Video Showing the Huge Gap Between Super Rich and Everyone Else Goes Viral

[jadehunter]

For much of the past decade, policymakers and analysts have decried America's incredibly low savings rate, noting that U.S. households save a fraction of the money of the rest of the world. Citing a myriad of causes -- from cheap credit to exploitative bank practices -- they've noted that the average family puts away less than 4 percent of its

Comments

[sesmo]

I liked this video but I wish they wouldn't conflate income inequality and wealth inequality. They are very different.

Top 1% income is $370K/year, ~7 times the mean. Of course, top 0.01% is somewhere much, much higher.

Top 1% wealth is $8.4M, ~69 times the mean.

[shipperx]

I liked this video but I wish they wouldn't conflate income inequality and wealth inequality. They are very different.

Good point!

Not the least of which being that most of the 1%'s wealth is not in the form of salary. Accumulated wealth is taxed at (at best) around half of what salary is taxed... which makes the purpose of deferred interest, being paid in stock options, and low capital gains rates kind of obvious.

Mitt Romney's never appearing taxes and multi-million dollar asigned stock value 401k being the posterchild for that sort of inequity.

[rhysande]

IA. It bothered me that the video used annual salaries to place the 100 "people" into their respective quintiles, and then compared wealth.

It bothers me, as well, that most people who discuss income (or taxes, for that matter) rarely define what they mean by income. As an example, what does the top 1% income you listed above include? Is that salary only or does it include other income streams? Is it gross income, taxable income, or after tax income? Does include the value of compensation packages and perks? For a discussion to be productive, the people participating need to be referring to the same thing.

[myrrhmade]

As depressing as this is, thank you for posting it. I'm going to post this, and email it to a bunch of folks in my life.

[martydressler]

I watched this in my political inquiry class the other day. Almost everyone in the class thought the discrepancy was ridiculous.

...except for this one dudebro who argued the 1% had a majority of "people not born into it (wealth)" and insisted that the 1% was "constantly fluctuating because people enter into/leave it in great numbers per year."

Cue a lot of non-subtle snickering from a few people in the class.

[happythree]

Yeah, please. It's a matter of fact that most people born in the bottom fifths stay there, and most people born in the top fifth stay there. Socioeconomic mobility does not define the US in the 21st century.

[bushy_brow]

LOL!

[heresie_irisee]

I love graphs enough that this video is an automatic awesome, but my french arse always has to laugh when US-centred reflections on inequality have to be couched almost entirely in terms of "BUT DON'T WORRY WE'RE NOT SOCIALISTS".

I'd like to see something in that vein with a more globalised viewpoint one of these days, because the animated graphs really do drive the point home very well.

[lai_choi_san]

my french arse always has to laugh when US-centred reflections on inequality have to be couched almost entirely in terms of "BUT DON'T WORRY WE'RE NOT SOCIALISTS"

"Don't worry, I'm harmless." It makes me laugh too, a sad laugh.

[romp]

It was only a couple years ago that I realized that the myth of Anyone Can Make It in America is what is used to blame the poor for their being poor. I now thinks it's one of the most damaging stories the US tells itself.