The world's ten richest people (mostly American) increased their combined wealth to $2.9 trillion in May, gaining about $220 billion as stock markets climbed. This matches independent reporting from Forbes and financial news outlets confirming the figure through market data. Reich's comparison to the bottom 50% of US households ($4.3 trillion) is harder to verify—while broader wealth distribution data exists from sources like the Federal Reserve, the specific $4.3 trillion figure for the bottom 50% isn't directly confirmed in standard public sources and appears to involve some calculation or estimation. The top 10 billionaire figure checks out, but without being able to verify the bottom 50% number with certainty, the inequality comparison rests on less solid ground than it first appears. It's worth noting that comparing the wealth of ten individuals to hundreds of millions of people is arithmetically valid but can obscure more than it reveals about what's actually driving wealth concentration.