These are actual statistics. You can verify them here.
1% of Americans hold 31.1% of the wealth.
9% of Americans hold 36.9% of the wealth.
40% of Americans hold 28.9% of the wealth.
50% of Americans hold 3.2% of the wealth.
To put this another way, one half of the population holds 96.8% of the country’s wealth; the other half of the population holds 3.2% of this country’s wealth.
I don’t think the issue here is bootstraps.
Steven Mills 