Being a millionaire isn’t what it used to be. This isn’t a lament, it’s a fact: As Bloomberg News reported recently, almost one-fifth of U.S. households have a net worth of more than $1 million. Fully one-third of them have gained that status since 2017.

There is, however, an important caveat to this data, which is through 2023: Most of that wealth is on paper. America may be entering the Era of the Illiquid Millionaire. Compared to the alternative — the illiquid non-millionaire — it is a nice problem to have. But it also is redefining what it means to be rich, with profound implications for both society and public policy.

Americans’ wealth is the result in part of a soaring stock market (up more than sevenfold from the bottom in 2009) and increasing real estate values (up 125% since 2009). Many Americans benefited from these markets because of deliberate policy choices that encouraged investment in them. In 1989, only 32% of Americans owned any equity; by 2022, about 60% did.

The big change first came from the increased popularity of tax deferred retirement accounts, which are the way most Americans save.

Since the 1980s, retirement accounts have displaced other forms of saving and are now how most Americans invest in markets. But these accounts make Americans feel richer than they are.

First, they are illiquid — that is, investors can’t get their money without paying a penalty (or borrowing against it) until they are 59. Also, most of the time they still owe income tax on the money — and the rate will probably be much higher than the capital gains tax rate on post-tax assets. Even if retirement assets are reported just like other kinds of financial assets, they are often worth less.

The other big source of wealth is housing, which makes up about 40% of the net worth of a typical American household. Policy also encourages homeownership: with tax incentives, subsidies for the mortgage market, and efforts to keep interest rates low. (Policy has also restricted supply, contributing to rising home values, which incentivizes homeownership.) But a house, too, is illiquid. Selling a home involves substantial transaction costs, and people who sell their house have to find somewhere else to live. The housing market can be brutal, with high prices and higher mortgage rates.

It all adds up to an illusion in which we tell ourselves: We are rich! I fall for it myself. I am doing things I never did before, such as looking at my brokerage account when the market is up and checking real-estate listings for similar apartments. It feels good, and even though I know better, it is easy to forget that I am actually about 35% less wealthy than it appears.(That’s about what it would cost me to convert my assets into cash and pay my tax liability when I am old enough to withdraw my money, which I can’t now. If I liquidate today, I am about 50% less wealthy than my account says I am.)

In some ways this wealth means America’s policy choices encouraging retirement saving and home ownership have been successful. These policies force people to save for the future, giving them a more comfortable retirement that is less reliant on public benefits.

On the federal level at least, the momentum is to encourage even more illiquidity for retirement investors — such as the White House’s plan to allow private equity in 401(k)s, which is a very bad idea. These proposals tend to come when asset prices are high, less so when prices fall.

But there are downsides. The illusion of wealth can encourage people to take on more debt — and unsurprisingly, home-equity loans and loans against 401(k)s have become more common. And while retirement accounts may mean more money for the future, they also increase vulnerability to economic shocks today.

And if a price correction in the market makes all these rich-on-paper Americans feel much poorer and cut back on spending, watch out. Wealth effects can be significant, even when investors are looking at an account they can’t touch for decades.

That’s what makes this story far more consequential than a cliché profile of a high-earning but cash-poor millionaire straight out of a Tom Wolfe novel. When almost 20% of the population is worth $1 million or more, $1 million truly does not mean what it used to. If your net worth is a million dollars, you’re certainly not poor. But you’re not as rich as you might think.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

In the annals of American politics, few figures have reshaped the landscape as profoundly as President Donald Trump. His bombastic style, unfiltered rhetoric, and policy disruptions galvanized the Republican base while triggering a seismic reaction among Democrats.

As Trump’s second term approaches its end in 2029, the GOP will stand at a crossroads. Far from being doomed by his polarizing legacy, Republicans are poised to emerge as the party of the sensible center, representing the non-polarized public, while Democrats, mired in anti-Trump fervor, risk alienating the masses with diminished appeal.

Trump’s polarization is undeniable. Following his 2016 ascent, he transformed the GOP into a vehicle for populist grievances, emphasizing immigration crackdowns, trade protectionism, and a combative foreign policy. This alienated moderates within his party but electrified disaffected voters. The actual ripple effect, however, was on the opposition.

Democrats viewed Trump as an existential threat to democratic norms, responding with unprecedented unity and ideological hardening. Late 2024 polling showed Democrats’ pessimism about their party’s future spiking after Trump’s victory, with many labeling leadership as “weak” or “ineffective.”

This wasn’t just emotional; it drove policy shifts. Under Trump’s shadow, Democrats accelerated their leftward drift, embracing progressive stances on climate extremism, identity politics, and expansive government intervention that often outpaced public sentiment.

A Brookings Institution analysis revealed how elected Democrats shifted further left during the Trump era, even as voters polarized: Republicans rightward, but Democrats more dramatically so.

