Averaged across 10’s of millions of people and even 100$ is quite significant. It’s not that everyone has X$ less, some people have more and others have significantly less.
Yep. And in the last week, the rich have lost more money than anybody else.
It’s all a function of two things: 1. what percentage of your wealth is where, (ie home, stock market, checking account) and 2. Even if you and a rich man are both 80% in the stock market, he’ll come out in absolute terms having made more money.
Is that fair? I think so. Both made the same percentage. And if it drops, he’ll lose more absolute money, too.
"By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median black net worth had fallen 83 percent to $2,170"
That's MEDIAN, not AVERAGE. Average is even worse, as you say drawn up by the few very wealthy. But with median, the wealth disparity is already astounding. It's a racial issue. We can debate the reasons, but the fact remains. Middle class and even lower class white households still have much more wealth on average than their black counterparts in the same income group.
>I would think it'd be far better to take the middle 80% of Americans and find an average wealth value (lop off the top 10% and bottom 10%). That would give you a perspective on how most of the nation is doing, especially since the very top radically skews the data upward.
How does the enormous wealth of the top 1% skew the median wealth upwards or downwards? I think you might be confusing median with average.
You are more than correct if you confused wealth for income. Median is $65k and average is $432. That's actually more than 6 times. Given that the top percentile makes their money through the stock market and real-estate, the income might be less relevant.
Holy shit, really? This is your argument? Talk about not getting it.
The average income in the US in 2013 is $52k.
The "haves" are not the arbitrary top 1% which starts at $380k, no, the "haves" are the people with millions or BILLIONS of dollars. It's not about yearly income, it's about net worth.
The difference between someone making $52k a year and someone with BILLIONS of dollars to their name is far more than 1:1000. Assuming just $1 billion to $52k the difference is about 19,230:1.
And that's assuming the people with $52k income "have" $52k. But they don't really, they're probably in debt.
they are comparing net worth, and even in america most people are worth 0 (or less). so yeah, lowly me is worth more than half a billion people, but their combined wages (even minute) would dwarf mine. but its not like you could take the 1%'s wealth and give it to everyone else and it would make any meaningful impact.
even if you took the top 10 richest people in the world and gave it to every person in just america, thats only about 1600$/person. They'd still be poor and there'd still be a richest 1% and apple would have sold a lot more iphones.
Completely agree, especially when the USA has nearly 330 million people!
Last year according to credit Suisse, the median wealth of the typical American actually /decreased/! And if I remember correctly, it was by quite a sizeable chunk, from 49,000 usd to 45,000 usd.
And the median excludes children, so it is adults only.
I have all the statistics in the world to back up what I'm saying, but even more important for me is anecdotal stuff that inspires me to dig deeper.
When you see the sheer number of young kids working chipotle or retail; when you see the demographics of uber drivers vs big 5 software engineers; when you realize that so much of the wealth in the US is old money that continues to centralize, pool, and grow (much like gravity);
when you realize all that, at the very least, it makes you say "hmmm... I need to rethink and dig deeper into this topic on my own".
[80% of Americans have some form of debt.][1] The average total wealth for all Americans is actually positive. [It's a little over $300,000.][2] But that number is really the skewed one, as it's significantly shifted by the 0.1% of the Americans [which own 90% of America's wealth][3].
As for the median, I can't seem to find that statistic, but I would argue that it's actually a less accurate picture than the average.
"In 2013 we estimate that 3.2 billion individuals – more than two thirds of adults in the world – have wealth below 10 000 dollars."[1] In total they also estimate that those 3.2 billion individuals have a combined wealth of 7.3 trillion dollars.
So, unless you're implying that everyone who has "a checking account" has more than 7.3 trillion dollars, sorry, it's just not the same.
I'm not denying that there is extreme inequality between poor in America and poor in Africa or India.
But let's not make false comparisons between having a banking account and being in the top 30 wealthiest individuals. Having a banking account is not the same as having 7 trillion dollars in wealth.
> that means the average person is loosing 4 out of every 10$ their earning. And, that's just the average.
Yeah, that's just the average. The median person is paying less, and should be paying even less than that.
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