The New Gilded Age

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The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

It's official: Gilded Age II has surpassed the original!
The gulf between the richest 1% of the USA and the rest of the country got to its widest level in history last year.

The top 1% of earners in the U.S. pulled in 19.3% of total household income in 2012, which is their biggest slice of total income in more than 100 years, according to a an analysis by economists at the University of California, Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics at Oxford University.

The richest Americans haven't claimed this large of a slice of total wealth since 1927, when the group claimed 18.7%. The analysis is based on data from Internal Revenue Service data.

...

In a separate analysis, Saez found the top 1% of earnings posted 86% real income growth between 1993 and 2000. Meanwhile, the real income growth of the bottom 99% of earnings rose 6.6%.
Notice that the story is about income, not accrued wealth (although the writer does mention "total wealth" once, I think he's just being sloppy). Somehow the rich are raking it in like never before even without President Romney. Thanks, Obama!

The first Gilded Age ended with a progressive era. Ultimately this one will have to go the same way -- the only questions are how and when.

So do you think record and still-growing income stratification is a serious problem? If so, why? and what can be done about it? And if not, why not?
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

More fun statistics:
Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. Hence, the top 1% captured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery. From 2009 to 2010, top 1% grew fast and then stagnated from 2010 to 2011. Bottom 99% stagnated both from 2009 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2011. In 2012, top 1% incomes increased sharply by 19.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 1.0%. In sum, top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LordMortis »

More productivity with less bodies. More exploitation of wealth not in the US. More WalMart. Less small business.

I don't think we are in for a progressive reform. I think we are in for wealth leaving the US and my guess is the 1% will begin to learn to move with it as an expression of their wealth. Their physical presence will begin to move around like their investments.

I have no idea where that will put the US, in general. I am intrigued by the coming of the DIY culture. It could be revolution, evolution, or sound and fury but it gives me hope in spite of our debt, our health care, and our refusal to rebuild infrastructure (which I believe is rooted in "the 1%" and goes back to your thoughts on progressive reform).
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by malchior »

I wrote a long response to this in the morning but the board ate it. So I'll write a simpler response and see where the discussion takes us.

I think the premise is flawed - the gilded age wasn't the cause for greater progressivity in the 1930s. The deficit was. The Government was much smaller (spending about 4-5% GDP) but even then it was starved for cash when the crisis of the Depression went full throttle. For the premise to hold I think you'd have to prove that the Depression was caused by income/wealth disparity at the time. I think that would be difficult.

I recall that being swung around by economists of that era but I don't think they survived continued scrutiny. The depression was more of a capital crisis brought upon by several coinciding factors -- with an especially poor governmental and fed policy response following that deepened the crisis. When the banks began failing (margin calls / bank runs) credit seized up throughout the economy. Then the Government stepped in with protectionist measures that ended up being counterproductive and deepened the slump. The income disparity was likely a factor but I have doubts it was major. This funding shortage led to progressive tax rates because they were likely safer than a wholesale increase on people who were already suffering but I don't think progressiveness in the way we see it was really the high level goal. It was more of an accident.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LawBeefaroni »

It's the Great Siphoning.

"The Recovery" aside, where wealth begets wealth and when markets go up over 100% the rich do very, very well, we're in an economy where every single transaction sends a cut up the ladder. If you think very carefully about every dime you spend and where it ends up, you'll start to see that more of it than ever before gets siphoned off into the coffers of the "1%." Even "The Recession" was a disproportionate haircut for the middle and lower classes since it crushed their largest store of wealth, housing. The top 1% came out pretty much unscathed.

I don't see it changing any time soon and with the top 1% holding nearly 40% of the wealth, the income gap will continue to grow at a steady rate.

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Re: The New Gilded Age

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2nd pic is 403.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

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Oh come on guys, happy days are here again! The 20's roared with life (as long as you had more money than god)! :wink:

Wealth gap widens: Richest 1 percent earn biggest share of income since 1920s.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

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Is this where the link to the Immigration reform page goes?
We urge Congress not to miss this opportunity to level the playing field for U.S. employers. We can’t afford to wait
Citizens of the US are both not smart and skilled enough and won't work the kind of jobs US employers want us to work. We simply aren't competitive enough for money to flow into the gap. Opening immigration will help though.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

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LordMortis wrote:Is this where the link to the Immigration reform page goes?
We urge Congress not to miss this opportunity to level the playing field for U.S. employers. We can’t afford to wait
Citizens of the US are both not smart and skilled enough and won't work the kind of jobs US employers want us to work. We simply aren't competitive enough for money to flow into the gap. Opening immigration will help though.
HA!