His immigration policies forced Democrats into a defensive posture, amplifying calls for open borders and sanctuary cities that polled poorly among independents. By 2025, Gallup reported Democrats regaining a slight edge in party affiliation, but this masked deeper fractures as internal polls showed growing liberal extremism, with bases demanding purity tests on social issues that repelled moderates.

This dynamic exemplifies a boomerang effect: Trump’s outsized persona not only rallied Republicans but radicalized Democrats into a mirror-image opposition. Polarization under Trump fueled political violence and division, with Democrats seeing Republicans as enemies rather than opponents. The result? By 2025, Democrats were more ideologically cohesive but less broadly appealing.

Post-election analyses highlighted how they lost working-class voters, especially non-white men, to Trump’s economic messaging, leaving the party reliant on urban elites and progressive activists. Trump’s win solidified his grip on the GOP, but it also set an expiration date: Jan. 20, 2029.

Here lies the opportunity for the post-Trump GOP. Without Trump’s personal baggage, legal entanglements, inflammatory tweets, and cultlike following, the party can pivot toward moderation. Discussions on Reddit and in think tanks like Brookings suggest a return to “normal” conservatism, characterized by fiscal responsibility, limited government, and pragmatic foreign policy, reminiscent of pre-Trump figures.

Trump’s successors could shed MAGA extremes while retaining its populist energy on trade and immigration, resonating with the “forgotten” middle class.

Democrats, conversely, face a steeper climb. Their anti-Trump entrenchment has calcified into left-wing orthodoxy that’s difficult to unwind. Pew noted Democrats’ views grew more negative toward Republicans, fostering hostility that alienates swing voters.

In 2025, with Trump in office, Democratic leaders grappled with internal divisions: progressives pushed for radical reforms, while centrists warned of electoral peril. The Hill reported that Democrats are struggling with identity amid Trump’s return, torn between base appeals and reclaiming the center. This polarization means even post-Trump, Democrats may cling to divisive issues like defund-the-police echoes or aggressive cultural wars, repelling the non-ideological public weary of extremes.

The non-polarized majority, independents and moderates prioritizing kitchen-table issues over partisan theater will likely gravitate toward a GOP unburdened by Trump’s shadow. AP-NORC polls in 2025 showed Democrats view their party as “weak,” with voters pessimistic about its future. Republicans could position themselves as the pragmatic alternative, focusing on economic growth and security without the drama.

Of course, this isn’t inevitable. The GOP must actively court the center, rejecting isolationism and embracing inclusivity. But the asymmetry is apparent: Trump’s polarization was a gift to Republicans in disguise, forcing Democrats into a corner from which escape is arduous. By 2029, as Trump fades, the GOP could reclaim the mantle of the people’s party through default.

The public, exhausted by strife, will reward normalcy. For Democrats, the lesson is stark: opposition to a man can define you, but surviving his absence requires reinvention they may be too polarized to achieve.

Nafees Alam is a professor in social work at Boise (Idaho) State University. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

A recent Fox News poll found that 38% of Jewish New Yorkers intend to vote for Zohran Mamdani for mayor, setting aside whatever reservations they might have about the candidate’s views on Israel. At least a few of those voters will support the 34-year-old state Assembly member not despite those views, but because of them.

That’s their right as Americans and as Jews. But I feel sure that for almost any Jew among the 42% who plan to vote for Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor, or the 13% who support Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, Mamdani’s views are more than disturbing.

Readers of this column, particularly those inclined to vote for Mamdani, should at least pause to consider the reasons.

A good place to start is to concede that nothing in the public record suggests Mamdani is antisemitic — taking the narrowest view of what the word implies. He has spoken of the “crisis of antisemitism” in New York as “something that we have to tackle.” He has condemned the hate crimes this year in Washington and in Boulder, Colorado. And he’s reached out to Jewish communities of various stripes, promising that Zionists would be welcome in his administration.

But Mamdani is also a longtime anti-Zionist of a peculiarly obsessed sort. Three lesser-known points of his biography stand out.

First, as an undergraduate at Bowdoin College, where he helped found the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, he broke off collaboration with the student arm of the left-wing Jewish group J Street, which supports Palestinian statehood, opposes Israeli settlements, and is roundly critical of the Israeli government.

Why? Because J Street supports Israel as “a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.” This was too much for Mamdani and his comrades in SJP, for whom working with J Street was a form of normalization. Mamdani, who to this day does not support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, also called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Bowdoin’s president rightly dismissed that notion for “stifling discussion and the free exchange of ideas.”

The second was a rap song Mamdani wrote in 2017, called “Salaam.” “My love to the Holy Land Five, you better look ’em up,” he crooned.

His critics did: The Holy Land Foundation was an ostensible charity convicted in 2008 of funneling $12 million to Hamas; the five defendants in the case received prison sentences of 15 to 65 years for crimes including money laundering, tax fraud and support of terrorism.

