Abstract
In the second quarter of 2026 the wealthiest 1% of American households held 32.5% of household net worth, the highest share in the Federal Reserve's quarterly record and 14 times the wealth of the entire poorer half of the country. This paper argues that concentration on that scale erodes the growth, credit, and political consent on which the returns to capital rest, a claim that cross-country associations, national-accounting evidence, and calibrated models support, each with limits the paper states. Walter Scheidel's survey of recorded history finds that every major compression of inequality came through mass-mobilisation war, revolution, state failure, or lethal pandemic, and that no peaceful reform has achieved one of comparable size.
The SAVI Capital Model is designed to divide every dollar of a portfolio company's net profit, exit gains included, at the top of the waterfall, half to the people who work there in equal shares and half to the capital that financed them. Chief executive pay is capped at 15 to 20 times the lowest-paid worker, and once investors have received five times their contributions, every further financial-side distribution passes to the institution's own non-profit arm. The Fifteen Compact is its public counterpart, a single contribution levied on profit after the workforce's share, rising in bands from 1% to a ceiling of 15%, offered first as an opt-in pilot with Argentina as the worked case. The SAVI Group offers its own funds as the first test cases and asks universities to evaluate the pilots, asset managers to commit a vehicle, and governments to legislate an opt-in regime.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23092301 · Published 1 October 2026 · Version 1.0 · CC BY 4.0 · Zenodo record
How to cite: Vitagliano, S. (2026). The SAVI Capital Model™: Reform Before Rupture (Version 1.0). The SAVI Group. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23092301
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A proposal for discussion. Not an offer of securities. Spanish and Portuguese editions are in preparation.