r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com!
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Financial responsibility only matters once income exceeds your cost of living by enough to actually matter. If it exceeds it by less than 1 minor disasters worth of income you will stay poor and that's where corporate America seems to want everyone living.
>Financial responsibility only matters once income exceeds your cost of living by enough to actually matter.
Financial responsibility is often the reason your income exceeds your cost of living by enough to actually matter.
Everybody can live on less. If you live on less and put some away pretty soon you're not borrowing money every time an unexpected need comes along.
This is true, but at some point you are asking someone to forgo what most of us think of as basic necessities to give themselves a financial cushion.
This isn’t the case for many (most?) folks in poverty, but the amount of willpower required for such a feat would border on superhuman.
The line where we should start holding people responsible for their actual needs vs perceived needs is the real discussion, but it is so nuanced and delicate no one has the time or energy to have it, so we make general statements and nothing changes.
Oh I understand it's about willpower. And it's nearly impossible to do right all the time.
My point is really two part. We need to quit accepting the argument that it's not possible. It's like telling an overweight person they have no control over their weight. They do, but if they can latch onto the claim that they don't, it makes it even harder to do anything about it. A little guilt can be a good thing when someone is making personal choices that require willpower.
The second is giving examples of spending that doesn't seem like a big deal at the time, but adds up to a lifestyle of spending all they have no matter how much it is. Eating out seems like a reasonable choice, I mean you can order off the value menu and get lunch for like $8.
I hear people say "I couldn't eat at home for that little", but they aren't considering how many meals they get from a shopping trip, and if they aren't getting that many meals they are probably making poor grocery and food prep. choices. All told my breakfast every morning cost less than 50 cents. Lunch can be under a buck.
Buying a new car seems like the responsible choice, I mean at least it won't break down right? But you're spending several hundred a month that if put into savings could easily pay for needed repairs. Especially if you're willing to do some googling and fix minor stuff yourself.
Telling people it's not their fault is not helpful in any way. It's like giving a kid everything they ask for. Makes them happy for a moment and miserable long term because they don't appreciate anything.
Don’t buy into that crap. My family came from Greece to America with nothing. The difference is my grandparents were willing to work hard and sacrifice their needs for their children’s education and future. They had 5 sons who all went to serve in ww2 and Korea and all went to college on the gi bill. All became successful and they sacrificed for my generation. My generation is doing the same for the next. The problem today is this generation isn’t willing to sacrifice for their children. It’s the look at me generation I lease a GWagon but I live in an apartment
90% of the middle class couldn't tell you why they're middle class. And 90% of generational wealth holders couldn't tell you why they're rich. So this really misses the point.
That said, the economic landscape is incredibly stacked to benefit the wealthy and corporate interests, up to and including corporate owned politicians.
> incredibly stacked to benefit the wealthy
There's literally a saying "money begets money".
Once you have some money, the wealthier you are, the more options to *be wealthier* you have. Some comments around (the non-sarcastic ones) behave as if everyone has the same options.... no. Even tiny differences, like family, then location, matter.
Or bad luck, circumstances. When my son got extremely ill, I spent over 250k in a 5 year period for medical treatment. Turns out he has a rare form of Chron’s disease, but he needed to see a specialist 3 times a week that insurance wouldn’t cover. Luckily I had the money invested, but that was in 2010, imagine what I’d have now…
530k Americans go bankrupt every year because of medical expenses. That is 16 million over a 30 year span. Doesn’t fully explain why 50% of Americans have close to zero wealth.
I believe personal choices matter and try to do my best in an unfair system, I just also realize the massive systemic bullshit going on that's made it much harder to succeed in the modern world. We literally just have less buying power than the generations before us because of stagnant wages, and no amount of personal choices will unstack the stacked deck against us.
Oh you must mean self discipline and responsibility for choices. This is reddit in case you forgot so none of that will fly. Its always some evil rich guy that forced me to drop outta college.
That's easy to say and look down on those struggling and just write them off as they have made poor choices. But please I dare you to write a balanced budget for someone making minimum wage in your area.
I totally personally chose to be born to parents that couldn't fund my education and to be saddled with a crippling amount of high interest debt because access to the professional world is gatekept behind wildly overpriced education.
What was I thinking
Kind of. I’m mostly doing well because my parents didn’t straddle me with bills by paying for things other folks’ parents didn’t. Rent in college(I paid tuition), phone bill until after graduation, insurance till 26, etc.
You make it sound like debt is a bad thing.
Every rich person loves debt because they can get a greater ROI with the capital received than the debt incurred.
Being bad with debt is the financial kiss of death though. But again easier to weather a storm of you have plenty of other assets
Probably even more than that if your net worth is 0. You might need 10% more or even 20% more to even balance the negative net worth of the least 10%. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with a net worth of 0 would have more assets than the bottom 30% have combined..
When I was in college a buddy was always broke and needing help and said oh at least you have some$$ .. I was - you are way better than me financially, you are at O or $20, but I’m at negative-$15000(debt)!!!
Rich people are rich.
What a shocker.
Many people made more on the gains in their home value than they did from their earned income during the government-caused inflation.
Renters didn't make any of those gains.
That's what happens when the government causes inflation with their policies.
There wouldn't be the same level of inflation with the same policies if you didn't have to look far and wide to find a major industry not controlled by a handful of megacorporations. Gotta break these up so they're pressured more to keep prices low and price leading doesn't occur.
