IRS Wealth Statistics Paint Fascinating Picture of Top One Percent

Anyones else getting really strong vibes of "author doesn't understand what they're analyzing" from this?

[edit] In particular, they seem to spend a lot of space marveling over marginal utility as if they'd never encountered such a thing, yet fail to mention it by name, and there are gems like: "curiously, the wealthiest Americans hold relatively modest balances in their retirement accounts" for which the author betrays no hint of having used "curiously" rhetorically and doesn't attempt to explain when, to a person like me who knows almost nothing about finance and economics, the reason seems obvious, unless they mean something different by "retirement account" than what I think they do (tax-privileged accounts like IRA and 401k). The word "trust" also does not appear in the article's body text. The apparent "gee, look how wrong these other stats are" at the beginning seems wholly unjustified without further analysis which is absent (i.e. most likely the author didn't notice that the difference is due to some methodological differences between the sources, or in some other way failed to understand what they were comparing, rather than such a source actually being so far off)

Ignoring the ... quality issues of this post, looking at the statistics of wealth _is_ interesting.

The author points out a couple times the sub-optimal investment strategies apparent in this data, and reads into them under the assumption that the wealthy must have some trick of their sleeves and so their investment strategies must just go _beyond_ us mere mortals.

I don't concur. I think, rather, most everyone is financially naive. _Especially_ wealthy people. Why? Here's an example.

Doctors make a lot of money. And yet the vast majority of doctors are abysmal when it comes to A) running a business and B) managing money. And it makes sense, because doctors have to spend the vast majority of their young adult lives in school, and then the rest of their lives in a high stress, high demand work place. There's no time to pick up those skills.

There's no reason to suspect that anything different happens for the wealthy in America. You don't just acquire skill with money simply because you have or it, or earn a lot of it. Most of the super wealthy are people like actors, athletes, etc. None of them would have the time or inclination to be proficient in finance.

Even in the case of wealthy business people, aptitude in business does not necessarily translate into aptitude with money. It sounds a bit contradictory at first glance, but managing finances is actually one of the least important things when it comes to running a business. It's mostly an after thought. It's just that it tends to be salient and a common topic of discussion. Zuckerberg isn't wealthy because he's good with money. He's wealthy because he had a good business idea with good execution. It's why the CEO isn't a CFO.

In other words, at the very least I believe the wealthy are as illiterate when it comes to money as the average American. But more likely they're worse, because being successful tends to mean being hyper focused on one specific goal in exclusion of other things.

And don't forget, your ideas about what wealth looks like and how the wealthy live ... comes mostly from celebrities; people who build their business on appearances. So no wonder they want to portray an image of 1) extravagance and 2) aptitude.

Click bait. Do not waste your time.

>Looking at the finances of people who have more money that you or I do can be a little unsettling. If we’re not careful, the financial voyeurism can also foster a sense of ingratitude. That’s not good…

"Ingratitude"?

Right after US congress passed the tax cut that will add 1,000,000,000 to the deficit?

Is the author - "Steve" - funded by the Mercers or the Kochs?

This seems like a rather naive approach to understanding the top one percent. Interviewing them and actually talking to them about their financial strategies seems like a much better idea. Many people have done this and there are books written from this perspective. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that they don't have much in their retirement accounts or mutual funds. Those are very middle class vehicles that are very inefficient. Most of the wealthy put their money in real estate investments, their own businesses, and high cash value life insurance.

Great article. Its sad that wealth automatically portrays hate in many peoples eyes. Jabs at the author don't advance anything and are not appropriate HN is better than that

I found this more interesting and relevant: http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20pre...

What is the optimum level of wealth inequality? First they put together what most people think is a fair distribution of wealth, then have those people estimate what they think it actually is, and then compare it to the actual distribution of wealth. Most people have the right idea that wealth inequality is not optimal, but they're way way off on estimating how suboptimal it is.

This is a screen shot of one of the charts in the doc. https://screenshots.firefox.com/EnpiKHzPzi7X2cGw/www.people....