I very much doubt that 50% of the wealth would be held by the richest 1% in another few decades.
The only thing holding that off now is owner occupied housing. If you deduct that, the top 1% currently owns over 50% of the nations wealth. IIRC, the top 5% currently owns close to 60% of the total wealth, including owner homes.
Something on the order of 35-40% of the population owns only 1% of the nations wealth. I'd call 35-40% a significant fraction and it is growing.
I have my doubts about the accuracy of that statement.
The numbers I find show the bottom 40% own much less than that, something like 0.2%-0.4%.
I wouldn't define poverty based on a percentage of a nations wealth. I just don't think that's the right way to measure.
And if you did want to measure it that way I'm not so sure that I would consider 1% of the nations wealth divided that way to be "very poor".
Also I wouldn't call someone very poor just from lack of assets, I would also require lack of income. The poorest 40% have a lot more than 1% of the personal income in the US, and total income for people other than just the wealthy is growing.
You have to provide some context for "poor" and as with most things, it needs normalization of sorts. So how else can you do it than look at assets? Income, if it all results in outgo, is not wealth, although I would factor in living standards relative to averages as well. Just because someone is living well beyond their means does not make them poor, I agree.
BTW, the poorest 40% have relatively higher incomes in large part because the richest 1% have a lot of their wealth accumulate from non-income sources. Asset appreciation is not income, but the bottom 40% does not have much in the way of appreciating assets.
Which I consider a good thing. Taxing consumption might be even better, but I oppose a wealth tax.
In any case assets are taxed, not as much as income but they are taxed.
You might well consider it a good thing, but my claim is that it might well end up being a "bad" thing.
Regarding the founding fathers, laissez faire capitalism, totalitarianism, and strawmen. You are missing my point. America was a unique experiment in that it was a fresh start for a group of people not at the top of the ladder. We can’t repeat that even now in America since there are no fresh countries with natives willing to be overrun that I know of. All I’m pointing out is that two very different systems, laissez faire capitalism and totalitarianism might both result in similar wealth distributions over time, which would have quite startled many of the founding fathers, and I suspect, would surprise many current supports of capitalism. I clearly understand that totalitarianism has many other great drawbacks and I in no way support it. For sure the dynamics are different, the people who end up rich or poor are different, etc, but a graph of percentages might look quite similar.
So, my questions to you are these:
1) What do you think the long term impact of extreme wealth inequality is wrt to a stable and safe society?
2)Is there a limit to the boundary of stability and safety wrt to this metric, or do you think it is an irrelevant metric?
3) Perhaps instead you think that even in principle it is irrelevant due to some inherent correctional mechanisms which will prevent the distribution from skewing beyond a certain point. If so, what are the mechanisms, and what is the danger point that we should be concerned about if we approach it?
4) Do you think that the long term dynamics of capitalism, sans governmental redistribution methods, results in wealth aggregation, and if so, is there any mechanism which places an eventual limit on this, or does it finally peg at a boundary condition? |