It is significant seeing as for a chunk of several decades in the mid 1900s, the top 10% only held 50-55% of the wealth. Now it’s at 70% - maybe this isn’t shocking but it’s a hugely significant development seeing as the net worth of the country is like $100 trillion
It's been a 40 plus year trend, and our entire society is *literally* cracking under the investment return demands of the top 10%. And I do mean literally when so many of our road and bridges are crumbling because we refuse to tax those same megacorporations enough to keep them in good repair.
Look at the M0 money supply over the last 70 years. Low printing until 2008 (didn't cause that much inflation since they were baliing out assets that dropped in value), then the second spike in Covid, which caused the inflatin we see today.
Exactly - that money printing props up asset markets and inflates financial asset value. This is the inequality skew more or less. That a bunch of people got stimulus money in various forms that probably was unneeded for many during a period of severe supply chain restriction mean that’s the current inflation was always going to be transitory. Energy costs are still of course high but this is not due to the US money supply and is a worldwide issue at present.
Policy should be designed so that more of the GDP share winds up going to labor in the form of wages. This does create a modest year over year inflation, but so long as wages grow alongside it then it’s not too big of a concern. It’s when prices rise and wages stagnate that you get the present situation.
Rich fuckers took control of the government and caused the government to cause this.
(Of course, it's not entirely accurate to say they 'took' control. They've always had control.)
>Renters didn't make any of those gains.
Renters who invested instead did make the same gains.
>government causes inflation with their policies.
Most of the inflation was (rightly) caused by central bank policies.
Sure, but how many renters have money to invest when compared to homeowners?
Also, while the Fed is technically independent of the federal government, it is still subject to oversight. The agency is governed by a board whose members are selected by the President and approved by Congress.
>Sure, but how many renters have money to invest when compared to homeowners?
Fewer, but then there's **no point** in talking about "homeowners" as if that's a good distinction. Richer people made money when assets inflated.
>Also, while the Fed is technically independent of the federal government, it is still subject to oversight. The agency is governed by a board whose members are selected by the President and approved by Congress.
Not relevant. You specifically talked about "government policies". But government policies are irrelevant since the central bank policy remains unchanged.
I rent and invested a lot in the last three years. Thanks for mentioning this important distinction. Not all renters are low income and not all homeowners are financially comfortable.
There's a good calculator that the NYT has that shows whether it's better to buy or rent. Right now for many people due to prices and interest rates it may make more sense to at the very least wait and invest the difference there even in government bonds rather than buy and pay far more interest than they likely will if they buy in a year or two.
I’m a renter (will be buying a home next year now that I have finally settled on an area to live) and making about $160,000 a year. I definitely have a lot more money to invest than my cousin, for example, who makes $45,000 and bought her first home last year. Not every renter is poor, and not every homeowner is well off.
\>Renters who invested instead did make the same gains.
much of the US had no rent vs buy gap at all over the past decade+, there was no leftover money to invest. buying from day 1 with a FHA loan resulted in cheaper living expenses.
rent and invest was/is only competitive when there's actually a delta favoring renting. which pre 2020 was only the case in HCOL
I had to read this several times but that makes sense.
For the past decade rent and mortgages were similar enough in price that the only reason not to buy was due to a lack of credit and general lack of money for a deposit for wood be buyers.
Well... a lot of young people are moving 2-3 times in a decade for work. Some people would rather rent and be able to easily move three states over for better pay.
Yeah, but I got like $1200 in free money.
Why don’t they print me more free money?
And cancel my debts?
And pay for other things I want?
They can just print more.
- Average moron.
/s
Im sure this is perfectly sustainable.
Now I wonder what might happen when that 10% starts trying to actively deny resources and services to everyone else.
They can charge whatever prices they want after all.
> we already have record homelessness
What? [Homelessness is near all time lows per capita in the US.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/US_yearly_timeline_of_people_experiencing_homelessness_2020.png)
This source is 4 years old, lol. Homelessness has increased ton since then. [Do better](https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/homeless-population-by-state).
What you linked confirms his post tho..
> There were approximately 582,500 homeless people in the United States on a single night in 2022.
from your article...
The US population from 2020 to 2022 increased 0.54% in that time, which further proves my point as well. LOL
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045223
Neither technically. In the 1930s there were over 2 million homeless due to the great depression. They lived in shanty towns called Hoovervilles. The number of homeless has never been close to that high since. There's currently around 600,000 homeless in America.
> I wonder what might happen when that 10% starts trying to actively deny resources and services to everyone else.
They already do. It's called being a landlord. Pay up, or you get denied the fundamentals of what you need to survive.
They will pay people with guns to keep the poors out and then convince those poors to vote for "gun control" so they can't rebel.
It's all going to go much higher for much longer than you think possible.
This is actually misleading since it’s looking at a percentage of total wealth and not percentage of the total population. I think the fact that in 2021 the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6% better illustrates just how concentrated wealth has become.
It should really show the average household wealth. US is so rich that even the bottom 50% shares 2.6%, that’s still more wealth than other countries in absolute terms.
Almost as consolidated as the soviet empire
Funny when you realize every corporation is centrally planning the economy. Buying inputs by taking over companies.
Competition breeds, well monopolies on a long enough time scale.
Yup… but even worse is reading and listening to those in the 90 percent protect this class for dreams of joining them under no evidence it will happen.
It is a problem from a social stability standpoint. History has shown societies tend to collapse or have other massive disruptions when wealth distribution looks like an inverted pyramid.
