'100% Completely Unsustainable': Billionaire Wealth Manager Issues New Warning About US Inequality

Wealth inequality in the US has grown unsustainably large, according to one billionaire wealth manager.

In a Monday social media post, Peter Mallouk, the CEO of wealth management firm Creative Planning, shared a graph from the Financial Times showing that the top 10% of earners in the US now account for nearly half of all consumer spending.

"This is 100% completely unsustainable as a society," Mallouk commented. "Nearly 50% of all consumer spending now comes from the top 10% of earners. The bottom 80%? Their share keeps falling."

Mallouk added that this disparity is "why the economy can look strong in the data while millions of people feel like they're falling behind."

Mallouk's observations about the highest earners accounting for a disproportionate share of consumer spending are in line with what economists have been describing as a "K-shaped" economy in which wealth continues growing for the very wealthiest while the vast majority of the population gets left behind.

A February report from TD Economics economist Ksenia Bushmeneva noted that "the economic divide between America’s households at the top of the income spectrum and everyone else continued to widen last year," as "upper-income households benefited from the still-robust wage growth, strong gains in equity markets, and better access to consumer credit."

Bushmeneva also projected that this divide would only grow in the coming year given that the tax cuts passed by Republicans in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025 are expected to provide outsized benefits to the wealthiest Americans, even as "a reduction in funding to various government programs" such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program "will weigh on low-income households."

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told Axios in a January interview that the data on US consumer spending patterns shows that "the economy is narrowly perched on the backs of the well-to-do," which he noted leaves it in a vulnerable position should the ultrawealthy pull back on their spending at any time.

Zandi's view of the instability of such an economy was echoed in a February column by Carol Ryan of The Wall Street Journal, who warned about the dangers of relying on the wealthiest to drive economic growth.

Given that the wealth of these Americans is tied up in the stock market, Ryan argued, this "could mean the entire economy pays a steep price in the next market correction," as consumer spending would then likely turn negative.

While the richest Americans continue getting wealthier, the US labor market has entered a downturn, as the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the American economy lost 92,000 jobs, and overall the economy has posted a net loss of 19,000 jobs since May 2025.