The end of the gilded age? Note, the We in that quote is the 1% everyone loves to loathe.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by noxiousdog »

Unless you enact a wealth tax, it's always going to get progressively more skewed. That's the nature of compounding assets.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LawBeefaroni »

noxiousdog wrote:the nature of compounding assets.
Get us drunk and...
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by $iljanus »

LawBeefaroni wrote:
noxiousdog wrote:the nature of compounding assets.
Get us drunk and...
Getting us drunk has been cut due to cost saving measures so it's now only the pounding of the ass.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by silverjon »

Enough wrote:The 20's roared with life (as long as you had more money than god)! :wink:
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Re: The New Gilded Age

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LordMortis wrote:I don't think we are in for a progressive reform. I think we are in for wealth leaving the US and my guess is the 1% will begin to learn to move with it as an expression of their wealth. Their physical presence will begin to move around like their investments.
This is what I'd predict, also, because I think the wealthy are no longer tied to the welfare of any one nation, as was the case in the 1920's. In this global economy, it would take a global outcry and disaster to change anything, and I don't see that happening any time soon. We have lost any means by which the wealthy, and the leadership of this country in general, can be held accountable, and this is the price we're going to pay for it.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

Mormech wrote: We have lost any means by which the wealthy, and the leadership of this country in general, can be held accountable, and this is the price we're going to pay for it.
It's more like Citizens United handed over the keys to the candy store. We can't even pretend that this isn't a plutocracy anymore.

Local politics in Massachusetts are supposed to be blind to party -- and for the most part, that's true. Candidates can run on their political philosophies, of course, but there is no R or D after their names on the ballot. But it's a novelty even in MA that there's an avowed communist running for selectman in a nearby town. His schtick is that the wealthy already own two political parties so it's time the rest of us had one.

Of course he will be crushed.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Mormech wrote:
LordMortis wrote:I don't think we are in for a progressive reform. I think we are in for wealth leaving the US and my guess is the 1% will begin to learn to move with it as an expression of their wealth. Their physical presence will begin to move around like their investments.
This is what I'd predict, also, because I think the wealthy are no longer tied to the welfare of any one nation, as was the case in the 1920's. In this global economy, it would take a global outcry and disaster to change anything, and I don't see that happening any time soon. We have lost any means by which the wealthy, and the leadership of this country in general, can be held accountable, and this is the price we're going to pay for it.
The near-exodus to Dubai is a perfect example. Of both their willingness to leave with their wealth and their ability to adapt quickly when the winds change.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

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LordMortis wrote:Is this where the link to the Immigration reform page goes?
We urge Congress not to miss this opportunity to level the playing field for U.S. employers. We can’t afford to wait
Citizens of the US are both not smart and skilled enough and won't work the kind of jobs US employers want us to work. We simply aren't competitive enough for money to flow into the gap. Opening immigration will help though.
Do mean competitive in the sense of habit, or skill sets? Americans are ridiculously competitive. So much so that we sacrifice each other to amass unnecessary wealth as social status. Most of our sports are internal within our country, because ours are better! If you take vacation someone will take your job! Our teens have rampant stress and health issues due to competitiveness in schools. Etc.
I think heterogeneity has far more impact than work ethic.

If you meant our poor lack the skillsets to be high-end labor or then perspective to work for pennies, cool.

I heard yesterday a crazy statistic that noted the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation since 1963.

