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The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

awealthofcommonsense.com

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Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#181

Post by dqv »

Gasp0de wrote: post #151
kortilla wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Road trips for families is how you stay on a budget. It’s easy to get hotels for around $100 a night that include breakfast if you stay out of world-renowned destinations. A lot of vacations also involve crashing at another family member or friends spare bedroom/fold out couch. I grew up with family vacations like this (inflation adjusted) and I had a great time. It’s hard to wrap your mind around when you think vaca…

100$ for four beds including breakfast? I live in Europe, perhaps that's why the prices feel off. I pay around 100$ per night without breakfast here in most places, for 2 people.

$100 for two queen beds and continental breakfast. The way my family did it is the parents would sleep in one bed and then the siblings would trade off sleeping in the other bed and sleeping in a sleeping bag/on a couch/on a cot.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#182

Post by AngryData »

weatherlite wrote: post #4

So a stock market and/or real estate crash can actually be good to reduce inequality . In fact I think its about the only way to dramatically reduce inequality. Think about young people trying to buy their 1st home now, its becoming impossible.

Theoretically sure it could help. Realistically we know governments, who are largely controlled by the wealthy, will immediately start dumping money around when stock markets dip and doing everything possible to insulate the investor class from losing everything. But if something only hurts the lower classes, they will usually ignore it as much as possible.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#183

Post by internet_points »

irjustin wrote: post #88

Genuine question - has this not been the case? It feels like this has been true just past stock market's inception.

the article says it's getting worse:

> These numbers have all increased since 1989 as well — total wealth (60.8% to 67.3%), stocks (81.7% to 87.2%), private businesses (78.4% to 84.4%) and real estate (38.2% to 43.9%).

So no. It has not always been like this.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#184

Post by thomasingalls »

renewiltord wrote: post #42
weatherlite wrote: post #4

So a stock market and/or real estate crash can actually be good to reduce inequality . In fact I think its about the only way to dramatically reduce inequality. Think about young people trying to buy their 1st home now, its becoming impossible.

You guys are so obsessed with inequality because you're always looking in the other guy's cup. I don't care about inequality at all - only absolute living standards. The US has been an unequal place all its history and it's a tremendous country to live in. Here's a recipe for happiness: stop comparing yourself to others and stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. It's old advice, but it's clearly been forgotten.

"Let them eat cake"

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#185

Post by suraci »

poincaredisk wrote: post #139
suraci wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care about inequality at all cheap products from 3rd world cheap nature resources from 3rd world cheap labor from 3rd world that's why many of the free citizens of the Empire don't need to care about inequality at all when these things change, you will care

So you're saying I should actually want to increase inequality? Obviously sarcasm, but taking your argument at face value this is what rational (not necessarily moral) citizen of europe/usa should think. For that reason I don't think this is a good argument.

it's not sarcasm or an argument, and it's not a morality criticism

i'm just saying that there are reasons why people can "calmly" and "rationally" view inequality. when those reasons change, they will lose their composure.

and this is not new

> In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#186

Post by Earw0rm »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #27
pydry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protip: if you ever want to downplay inequality, gloss over wealth inequality and focus on income inequality to the exclusion of all else. It's VERY effective.

The article also uses income... Anyway, if anything the distribution based on wealth would even more starkly be hyper-focused at the top, the people in the 10-9% range aren't exactly sitting on mountains of gold.

90th percentile 21-year-old has nothing. With college debt their assets are net negative.

90th percentile 65 year old has perhaps $1M+ in accumulated property wealth and retirement savings.

There is some generational inequality at work, but that 65 year old also had ~zero at 21. The 90th percentile 21 year old will likely be doing very well by the time they're 65, hard to say whether better or worse than today's cohort.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#187

Post by raziel2p »

tokioyoyo wrote: post #97
ookblah wrote: post #31

I think about this from time to time and I suppose everything is cyclical in the end. Most of us would have been some peasant in the feudal age and when it gets really bad it always ends in a revolution of some sort. It's just on a global scale and timeframe now. As more of the population feels the effects of inequality they won't appeased by just fancy toys and shiny things, they will want change by force. My only s…

Global average age is higher than it has ever been and it keeps climbing. My stupid take is, we will continuously live in unprecedented territories for the foreseeable future, because needs, wants, abilities, thinking style of humans change as they age.

do they? can you give some examples?

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#188

Post by mandmandam »

bawolff wrote: post #110
jopsen wrote: post #102

Top 10% is actually a lot of people! Wealth equality is not really a goal, it better to ask if the bottom 50% got wealthier in absolute terms, which the author answers in another post: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2024/06/the-bottom-50/

From a socital stability point of view, i think it still matters. Too much inequality (especially when combined with lack of class mobility) leads to class resentment which is bad for sociatal stability. Humans get jealous even if their wealth increased in absolute terms.

As true and important as that it, there are more harmful and more direct effects wrapped up with our record inequality than jealousy and resentment, or even hate; like the capture of our political system.*

And most Americans have no idea how unequal wealth distribution really is, which means that those emotions are being easily redirected onto vulnerable groups by the people actually responsible for the gross inequality: immigrants, trans people, foreign powers etc.

* See, for example, the vast gulf between public opinion on issues like Israel, public healthcare, free education and housing for all, vs the opinion of the political and media class.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#189

Post by alberto-m »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #38
arvinsim wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial education is useless if you don't have capital. Most poor people are just earning enough to live day by day. Getting financial literacy would help little.

I think the importance of financial education is pretty underestimated. But just to illustrate, investing $10 a month into an index fund would mean something like $100K saved up for retirement. Even if you’re poor, it is usually possible to find that $10.

The calculation seems off by almost one order of magnitude. Even investing 10$ a month for 50 years (!), and managing to get a net return of 7% for such half a century, will build up only about 50K. Except that, by that time, even a modest inflation rate of 2.5% will make it worth less than 15K in real terms.

Which makes sense, otherwise any childless person in the West with a decent job could save 1k a month and retire with 10M, or a Google SWE5 living with a SWE4 lifestyle could save 10k a month and retire with 100M.

Re: The top 10% owns 87% of the stocks

#190

Post by jltsiren »

Gasp0de wrote: post #108

I was very surprised by the holiday budget. Less than 2500$ for 80% of the population? Does that mean that no one from these 80% stays in a Hotel or AirBnB for longer than a week with their family? No one travels overseas, or if so, only every 5 years or so? 2000$ is what you can easily spend on plane tickets for a family of 4.

Those numbers exclude airfare and other transportation costs.

And you need both time and money for a vacation. The average American family probably can't take 2-3 weeks off to travel every year, which makes their vacations shorter and cheaper.

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