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According to this report (https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51846) the average wealth for the top 10% in 2013 was ~$4 Million. Spread equally around everyone that represents a ~25% increase for families in the 50-90th percentile, and over a 1000% increase for families below that. Seems pretty significant to me.

Percentages are misleading. Going from 1$ to 10$ is a 1000% increase, yet it's not significant.

Do the math again, this time with actual dollar amounts, then try again. Take all the money the top 10% have, then spread it among the rest. Also remember, you can only do that once.

Productivity has been rising steadily pretty much since they started keeping track of it, while the median family income has stagnated over the past 40 years or so.[1] Productivity is defined as the ratio of the volume of outputs to inputs, or equivalently, the "money out to the money in." If the money is not going to the median families, where is it going? It certainly isn't going to the lower class. It is going to the upper class, and is seen as a "concentration of wealth" since the money is all going into more or less the same pockets (the fuzziness of the wording is due to the fact that sometimes people die and other people become richer to move into the upper class).

To come to the challenge posed in your comment, let's examine some other indicators of inequality.[2] The top 1% holds around 42% of the wealth. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% holds around 1% of the wealth. Doesn't that seem a bit ... unequal? Of course, to have valid concepts of "top 1%" inequality must of course exist on some level, but the disparity is staggering. There are 160 million people in the bottom 50%, and about 3 million in the top 1%.

The average person in the top 1% holds about $2240 for every $1 belonging to the average person in the bottom 50%. The price of a $1m car to the top 1% is on par with the cost of a current-gen gaming console (~$450) to the bottom 50%, on average.

Even without getting into the top 0.1% and their obscene amounts of money hoarding, this is a lot. We can go there too if you want.

We could also just ask the people who arguably have the best access to such data: the Congressional Budget Office.[3] The graphic on the front cover is enough to illustrate the difference, but you can also go through the findings in the body if you need more convincing.

All of this is freely available on the internet, and found with Google via "total wealth in the us". Either you didn't know this was possible, or you don't want to know the facts.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Productivity_and_Real_Med...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._economic_variables_r...

[3] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...

You're missing the point entirely. I'm not saying inequality doesn't exist. Of course it exists.

I'm asking again: What happens if we take the wealth not just from the top 1%, but the top 10%, then spread it among the rest? How much does everyone get? Would it be a life-changing amount of money?

As of 2013, the top 10% of people had 85% of the wealth and the bottom 90% of people had 15% of the wealth.[1] FRED says the total net worth of households and nonprofit organizations was $79 trillion.[2] The population of the US at the end of 2013 was around 317 million.[3]

Crunching the numbers, we can determine that the top 10% had $67.15 trillion. If this full amount is distributed equally to every person in the bottom 90%, as the question states (let's call this the "kill the bourgeoisie" scenario), each person in the bottom 90% would receive $235,000 on average.

If we wanted to forcefully distribute the money while leaving the people at the top intact (let's call this "blunt force redistribution") such that the current top 10% has 10% of the wealth, then each person in the bottom 90% would receive $208,000 on average.

I would definitely consider this a life-changing amount of money.

[1] http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/images/wealth/Net... via http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HNONWRA027N

[3] https://www.census.gov/popclock/

Edit: Especially when you consider that this article[4] came out in 2013, a majority of people will be able to 1) basically completely exit debt and 2) start contributing substantially to the economy again. Not to mention afford college, afford healthcare, afford good food for themselves and their children, drop a whole lot of stress, and generally build their lives back up. There would be zero people below the poverty line. Who knows if the traditional refrain of "velocity of money increasing means inflation means collapse" would be realized in such a radical redistribution, and if a sudden and drastic shift such as that would end up hurting more than helping. We can only ever play the speculation game in matters like these.

The numbers in the main body reflect also the worth of nonprofits. Not sure on the proportions on that one, but even if you take it to be 10% of all the wealth (IMO an absurdly high estimate) the number still shifts to $187,000 per person in the bottom 90%.

[4] http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/index.h...

> If we wanted to forcefully distribute the money while leaving the people at the top intact (let's call this "blunt force redistribution") such that the current top 10% has 10% of the wealth, then each person in the bottom 90% would receive $208,000 on average.

They would receive assets valued at 208,000$ at current (arguably inflated) prices, most of it not being cash. You might expect the biggest expropriation in US history to be somewhat upsetting to the markets.

Now that we've established an upper bound, maybe we can talk about what percentage of that money can realistically be taken and what problems it could actually solve.

>They would receive assets valued at 208,000$ at current (arguably inflated) prices, most of it not being cash. You might expect the biggest expropriation in US history to be somewhat upsetting to the markets.