Finally, a few months before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas, Mamdani introduced a bill in the state Assembly that could have jeopardized the tax-exempt status of virtually every pro-Israel charity. The bill, noted Alex Bores, a fellow Assembly member and a Democrat, “is not aimed at improving regulations of nonprofits broadly, or even applying standards which would apply across the board,” Rather, it “singularly applies to organizations providing aid to a specific country and its people. This is immediately suspicious.”

What stands out about this list is the affinity for extremists, the double standards, and the monomania. Especially the monomania.

One of the ways anti-Zionists tend to give themselves away as something darker is that the only human-rights abuses they seem to notice are Israel’s; the only state among dozens of religious states whose legitimacy they challenge is Israel; the only group whose suffering they are prepared to turn into their personal crusade is that of the Palestinians. What gives? Has Mamdani sponsored bills to oppose, say, the persecution of Uyghurs in China or Kurds in Turkey or gays in his native Uganda, where he was photographed in July with a notoriously homophobic official? Did he ever rap his “love” for the people of Iran fighting their regime?

This is not the only thing that scares so many Jewish voters. An article of faith among many self-professed anti-Zionists is that they are not antisemitic. But Jews don’t live in a world of fine-grained semantic distinctions. The man accused of killing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, the young couple fatally shot in May outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, yelled “Free Palestine.” Many of the thousands of antisemitic incidents nationwide since the Oct. 7 attacks also have had at least a patina of anti-Zionism. The homes and businesses of prominent Jews have been attacked or vandalized, some by pro-Palestinian protesters, adding to the sense of threat.

What does it mean for Jewish New Yorkers that a mayoral candidate who pledges to fight antisemitism also proudly avows the very ideology that is the source of so much of the hatred Jews now face? Why, right after Oct. 7, could he do no better than to issue a mealy-mouthed acknowledgment that Jews had died the day before? Why couldn’t he even denounce the perpetrators of the most murderous antisemitic rampage in the past 80 years?

Even that’s not the deepest worry. “The painful truth,” Elliot Cosgrove, the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue, observed in his Saturday sermon, is that “Mamdani’s anti-Zionist rhetoric not only appeals to his base but seems to come with no downside breakage. What business does an American mayoral candidate have weighing in on foreign policy unless it scores points at the ballot box? I don’t doubt that Mamdani’s anti-Zionism is heartfelt and sincere, but its instrumentalization as an election talking point should frighten you in that it says more about the sensibilities of our fellow New Yorkers than it does about Mamdani himself.”

In the long, sorry tale of anti-Jewish politics, it hasn’t just been the prejudice of a few that’s led Jews to grief. It’s been the supine indifference of the many. That’s what frightens Jews like me.

Bret Stephens writes a column for the New York Times.

CHICAGO — Thanks to U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, we’ve finally learned something about what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Border Patrol are doing in the Chicago area from the perspective of ICE and the U.S. Border Patrol, which is helpful even if you don’t like what’s going on.

Todd Lyons, acting director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Greg Bovino, chief patrol agent, El Centro Sector, U.S. Border Patrol, did write to this newspaper last month to take issue with one of our editorials and offer their view of events, which we duly published, but beyond that ICE has said little or nothing to reporters as it upends life as we knew it in Chicago. Local officials also tell us they are being kept in the dark.

To say that both ICE and the Border Patrol lack a commitment to transparency is to understate.

But Ellis, a persistent jurist, has managed to extract the information that the Border Patrol has 232 agents in the area, working on “Operation Midway Blitz,” all of whom are equipped with cameras. She also heard from Deputy Field Office Director Shawn Byers that there are approximately 300 ICE agents assigned to the Midwest, with only about 75-80 total in the Chicago area, somewhat fewer than many people think. Apparently ICE agents mostly are not equipped with cameras; a lack of funding was cited as a reason in court. That should be corrected.

If there is a viable argument against the use of cameras by federal agents enforcing immigration law in our communities, we have not heard it. And we’re not sympathetic to the line that the use of cameras takes a ton of training. In essence, agents attach a camera to their bodies and turn it on. Chicago’s police officers have been doing it for years in compliance with both departmental policy and state law.

Federal agents have claimed in court and elsewhere that some citizens aren’t just peacefully protesting but are interfering with their duties. Cameras, surely, would be helpful in sorting out what really has been happening. If ICE and the Border Patrol are telling the truth about these incidents, they should have nothing to fear from making the footage available to the American public, ideally under the supervision of a court, not as a judiciously edited propaganda tool.

These agents are acting with the authority of the U.S. government and their actions should be recorded and viewed in the clear light of day, albeit with all of the appropriate safeguards and protections that go into the release of video from other law enforcement agencies whose work routinely involves conflict. It is not “judicial activism” to insist that ICE and the Border Patrol be subject to the same levels of transparency as the Chicago police.

— The Chicago Tribune