re: People still don't understand net worth/wealth vs income

One of the more popular Marxist critiques has to do not with income, but with income "inequity".

The premise being that if individuals start a US car company (Tesla) or Internet Retailer (Amazon) from scratch, and become the world's two richest men in the process, that McDonald's should then pay its workers more to close the newly arisen income gap.

It makes little pragmatic sense.
But the US Left does a hell of a job promoting it. Your "poor getting more poor" misperception being a perfect example.

As a messaging aid, they'll publish "quintile" charts showing US "income disparity". For example:

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In accordance with the adage "Figures don't lie, but liars figure," the chart above is misleading.

It really is not a quintile chart.
Something unique ONLY TO US charts is the inevitable addition of Top 5% or Top 1% or Top 0.1% growth lines.

Keep in mind, the Top 5% or Top 1% or Top 0.1% growth lines are already a component of the "Top Quintile".
So why break them out?

Because as the sample size diminishes, samples are increasingly distorted by massive FIRST GENERATION WEALTH of new US entrepreneurs (Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Ellison, Bloomberg, etc). The concept of rising from limited means to become one of the world's wealthiest people in a matter of a decade or two defines American Exceptionalism. Yet that exceptionalism is what these US income inequity charts are specifically designed to highlight and criticize.

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Put another way, here is identical data from the chart above, but now only showing quintiles (i.e., without the added "Top 5%" line)

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Now compare it with a similar chart from the UK.

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