This is the title of a great post on The Washington Post’s “Wonkblog” (see here) that I saw last month (yes, it has taken me, um, a while to put this up on Historicalness.com…good thing I’m not covering breaking news). Their post was made even better since it had a graph:

What we can see is that since the late 1980s, the top 1% wealthiest households have consistently held about 40% of the stock market wealth.

And for those same 25 years, the top 10% have consistently held about 80% of stock market wealth.

As Wonkblog notes, even though “about 52 percent of Americans own at least some stock, mostly in their 401(k)s,” those holdings are tiny compared to the average holdings of the wealthiest households, which are the ones that benefit disproportionately to a stock market increase.

On Friday, the S&P 500 closed at 1,582, just below its all-time high.  The stock market has had a dramatic rebound since its late 2008 / early 2009 depths.  Here’s a chart showing the S&P’s growth since 1950:

The avid readers of Historicalness.com surely know that this blog’s third-ever post was about New York’s Trinity Church, its deep roots in the city, and its extensive property holdings in lower Manhattan (see the post here).

A few days ago, we learned that by one estimate the value of those properties today — stemming from the 215 acres gifted to the Church by Queen Anne in 1705 — is $2 billion.  The Church’s latest figures show that it holds 14 acres with 5.5 million square feet of commercial space, mainly in the Hudson Square Area.

Here’s the map of their properties that I posted last time:

In addition to its estimated property value, the real estate generated $158 million in revenue in 2011.

Talk about a great long-term hold!