Return on investment

Those in the 1% need to invest all that money they have lying around. Get it working! But the stock market and bond market aren't going to return much on an investment, so alternatives are big. And those alternatives are: SWAG --- Silver, wine, art, and gold. The price of art has gone through the roof and is now considered an "asset class."

Sam Pizzigati of Campaign for America's Future notes:

The Artprice Global Index, a broader tally of the prices works of fine art are fetching, has art values up 120 percent over the last decade.
…
Fine wines, the Liv-Ex wine index shows, have jumped about 300 percent since 2000. Gold has appreciated at an even higher rate, as has silver.

All this wealth hangs on walls, sits in wine cellars, or sits in safes. Hmm. Perhaps an investment bubble looming?

Now contrast today's rich with those in the 1950s. Income taxes were up around 90%, so Anna Dodge, widow of Horace and heir to the Dodge auto fortune invested her entire $56 million in municipal bonds.

They paid only 3 percent in interest. But the dollars invested in municipals paid off handsomely for the mid-century 99 percent. Those dollars financed the schools and sewage plants and waterworks that created the foundation for the classic American middle class.