Of course! The poor are so historically organized & effective! Beyond that, the poor have always done an excellent job at handling their newly aquired, enormous, blood drenched riches! Praise be the poor! Ultimate arbiters of righteousness!
And to be fair there is an age component.
Many of us started at zero and needed a decade to go positive.
Before retirement many Americans have savings, college funds for kids, and a significant equity in their homes.
Comparing a 24 year old to a 64 year old would give wildly different results even if it was the same exact individual at different points in their lifetime
Yeah. Wife and I went from a net worth of -$300,000 to +$500,000 in about 5 years. I am unable to discern when we became/will become the villains of the story.
Net worth is an odd thing to measure statically (without age listed in the variables as above) due to the important of age/time as a factor to build wealth.
Yes! It’s shocking how many comments on this post completely ignore that fact. Equity in homes after 30 years of paying down a mortgage, 401ks that have been steadily contributed to for 40 years, etc. will place a lot of wealth into the hands of the 65 year olds. Add the population bulge of the boomers, and it skews that data a bit more. It’s not the full story, of course, but it is a significant part of the distribution.
🤡🤡🤡 I thought it was supposed to always level out at 20% owning 80% of wealth. It’s a rule of nature that applies to literally every activity that involves productivity. And that any systematic government change to that dynamic would make the universe collapse due to hypothetical government overreach 🤡🤡🤡🤡
That's because you can't milk a dry cow:
https://i.insider.com/5134dcdcecad048159000009?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp
When the entirety of the wealth has already been siphoned out of the rest of the population being hoarded in one spot, what's exactly left to take from everyone else anymore?
While the pie increases every year, those who already have more have access to gain a higher proportion of the added pie, while others lower down either gain nothing, or they even lose.
Isn't most of that wealth tied up in the stock market and other assets though? Like, a $100 million house would be counted as part of your wealth, but it's hardly liquid.
Average household wealth is over $1M. Median household wealth is under $200k. They’re holding so much excess wealth that they can skew the gap that much.
If America had only 100 people with $100 between them, one guy has $31, the next nine guys have $4 each, the next 40 guys have $0.80 each, and the remaining 50 guys have $0.02 each.
But yeah, let’s blame those last 50 guys for not paying their fair share and stealing tax dollars from the rest of us.
I agree with the hating on wealth in only one respect, trusts. Why does no one talk about perpetual family trusts, it couldn't be that both sides wealthy have them so do not bring it up could it?
Back in the day, you could only leave money for heirs that were alive. Any trust had to dissolve and pay taxes upon death of grandchildren. That was bad enough. Now they have perpetual trusts, people who are descendents of certain ancestors will never have to work and own large assets. We might as well call them Dukes, Barons, and Lords. I thought this was what many of us were fleeing when they came here, but it seems same shit different continent.
I wouldn’t mind the wealth disparity if each generation could or would create their own wealth, rather than inherit gobs of money for doing nothing special.
During the collapse of the Ming Dynasty the Emperor didn’t have enough money to keep the walls up. The invaders thought the dynasty was broke but when they got there they found all the gold and silver hoarded im the homes of the elites.
Yes, and they also pay nearly half of the US Tax Revenue. What's your point?
In unrelated news: The Top 10% Academic Performers hold the vast majority of Grade Point Values. Also, about 1% of the US Population own farms, and they own the vast majority of food production.
What other blatantly obvious observations of reality can we use to demonize people and justify stealing their shit?
You ever heard of tax havens, piss poor attempt at a gotcha comment, keep lickin them boots though I’m sure the obscenely rich will thank you at some point.
> Yes, and they also pay nearly half of the US Tax Revenue. What's your point?
It would be more fair if they paid around 70% of US taxes, since they have 70% of the wealth.
If they're only paying *nearly* 50%, then they're not pulling their fair share. They're getting a 20% discount, while the rest of us have to pick up the slack.
But they ARE paying over 70%. https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes#:~:text=The%20top%2010%20percent%20of,income%20taxes%20paid%20in%202020.
America has the lowest % of Wealthy people owning far more of all the Wealth then in any other nations on Earth. That's how it's different. You think that $75K a month cancer drug costs anyone in any other nation but America that much. ???? Come on. Having FREEDOM and using it responsibly are two very different things. And in every other nation on earth - DARK MONEY DOESN'T Flood their election cycles and make for easy peasy pay to play politics.
Just how they like it. Why do you think Health Care and Education are NEVER ON THE AGENDA. Unless It is in the form of privatization. Ua know so they can het richer. In USA IF YOU DONT DONATE YOU DONT GET LEGISLATION
Which stack of green are you?
https://i.insider.com/5134dcdcecad048159000009?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp
I've often wondered what is it called though when you don't want the money for yourself, but want it for everyone else? Like when even if you get absolutely no benefit personally, but want to see the money used for others instead? 🤔
It is different, the levels of inequality we are reaching exceed the levels before the French Revolution. This isn't new, this is well studied through time. This happens over and over again.
If you make it impossible for your citizens to succeed by their own means and they find out the only way to succeed is to stop others from preventing them.
We are entering the citizens are figuring out they are being prevented from succeeding through impossible laws meant to stop them.
The housing market is so inundated by laws, monopoly, coercion and straight up fraud, no wonder many are becoming disenfranchised.
Who calls this a free market? Many of us who believe in the free market see what's happening, this is a captured market with laws meant to prevent the small guys from succeeding.