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Re: The New Gilded Age

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Combustible Lemur wrote:
LordMortis wrote:Is this where the link to the Immigration reform page goes?
We urge Congress not to miss this opportunity to level the playing field for U.S. employers. We can’t afford to wait
Citizens of the US are both not smart and skilled enough and won't work the kind of jobs US employers want us to work. We simply aren't competitive enough for money to flow into the gap. Opening immigration will help though.
Do mean competitive in the sense of habit, or skill sets? Americans are ridiculously competitive. So much so that we sacrifice each other to amass unnecessary wealth as social status. Most of our sports are internal within our country, because ours are better! If you take vacation someone will take your job! Our teens have rampant stress and health issues due to competitiveness in schools. Etc.
I think heterogeneity has far more impact than work ethic.

If you meant our poor lack the skillsets to be high-end labor or then perspective to work for pennies, cool.

I heard yesterday a crazy statistic that noted the minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation since 1963.

Sent courtesy of the Galaxy.... note2.
I was mixing sarcasm and cynicism. Americans workers aren't competitive with immigrants with similar skill sets looking to step up. And the wealthy in the US are working toward having additional leverage and means to exploit the working class to expand wealth gap. Supply and demand when it comes to labor.

I also find it hard to believe minimal wage isn't keeping up over the last fifty years. Or I would if it weren't for inflation (government claims we aren't experiencing, except in housing) over the last couple few years. Right now I'm not so sure.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by paulbaxter »

I have never identified myself as a progressive nor as a democrat at any point in my life, nor do I now, but even I think that income inequality is way out of hand.

My own idea of a solution is to fix maximum salaries as a multiple (say somewhere around 7X to 10X) of minimum salaries within any given place of employment. I suppose to be effective there might also have to be some disincentives to things like stock options, or at least have similar sorts of rules for them. If it's possible to live as a relatively poor family at 35k, then it should certainly be possible for people to feel successful at 300k.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

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Trying to do that at a national level will create a brain drain, as the best at running a company will either move their businesses off-shore, or are hired away by companies already there.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

The 1% don't get most of their income from salaries; they get it from assets and investments. Taxing non-wage income the same way we tax wages might be a reasonable place to start. It's always struck me as backwards that we take away more money that you worked for than money that you didn't work for.

I was surprised to learn that "the 1%" starts at an income level of somewhere around $350,000 per year. I know a couple of guys who are in that range. Only one of them (a lawyer) admits to being rich. The other one (a doctor) is so leveraged that he feels...well, not poor, but certainly not rich. His money's tied up in his business, in two houses, and in three kids in college (whose student loan debt is minimal to none). Yeah, he takes a couple of Jamaican vacations every year and he's never short of pocket money, but his lifestyle is decidedly middle class.

When we talk about the 1% most of us think of people, like Mitt Romney, who are actually in the top 0.1% or higher.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Combustible Lemur »

Kraken wrote:The 1% don't get most of their income from salaries; they get it from assets and investments. Taxing non-wage income the same way we tax wages might be a reasonable place to start. It's always struck me as backwards that we take away more money that you worked for than money that you didn't work for.

I was surprised to learn that "the 1%" starts at an income level of somewhere around $350,000 per year. I know a couple of guys who are in that range. Only one of them (a lawyer) admits to being rich. The other one (a doctor) is so leveraged that he feels...well, not poor, but certainly not rich. His money's tied up in his business, in two houses, and in three kids in college (whose student loan debt is minimal to none). Yeah, he takes a couple of Jamaican vacations every year and he's never short of pocket money, but his lifestyle is decidedly middle class.

When we talk about the 1% most of us think of people, like Mitt Romney, who are actually in the top 0.1% or higher.


This is the problem. Other than several vacations per year, multiple homes, and, debt free higher education for multiple children he lives middle class... Not MIDDLE CLASS!! not even fucking close. My wife and I together make nearly double the median household we are precisely individually middle class. Single falling apart home, two incomes, no vacations, no children, a few dogs, vices almost always in home and mid to low cost, no expensive tastes, and both work 50+ hrs a week. Both with degrees. We live pretty damn well. I'm so sick of people bitching about their middle class existence at 150k+. Fuck that, I'm sorry if you spend your money, but you are not middle class.

