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$30,000 bracket can ever bridge the wealth gap.
An intelligent investor who makes $80,000 or more has a sizable advantage. The wealthiest 10% of Americans tend to have their wealth compound, whereas the average middle class worker's wealth stays relatively the same.
Those who own stocks receive dividends and those dividends when reinvested create compound interest and cause wealth to accumulate rapidly. Americans with less financial know-it-all and lower incomes own few, if any stocks and their incomes disappear due to everyday expenses.

Wealth tends to build off wealth as the CNN reporter states. For example, a theoretical example taken from the book "The Millionaire Next Door" shows the difference in thought between the average American and wealthy American with financial knowledge. An American with an average income who smokes 3 packs of cigarettes a day for 46 years would approximately spend $33,190. In contrast, a wealthy investor with financial knowledge could take that same $33,190 and invest it in the Philip Morris tobacco company over a period of the same 46 years. How much would that be worth at the end of 46 years? It would be a portfolio worth over $2 million. Movie stars and those with large inheritances create wealth gaps, but I think the varying degrees of financial knowledge create wealth gaps in a much greater way. Wealth disparity will never diminish, in my opinion, until Americans as a whole understand the difference in mindset of self-made millionaires in the upper 10% of the wealth category. The difference in mindset is a larger contributor of wealth gaps, but at times, we only look at the difference in income. Income is one factor, but not the main factor in causing wealth disparity.

Learn more about this author, Wesley Deans.
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