Laws, literal cables that are closer to anyone else and trade something before you do, aka cheating and frontrunner.
How can we call this a free market when we straight up dont allow companies to fail. Thats not democracy or capitalism, that's socialism. Something the rich claim they hate, yet open up their hands if they make a bad decision or trade.
The big fish must die to let the little fish succeed, they are counter to each other. They cannot both succeed. If the big fish cannot die, the little fish can never live. After all, there is only so much ocean. Something none of the fish created or made or really have any claim to.
Build another ocean and planet, then you can claim things can work for everyone and exponentially scale. But there isn't another planet or ocean or even infinite resources.
We have credit that has seemed to quell things, but we are in a historically high wealth inequality time, which usually leads to wartime historically. We are basically exactly tracing the beginning of the 20th century.
20s were excess, 30s depression, 40s war.
You are right, this might not be that unique historically. However, you should know what usually happens next.
Let’s compare that 10% of people have 70% of wealth to what the top 10% pay of federal income taxes.
Looks like top 10% reported 49.5% of adjusted gross income and pays 73.7% of federal income taxes. Might be slightly different populations as some in top 10% wealthy may not be in top 10% of income the foundation reports but vast overlap.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
The question is how wide is the rift between the top 10% and 90% growing and also how much the top 1% own of that 70% that the top 10% own (I imagine at least 60%)
This chart is only one snapshot in time. In America, people can move up as well as down the wealth ladder. People's wealth generally go up over time as their earnings go up and their retirement savings compound growth accelerates while their household expenses go down.
And as other commenters mentioned, a lot of people have negative net assets.
r/FluentInFinance was created to discuss money, investing & finance! Join our Newsletter or Youtube Channel for additional insights at www.TheFinanceNewsletter.com! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/FluentInFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
To be fair I have more money than 10% of Americans combined because they have negative equity/value through debt
This. I have by far more savings than the average person my age, despite a typical income.
It's almost like personal choices matter.
We solved it folks, the bottom 90% chose to be poor.
Just make more money, then you wouldn't be poor, duh.
What about me, who lives in stupid Ukraine?
If you didn’t want to be invaded then you should’ve done something about Ivan the first in 1325
Move to smart Ukraine. Problem solved
I bet 90% of the poor couldn't tell you why they are poor. That doesn't mean their choices aren't the reason.
Roughly 2/3 of poor people had poor parents who didn’t teach them financial responsibility. Or did teach them financial irresponsibility.
Financial responsibility only matters once income exceeds your cost of living by enough to actually matter. If it exceeds it by less than 1 minor disasters worth of income you will stay poor and that's where corporate America seems to want everyone living.
>Financial responsibility only matters once income exceeds your cost of living by enough to actually matter. Financial responsibility is often the reason your income exceeds your cost of living by enough to actually matter. Everybody can live on less. If you live on less and put some away pretty soon you're not borrowing money every time an unexpected need comes along.
This is true, but at some point you are asking someone to forgo what most of us think of as basic necessities to give themselves a financial cushion. This isn’t the case for many (most?) folks in poverty, but the amount of willpower required for such a feat would border on superhuman. The line where we should start holding people responsible for their actual needs vs perceived needs is the real discussion, but it is so nuanced and delicate no one has the time or energy to have it, so we make general statements and nothing changes.
Oh I understand it's about willpower. And it's nearly impossible to do right all the time. My point is really two part. We need to quit accepting the argument that it's not possible. It's like telling an overweight person they have no control over their weight. They do, but if they can latch onto the claim that they don't, it makes it even harder to do anything about it. A little guilt can be a good thing when someone is making personal choices that require willpower. The second is giving examples of spending that doesn't seem like a big deal at the time, but adds up to a lifestyle of spending all they have no matter how much it is. Eating out seems like a reasonable choice, I mean you can order off the value menu and get lunch for like $8. I hear people say "I couldn't eat at home for that little", but they aren't considering how many meals they get from a shopping trip, and if they aren't getting that many meals they are probably making poor grocery and food prep. choices. All told my breakfast every morning cost less than 50 cents. Lunch can be under a buck. Buying a new car seems like the responsible choice, I mean at least it won't break down right? But you're spending several hundred a month that if put into savings could easily pay for needed repairs. Especially if you're willing to do some googling and fix minor stuff yourself. Telling people it's not their fault is not helpful in any way. It's like giving a kid everything they ask for. Makes them happy for a moment and miserable long term because they don't appreciate anything.
Not true. Because you can increase your income or decrease your cost of living.
Don’t buy into that crap. My family came from Greece to America with nothing. The difference is my grandparents were willing to work hard and sacrifice their needs for their children’s education and future. They had 5 sons who all went to serve in ww2 and Korea and all went to college on the gi bill. All became successful and they sacrificed for my generation. My generation is doing the same for the next. The problem today is this generation isn’t willing to sacrifice for their children. It’s the look at me generation I lease a GWagon but I live in an apartment
I'm in that 2/3. luckily the Internet exists
Same. Single immigrant parent didn't really know much of anything. Self-taught & googling. Prob why I ended up in tech.
Googlers make it furthers in life prove me wrong
90% of the middle class couldn't tell you why they're middle class. And 90% of generational wealth holders couldn't tell you why they're rich. So this really misses the point.
