Who owns America and what does American power actually buy the American people?

American Power Is Becoming Increasingly Difficult to Reconcile With Life in America

Edited by Yiannis Damellos

Illustrations: IntellAIgence - AI-generated art & digital creativity

August 19, 2026

America isn't necessarily becoming poorer; rather, it's experiencing a growing disparity in who reaps the benefits of its vast wealth and who bears the burden of sustaining its power.

Donald Trump has spent much of his second presidency reminding America's allies that the United States carries an enormous share of the Western world's military burden. At NATO, he has repeatedly complained that America is getting too little in return, while demanding that allies spend more on defense. There is an obvious argument to be made for burden-sharing. But there is another question — one that is rarely asked with the same force: What does American power actually buy the American people?

That question becomes particularly uncomfortable when Washington's foreign-policy establishment celebrates America's unmatched military reach while millions of Americans struggle with housing, health care, savings and debt.

The United States remains extraordinarily wealthy. Indeed, aggregate American household wealth reached about $183 trillion in the first quarter of 2026. America is not a poor country. The problem is that being an American is increasingly not the same thing as sharing equally in American wealth. And that distinction goes to the heart of the argument over American power.

A country of extraordinary wealth and insecurity

Consider something as mundane as a $400 emergency. According to the Federal Reserve's latest household survey, 63% of American adults said they could cover a hypothetical $400 emergency expense using cash or its equivalent. That means 37% could not. Most of those who could not pay immediately would find another way — usually by using credit, carrying a balance or employing several methods. But the fact remains that more than one in three adults does not have $400 readily available for an unexpected expense. That is not a statistic from a poor country. It is a statistic from the world's largest economy.

Then there is housing. HUD counted 745,652 people experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2025, including 266,320 people living in unsheltered conditions. Unsheltered homelessness had increased 36% since 2013. More than a quarter of a million people were literally living without shelter on the night of the government's count. And this is happening in a country whose financial markets can create trillions of dollars of additional wealth in a matter of months.

The minimum wage tells another story

The federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. It has been there since July 24, 2009. Seventeen years. The Department of Labor confirms that the federal rate has not changed since then, although many states and municipalities impose higher minimum wages. That is important. America's economy has changed dramatically since 2009. Asset prices have exploded. Corporate valuations have reached extraordinary levels. Technology has transformed entire industries. Workers are losing their jobs to AI. Yet the federal floor beneath the lowest-paid worker has remained frozen. The issue, therefore, isn't simply that America has become poor. 

It is that the gains from American economic power have not been distributed evenly.

Follow the Money

The Federal Reserve's Distributional Financial Accounts provide perhaps the clearest picture. In the first quarter of 2026, American households and nonprofit organizations possessed roughly $183 trillion in net worth. 

But look at what constitutes that wealth.

The Federal Reserve's distributional data show enormous concentrations of corporate equities and business ownership at the top. In 2026's first quarter, the top 0.1% alone held about $13.33 trillion in corporate equities and mutual-fund shares, compared with only $590 billion held by the bottom 50%. The top 0.1% also held approximately $4.68 trillion in unincorporated businesses. See what's going on here? The American economy can become richer without the median American becoming proportionally richer. A rising stock market is wonderful if you own substantial amounts of stock. A booming corporate sector is wonderful if you own businesses. Rapidly appreciating real estate is wonderful if you own multiple properties. But aggregate wealth statistics can conceal a very different reality for people whose principal asset is their labor.

The question is therefore not simply how rich is America? It is: Who owns America?

The people who own assets live in a different economy

This is where the phrase "the rich are getting richer" needs to be treated carefully. It is not merely a political slogan. The Federal Reserve's distributional accounts are explicitly designed to measure how wealth is distributed among American households. The top 1%, the next 9%, the next 40% and the bottom 50% occupy dramatically different positions on the American balance sheet.

And the composition of wealth matters enormously. The bottom half does not merely own fewer stocks. It owns vastly less of the assets that generate additional wealth. That creates a compounding effect. If you own shares, rising markets increase your wealth. If you own a business, corporate profits can increase your wealth. If you own property, appreciation can increase your wealth. If you own none of these things, inflation and rising asset prices can instead make life more expensive. This is how a country can become richer on paper while many of its citizens feel poorer.

And then comes the bill

Now add the federal government's balance sheet. The Treasury's Debt to the Penny database tracks America's outstanding federal debt daily. In August 2026, the debt was hovering around $39.9 trillion, putting the United States essentially at the $40 trillion threshold.

