The Bottom 60%

Billionaire entrepreneur and financier Ray Dalio says there are two very different economic realities in the United States right now. That divide is threatening the nation’s stability, the Bridgewater Associates founder says, and it’s only going to get worse as technology replaces workers.

“[T]here are two economies. We talk of ‘the economy.’ Recognize that you can’t talk about the economy … there are two economies,” says Dalio, speaking to Recode executive editor Kara Swisher on her podcast, Recode Decode, published Monday.

There’s the “top 40 percent” and “the bottom 60 percent,” says Dalio. And for those at the bottom, life is hard without a lot of hope.

“If you look at the economy of the bottom 60 percent, it is a miserable economy. Not only hasn’t it had growth and economic movement and so on, it has the highest rising death rates, it is the only place in the world where death rates are rising because of a combination of opiates, other drugs and suicides,” Dalio says. (Indeed, Princeton Professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton found that drugs, alcohol and suicide are a major reason behind rising death rates among non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. with a high school diploma or less.)

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