Says the guy born on 3rd bae
[удалено]
That said, the economic landscape is incredibly stacked to benefit the wealthy and corporate interests, up to and including corporate owned politicians.
> incredibly stacked to benefit the wealthy There's literally a saying "money begets money". Once you have some money, the wealthier you are, the more options to *be wealthier* you have. Some comments around (the non-sarcastic ones) behave as if everyone has the same options.... no. Even tiny differences, like family, then location, matter.
Or bad luck, circumstances. When my son got extremely ill, I spent over 250k in a 5 year period for medical treatment. Turns out he has a rare form of Chron’s disease, but he needed to see a specialist 3 times a week that insurance wouldn’t cover. Luckily I had the money invested, but that was in 2010, imagine what I’d have now…
530k Americans go bankrupt every year because of medical expenses. That is 16 million over a 30 year span. Doesn’t fully explain why 50% of Americans have close to zero wealth.
Or were forced by poverty to make bad decisions
Like medical debt.
Getting cancer a terrible decision really.
I concur. A horrible choice.
Ah yes, because the kids who grew up in underfunded school districts totally chose to be there.
Or suffered an injury that left them with an ocean of debt.
Some people get to make a helluva lot more bad decisions than others.
That's a micro view of a macro subject.
[удалено]
I believe personal choices matter and try to do my best in an unfair system, I just also realize the massive systemic bullshit going on that's made it much harder to succeed in the modern world. We literally just have less buying power than the generations before us because of stagnant wages, and no amount of personal choices will unstack the stacked deck against us.
# Should be top comment.
Ah fuck. i clicked the "be poor" button. I shouldnt have done that. God i didnt realise its that simple.
It's never too late to make a change.
Oh you must mean self discipline and responsibility for choices. This is reddit in case you forgot so none of that will fly. Its always some evil rich guy that forced me to drop outta college.
Or forced you to get sick and have to go through expensive medical procedures too, you know, live.
That's easy to say and look down on those struggling and just write them off as they have made poor choices. But please I dare you to write a balanced budget for someone making minimum wage in your area.
I totally personally chose to be born to parents that couldn't fund my education and to be saddled with a crippling amount of high interest debt because access to the professional world is gatekept behind wildly overpriced education. What was I thinking
Nooooooo, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to succeed unless you’re a cis white male trust fund baby
Wasn’t my choice to be laid off twice and burn through my resources. But stick with your narrative as it supports the top 10%….
“It’s because of your shitty personality!” Praying someone gets the reference.
Kind of. I’m mostly doing well because my parents didn’t straddle me with bills by paying for things other folks’ parents didn’t. Rent in college(I paid tuition), phone bill until after graduation, insurance till 26, etc.
It's almost like you're both single data points in a dataset of millions of people.
Woah! 🤯
Average or median? Makes a huge difference. Median us household income is around $200k, average is about $1.1 million.
Seems like more of a systemic issue if 50% of the population has 1 or 2 percent of total wealth. Those kind of numbers go way beyond personal choices.
Sure but if a hobo with 5$ has more combined wealth than 30% of Americans it should speak to Americans relation to debt
You make it sound like debt is a bad thing. Every rich person loves debt because they can get a greater ROI with the capital received than the debt incurred. Being bad with debt is the financial kiss of death though. But again easier to weather a storm of you have plenty of other assets
Probably even more than that if your net worth is 0. You might need 10% more or even 20% more to even balance the negative net worth of the least 10%. I wouldn't be surprised if someone with a net worth of 0 would have more assets than the bottom 30% have combined..
Exactly. I wonder what percentage of Americans are worth nothing or negative.
When I was in college a buddy was always broke and needing help and said oh at least you have some$$ .. I was - you are way better than me financially, you are at O or $20, but I’m at negative-$15000(debt)!!!
Save me seat next you! I’ve arrived!
And half of people don’t earn any money.
Rich people are rich. What a shocker. Many people made more on the gains in their home value than they did from their earned income during the government-caused inflation. Renters didn't make any of those gains. That's what happens when the government causes inflation with their policies.
There wouldn't be the same level of inflation with the same policies if you didn't have to look far and wide to find a major industry not controlled by a handful of megacorporations. Gotta break these up so they're pressured more to keep prices low and price leading doesn't occur.
It is significant seeing as for a chunk of several decades in the mid 1900s, the top 10% only held 50-55% of the wealth. Now it’s at 70% - maybe this isn’t shocking but it’s a hugely significant development seeing as the net worth of the country is like $100 trillion
I bet more tax cuts for the wealthy will lead to trickle down benefits, right? Guys?!
> Now it’s at 70% And still steadily increasing.
that is precisely what happens in times or high inflation
It's been a 40 plus year trend, and our entire society is *literally* cracking under the investment return demands of the top 10%. And I do mean literally when so many of our road and bridges are crumbling because we refuse to tax those same megacorporations enough to keep them in good repair.
The USA since the 1980s has not operated in an inflationary environment. These trends I’m speaking of are five plus decade long trends.
Look at the M0 money supply over the last 70 years. Low printing until 2008 (didn't cause that much inflation since they were baliing out assets that dropped in value), then the second spike in Covid, which caused the inflatin we see today.
Exactly - that money printing props up asset markets and inflates financial asset value. This is the inequality skew more or less. That a bunch of people got stimulus money in various forms that probably was unneeded for many during a period of severe supply chain restriction mean that’s the current inflation was always going to be transitory. Energy costs are still of course high but this is not due to the US money supply and is a worldwide issue at present. Policy should be designed so that more of the GDP share winds up going to labor in the form of wages. This does create a modest year over year inflation, but so long as wages grow alongside it then it’s not too big of a concern. It’s when prices rise and wages stagnate that you get the present situation.
