The Rich Get Richer While the Rest Don't.

A report from the Congressional Research Service last year points out that the richest one percent of the population held more than a third of total net wealth of the United States, the richest 10 percent held three quarters of total wealth, and the next 40 percent of the richest held a quarter of the total. The poorest half of the population shared only 1.1 percent of the net wealth.

Indeed the median household net wealth was less in 2010 than it was in 1989. Remember, the median is the point where half the households have less and half have more; thus poor people were by and large worse off in 2010 than they had been two decades before. On the other hand, the mean household wealth had increased over the two decades from $313,600 to $498,800. The well off got much richer while the less well off did not.

That gives some perspective to the new report that the household wealth has been reestablished to 98 percent of the level prior to the Great Recession.