Top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent

[Teals_Of_Wonder]

what the left wing castro loving media will never tell you,,,,,,the 1% who is hoarding a few trillion dollars,,,are all waiting for President O'Bozo To Leave the White House with his bedroom slippers!! and as soon as Romney or Cain is in the White House&they fire all the CZARS,,then they WILL INVEST IN AMERICA !!!

 

[Harry Dresden]

100-1=99, not 90.

That's because the top 1% don't own more than the entire 99% of the rest of the country. Only the bottom 90%. 9%, obviously, were left out.

This is what is wrong with Republicans. For one, they don't know how to read. Second, what ever it is they do read, they imagine it to be something else.

Do you even read the links that you post?
The 9% WERE included.
Where have I ever claimed I was a Republican?

if you disagree with Dean......you must be a Republican.....what else is left?.....in Deans world if your not with him.....then you must be to his right.....hence....your a Republican.....

 

[flacaltenn]

How much do you JK Rowling made per book sold to the public? Rothleisburger makes far more for each pass completed doesn't he? Now how much does the CEO of Firestone make for each tire sold?

Can you explain the diff -- No there isn't one. You could take the CEO of Firestone and fleece him down in the parking lot and fire him. Distribute all the proceeds to the employees and they could afford MAYBE a set of tires at corporate discount.

 

[Maple]

The top 1% is supporting how much of the bottom 90%?

Yes, I noticed how he left that out,

You can not help the poor by destroying the rich. And that's exactly what dean wants to do--it's called envy.

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, the gospel of envy, it's only virtue is the shared equality of misery." Winston Churchill

Dean wants to bring the wealthy down so that they can enjoy the same misery he is enjoying. He does not aspire to work and become wealthy, he aspires to envy.

The constitution guaranteed and equal opportunity it DID NOT guarantee and equal outcome. Dean wants to equal the outcome. Outcome is an individual choice, and it's obvious that Dean made some bad choices.

 

[Utilitarian]

From the OP...



You do realize RDean that about 40% of the Forbes 400 are people who came from "first base". Meaning that THEY created all of that wealth -- not their parents or ancestors. That alone tells how dynamic and MOBILE wealth in America is. It's actually pretty wonderful to ponder. AND -- it gives you an example of how hard it would be to accurately measure..

Most wealthy people come from industries. Industries that make the big bucks employ thousands of people. There are always exceptions (like entertainers and sports stars), but most wealth is actually created by a large pool of labor.

So again... it's not like they really earned all of it themselves. We're simply part of a system where wealth accumulates at the top. Most systems are like this anyway, but it's a consequence of human nature, not of work ethic so much.

NOPE.. Most wealthy people come from entertainment, arts, sports, authors, doctors, lawyers, inventors, and hard working smaller entreprenurial businesses. The 'Wall Street' contingient is a small portion of our top 10%.

On the BILLIONAIRE level -- yes the majority of those folks came from Corporate wealth.

And Like I said above -- JK Rowling had an army of "workers" to create and maintain her Harry Potter empire. So does Phil Mickelson. There is no diff. There is no THEFT. We should "move on"...

I was focusing more on the billionaire and hundreds of millions level, although I realize I muddled the discussion by mentioning the exceptions.

A doctor who makes $300,000 a year is wealthy compared to most of us, but he's not the elite.

An actor who makes $20 million still isn't among the elite.

You're not really among the elite until you hit 9 figures. Those are the people who pull the strings. Vote for whoever you like, but just remember that whoever gets the nomination or wins the election has been "pre-approved" by the elite. In the few cases where this hasn't occurred, the candidate either gets killed (RFK) or discredited to make way for one more favorable to their interests.

These are also the people that have to be dealt with for any real change to occur in our system.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

From the OP...

The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

You do realize RDean that about 40% of the Forbes 400 are people who came from "first base". Meaning that THEY created all of that wealth -- not their parents or ancestors. That alone tells how dynamic and MOBILE wealth in America is. It's actually pretty wonderful to ponder. AND -- it gives you an example of how hard it would be to accurately measure..

75% are self made

 

[Harry Dresden]

All this talk about the wealthiest of Americans has only just recently flared up.

Logic tells me that it must be the Obama administration that is making it possible for all this wealth to be growing like it is.

maybe the economy is better than we think!!

and i bet the Obama family and every Democrat in Congress has got a fatter bank account too....

 

[Utilitarian]

How much do you JK Rowling made per book sold to the public? Rothleisburger makes far more for each pass completed doesn't he? Now how much does the CEO of Firestone make for each tire sold?

Can you explain the diff -- No there isn't one. You could take the CEO of Firestone and fleece him down in the parking lot and fire him. Distribute all the proceeds to the employees and they could afford MAYBE a set of tires at corporate discount.

When money is directly tied to quality of life, it poses several questions regarding what one's worth really is.

The idea that we've been programmed to believe is that someone is worth whatever the market will bear, but then that leaves us with some rather disturbing thoughts.

