[presidentcarter]

Source: http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-amer...fact-2?g=3

[Tytalus]

Preaching to the choir.

[Tail Gunner]

What is that old adage about statistics? "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments. Meaning that you can prove almost anything that you wish.

The U.S. is a great economic machine because it provides something incalculably important to an individual who is willing to work hard, which most other nations do not, i.e., the ability for upward mobility despite class, race, religion, etc. An excerpt from an article by an African-American economist and editorial writer who made it to the top:

Quote:

While the rhetoric is about people, the statistics are almost invariably about abstract income brackets.

It is easier and cheaper to collect statistics about income brackets than it is to follow actual flesh and blood people as they move massively from one income bracket to another over the years.

More important, statistical studies that follow particular individuals over the years often reach diametrically opposite conclusions from the conclusions reached by statistical studies that follow income brackets over the years.

Currently we are hearing a lot in the media and in politics about the "top 1 percent" of income earners who are supposedly getting an ever-increasing share of the nation's income.

That is absolutely true if you are talking about income brackets. It is totally untrue if you are talking about actual flesh and blood people.

The Internal Revenue Service can follow individual people over the years because they can identify individuals from their Social Security numbers. During recent years, when "the top 1 percent" as an income category has been getting a growing share of the nation's income, IRS data show that actual flesh and blood people who were in the top 1 percent in 1996 had their incomes go down — repeat, DOWN — by a whopping 26 percent by 2005.

How can both sets of statistics be true at the same time? Because most people who are in the top 1 percent in a given year do not stay in that bracket over the years.

If we are being serious — as distinguished from being political — then our concern should be with what is happening to actual flesh and blood human beings, not what is happening to abstract income brackets.

There is the same statistical problem when talking about "the poor" as there is when talking about "the rich."

A University of Michigan study showed that most of the working people who were in the bottom 20 percent of income earners in 1975 were also in the top 40 percent at some point by 1991. Only 5 percent of those in the bottom quintile in 1975 were still there in 1991, while 29 percent of them were now in the top quintile.

People in the media and in politics choose statistics that seem to prove what they want to prove. But the rest of us should become aware of what games are being played with numbers.

http://www.redding.com/news/2011/nov/09/...artner=RSS

[Joga Bonito]

Russia's got everybody beat, with 110 people controlling 35% of the country's wealth.

Quote:

Credit Suisse is out with its Global Wealth Report for 2013, looking at the distribution of household wealth around the world. Lukas Alpert of the Wall Street Journal pulls out the eye-popping stat that 35 percent of Russia’s wealth is now concentrated in the hands of just 110 people. Russia has just one billionaire for every $11 billion in household wealth compared to one for every $170 billion worldwide.

Worldwide, “personal wealth increased by 4.9 percent during the year to mid-2013 and now totals USD $241 trillion,” according to the report. U.S. wealth increased by 12.7 percent to $72.1 trillion. But as the charts below, whether you look at the change in wealth in total figures or in percentage, it was a rough year for Japan, which lost $5.8 trillion, or 20 percent of its net worth largely due to the falling yen/dollar exchange rate:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/20...ights.html

[Tail Gunner]

(10-17-2013 07:10 PM)iWin Wrote:  

Russia's got everybody beat, with 110 people controlling 35% of the country's wealth.

Quote:

Credit Suisse is out with its Global Wealth Report for 2013, looking at the distribution of household wealth around the world. Lukas Alpert of the Wall Street Journal pulls out the eye-popping stat that 35 percent of Russia’s wealth is now concentrated in the hands of just 110 people. Russia has just one billionaire for every $11 billion in household wealth compared to one for every $170 billion worldwide.

Worldwide, “personal wealth increased by 4.9 percent during the year to mid-2013 and now totals USD $241 trillion,” according to the report. U.S. wealth increased by 12.7 percent to $72.1 trillion. But as the charts below, whether you look at the change in wealth in total figures or in percentage, it was a rough year for Japan, which lost $5.8 trillion, or 20 percent of its net worth largely due to the falling yen/dollar exchange rate:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_world_/20...ights.html

The same situation applies to China, where a small clan of ruling families (descendants of the revolutionaries) control the wealth of the country.

[Hencredible Casanova]

That good ole' out of touch 1%...

[iknowexactly]

They say the first million is the hardest. Once you get to a certain level of wealth, you crowd out others who are trying to get some to a certain extent.

For instance, I'm guessing most apartment units in any town are owned by the top 1%, they can ( and do) raise the rents.

This makes it harder for someone living in one of those apartments to save money and become an apartment building owner themselves.

Incremental increase win: The 1%, again. That's why their proportional share keeps increasing--they have far, far more power to extract from the other 99% than the 99% have to take any back.