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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by malchior »

Kraken wrote:I was surprised to learn that "the 1%" starts at an income level of somewhere around $350,000 per year. I know a couple of guys who are in that range. Only one of them (a lawyer) admits to being rich. The other one (a doctor) is so leveraged that he feels...well, not poor, but certainly not rich. His money's tied up in his business, in two houses, and in three kids in college (whose student loan debt is minimal to none). Yeah, he takes a couple of Jamaican vacations every year and he's never short of pocket money, but his lifestyle is decidedly middle class.
Yep - while I'm not anywhere near that income level I have a colleague whose wife is a doctor and combined they probably fall into that range. Neither of them are retiring anytime soon with their fabulous wealth. He probably has more security and options than poorer folk but you hit the nail...
When we talk about the 1% most of us think of people, like Mitt Romney, who are actually in the top 0.1% or higher.
This is where the problem lies. Wealth is increasingly concentrating to these folks and they command a lot of power. You just have to look back at the economic rescue measures in the crisis to see who matters -- these people were almost entirely whole while ordinary folks were paid some lip service but ultimately were hung out to dry.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

Combustible Lemur wrote:
Kraken wrote:The 1% don't get most of their income from salaries; they get it from assets and investments. Taxing non-wage income the same way we tax wages might be a reasonable place to start. It's always struck me as backwards that we take away more money that you worked for than money that you didn't work for.

I was surprised to learn that "the 1%" starts at an income level of somewhere around $350,000 per year. I know a couple of guys who are in that range. Only one of them (a lawyer) admits to being rich. The other one (a doctor) is so leveraged that he feels...well, not poor, but certainly not rich. His money's tied up in his business, in two houses, and in three kids in college (whose student loan debt is minimal to none). Yeah, he takes a couple of Jamaican vacations every year and he's never short of pocket money, but his lifestyle is decidedly middle class.

When we talk about the 1% most of us think of people, like Mitt Romney, who are actually in the top 0.1% or higher.


This is the problem. Other than several vacations per year, multiple homes, and, debt free higher education for multiple children he lives middle class... Not MIDDLE CLASS!! not even fucking close. My wife and I together make nearly double the median household we are precisely individually middle class. Single falling apart home, two incomes, no vacations, no children, a few dogs, vices almost always in home and mid to low cost, no expensive tastes, and both work 50+ hrs a week. Both with degrees. We live pretty damn well. I'm so sick of people bitching about their middle class existence at 150k+. Fuck that, I'm sorry if you spend your money, but you are not middle class.
Upper middle class, lower upper class, whatever. Your post just illustrates that "middle class" covers all the ground from nearly poor to nearly rich and "rich" is in the eye of the beholder. My friend has a nicer lifestyle, more security, and more financial flexibility than I will ever have, but he also works hard and worries about money and debt. He's not leisure class or a master of the universe type...even though he was born into wealth and has had high expectations all his life.

(I don't know how relevant this is, but since he was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago he isn't planning on retirement.)

...which brings up another tangent about the concentration of wealth: Namely, decreased social mobility. If you're born into the 1%, you can pretty much count on being there your whole life. The other 99% can't say the same. The middle class isn't shrinking because so many of us are moving on up. The ranks of the poor keep expanding, the truly rich keep pulling farther and farther away. This stratification is going to bite us in the ass if it continues.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Combustible Lemur »

Kraken wrote:
Combustible Lemur wrote:
Kraken wrote:The 1% don't get most of their income from salaries; they get it from assets and investments. Taxing non-wage income the same way we tax wages might be a reasonable place to start. It's always struck me as backwards that we take away more money that you worked for than money that you didn't work for.

I was surprised to learn that "the 1%" starts at an income level of somewhere around $350,000 per year. I know a couple of guys who are in that range. Only one of them (a lawyer) admits to being rich. The other one (a doctor) is so leveraged that he feels...well, not poor, but certainly not rich. His money's tied up in his business, in two houses, and in three kids in college (whose student loan debt is minimal to none). Yeah, he takes a couple of Jamaican vacations every year and he's never short of pocket money, but his lifestyle is decidedly middle class.

When we talk about the 1% most of us think of people, like Mitt Romney, who are actually in the top 0.1% or higher.


