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    The top 10% drive nearly half of U.S. consumer spending [OC]
    Data

    The top 10% drive nearly half of U.S. consumer spending [OC]


    Data

    • U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) — Consumer Expenditure Survey
    • Moody’s Analytics
    • Yahoo Finance (macro cross-checks)

    Software

    • R (data processing and visualization)

    Sources

    This visualization shows the share of total U.S. consumer spending attributable to different household income groups using the latest available data (2024–2025).

    Households are grouped by income percentiles (lowest 30%, second 30%, third 30%, and top 10%). The chart highlights a nonlinear relationship between income and aggregate consumption: higher-income households account for a disproportionately large share of total spending.

    Based on the data, the top 10% of households account for approximately 49% of total consumer spending, exceeding the combined share of the lowest 60% of households. Each of the remaining income groups contributes a progressively smaller share despite representing a much larger number of households.

    Posted by forensiceconomics

    View 19 Comments

    19 Comments

    4. fuck_all_you_too on

      They will use it because it favors shitting on the average consumer until the market is gutted, then watch them scatter to a new country to strip down for parts

    5. SomeSchmidt on

      If they have 90% of the wealth (not sure about the exact %) then shouldn’t they account for 90% of the spending? Kind of seems like they’re holding the economy back by hoarding all that $$

    6. truthindata on

      The math is bad here, but this shows a relative metric of why “tax the rich” can be problematic. Reaganomics don’t quite work, but more taxation never results in a healthier spend metric.

      Currently, the better earning folks support a LOT of the economy.

      Punishing them doesn’t help anything unless you backfill it with increased spend from other categories. Taxes are just about the least efficient possible way to transfer wealth.

    7. SgtRamesses on

      Wait, wait… you mean to tell us that those with the money are the only ones able to spend it? Huh, who’d have thought.

    8. cobrachickenwing on

      You don’t even know what the spending is on, so it’s hard to create policies to tax on those vices. What if all their spending is on digital goods? The Mag 7 have actively lobbied for no taxes on digital products.

    9. SecretRecipe on

      and they pay more than half of all taxes too. the top 10% basically carries the economy

    10. Thin-Ebb-9534 on

      This is actually an important chart to consider and study. Conservatives claim that giving the highest income earners tax cuts will “trickle down” to everyone else because it will stimulate more spending. But this is a statistical bias, somewhat similar to survivor bias. They point to a chart like this and say, “look, they are who spends the most money so if we give them a tax cut they will spend even more.” But the actual truth is they can already afford to buy the vast majority of what they want, so further tax cuts just increase their savings. (Obviously I am talking in directional generalities here, not absolutes). But if you give tax cuts or stimulus money to the other, lower income groups, almost all of it will be spent, yielding a much stronger multiplier effect on the economy.

    11. ADeweyan on

      Considering how much if their wealth is parked overseas or not circulating in the economy, imagine how much stronger the economy would be if much more of their wealth was spread to the lower 10%.

    15. godot_lover on

      The bottom 60% are now irrelevant to growth. We’ve shifted from a mass market to a luxury economy

    16. sproge on

      See, this is the shit I’ve been saying when people say “but the rich need poor people to drive the economy”

      No they don’t, they can just shuffle money between each other and drip-feeding the rest of us the minimum required for us not to rebel

    18. ToonMasterRace on

      Also pay the majority of taxes to the federal government. They really are required to keep our house of cards from collapsing faster than it already is.