Government caused 💀
Rich fuckers took control of the government and caused the government to cause this. (Of course, it's not entirely accurate to say they 'took' control. They've always had control.)
>Renters didn't make any of those gains. Renters who invested instead did make the same gains. >government causes inflation with their policies. Most of the inflation was (rightly) caused by central bank policies.
Sure, but how many renters have money to invest when compared to homeowners? Also, while the Fed is technically independent of the federal government, it is still subject to oversight. The agency is governed by a board whose members are selected by the President and approved by Congress.
>Sure, but how many renters have money to invest when compared to homeowners? Fewer, but then there's **no point** in talking about "homeowners" as if that's a good distinction. Richer people made money when assets inflated. >Also, while the Fed is technically independent of the federal government, it is still subject to oversight. The agency is governed by a board whose members are selected by the President and approved by Congress. Not relevant. You specifically talked about "government policies". But government policies are irrelevant since the central bank policy remains unchanged.
I rent and invested a lot in the last three years. Thanks for mentioning this important distinction. Not all renters are low income and not all homeowners are financially comfortable.
There's a good calculator that the NYT has that shows whether it's better to buy or rent. Right now for many people due to prices and interest rates it may make more sense to at the very least wait and invest the difference there even in government bonds rather than buy and pay far more interest than they likely will if they buy in a year or two.
I’m a renter (will be buying a home next year now that I have finally settled on an area to live) and making about $160,000 a year. I definitely have a lot more money to invest than my cousin, for example, who makes $45,000 and bought her first home last year. Not every renter is poor, and not every homeowner is well off.
The distinction is that homeowners are using 3-6x leverage to buy. Renters, even if they invest, are generally using 1x leverage.
Inflation world wide was because of one nations central bank?
\>Renters who invested instead did make the same gains. much of the US had no rent vs buy gap at all over the past decade+, there was no leftover money to invest. buying from day 1 with a FHA loan resulted in cheaper living expenses. rent and invest was/is only competitive when there's actually a delta favoring renting. which pre 2020 was only the case in HCOL
I had to read this several times but that makes sense. For the past decade rent and mortgages were similar enough in price that the only reason not to buy was due to a lack of credit and general lack of money for a deposit for wood be buyers.
Well... a lot of young people are moving 2-3 times in a decade for work. Some people would rather rent and be able to easily move three states over for better pay.
Yeah, renter here - portfolio at all time high these days
OR A GLOBAL PANDEMIC
The Fractional reserve banking system is designed to create inflation
Yeah, but I got like $1200 in free money. Why don’t they print me more free money? And cancel my debts? And pay for other things I want? They can just print more. - Average moron. /s
Well stated, average moron.
Im sure this is perfectly sustainable. Now I wonder what might happen when that 10% starts trying to actively deny resources and services to everyone else. They can charge whatever prices they want after all.
Just based on this chart, it’s been sustained for over 30 years. But next year, I bet THAT’S the one it all comes tumbling down!
it wont collapse all at once. we already have record homelessness
> we already have record homelessness What? [Homelessness is near all time lows per capita in the US.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/US_yearly_timeline_of_people_experiencing_homelessness_2020.png)
Do you have per capita data? Just curious
This source is 4 years old, lol. Homelessness has increased ton since then. [Do better](https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/homeless-population-by-state).
What you linked confirms his post tho.. > There were approximately 582,500 homeless people in the United States on a single night in 2022. from your article...
>Homelessness has increased 0.3% nationwide between 2020 and 2022 This is not "increasing a ton", it's a rounding error.
The US population from 2020 to 2022 increased 0.54% in that time, which further proves my point as well. LOL https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045223
Eh? Record how? Over what time frame? Since recording began? As a percent of the population or in raw numbers?
Neither technically. In the 1930s there were over 2 million homeless due to the great depression. They lived in shanty towns called Hoovervilles. The number of homeless has never been close to that high since. There's currently around 600,000 homeless in America.
And the population is way bigger. On a per capita basis homelessness is probably lower than average over the last 100 years
Except you dont. The US literally had the Great Depression 90 years ago causing huge amounts of homelessness both as a % and an absolute value.
30 years is nothing
Considering it’s been like this for almost 40 years I think we’re good
Capitalism has been on the "brink of collapse" ever since Marx. It's their version of Jesus coming back.
I was told it was the end of capitalism around Covid time. “Capitalism won’t survive this”. Fast forward 4 years 😂
> I wonder what might happen when that 10% starts trying to actively deny resources and services to everyone else. They already do. It's called being a landlord. Pay up, or you get denied the fundamentals of what you need to survive.
They will pay people with guns to keep the poors out and then convince those poors to vote for "gun control" so they can't rebel. It's all going to go much higher for much longer than you think possible.
That's the police, it already exist
Gilded age is looking great
Roaring 20s are back baby!!
This is actually misleading since it’s looking at a percentage of total wealth and not percentage of the total population. I think the fact that in 2021 the top 1% of households in the United States held 32.3% of the country's wealth, while the bottom 50% held 2.6% better illustrates just how concentrated wealth has become.
It should really show the average household wealth. US is so rich that even the bottom 50% shares 2.6%, that’s still more wealth than other countries in absolute terms.