After all... does this mean that a handicapped person is worthless? Does this mean children are only worth what they could accomplish in a sweatshop?

The point here is that the only reason money accumulates at the top is because profit drives our system. People work for the sake of accumulating wealth, but the profit made is merely a consequence of market conditions that are relative -- so there is no absolute value involved.

For a society to function properly, profit cannot be the sole motivator. If a society reaches that point, then it culturally atomizes. A certain amount of public good must be established and promoted via public investment. This includes entitlements.

So, the wealth accumulated by the elite is the largest pool of funds to work with. The more wealth disparity a country has, the more its systems depend on the wealth of the elite for taxes.

The good news is that public investment can decrease wealth disparity, so that there is less of a tax burden on the elite in the long run. However, it would seem that dogma prevents many from realizing this.

 

[flacaltenn]

From the OP...

The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

You do realize RDean that about 40% of the Forbes 400 are people who came from "first base". Meaning that THEY created all of that wealth -- not their parents or ancestors. That alone tells how dynamic and MOBILE wealth in America is. It's actually pretty wonderful to ponder. AND -- it gives you an example of how hard it would be to accurately measure..

75% are self made

Frank: there was leftist think tank that used to plow thru the Forbes 400 every year to make their case that wealth in America was static. They STOPPED doing that in the late 90's because the results were just to embarrassing to spin anymore.

 

[Listening]

Let's start with the obvious: Unemployment. Three years after the financial crisis, the unemployment rate is still at the highest level since the Great Depression (except for a brief blip in the early 1980s)

Corporate profits just hit another all-time high.

Corporate profits as a percent of the economy are near a record all-time high. With the exception of a brief happy period in 2007 (just before the crash), profits are higher than they've been since the 1950s. And they are VASTLY higher than they've been for most of the intervening half-century.

CEO pay is now 350X the average worker's, up from 50X from 1960-1985.

CEO pay has skyrocketed 300% since 1990. Corporate profits have doubled. Average "production worker" pay has increased 4%. The minimum wage has dropped. (All numbers adjusted for inflation).

After adjusting for inflation, average hourly earnings haven't increased in 50 years.

In short... while CEOs and shareholders have been cashing in, wages as a percent of the economy have dropped to an all-time low.

In other words, in the struggle between "labor" and "capital," capital has basically won.

Of course, life is great if you're in the top 1% of American wage earners. You're hauling in a bigger percentage of the country's total pre-tax income than you have at any time since the late 1920s. Your share of the national income, in fact, is almost 2X the long-term average!

In fact, income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in "income equality." China's ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.

And, by the way, few people would have a problem with inequality if the American Dream were still fully intact—if it were easy to work your way into that top 1%. But, unfortunately, social mobility in this country is also near an all-time low.

So what does all this mean in terms of net worth? Well, for starters, it means that the top 1% of Americans own 42% of the financial wealth in this country. The top 5%, meanwhile, own nearly 70%.

And remember that huge debt problem we have—with hundreds of millions of Americans indebted up to their eyeballs? Well, the top 1% doesn't have that problem. They only own 5% of the country's debt.

And then there are taxes... It's a great time to make a boatload of money in America, because taxes on the nation's highest-earners are close to the lowest they've ever been.

You keep launching this line of thinking to somehow connect the two, but never do when asked.

So I'll ask again.

 

[flacaltenn]

How much do you JK Rowling made per book sold to the public? Rothleisburger makes far more for each pass completed doesn't he? Now how much does the CEO of Firestone make for each tire sold?

Can you explain the diff -- No there isn't one. You could take the CEO of Firestone and fleece him down in the parking lot and fire him. Distribute all the proceeds to the employees and they could afford MAYBE a set of tires at corporate discount.

When money is directly tied to quality of life, it poses several questions regarding what one's worth really is.

The idea that we've been programmed to believe is that someone is worth whatever the market will bear, but then that leaves us with some rather disturbing thoughts.

After all... does this mean that a handicapped person is worthless? Does this mean children are only worth what they could accomplish in a sweatshop?

The point here is that the only reason money accumulates at the top is because profit drives our system. People work for the sake of accumulating wealth, but the profit made is merely a consequence of market conditions that are relative -- so there is no absolute value involved.

For a society to function properly, profit cannot be the sole motivator. If a society reaches that point, then it culturally atomizes. A certain amount of public good must be established and promoted via public investment. This includes entitlements.

So, the wealth accumulated by the elite is the largest pool of funds to work with. The more wealth disparity a country has, the more its systems depend on the wealth of the elite for taxes.

The good news is that public investment can decrease wealth disparity, so that there is less of a tax burden on the elite in the long run. However, it would seem that dogma prevents many from realizing this.

That's all kinda reasonable. Especially the part about "the more it's systems depend on the wealth of the elite for taxes.".. That's just logic and reason.

THe biggest problem I have is evidently you believe that PROFIT is threatening to become the "sole motivator".. Here's some logic and reason.

