US Wealth Distribution - Is this true?

[schwarzkopf]

Ok - I'm pretty sure the facts about the wealth distribution are true, but I can't believe 92% of US citizens don't know how warped the current system is.

This pretty much speaks for itself. At 1:05, I get a rude awakening. At 1:41, he starts talking about you. At 2:24, he says a bad word. At 3:50, he kind of breaks my brain. At 4:50, he lets you know how broke you really are. At 5:20, he rubs it in. And at 5:50, he points out that reality isn't close to what we think!


http://www.utrend.tv/v/9-out-of-10-a...-blowing-fact/

[Deleted]

Is there a mistake in the grafic where it says 10-2% and 1%?

It says
Top 20%
{Top 10-2%, Top1%}

Wouldn't the above statement exclude the top 20-10%

Top 20%
{Top 20%- Top2%, Top1%}
or
{Top 19%, Top1%}

Ok the line isn't drawn to the end ;X

[Blueobelisk]

Dude I'm in class on my phone. I can't watch a video. Can you summarize?

[Stir]

Dude I'm in class on my phone. I can't watch a video. Can you summarize?

Basically: Wealth distribution in the US is absurd, and public expectations are nowhere near accurate.

[Toxigen]

It's accurate.

Pretty disturbing, eh?

[Cthulhu 2020]

Ok - I'm pretty sure the facts about the wealth distribution are true, but I can't believe 92% of US citizens don't know how warped the current system is.

This pretty much speaks for itself. At 1:05, I get a rude awakening. At 1:41, he starts talking about you. At 2:24, he says a bad word. At 3:50, he kind of breaks my brain. At 4:50, he lets you know how broke you really are. At 5:20, he rubs it in. And at 5:50, he points out that reality isn't close to what we think!


http://www.utrend.tv/v/9-out-of-10-a...-blowing-fact/

Yeah it's pretty much all true. Even after this video was posted, despite the bipartisan nature of the study and the results, there are people who defend this kind of distribution. I see tea baggers claim that the Democrats want the middle class to disappear, and then defend this kind of wealth distribution. Sad, really.

Actually, he did get one thing wrong.

When he distributes all of the wealth evenly, that's not "socialism" that's communism.

[Payday]

Do you want to know the main reason for this? It's because



I see no reason to say the data is inaccurate. If it's possible that this data is skewed and the figures are off, who's to say that it isn't skewed in the other way? /gulp

[Masark]

Dude I'm in class on my phone. I can't watch a video. Can you summarize?

Here's a single-image summary.

[Kivimetsan]

Doesn't surprise me one bit. What people think is the truth is generally far from it.

[Dezerte]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ncome_equality also relevant



Higher Gini (darker blue) = more income inequality.

[Cthulhu 2020]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ncome_equality also relevant



Higher Gini (darker blue) = more wealth inequality.

Also relevant:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

[Deleted]

This is what happens when you think socialism is bad.

[ptwonline]

Here's a single-image summary.

Excellent image to sum it up.

Basically, people know it's bad, but they have absolutely no idea just how bad it is.

They favor a much, much more even distribution of wealth than they think currently exists. Much closer to the dreaded "socialism".

One thing I would love to see: The same graph in the late 70's before Reaganomics, free trade, and the busting of unions.

[BLCalliente]

Of course it's true. And the folks on the left side of that scale are spending an awful lot of money to make sure it stays that way.

[Symphonic]

It's true. And the single graphic version above shows that our ideal wealth distribution puts the bottom lower 20% ahead of all the middle class. It's so sad.

Yet people don't seem to have a clue.

[Slybak]

Do you want to know the main reason for this? It's because

It's actually has a lot to do with "rents," just of a different kind.

The problem is that over the past 30-odd years we've basically financialized everything, replacing measurable, broad economic growth with private debt peonage. Not only does this allow rent-seekers in the financial sector to extract a larger share of value out of the economy without putting anything back in, but their increased ability to buy influence allows them become their own very powerful political constituency, which has worked tirelessly to create the perception that their behavior is not only natural, but morally virtuous. Subsidies, re-branded as "encouraging laziness," are slashed, and rights that allows labor to negotiate for their fair share go ignored.

This problem is, in turn, exacerbated by the decreasing opacity of financial instruments, and both of this and the over-reliance on private debt leads the public to the erroneous conclusion that very wealthy people are wise and prudent stewards of the economy instead of leeches sucking it dry. The answer to any problem, obviously, is more bloodletting. Let this go on for a generation, and accumulated wealth of the rent-seekers, built at the direct expense of debt peons, increases and increases. It won't be long before the richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million combined, which is the state of things today.

[Endus]

Yeah it's pretty much all true. Even after this video was posted, despite the bipartisan nature of the study and the results, there are people who defend this kind of distribution. I see tea baggers claim that the Democrats want the middle class to disappear, and then defend this kind of wealth distribution. Sad, really.

The really frustrating part is that if you re-define economic classes as holding a certain percentage of the total wealth, so that the "middle class" are in the same relative position to the 1%ers throughout all time periods, then the middle class is already gone, in the US. If you're making less than about a quarter of a million a year, you're poor.

The usual metric is an objective assessment of quality of life, but that isn't a productive measure, because as the nation increases in wealth and productivity, the "middle class" has an increasingly smaller proportional share of the wealth of the nation. Which is what's happened; the middle and lower classes have seen essentially no gains whatsoever from the increased productivity and wealth of the nation. It is in no way a benefit to them.

[Annapolis]

How much of the distribution of wealth do people have who own debt? This graph just shows that a huge portion of Americans have massive amounts of debt. The income distribution is not this drastically different.

[matt4pack]

Well people are happy to hand their money away to the top 1%. How many of the Occupy people had iphones and macbooks? They seem happy to hand over their money to the richest company in the world.

The corporations have created the rampant consumerism and people have gone along with it. Maybe people should change the culture and stop being so materialistic.

[Mayhem]

Also relevant:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

relevant is understated, everyone should watch this