wealth-altimeter

Wealth Altimeter

An interactive page that shows US household wealth by percentile as stacks of $100 bills ($1 million = 1.09 m), from the sidewalk to orbit. Built September 2026 as a response to the 2026 update of the “Wealth Inequality in America” video.

Live artifact: https://claude.ai/code/artifact/64c411f5-0ef8-4e70-8bb0-90103c78398d

Files

• model.py — builds model.json: per-percentile averages anchored to the Fed’s Distributional Financial Accounts (Q1 2026), survey thresholds (DQYDJ / SCF 2023), the top-tail split (WID shape + Forbes), net-worth headcount bands, and Census income bands from hinc01.json.
• hinc01.json — Census CPS ASEC table HINC-01, households by income in 2024.
• altimeter.template.html — the page, with /*__DATA__*/ where the model is injected.
• build.py — writes wealth-altimeter.html (publish this) and preview.html (open locally).

Updating the numbers

1. New Fed quarter: edit the G dict in model.py (FRED release table, levels in $ millions).
2. New Forbes figures: edit NAMED and MUSK (the latter is in the template’s script header).
3. New survey thresholds: edit T in model.py.
4. Run python3 model.py && python3 build.py, then republish wealth-altimeter.html.