Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (22127)	7/26/2010 9:35:53 AM
From: Eric	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86356

Yup, wealth concentration has increased over the Bush years for sure and isn't stopping. Not a pretty picture for the rest of us.

To: Road Walker who wrote (22127)	7/30/2010 3:25:00 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 86356

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it Except the stats provided do nothing of the sort. • 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. One can easily be middle class without large stock holdings (in fact large stock holdings might be enough to consider you to be past the middle class point), or even any stock holdings. Also that's a snapshot, not evidence of change. "Shrinking" implies change, "radically shrinking", implies quite a lot of it. 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007. Look up the term "recession". 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans. 1 - Which means the other 34% went to those below the top 1%. 2 - Which means the very rich got richer, not that others got poorer. If the top 1% had their wealth increase by a factor of 1000, that would not equal a shrinking of the middle class. 3 - During that time period the middle class did shrink, but not radically, and more by people moving up out of it, than down below it. 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings. 1 - Which means that 64 percent do contribute. 2 - Again a snapshot, not a sign of change. 3 - Not an issue closely related to "middle class". You can be middle class without sending anything to retirement savings. A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement. 1 - Which means that 57 percent have more than that. 2 - Again a snapshot not a sign of change. 3 - Again an issue not closely related to middle class status. You can be middle class with no retirement savings. 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year. Again - Look up the term "recession". Also why it probably has changed for the worse the stat itself is just a snapshot, it doesn't show the change. Also "putting off retirement" != "not middle class". Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008. Again look up "recession". Also over 308 million Americans didn't file for bankruptcy in 2009. Or since its more a household thing, perhaps it would be better to say over 110 million households didn't file for bankruptcy in 2009. Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. Households are smaller. Real income per person has gone up since 1975 for more households than its gone down. ...