This is the problem. Other than several vacations per year, multiple homes, and, debt free higher education for multiple children he lives middle class... Not MIDDLE CLASS!! not even fucking close. My wife and I together make nearly double the median household we are precisely individually middle class. Single falling apart home, two incomes, no vacations, no children, a few dogs, vices almost always in home and mid to low cost, no expensive tastes, and both work 50+ hrs a week. Both with degrees. We live pretty damn well. I'm so sick of people bitching about their middle class existence at 150k+. Fuck that, I'm sorry if you spend your money, but you are not middle class.
Upper middle class, lower upper class, whatever. Your post just illustrates that "middle class" covers all the ground from nearly poor to nearly rich and "rich" is in the eye of the beholder. My friend has a nicer lifestyle, more security, and more financial flexibility than I will ever have, but he also works hard and worries about money and debt. He's not leisure class or a master of the universe type...even though he was born into wealth and has had high expectations all his life.

(I don't know how relevant this is, but since he was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago he isn't planning on retirement.)

...which brings up another tangent about the concentration of wealth: Namely, decreased social mobility. If you're born into the 1%, you can pretty much count on being there your whole life. The other 99% can't say the same. The middle class isn't shrinking because so many of us are moving on up. The ranks of the poor keep expanding, the truly rich keep pulling farther and farther away. This stratification is going to bite us in the ass if it continues.
Yes and no. As the gap gets bigger, the Real value doesn't really change (other than inflation). Which is why those people in the nearly rich are deluding themselves. They are rich. Not richey rich Jetsons rich, but to 75percent of America rich. It speaks to the entitlement problem. It's not that people think they are entitled to being wealthy. It's that people who are in the top 25percent think they are entitled to not NEEDING to work till they're 70. And that those of us that have to are just lazy or not skilled enough. Either we as a society believe that any one who works should make a real living wage or that market value designates societal worth. Meaning those who aren't valuable enough don't matter. Like how people get up in arms about paying $12 an hour to flip burgers, because how dare they expect a living wage to do something so lazy and meaningless?

Also: I am ranting.


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Re: The New Gilded Age

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1) If you are making 350k a year and you are living in the middle class, that's likely (but not necessarily) by choice. You're (likely) making choices not to concentrate your wealth. This is still not to say you are rich, just that you are making choices toward extravagance.

2) "1%" is a short hand for the uberwealthy IMO, and not meant to be literal. I sincerely doubt many people believe that 1 in every 100 people are part the wallstreet elite living in Mitt Romney's world. But the .1 percent or .01 percent or .001 percent just wasn't as easy to poster board and bumper sticker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Numbe ... 011_v4.jpg" target="_blank

I'm not even sure I'd consider those with a worth of 10,000,000 to be at the top of the food chain but by that point you have to at least starting thinking of them that way. The majority of which I am sure are making bulk of the income off of investments vested in the idea that labor should be cheap, precisely because they've never been labor. That sound like about .3%.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Combustible Lemur »

LordMortis wrote:1) If you are making 350k a year and you are living in the middle class, that's likely (but not necessarily) by choice. You're (likely) making choices not to concentrate your wealth. This is still not to say you are rich, just that you are making choices toward extravagance.

2) "1%" is a short hand for the uberwealthy IMO, and not meant to be literal. I sincerely doubt many people believe that 1 in every 100 people are part the wallstreet elite living in Mitt Romney's world. But the .1 percent or .01 percent or .001 percent just wasn't as easy to poster board and bumper sticker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Numbe ... 011_v4.jpg" target="_blank

I'm not even sure I'd consider those with a worth of 10,000,000 to be at the top of the food chain but by that point you have to at least starting thinking of them that way. The majority of which I am sure are making bulk of the income off of investments vested in the idea that labor should be cheap, precisely because they've never been labor. That sound like about .3%.
I agree with all of this except I would put the number at 150k. You don't Have to live in the tri-state. Just like people who live in hurricane and tornado areas. If you make 350k you aren't middle class. You may pretend or save such that your day to day budget is equivalent, but your real and actual life is not.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by noxiousdog »

Kraken wrote:The 1% don't get most of their income from salaries; they get it from assets and investments. Taxing non-wage income the same way we tax wages might be a reasonable place to start. It's always struck me as backwards that we take away more money that you worked for than money that you didn't work for.

