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Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

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Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#51

Post by jellicle »

arvinjoar wrote: post #12
pg wrote: post #6

I wouldn't be surprised if most respondents are answering as if the question were about income rather than wealth.

Exactly, and I can't see why the charts shouldn't look like this. Saving money is a luxury, it's a good thing to do if you can afford it and if you're saving your money for something worthwhile. What's important is that people are living the lives they want to be living, and I'm sure that's possible without lots of savings (although wealth could probably help). Most people like to spend money now instead of later tho…

You're absolutely right, the reason why people earning $10K/year aren't millionaires is because they just aren't saving properly.

{shakes head sadly}

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#52

Post by jonhendry »

jacoblyles wrote: post #31
redwood wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing is that the bottom folks aren't as "needy" as folks were in, say, the great depression. - I.e. "no one starves in america" and most people know this: so while the distribution in wealth is extreme, the distribution in QUALITY OF LIFE is less extreme. - This biases people's view and makes them feel that generally, for most americans, things are okay. This is all true of course: except that the worry ab…

The fears of a plutocracy are overblown. You write that "money is power and speech". But people like Meg Whitman and Mitt Romney have tried to buy elections with their personal fortunes and it didn't work (and self-funded candidates do worse, on average, than other candidates). Political inertia, the passions of the mob, and the maladaptive incentives facing legislators and bureaucrats are much more potent forces sha…

"But people like Meg Whitman and Mitt Romney have tried to buy elections with their personal fortunes and it didn't work (and self-funded candidates do worse, on average, than other candidates)."

Seeking office is probably the least effective way for wealth to exercise its power. They do a lot better from behind the scenes, giving smaller sums to many politicians (or threatening to withhold it) to buy influence.

Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan is more powerful than either Romney or Whitman, and he hasn't quit his day job or squandered a bunch of his personal fortune.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#53

Post by chrischen »

jasonkester wrote: post #8

I'd like to see that graph broken down between people who think that wealth is a zero sum thing that can be represented as a pie (as shown) vs those who know it isn't. That is, people who think that if I have a dollar, then they can't also have that same dollar at the same time.

So given companies competing in a certain market for market share, does it become harder as more entrants come into play?

If one has a monopoly, can others do just as well without detriment to the monopolist?

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#54

Post by pedanticfreak »

I'm not sure Americans are misinformed, per se, but instead I'd sooner say human beings exhibit an equality bias. For example, if you gave a person a choice of two mutual funds, a low risk and a high risk, most people would put 50% in one and 50% in the other regardless of the actual distribution of risk over the two funds.

So if you gave the average person 5 groups of people and told them to ideally distribute the wealth between them, they would probably exhibit this same equality bias on average.

As for the estimated case, I'm sure you'd get similarly wrong responses asking the average person basic questions about U.S. history. Or algebra, chemistry, or pretty much any other academic subject.

EDIT: Dan Ariely and others frequently cite this kind of bias in the books and talks I've seen. I wonder what Dan would have to say about that considering he collaborated on this paper.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#55

Post by cletus »

I find posts like this one depressing. They're cynical and shortsighted.

The premise of such posts is that if people were aware of who was getting a tax cut they would be against it. Put another way: the premise is that everyone is purely motivated by self-interest.

There are two immediate problems with this line of thinking.

The first is tha it ignores how aspirational people are.i remember a survey from the 2000 election when Gore made the mistake of demonizing the top 1% repeatedly. The survey show something like 19% of people thought the were the top 1% and another 20% thought they would be someday.

The second problem is the whole "money for rich people = bad" argument. Some may ascribe to Reagenesque trickle down economics. Others may see that overtaxing the rich is ultimately shortsighted. Yet others may not get hung upon percentages and look at the absolute tax burden (iirc the top 1% pay ~40% of the tax burden).

Personally I just object to the tone of the rhetoric where politicians talk about "affording" or "paying for" a tax cut like they're giving away money. The reality is just that they're taking less money. Bit of a difference.

All of this is just "policy theatre" however. What the US (and most of the West for that matter) is facing a far bigger problem that the current systemis unsustainable and no politician wants to be at the helm when the music stop (to mix metaphors) with declining birth rates and increasing life expectancy.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#56

Post by jonhendry »

iwwr wrote: post #10

Technology allows people to be much more productive than the mean and the weight of most productivity is naturally skewed toward a small minority. This is not an injustice. A top programmer will be many times more productive than an average programmer and large codebases tend to include code from top programmers preferentially. Not only that, the value generated by top programmers (or project leader) is vastly more t…

"This is not an injustice."

Paris Hilton. Among other examples. Yes, there are people who get large paydays because they are strikingly effective at what they do. Then there are the people who get large paydays for no particular reason. Or because of their parentage.

Before celebrating the übermensch, please try checking back in with reality.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#57

Post by jonhendry »

cletus wrote: post #55

I find posts like this one depressing. They're cynical and shortsighted. The premise of such posts is that if people were aware of who was getting a tax cut they would be against it. Put another way: the premise is that everyone is purely motivated by self-interest. There are two immediate problems with this line of thinking. The first is tha it ignores how aspirational people are.i remember a survey from the 2000 el…

" The reality is just that they're taking less money. Bit of a difference."

Can you afford to take a year off from work? It's just taking less money. The fact is that tax cuts aren't free. If they aren't matched by spending cuts, you're just deferring the tax increase until later and incurring deficits in the meantime.

So you have to decide what you're going to cut. Which means weighing, say, decent healthcare for veterans, versus the benefit of the tax cut to people who are probably quite well-off already.

The Republicans in the Bush years were not willing to do that. So they cut taxes. And raised spending. And we could afford neither.

Re: Americans Are Horribly Misinformed About Who Has Money

#59

Post by javert »

parenthesis wrote: post #45
javert wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it may be that, through the miracle of technology's abundance, we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, but only a smaller and smaller pool of people "own" the production engines. I think the first part of what you said is right: we will continue on a track where we all have a high quality of life, absent a paradigm shift in which the economy crashes like in Weimar Germany. The second par…

Steve Jobs has "only a high school diploma".

I know, that's my point.

Just kidding, I'd forgotten that fact. Wish I could say I'd worded things as I did on purpose, remembering that.

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