on the wealth gap in the US
Michael Moore delivered this speech to the demonstrators in Wisconsin recently that I heard about from his e-mail newsletter. Regardless of what you think of the guy, it was an impassioned speech and I was touched by his emotion. (I didn't watch the whole thing, but you can see it here if you're interested.)
Anyway, the reason for my post here is actually to draw some attention to this provocative article he posted in that newsletter that describes the disparity in wealth in the US right now. I sent the link to my favourite lefty comedian Jimmy Dore in the hopes he might quote from it in a future episode of his political radio show on KPFK.
Some of my favourite highlights from that article are:
• 400 people have as much wealth as half the US population;
• the top 5% of US families saw their incomes rise by 73% between 1979 and 2008, while the lowest 20% saw a decrease of 4% and the remainder stayed mostly stagnant; and
• in 2007, the richest 1% of US households owned more than 33% of the nation's private wealth, which is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.
My great friend and erstwhile physical fitness mentor vyus has been writing some great posts recently about economics, and it strikes me that he might take some issue with this article, or maybe its sources. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what his or anybody's take on it is. Even if the statistics in this article were inflated by 100%, they'd still be freaking scary to me.
PS: I have a few family members whom I'd consider wealthy or at least extremely comfortable: an successful entrepreneurial uncle by marriage worth probably $15M+ and a few other retirees with holdings probably in excess of $3M. But that's not the level of wealth I'm talking about here. It's the extremely high-income families earning tens or hundreds of millions each year where I think the problem lies. If there were a million multi-millionaires of the former ilk in the US (e.g. with $10M or less in the bank), I believe that trickle-down economics might actually work -- there'd be lots of liquidity and investment and entrepreneurship happening. But I can't imagine that dozens of billionaires are of much constructive use to the economy at all. At least, not for the little guy. Or the middle class worker. Just my $0.02.
Anyway, the reason for my post here is actually to draw some attention to this provocative article he posted in that newsletter that describes the disparity in wealth in the US right now. I sent the link to my favourite lefty comedian Jimmy Dore in the hopes he might quote from it in a future episode of his political radio show on KPFK.
Some of my favourite highlights from that article are:
• 400 people have as much wealth as half the US population;
• the top 5% of US families saw their incomes rise by 73% between 1979 and 2008, while the lowest 20% saw a decrease of 4% and the remainder stayed mostly stagnant; and
• in 2007, the richest 1% of US households owned more than 33% of the nation's private wealth, which is more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent.
My great friend and erstwhile physical fitness mentor vyus has been writing some great posts recently about economics, and it strikes me that he might take some issue with this article, or maybe its sources. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing what his or anybody's take on it is. Even if the statistics in this article were inflated by 100%, they'd still be freaking scary to me.
PS: I have a few family members whom I'd consider wealthy or at least extremely comfortable: an successful entrepreneurial uncle by marriage worth probably $15M+ and a few other retirees with holdings probably in excess of $3M. But that's not the level of wealth I'm talking about here. It's the extremely high-income families earning tens or hundreds of millions each year where I think the problem lies. If there were a million multi-millionaires of the former ilk in the US (e.g. with $10M or less in the bank), I believe that trickle-down economics might actually work -- there'd be lots of liquidity and investment and entrepreneurship happening. But I can't imagine that dozens of billionaires are of much constructive use to the economy at all. At least, not for the little guy. Or the middle class worker. Just my $0.02.