Who rules America
sociology.ucsc.edu
sociology.ucsc.edu
The rich dont need additional tax breaks. They need to pay tax rates closer to what the rest of us do.
The wider the range of the distribution, the bigger the concentration will be.
I wonder how much of the wealth distribution disparity is simply a consequence of the fact that we have a wide range (near $0 to many $billions).
They're making it sound like the top percentage of wealthy people are hogging the wealth, taking it away from everyone else. What about the possibility that the top 20% had a considerable hand in creating that additional 15% of wealth?
> But it's important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)
[1] http://www.unschooled.org/2010/11/first-know-thyself/
[2] "Ask HN: Side Projects Gone Big"
-The founders, early hires, and investors made a lot. This is their top 1% accounting for 35% of the wealth
-The rest of the employees made not as much, but still quite a lot. This is the next 19% holding 50%.
Then there's people who didn't have anything to do with building Google, who own none of Google. That's the other 80% of people, who own 15%.
The people who didn't build Google benefit a heck of a lot from the people who did - they have free to a range of amazing quality free services - search, Gmail, Maps, Earth, Apps, Finance, Analytics, Voice, Android, etc, etc, etc. They don't own Google and they're not millionaires. But they're much better off because the Google guys built that amazing company, which is why they're so wealthy.
Evidence shows that most people don't know the actual wealth distribution in this country: http://www.slate.com/id/2268872
Looking at the Real vs. Imagined Welath Distribution, it's easy to see that people underestimate the top 20%, but what is striking to me is the the bottom 40% isn't even visible on the actual distribution because they make up about %0.3. Call me ignorant but that was a big surprise to me.
EDIT: Just wanted to make it clear that the slate link is only about wealth and not income.
A couple of quotes:
"The super-rich of high-tech, on the other hand, create tangible things that make our lives easier, and this we can respect. Steve Jobs gave us the ubiquitous iPod. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the roller-blading Google guys, devised a better way to search the Internet. Jeff Bezos gave people a way to shop in their pajamas. Bill Gates makes the desktop software on the computers most people use every day."
"In contrast, the public seems to resent the big boys of Wall Street because they do not appear to have invented anything -- unless you count ingenious ways to make more money. Option derivatives are as inexplicable to the general public as particle physics. Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, Alan Schwartz of Bear Stearns and Robert Willumstad of AIG might have tremendous records of innovation. If they do, none of us were told."
I actually think that much of the supposed American resentment toward the "rich" is anger with wall street. I have a feeling that some wall street PR will attempt to use this ambiguity, attempting to equate anger toward bailed out banks with a general hostility toward capitalism, investing, rich people in other sectors of the economy such as high tech, etc....
I also think that it would be foolish for "the left" (am I allowed to say that?) to play right into this by acting too alarmed about wealthy people who clearly have created great wealth.
A better analogy is that Sergey Brin's kids will never have to lift a finger in his life, and he'll still make more money than all of your grand kids combined, regardless of how smart, good, and ambitious they are.
Before reading this article, did you know that CEO pay has grown twice as fast as the S&P 500, three times as fast as corporate profits, and sixty-nine times as fast as production workers? And that the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has not grown at all and has in fact lost ground?
Yes, it's true that good companies make everyone wealthier in absolute terms, but that's not the whole picture either. Not every company is Google.
And with the malfunction in mind I don't think that these findings are to be applied to the googles, but to those companies with atomized shareholder stakes.
Also note that while it may be tempting to "soak the rich", they are the most mobile segment of society. Arguably too, they are the most productive private users of capital. (I'd make a distinction here between real private capitalists and bankers/financialists etc)
Finally, technology allows individuals today to be vastly more productive than their potential peers. The differences are much more stark in a high division of labor society. Whereas, if you are a great hunter your productivity could be maybe 2-3 times better than average, a guru programmer can be a few orders of magnitude above the otherwise average skilled professional.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
(top 1% pay 38% of income taxes)
Based on the Slate data referenced elsewhere in the comments here, there looks to be around 84% of the aggregate income for the top 20% of the earners.
Then interpolating the data buckets shown within the NTU tables and particularly guessing that the 20% range is around 80% of the taxes paid, and matching that with the Slate income charts.
This implies that the folks with 80% of the income pay somewhere roughly around 80% of the taxes. Give or take.
I'd be interested in seeing a NTU-like breakdown matched with what data Slate has shown for relative incomes; matched with what looks to be the income and with slicing the income based on the different AGIs.
Through the media, corporations, and lobbyists the rich rule America.
"It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet -- it is the order of things today"
And viewership numbers rule the media, which isn't that great a thing either.
I believe it's actually the other way around.
And the reason I call out "inherited" is I notice a fundamentally different position between people I know who have earned their wealth versus those that have inherited it (even for relatively poor/middle-class people who have inherited their position through things as basic as being white in the US -- which tends to mean you've had generations to accumulate capital that can be transferred).