# IS Wall Street the main cause of U.S. income/wealth inequality? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 12, 2016, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926 "2016-02-12T13:45:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 87
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2016, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926/87 "2016-02-15T13:59:51Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > So in other words, if they save every penny, live like a college freshman for the greater part of their adult lives, they might be able to save what a 28 year old analyst at Goldman Sachs makes a year or so out of business school. As I wrote just a couple weeks back in another thread: > [@Why will most Americans never become mega millionaires or billionaires?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-will-most-americans-never-become-mega-millionaires-or-billionaires/743969/128): > > Someone who retired at the end of CY2015 after 30 or 40 years of investing in the S&P 500 saw a CAGR of greater than 7%. So we’re not even talking about heroic levels of frugality here. My mid-20s days of living off $25k/year and still maxing out my IRA were hardly “living like a college freshman.” Now obviously some people are already living like one before setting anything aside. But for the rest of us, there’s almost always someone who makes less and saves more. I suspect many of us have very high personal discount rates, so the present value of any future gains quickly approaches zero, even with seemingly hefty returns. Not that a junior MBA at GS is exactly rolling in it. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-wall-street-the-main-cause-of-u-s-income-wealth-inequality/745926)._