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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: willcousa who wrote (330118)	12/17/2002 6:18:12 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Wealth is apparently a very difficult figure to get accurately (statisticians say the very rich don't seem all that eager to accurately report their holdings :) I tend to believe the statisticians when they say that - at the upper reaches of wealth - the wealth numbers are understated.) I know from my own Broker days that two lies were common when dealing with strangers: the poor over-stated their wealth, and the rich under-stated theirs. Since accurate statistics on wealth distribution are difficult to come by, many seem - as you pointed out - to be using the income statistics as a surrogate for the less available wealth numbers. But, here too, many seem to feel that using income stats as surrogates for wealth understate the true extent and magnitude of wealth in the upper reaches of the wealth distribution... since many income flows are sheltered, or only weakly reflected in the public statistics, and some of the total asset and capital base is not reflected in income statistics. So, I think it is likely safe to conclude, that if the Income statistics report a steady accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands (i.e., the WSJ's "1% owns 40% of the wealth), than that conclusion is likely to prove conservative.