Forty trillion dollars is difficult to comprehend.

But the more important question is not the size of the number itself. It is who ultimately services it. The federal government can borrow because investors believe the United States will continue to tax, grow, refinance and ultimately honor its obligations. There is no separate class of "Washington money" that pays the debt. Government ultimately depends on the economic activity of citizens and businesses. That means today's borrowing creates tomorrow's political choices.

Higher taxes. Reduced spending. Reduced benefits. Higher inflation. Financial repression. Or some combination of all of them. And interest payments themselves increasingly compete with everything else the government wants to do. 

The debt is therefore not simply a number on a Treasury website. It is a claim on future American economic output.

This is where the argument about American power becomes uncomfortable

America spends enormous sums maintaining its global military position. It maintains hundreds of overseas bases and installations, funds the world's most sophisticated military, provides extended deterrence to allies and remains the central pillar of the NATO security architecture. And there is a legitimate argument that this system has produced enormous benefits for the United States.

NATO itself is not a useless arrangement for Hegemony reasons but also for retaliation. Quite the opposite. When the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in its history. The alliance subsequently participated in the Afghanistan campaign. It is historically absurd to say NATO has done nothing for America. But that doesn't mean the alliance — or America's global military posture — should be immune from scrutiny. 

My question here is different, though. It is whether the enormous resources devoted to maintaining American primacy are producing a sufficiently broad dividend for the American population.

America's paradox

Here is the paradox. The United States can project military power almost anywhere on Earth. But a significant minority of its own population cannot comfortably absorb a $400 financial shock. It can mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars for national security. But the federal minimum wage remains frozen at $7.25. It possesses approximately $183 trillion in household and nonprofit net worth. Yet hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless. It has the world's deepest capital markets. Yet millions of Americans remain financially vulnerable to medical expenses, housing costs and consumer debt. And it can borrow another trillion dollars with remarkable speed. But eventually somebody has to service the accumulated claims.

That is not the picture of a poor country. It is the picture of an extraordinarily wealthy country in which wealth, security and economic opportunity are distributed unevenly.

The great American inequality is not simply between rich and poor

It is increasingly between those who own assets and those who sell their labor. America's economic and tax system contains enormous advantages for people who already possess capital — including preferential treatment of different forms of investment income, business ownership and wealth accumulation. And once wealth is accumulated, it can generate more wealth.

That is the mechanism. It doesn't require a conspiracy. It doesn't require the rich to pay zero tax. It simply requires a system in which capital compounds faster for those who possess it than wages compound for those who don't. That is a much more serious problem because it is structural. 

The American promise is being tested

The traditional American promise was never that everyone would be equally wealthy. It was something more fundamental: Work hard, obey the law, participate in society, and you should have a reasonable chance to build a secure life. That promise becomes harder to sustain when housing becomes inaccessible, emergency savings disappear, health care threatens household finances, and the federal government accumulates obligations on a scale previously unimaginable.

Meanwhile, those who already own the country's productive assets can watch their wealth compound.

This is why the question of American power cannot be reduced to aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, NATO contributions or GDP. Power is also the capacity of a society to provide security and opportunity to its own citizens. 

A country that can dominate the global financial system but cannot provide economic security to a substantial portion of its population has a contradiction at its core.

And this is the question you should be asking your politicians

Trump is right about one thing - and one thing only- when he asks whether America's alliances provide sufficient value to Americans. And that's because Americans have every right to ask the same question about their own government. What does American power provide to the people who finance it? If the answer is national security, that is legitimate. If the answer is global influence, that has value. If the answer is protection of trade routes, financial stability, technological leadership and a favorable international order, those are real benefits. But they must eventually be measured against the domestic balance sheet. Because the United States is approaching $40 trillion in federal debt while enormous concentrations of private wealth sit in the hands of those best positioned to benefit from asset appreciation.

The country is not poor. Its people are not uniformly poor. The deeper problem is that the United States increasingly resembles a country in which national wealth and individual security are becoming two different things. And that may ultimately be a more serious threat to American power than anything war does — or fails to do. A superpower cannot remain powerful indefinitely if the social contract underpinning that power begins to fracture.

The aircraft carriers can remain at sea. The missiles can remain in their silos. The dollar can remain the world's reserve currency. But if an increasing number of Americans feel that the extraordinary wealth of their country belongs to somebody else — while the debt accumulated in their name will eventually belong to them — then the question is no longer whether America is powerful.

The question is: powerful for whom?