Technically true, but the path of this redistribution would be in the form of taxation and offered public services, which is extracted purely as cash.

According to the Obamacare website, poverty levels are around $11,000 per person, scaling sublinearly with the number of people in a single household. If we use that as a baseline, we'd need to tax the top 10% about 5% more per year and redistribute that in cash or an equivalent value of provided services (education, healthcare, etc.) to create a buffer that effectively nullifies the concept of a poverty level. In reality this would likely be applied more as a progressive tax, so the top earners would be taxed more and more benefits would go to the people who are actually poor.

> Well, how high should they have risen? They can't rise indefinitely.

Why couldn't they be on par with the rise in productivity? As they did from 1950 to 1970: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6H3OQjdwq4w/T6Hs2Dz3X5I/AAAAAAAAD0...

> "It all goes in the pockets of a few super-rich" > It's repeated like a mantra on the left, but when do they ever show you the actual numbers?

Yes, quite frequently. Here's an article with numbers and a graph: https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/graph-day-1-get-richer/

> Why couldn't they be on par with the rise in productivity?

Because wages are tied to supply and demand, not productivity. Increased productivity will rather lower wages.

> Yes, quite frequently. Here's an article with numbers and a graph

Same fallacy with the percentages: The top 1% clearly got their wages raised (CEOs etc), but in broader terms it doesn't matter much, because it's only 1%. In absolute terms, the sums are not that large relative to the sum of the wages of everyone else. It's a psychological problem, because people don't like income inequality, but economically, it doesn't make much of a difference. This is where the left steps in to gain political capital from a non-issue.

"It's a psychological problem, because people don't like income inequality, but economically, it doesn't make much of a difference."

Did you not notice the sharp inflation-adjusted increase in rents and house prices over the last 20 years?

That was directly a result of rising income and wealth inequality.

First of all, I'm talking about the inequality of income between the super-high-earners (1%) and the rest. Those people are not the ones pricing everyone else out of housing.

Secondly, it's not true that rent/house prices increased sharply everywhere, nor is it entirely due to income inequality between high-earners and low-earners.

For one, we had and have a lot of real estate speculation (a correction of which we experienced in 2007) but we also have policies and regulations in place that ensure the market can not provide for affordable housing. What prevents construction of an apartment highrise in the middle of San Francisco? It ain't neoliberalism, that's for sure...

>First of all, I'm talking about the inequality of income between the super-high-earners (1%) and the rest. Those people are not the ones pricing everyone else out of housing.

>For one, we had and have a lot of real estate speculation

Who did you think was speculating?

People are still using averages to talk about heavy tailed exponential - like distributions such as income distribution? Please...

In fact the super rich getting richer will skew the average disproportionately. But not the median. So your point is as invalid as the use of the average for income in the first place.

Well, those 1% could in theory have 99.99% of all income. So the justification that "because it's only 1%" (of people) is wrong.

In fact, neither the median nor the average supports my point, but the share of the income total of those 1% relative to the sum of all incomes.

> Because wages are tied to supply and demand, not productivity. Increased productivity will rather lower wages.

You ever notice how right-wingers dismiss economic statistics quasi-scholastic talking points, and never show you numbers?

I'm not a right-winger and I'm not dismissing the statistic. The statistic is correct. The question was "why aren't wages tied to productivity?".

The answer is, an employer will only pay as much as necessary, even if workers become more productive. That's just common sense.

An increase in productivity correlates with an increase in wages only if market demand supports it. An increase in productivity combined with stagnant demand will reduce the amount of labor required, increasing the supply of labor, lowering its price. Is that not obvious?

Make with the numbers.

The CPI takes these quality factors into account. Not everything has increased in quality, either. For example cars are much more durable than they used to be, but appliances are much less durable.

Your point about Chinese doing better is a good one, and it's the central issue. The American working class has taken it on the chin to lift the Chinese worker out of poverty. As a side effect, the American capitalist has done very well. On a global scale, this is probably a net good, but the world doesn't get to vote in American elections, and Americans are entitled to a government that prioritises American citizens' interests over Chinese citizens' interests. The Chinese certainly are prioritizing their own interests... If you want to see what this looks like globally, this is an interesting chart: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21707219...

Planned obsolescence is an interesting topic, but suffice it to say that while I do own a handful of decades-old appliances that still work, they did cost much more at the time. It also depends on the brand. Some will offer warranties at a premium. You have the choice, as a consumer.

Another question is: Do you really want to use the same appliance for decades?

The problem of the low-end worker who is stuck with an ever-shrinking amount of jobs with no career-prospects is, of course, very real. However, neoliberalism itself isn't to blame and leftist policy isn't the cure.