Does 1% own 35% of assets?

Subject: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Tigger the Tiger
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 06:20 AM

I have read in a couple places that this is the current concentration of wealth in the US. I realize that this would be a generalization,but does anyone know if these numbers are even close?

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: freda underhill
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 07:00 AM

According to
Nobel prize winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz they are.

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Tigger the Tiger
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 08:24 AM

Thanks so much for this additional information.

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: GUEST,AEOLA
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 05:35 PM

I reckon 2% own 98% in UK

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 06:04 PM

Try 90% of the wealth owned by the upper 1%... That's closer to reality...

B~

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 06:12 PM

Hurst, Charles E, 2007, Social Inequality: Forms, Causes and Consequences, p. 34.
Top 10% owns 80% of all financial assets and the bottom 90% hold only 20% of all financial wealth.
This seems to be the most recent verifiable figures.
Wikipedia.

Also see "Income inequality in the United States," Wikipedia.
"University of Texas economists James K. Galbraith and Travis Hale found that most of the gains enjoyed by the top 1% came from a small number of counties, rather than a national trend. Almost all of the richest 1%'s gains occurred in the economic hotbeds of Silicon Valley and New York City. If the top four counties in those regions are removed there is almost no trend towards income equality in the U.S. in recent decades. On this basis, the researchers ascribe the recent growth in income equality to the growth of information technology."

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 06:42 PM

The concentration of wealth in the top 1% in the US is obscene, but even if one goes a little beyond the 1% it doesn't reveal the full impact of the inequity.

Although the information is a bit dated, with last figures being only up to 2007, Who Rules American Wealth? gives a broader view.

(Comments from professors in the California University system are always suspect, but so far as I can tell figures at the above link agree with US Census information that's much more difficult to analyse for one's own uses.)

The article considers "total wealth" and "financial wealth" separately, with total wealth being "everything one owns" and financial wealth being "everything marketable that one owns."

In 2007, the top 1% held 34.6% of total wealth, and 42.7% of financial wealth.

The next 19%, in 2007, had most of the rest, with the bottom 80% of people having only a "leftover" 15% of total net worth, and only 7% of marketable (financial) wealth.

There is quite a lot of information more or less available, but much of it is scattered and has to be mined out a bit at a time. Some of the best data is in rather technical jargon that requires some studying to be meaningfully interpreted.

The concentration of wealth is not unique to the US. A Forbes article a very few months back made the assertion that 90% of "worldwide wealth" was "in the hands of" persons within a circle a mile in diameter centered in London. (Recollection was that it said "n people" with the number somewhere near 100 or so.) I regret that I didn't make notes, but that article failed to indicate whether it meant "managed by" or "owned by" ... and with other vagaries I didn't consider it "cite worthy" at the time.

John

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Rapparee
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 06:46 PM

Ain't gonna be no class war, nossir....

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 07:47 PM

Maybe one reason I remembered the Forbes article was my immediate thought that "they're already penned up, so they'd be really easy ... ."

(Perhaps London would have been a more effective target than New York, if it was really just about the money? One hopes security is on the job.)

John

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 08:07 PM

Another way to look at it is like this:

The wealthiest forty indivuduals in the US control as much wealth as the poorest forty per-cent of the population. In other words, the 40 guys at the top have as much as the 123,000,000 at the bottom.

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Penny S.
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 08:16 AM

Is there any way we (the majority) can stop servicing them (the few who depend on our labour)?

Penny

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: freda underhill
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 09:10 AM

strike action.

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: GUEST,BobL
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 01:15 PM

Hardly surprising when so many have NO idea how to manage money...

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: BTNG
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 02:00 PM

can't blame those that have all the power and the money can we?...just blame the poor because "so many have NO idea how to manage money'

riiiiigggghhhtttt.... what's that line from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy? Oh yeah...to paraphrase "he was the first against the wall when the revolution came."

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 02:12 PM

The L-curve is highly instructive in trying to convey intuitively the massive inequality in the USA:

http://www.lcurve.org/images/LCurveFlier2003.pdf

L-curve

Notice this depicts *income*, not overall wealth.

Scarey stuff.

Revolution coming.

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 24 Oct 11 - 02:36 PM

Join the Society campaigning for the restoration of crossbars on lampposts, so that come the revolution we'll have somewhere to swing the b....rs.

Paws

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 25 Oct 11 - 12:41 AM

Here is an article about the landslide re-election of Argentine president Cristina Fernandez. Her husband was elected to the office in 2003 and she was elected after his death. Although the votes are still being counted, it appears that she won by the largest margin in the history of Argentina.

Why? Here's a quote from the article:

"The Kirchners also cut the wealth gap -- the difference in income between the 95th and 5th percentile -- nearly in half by nearly tripling social spending in real terms, economist Mark Weisbrot said."

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Does 1% own 35% of assets?
From: autolycus
Date: 25 Oct 11 - 04:04 AM

It would help if people who believe that ANYBODY can do it stop making the mistake of thinking that means that EVERYBODY can do it.