So what was the average net worth of a fifty year old ten years ago? You really think it has plummeted recently? I've been reading this kind of thing for twenty years.
In this country there is about a third of the population which doesn't work due to numerous factors, too old, too young, in jail, disabled, in an institution, etc. Of the two thirds who do work, one half (one third the population) makes 80% of the income, pays 96% of the taxes, Federal, state, employment taxes. The lower half of the population that works represents fully one third of the country's population, most make exactly what they spend with zero accumulation of savings. Even Adam Smith remarked that a man who lives "by his own labor" will never make more than what it takes to feed and clothe themselves. Meanwhile the income level to be considered "living in poverty" has risen steadily for 100 years.
The top half of those who work are the ones who accumulate most of the wealth and of those there is a large number who do exactly what the bottom half does, spend everything they make and more. This leaves most of the net worth in the hands of those who, after getting taxed up the wahzoo, having their savings attacked by inflation, have managed to actually put some money aside, people like me and my husband. Both of us moved from the bottom half to the top. What people should be most interested in is not what one group has and what some other group doesn't have but how is it that people move from the group of have nots to the group of haves.
Hint: almost no one moves from the bottom into the top with subsidies from the government other than maybe those who take advantage of educational loans and grants (not their stupid jobs programs and income redistribution programs). Everyone I knew in the 1970-80s who took those stupid government created CETA jobs (and I knew quite a few) is still marginal unemployable 30 years later and has little or no net worth. Those of us who jumped into the real world and got private sector jobs regardless of how crappy they were at the time got rich over the last 30 years.
As a side note: Educational loans and grants have the same effect on educational cost as subsidies to homeownership, they inflate it. In an attempt to make these things more affordable government drives up the cost, they have the opposite effect. This is the effect of any government intervention to give money to the bottom half, it inflates the cost of living at an amount just slightly ahead of the benefits it is suppose to confer on the recipient. What further proof would one need than seeing what happens with cheap money for mortgage financing. The advantage of cheaper money was inflated away rapidly. |
