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Four of the five top names on the list are software or hardware barons -- Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and Michael Dell. Of the 60 people who made the magazine's annual list for the first time this year, no fewer than 19 earned their fortunes from floating stock in their Web businesses. Overall, there are now 5 million millionaires in the United States and 268 billionaires -- including 79 new ones, a 42 percent increase over a year ago -- the magazine that bills itself as the "Capitalist Tool" informs us. So, what does this expanding crop of Internet billionaires and millionaires tell us about the distribution of wealth in America? Has it, at long last, grown more democratic?

Guess again.

A number of recent studies document that wealth and income are more concentrated now than any time since the 1920s. In fact, the fabulous new riches of the Information Age are concentrated in precious few hands -- and that could spell bad news for those who dream of a "long boom" or a "36,000 Dow."

While the top 20 percent of the population has seen its share of the national financial pie expand rapidly over the past two decades, the rest of the population has failed to benefit, and the bottom 20 percent has actually been losing ground.

Globally, the growing gap between rich and poor is downright scandalous. The wealthiest 400 Americans are now collectively worth over $1 trillion, which is more than the collective net worth of 1.2 billion Chinese.

The world's richest man, Microsoft's Bill Gates, with $85 billion, is worth more than all 75 million people living in the Philippines. Most economists shrug off this data. "Where's the problem?" they ask. As long as the pie is expanding, there should be enough to give almost everyone (except the poorest) at least a slightly larger slice in the future, they argue.

But others are not so sure. They fear that the distribution of wealth and income has gotten so out of whack that it now threatens to undermine the nation's current prosperity. Their caution is especially sobering now that the long-running bull market is starting to show its age.

This argument owes an intellectual debt to Karl Marx, although no one in this post-communist era would acknowledge it. Marx was one of the few thinkers to try to analyze the threat to capitalism represented by disparities in the distribution of wealth.

John Maynard Keynes, who saved capitalism from its Depression-era midlife crisis, also understood the problem in these terms. William Greider, in his recent book "One World Ready or Not," analyzed the emerging global economic crisis in our time from a similar perspective.

The idea is simple: In eras of great innovation, like the one we are living through now, capitalism spawns new products and new tools, making most workers vastly more productive than they were before. These fabulous new tools (like the one you're reading these words on) give the economy the capacity to produce more goods, more services and more information at lower and lower costs.

In the somewhat rarefied enclave of North America, Alan Greenspan may be worried about the danger of inflation, but look around the world to see what is actually happening to prices.

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