Are you living in a "one-in-every-325" households with a net worth of $10 million?

Off-topic
1

One in every 825 households earned at least $2 million last year, nearly double the percentage in 1989, adjusted for inflation, Mr. Wolff found in an analysis of government data.

When it comes to wealth, one in every 325 households had a net worth of $10 million or more in 2004, the latest year for which data is available, more than four times as many as in 1989.

By the way, the VERY WEALTHY (top tenth of 1%) increased their wealth by 135% last year, while the MERELY WEALTHY (top 1%) only increased their wealth by 65%.

In that same time period, the lower 90% of us (that’s ME!) increased our wealth 2%.

2

I don’t know about that but I was able to graduate college in the top 90% of my class.

3

not a chance

4

Yes.

5

Most of that is because the non-wealthy are spending all their money on stupid stuff like car repairs, Xboxes, fancy cars, rent on fancy apartments they don’t own, etc. after which there’s not a lot left to build wealth with even if they had some inkling of how to do it instead of making up conspiracy theories and trying to convince themselves of their moral superiority for not having any money in the bank and hence being just another mouth to feed.

6

It’s encouraging to see that so many people are doing well. It gives great hope to the other 324 households who probably are doing so bad themselves. I guess it is just more evidence of the great opportunities we enjoy here in the USA!

7

Wow. Sounds like you’d really benefit from seeing more of the world…I’m guessing you can afford it. If not though, you don’t have to go far. Try simply listening to some of those ‘non-wealthy’ people, and not just the ones you think you know.

Andrew

8

Too late to edit…just wanted to clarify that my comments about needing to see more of the world and how other cultures live very much applies to me too. I realise I’m horribly uninformed. I just think realising it is a very important first step that a lot of people need to take.

9

In the U.S., people are doing pretty darned good. I do know a pretty good number of people who live in very “poor” conditions. Typically, they own luxuries which leave me gaping with sticker shock, and have their money doing rather inefficient things - leading me to believe that their poverty is mainly a matter of having bigger holes in the bucket than spout to fill it with.

As pointed out by one of my professors, the definition of poverty line in the US is defined rather interestingly - the baseline statistically assumed household budget often includes things like advanced cable television subscriptions as part of the “cost of living”. This doesn’t deny that there are people who are barely staying above water, but it does indicate that the numbers are being massaged a bit to make things look worse than they are.

For the entirety of human history, being fat has been a sign of opulent wealth; only the wealthy could afford to overeat. In the U.S., “poor” people are often overweight. We have fat poor people. Clearly from an absolute stance, we are living in a Golden Age. The U.S. may have many problems, but backbreaking poverty is not one of them.

10

Hmmm. So the people that are now very weathy increased their wealth considerably in the past. Makes sense… gotta increase your wealth to become more wealthy. Amazing how adding two positive numbers will create a larger number. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

I think that is the most significant statistic. More than 90% saw their wealth increase by 2%. It may only be a rough statistic, but that pretty meaningful.

Nao

12

Go Class Divide!

13

How is it meaningful?

I think that it’s not very meaningful as written (remember, this is coming from BTMG), but you could derive some meanings from it with enough info.

The 90% figure is flawed, because it’s lowered due to people in retirement and non working individuals, those not looking for employment, such as students and kids. No source or further info was given to know who exactly is accounted for… is it households, each working individual, each resident, etc.

If we knew what the 90-99 percentile was, all we could gather from this is a figure of what the average increase in wealth is and probably see that the average increase is above zero which means the economy is progressing (ie. we’re not in a recession).
(0.001*2.35)+(0.01-0.001)1.65+(missing data)+(0.91.02)

14

Am I one? I wish.

Got to agree with that. Though we definitely have poverty and other big problems in this country, on the average we’re doing pretty awesome compared to Mexico, China, etc. Though China is moving up fast…

Billy, do you have a point? Should the 1/325 stop being such good investors or something? I know plenty of people who have fine incomes, but don’t know what to do with it. I know someone, my age, mentioned to me the other day he has $19,000 in his 401(k), and thought he was doing pretty good. :astonished: And he is plant manager of a factory with 100+ employees! It’s not a rich person’s fault that he’s not investing.

15

John: The rich are getting richer, but the ultra rich are getting twice as rich as the merely rich.

As for many Americans (despite widespread denial), since the 1970s, Americans have actually fallen behind. Inflation has outpaced wage increases, and 2 incomes are now needed to support a family.

Your plant manager friend is not alone. There is lots of recognition that many hard working Americans will not retire in dignity.

I’m off to a catfood tasting in aisle 3! :smiley:

16

the greedy picking the pockets of the needy. The villains are C.E.O.s,

"the rich are getting richer, but sizable productivity gains and rising corporate profits are not paying off for the working and middle classes. All boats are not rising with the tide.

The picture is a paint-by-the-numbers portrait of
the greedy picking the pockets of the needy. The villains are C.E.O.s, investment bankers and corporate managers who refuse to pass on profits in the form of higher wages. The victims are workers who struggle to deal with an increasingly unreliable and, for many, unrewarding marketplace * producing more while under the constant threat of job, health care and pension loss.

The success of candidates attacking outsourcing and trade agreements like Nafta, combined with high Democratic margins among economically pessimistic voters, clearly point to middle-class wage stagnation and growing inequality as significant factors in the election this month." --Thomas Edsall, NYTimes

17

The thing that annoys me about such rants is that they aren’t about improving conditions for e have-nots, they’re about being nasty to the haves. A lot of arguments like that give me the impression that the commentators would be happy if everyone suffered a backbreaking recession, just so long as it hit the wealthy the hardest.

Imagine this:
Someone in a third world village is of the lower class of the village. Like all others of his class, he lives in a leaky and unsafe mud hut. There are a few wealthy people in his village, they live in sturdy wooden cabins with outhouses; the wealthy are about 10 times more rich than the poor villager.
One day, the poor villager finds a magic lamp. The genie tells him that whatever he wishes for, his whole village will get, and if he does not like the wish, he can say a set of magic words, and the wish will be undone.

So, he makes a wish: he wishes to be more wealthy. Shazam!

Suddenly, his whole village is affected by the wish.
Now the villager goes home. Like all his neighbors, he now lives in a small modern frame house with working plumbing. Then they chance to look up on the hill where the wealthy live. In the place of the cabins, are vast mansions with solar panelling, satellite dishes, streets, swimming pools, and the works. In fact, these new mansions are so opulent that they reveal that the wealthy are now 100 times richer than the poor villagers.

Here’s the question: Is the villager who made the wish richer or poorer than they were before? Are they better off, or are they worse off than they were before they made the wish?

By the reasoning of many left theorists I have encountered and spoken with in the U.S., the villager, who now has drinkable water, an earthquake-resistant home, sanitary plumbing, and other things which will extend his expected lifespan, is now ten times worse off than they were before, and they should say the magic words. Why? Because their criteria has nothing to do with ABSOLUTE quality of life, they are only concerned with how much the guy down the street owns that they don’t.

I think that’s absurd, and wrong.

18

Yes, but, -correct me if my math is wrong- 2% of 40,000 is eight thousand.
65% of, say, 4,000,000 is 2 mil, 6 hundred-thousand.

“Pretty meaningful” sounds like we’re spirialing into the drink.

19

Math is wrong. .02 x 40,000=800

20

no but probly one of the aspen people r
a 3 bedroom house there can cost up 1million dollers
o snap