Are we going in the wrong direction ??

Wealth shares In 1989, with that year's Forbes 400 wealth factored in, the average family in America's richest 1 percent held 106 times the average net worth of families in America's bottom 90 percent.

In 2004, with the Forbes numbers again taken into account, the average top 1 percent family held 176 times more wealth than the average bottom 90 percent family. What do these multiples and percentages mean in actual dollars and cents?

If the bottom 90 percent of America's families and the wealthiest 1 percent held the same share of the nation's income in 2004 as they did in 1989, the average family in the bottom 90 percent would have had $12,208 more to its name and the average top 1 percent family $1.7 million less.

FROM: Arthur B. Kennickell's Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989-2004.

Although this whole idea of the unequal distribution of wealth in the world in general and the United States in particular is very sadly neglected, in my opinion; the question seems to generate an outpouring of apathy whenever it's raised.I think the trouble may be that when we consider numbers in the six, nine, or twelve digit range the brain tends to boggle and wander off into more pleasant reveries. Perhaps I should re-state the problem as a more readily grasped proportional one.

Let's imagine that the population of the country consists of exactly 100 people. In that way, the top 1 percent is simply one individual. Let's call him Dick. The combined total wealth of the country, for the sake of simple arithmetic, is $100.00. It appears then that our national treasure is divided in such a way that Dick receives $38.00, while the 40 people on the bottom of the democratic republic, have to divide 20 cents between them. That's assuming they divide it equally. I think something is stinking in Denmark - although we aren't talking about Denmark.
Even if I am somewhere below the top 30 percent, I'm only entitled to between $1.25 and nothing?

quote:

Originally posted by frankvan:
I think something is stinking in Denmark - although we aren't talking about Denmark.

You certainly aren't. By any parameters you care to use Denmark has the most even distribution of wealth, the lowest comparative poverty and its poor are better off than anywhere in Europe ! (Naturally the US shows worse than Europe )

Distribution, Denmark etc

Of course, distribution is not everything. If a country were unimaginably rich it might have many billionaires and quite a small percentage owning most of the wealth but even its least wealthy, its 'poor', might be rich by any normal standards. I imagine that such a country would be so rich that it would not need to provide health care for its citizens because every one of them, however 'poor' would have private insurance, whatever their state of health or age, for which they could always afford the premiums.Indeed it would be so rich that it would not need to provide free healthcare for, say, all its older citizens regardless of their means.

Frank, I didn't post before because I have often pointed out the same thing. The wealthy in this country are getting wealthier, and the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is getting smaller, and most of those that leave the middle class aren't getting rich. Even bush, certainly no friend of the working man, has pointed out the growing disparity betweem what CEOs make compared to what the average worker in that industry makes; that difference has increased by a factor of 4 or 5 in the last 2 decades. A rising GNP means nothing for the country if the money doesn't reach most of the citizens. (I imagine that the GNP of the southern states increased greatly from 1776 to 1826, but it really didn't help the people that produced the product.) Creating jobs means little is the jobs created don't allow much over subsistece living.