You cannot make a profit unless you provide a good or service that people NEED and WANT.

Therefore businesses and corporations strive to find NEEDS and WANTS to fill gaps.
Thus profit is always a secondary consideration to defining a business. I've been involved in many start-ups and the desire to fill societal need comes first -- even if we have to work REAL HARD to figure out how to serve that need and balance that with satisfying the stockholders, the banks, and paying our employees.

THAT's the primary motivator. You can find some NEEDS and WANTS that might NOT be profitable. Those need to get addressed some other way. But I dare you to find a societal need that it is not being addressed by corporations if they eek a profit out of it.

 

[theHawk]

Yet another idiotic thread started about the top few percent "owning" the vast majority of wealth in the country.

Just because Forbes says someone is "worth" hundreds of millions doesn't mean that they are hoarding all that money in a bank.

Good to see that the only message liberals have going into this election is "tax the rich more" because all of America has seen their failed policies come to fruition. They can't accept that the fact that progressivism is a complete failure, so all they have left is to try to start a class war and stir up their base to be as loud and obnoxiuous as ever. We're now starting to see the true colors of liberals, hence the name "shitters" on Wall Street.

 

[Londoner]

The narrow accumulation of wealth is fine, unless you have a mass-consumption economy which requires more broadly distributed wealth, i.e., a high level of purchasing power by the "under classes", which is what we had during the postwar years.

After we shed high wage manufacturing jobs and rolled back many of the redistributive policies which sustained consumption at the lower & middle echelons, we opted for a "credit democracy", that is, we sustained consumption and upward mobility through borrowing - we leant the worker the money he used to make in wages, benefits, and "programs". Don't take my word for it, track household debt from the 70s through 2005.

Problem is: manufacturing ain't coming back and we can't return to the pre-meltdown credit-debt economy.

We need a whole new way of incentivizing job growth and re-capitalizing the consumer - beyond the solipsism of both parties - otherwise too much of the unprecedented surplus capital on top will continue to get side-tracked into speculative garbage, political coffers, and ideological bullhorns.

 

[MeBelle]

That's because the top 1% don't own more than the entire 99% of the rest of the country. Only the bottom 90%. 9%, obviously, were left out.

This is what is wrong with Republicans. For one, they don't know how to read. Second, what ever it is they do read, they imagine it to be something else.

Do you even read the links that you post?
The 9% WERE included.
Where have I ever claimed I was a Republican?

The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

Read it again. Try reading out loud. Maybe that will help.

I did read it, silly head.
I don't need to read out loud...it wouldn't 'help' me as much as it might help 'others'.

The OpEd references OWS several times, hence the inclusion of the 9%!! durrr

 

[auditor0007]

100-1=99, not 90.

Honestly, that is incredible; you actually can do basic math. Unfortunately, your reading comprehension is atrocious. The OP never stated that 100-1 = 90. The statement was that the top 1 percent earned more than the bottom 90 percent. The two have nothing to do with each other. It wasn't a math problem.

 

[auditor0007]

100-1=99, not 90.

Math isn't rdweeb's best subject. He doesn't like his teacher - so it's the teacher's fault that he's an idiot.

I guess you are another one with reading comprehension problems. If it had been stated that the top 1 percent earns more than the bottom 99 percent, it would be an untrue statement. The statement that the top 1 percent earns more than the top 90 percent is a correct statement. It is not a math problem.

 

[auditor0007]

100-1=99, not 90.

That's because the top 1% don't own more than the entire 99% of the rest of the country. Only the bottom 90%. 9%, obviously, were left out.

This is what is wrong with Republicans. For one, they don't know how to read. Second, what ever it is they do read, they imagine it to be something else.

It becomes more obvious everyday. It's amazing how they can stick both feet into their mouths at the same time.

 

[MeBelle]

100-1=99, not 90.

Honestly, that is incredible; you actually can do basic math. Unfortunately, your reading comprehension is atrocious. The OP never stated that 100-1 = 90. The statement was that the top 1 percent earned more than the bottom 90 percent. The two have nothing to do with each other. It wasn't a math problem.

Thanks for the insults.
I won't return the favor though.
READ the OpEd and you will find that it refers to OWS which was the point I was making.

 

[MeBelle]

100-1=99, not 90.

Honestly, that is incredible; you actually can do basic math. Unfortunately, your reading comprehension is atrocious. The OP never stated that 100-1 = 90. The statement was that the top 1 percent earned more than the bottom 90 percent. The two have nothing to do with each other. It wasn't a math problem.

http://www.usmessageboard.com/polit...ottom-90-percent-post4285444.html#post4285444


Mmm, yup!

 

[editec]

People decry that the successful are expected to pay more to keep society going than the unsucessful.

It's UNFAIR, they whine.

Meanwhile, they believe, it is perfectly fair for those victims of taxation to unfairly exploit people in business and in life.

Its actually funny to see them these tools protesting about how unfairly put upon the wealthiest people in the world are.