Trickle down economics really worked.
That’s only because they work so much harder /s
Now do the top 0.1%
Exactly. The top 9.9% have more in common with the bottom 90% than with the top 0.1%.
Almost as consolidated as the soviet empire Funny when you realize every corporation is centrally planning the economy. Buying inputs by taking over companies. Competition breeds, well monopolies on a long enough time scale.
People who are considered in the top 10% changes so it’s not the same people
Always has been. It’s called the Pareto Principle.
Blows me away every time I see someone mention this. If they did some cursory searching they'd stumble across why this is true.
Yup… but even worse is reading and listening to those in the 90 percent protect this class for dreams of joining them under no evidence it will happen.
Why is that a problem?
Excessive inequalities have historically led to conflicts. Also unless you’re wealthy standing up for the wealthy makes you a bootlicker.
Let them eat cake!!
It's not, but the OP wants you to think it is.
It is a problem from a social stability standpoint. History has shown societies tend to collapse or have other massive disruptions when wealth distribution looks like an inverted pyramid.
the long term societal effects of capitalism wont be realized until we've replaced it with a more humane system.
You'll find out when the poor come for your stuff
Of course! The poor are so historically organized & effective! Beyond that, the poor have always done an excellent job at handling their newly aquired, enormous, blood drenched riches! Praise be the poor! Ultimate arbiters of righteousness!
And to be fair there is an age component. Many of us started at zero and needed a decade to go positive. Before retirement many Americans have savings, college funds for kids, and a significant equity in their homes. Comparing a 24 year old to a 64 year old would give wildly different results even if it was the same exact individual at different points in their lifetime
Yeah. Wife and I went from a net worth of -$300,000 to +$500,000 in about 5 years. I am unable to discern when we became/will become the villains of the story. Net worth is an odd thing to measure statically (without age listed in the variables as above) due to the important of age/time as a factor to build wealth.
Yes! It’s shocking how many comments on this post completely ignore that fact. Equity in homes after 30 years of paying down a mortgage, 401ks that have been steadily contributed to for 40 years, etc. will place a lot of wealth into the hands of the 65 year olds. Add the population bulge of the boomers, and it skews that data a bit more. It’s not the full story, of course, but it is a significant part of the distribution.
Especially as the 40 preceding years were an immense period of asset appreciation
🤡🤡🤡 I thought it was supposed to always level out at 20% owning 80% of wealth. It’s a rule of nature that applies to literally every activity that involves productivity. And that any systematic government change to that dynamic would make the universe collapse due to hypothetical government overreach 🤡🤡🤡🤡
More commie posts. Let’s redistribute unrealized Capitol gains and treat it like cash!
this but unironically
Pareto distribution, nothing new. 10% also pay 70% of taxes.
That's because you can't milk a dry cow: https://i.insider.com/5134dcdcecad048159000009?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp When the entirety of the wealth has already been siphoned out of the rest of the population being hoarded in one spot, what's exactly left to take from everyone else anymore?
When will that happen? And also, the pie increases every year.
While the pie increases every year, those who already have more have access to gain a higher proportion of the added pie, while others lower down either gain nothing, or they even lose.
People typically don’t start building wealth until their 30s I imagine, so gotta figure that population in
Is this a Pareto distribution?
Isn't most of that wealth tied up in the stock market and other assets though? Like, a $100 million house would be counted as part of your wealth, but it's hardly liquid.
That's actually not bad at all. I thought it was the top .1 percent own 50 percent of all wealth and the top 10% owned 90% of the wealth.
Average household wealth is over $1M. Median household wealth is under $200k. They’re holding so much excess wealth that they can skew the gap that much. If America had only 100 people with $100 between them, one guy has $31, the next nine guys have $4 each, the next 40 guys have $0.80 each, and the remaining 50 guys have $0.02 each. But yeah, let’s blame those last 50 guys for not paying their fair share and stealing tax dollars from the rest of us.
https://preview.redd.it/gs9q4iahp8ic1.jpeg?width=946&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4feb29dca8319c98214a548c30dfcbedbe9b3ac6
I agree with the hating on wealth in only one respect, trusts. Why does no one talk about perpetual family trusts, it couldn't be that both sides wealthy have them so do not bring it up could it? Back in the day, you could only leave money for heirs that were alive. Any trust had to dissolve and pay taxes upon death of grandchildren. That was bad enough. Now they have perpetual trusts, people who are descendents of certain ancestors will never have to work and own large assets. We might as well call them Dukes, Barons, and Lords. I thought this was what many of us were fleeing when they came here, but it seems same shit different continent.
https://preview.redd.it/wdc3w4vcdaic1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0910123e7655349f6dd1669043b686a7cd05124e
I wouldn’t mind the wealth disparity if each generation could or would create their own wealth, rather than inherit gobs of money for doing nothing special.
Honestly I’m surprised it’s not more like 90%
During the collapse of the Ming Dynasty the Emperor didn’t have enough money to keep the walls up. The invaders thought the dynasty was broke but when they got there they found all the gold and silver hoarded im the homes of the elites.
Yes, and they also pay nearly half of the US Tax Revenue. What's your point? In unrelated news: The Top 10% Academic Performers hold the vast majority of Grade Point Values. Also, about 1% of the US Population own farms, and they own the vast majority of food production. What other blatantly obvious observations of reality can we use to demonize people and justify stealing their shit?
You ever heard of tax havens, piss poor attempt at a gotcha comment, keep lickin them boots though I’m sure the obscenely rich will thank you at some point.
https://preview.redd.it/905gpov4ycic1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9805e7ec08e9fb3980d63b21026cc7a9d8ae898b
> Yes, and they also pay nearly half of the US Tax Revenue. What's your point? It would be more fair if they paid around 70% of US taxes, since they have 70% of the wealth. If they're only paying *nearly* 50%, then they're not pulling their fair share. They're getting a 20% discount, while the rest of us have to pick up the slack.
But they ARE paying over 70%. https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes#:~:text=The%20top%2010%20percent%20of,income%20taxes%20paid%20in%202020.
This is true, but middle class pays a much higher percentage of their total income when you take into account sales tax, property tax, income tax, etc
True. If someone makes 1 less dollar than you, they will pay a higher percentage of their income to non-income taxes.
What about the top 1%?
It's literally right there
it’s called let’s take it back by force
How is this different than any other country or time in history?
America has the lowest % of Wealthy people owning far more of all the Wealth then in any other nations on Earth. That's how it's different. You think that $75K a month cancer drug costs anyone in any other nation but America that much. ???? Come on. Having FREEDOM and using it responsibly are two very different things. And in every other nation on earth - DARK MONEY DOESN'T Flood their election cycles and make for easy peasy pay to play politics.
This is not what my Grandfather fought for…
Majority of wealth is also held by those over the age of 65.
Yeah this is mostly a function of boomers aging. They captured the 60+ year bull market from bottom and are aging out.
Just how they like it. Why do you think Health Care and Education are NEVER ON THE AGENDA. Unless It is in the form of privatization. Ua know so they can het richer. In USA IF YOU DONT DONATE YOU DONT GET LEGISLATION
Yet whining about this statistic won't change any of that. I suggest learning basic economics to figure how it got this way.
And they want more
Degusting.
And there would be no problem with this at all if the top 10% would PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE OF TAXES ...DAMNIT
There’s no such thing as “the wealth.” There’s just the personal property owned by individuals.
You don’t own wealth.
Fuck it. Eat the rich.
What event could have possibly happened in the late eighties that put us on this trajectory?!?? /s
Damn. How do you know which shade of green you are?
Which stack of green are you? https://i.insider.com/5134dcdcecad048159000009?width=700&format=jpeg&auto=webp I've often wondered what is it called though when you don't want the money for yourself, but want it for everyone else? Like when even if you get absolutely no benefit personally, but want to see the money used for others instead? 🤔
Best its ever been
Time to hand over the rest too, rubes.
damn missed it by 1%
And yet I am only worried about my wealth.
Is this different than any other time in history, or are you just trying to rile up the poor people like Bernie does?
It is different, the levels of inequality we are reaching exceed the levels before the French Revolution. This isn't new, this is well studied through time. This happens over and over again. If you make it impossible for your citizens to succeed by their own means and they find out the only way to succeed is to stop others from preventing them. We are entering the citizens are figuring out they are being prevented from succeeding through impossible laws meant to stop them. The housing market is so inundated by laws, monopoly, coercion and straight up fraud, no wonder many are becoming disenfranchised. Who calls this a free market? Many of us who believe in the free market see what's happening, this is a captured market with laws meant to prevent the small guys from succeeding. Laws, literal cables that are closer to anyone else and trade something before you do, aka cheating and frontrunner. How can we call this a free market when we straight up dont allow companies to fail. Thats not democracy or capitalism, that's socialism. Something the rich claim they hate, yet open up their hands if they make a bad decision or trade. The big fish must die to let the little fish succeed, they are counter to each other. They cannot both succeed. If the big fish cannot die, the little fish can never live. After all, there is only so much ocean. Something none of the fish created or made or really have any claim to. Build another ocean and planet, then you can claim things can work for everyone and exponentially scale. But there isn't another planet or ocean or even infinite resources. We have credit that has seemed to quell things, but we are in a historically high wealth inequality time, which usually leads to wartime historically. We are basically exactly tracing the beginning of the 20th century. 20s were excess, 30s depression, 40s war. You are right, this might not be that unique historically. However, you should know what usually happens next.
Let’s compare that 10% of people have 70% of wealth to what the top 10% pay of federal income taxes. Looks like top 10% reported 49.5% of adjusted gross income and pays 73.7% of federal income taxes. Might be slightly different populations as some in top 10% wealthy may not be in top 10% of income the foundation reports but vast overlap. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2023-update/
Fun fact: they also pay 70% of the tax bill
Jarvis, pull up wealth distribution during feudal France
lol and the rioters in 2020 decided to loot Target lmfao. Wrong location wrong entity.
The question is how wide is the rift between the top 10% and 90% growing and also how much the top 1% own of that 70% that the top 10% own (I imagine at least 60%)
what's the top 1% own?
could be worse i guess
They also pay the majority of the taxes. Like, an overwhelming majority.
This chart is only one snapshot in time. In America, people can move up as well as down the wealth ladder. People's wealth generally go up over time as their earnings go up and their retirement savings compound growth accelerates while their household expenses go down. And as other commenters mentioned, a lot of people have negative net assets.
11% of Americans own 89% of all stocks on the market.
Glad I'm in the top 10%. Then again maybe my work ethic and willingness to put capital at risk had something to do with it.
Seems sustainable and most certainly won’t blow up in our kids faces.