I was surprised to learn that "the 1%" starts at an income level of somewhere around $350,000 per year. I know a couple of guys who are in that range. Only one of them (a lawyer) admits to being rich. The other one (a doctor) is so leveraged that he feels...well, not poor, but certainly not rich. His money's tied up in his business, in two houses, and in three kids in college (whose student loan debt is minimal to none). Yeah, he takes a couple of Jamaican vacations every year and he's never short of pocket money, but his lifestyle is decidedly middle class.

When we talk about the 1% most of us think of people, like Mitt Romney, who are actually in the top 0.1% or higher.
You are very correct about investments vs. income. And really, it's the .1% that skew that figure.

The only way to solve it is either a massive wealth tax on the .1% or provide significant incentives for everyone else to invest.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Jag »

noxiousdog wrote:You are very correct about investments vs. income. And really, it's the .1% that skew that figure.
I agree. The people I know in the 1% range have high salaries, good living standards, but mostly basic retirement/college fund investments. I'm not sure what level is the .1%, but I also know some people with millions in the bank who don't work and just live off their investment income.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LawBeefaroni »

The income averages of the "1%" are misleading. If you know someone with a salary of $400K, that doesn't mean they're in the 1%. Larry Ellison made $1 in 2012 but his net worth increased by over $90M in the same year. He's a 1%er. The "1%" is more about net worth than salary.

The guy with a $400k job, $500K in the bank, $2M in liquid investments, a $1M paid-off house and $300K worth of cars isn't even to the 1% yet. He's just over halfway.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by noxiousdog »

LawBeefaroni wrote:The income averages of the "1%" are misleading. If you know someone with a salary of $400K, that doesn't mean they're in the 1%. Larry Ellison made $1 in 2012 but his net worth increased by over $90M in the same year. He's a 1%er. The "1%" is more about net worth than salary.

The guy with a $400k job, $500K in the bank, $2M in liquid investments, a $1M paid-off house and $300K worth of cars isn't even to the 1% yet. He's just over halfway.
I don't think that's right. According to this, 1.45M of networth puts you in the 1%. 3.8 M puts you in the top 0.1%.

Larry Ellison is probably in the top .00000001% (top 1000 incomes of 100 million wage earners)
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Smoove_B »

From the Atlantic, Where Americans (rich and poor) spent every dollar in 2012:
For the poor, food, clothes, and housing account for more than 60 percent of all spending. The rich have more left over for leisure, insurance, and savings.
Maybe next year, maybe no go
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LawBeefaroni »

noxiousdog wrote:
LawBeefaroni wrote:The income averages of the "1%" are misleading. If you know someone with a salary of $400K, that doesn't mean they're in the 1%. Larry Ellison made $1 in 2012 but his net worth increased by over $90M in the same year. He's a 1%er. The "1%" is more about net worth than salary.

The guy with a $400k job, $500K in the bank, $2M in liquid investments, a $1M paid-off house and $300K worth of cars isn't even to the 1% yet. He's just over halfway.
I don't think that's right. According to this, 1.45M of networth puts you in the 1%. 3.8 M puts you in the top 0.1%.
I guess it depends who you talk to, the exact year of the data and the source. 2010 Census data is what, 2009 net worths? Self reported?
NYT wrote:January 17, 2012
...
But for net worth, the 1 percent threshold for net worth in the Fed data was nearly $8.4 million, or 69 times the median household’s net holdings of $121,000.
Granted that's 2007 data but I'm fairly certain that the 1%ers have largely recovered after 2008-2009.

And on the high end:
The Economic Policy Institute reports that the net worth of the top 1% of wealthy Americans has risen substantially over the past 50 years. In 1962, the wealthiest 1% had net worths equal to approximately 125 times that of the average American household. Their net worths were shown to be approximately 288 times the net worth of the average household in 2010, equaling about $16.4 million.

Say we put $3.8M on the very low end. My example is just barely a low end 1%er and a debatable one at that.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by noxiousdog »

Interesting how much it varies.

This one says top 1% is 6.8M.

Could be that it's households vs. individuals?
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

Employment gap between rich and poor widens
The rates of unemployment for lowest-income families (earning less than $20,000) have reached 21 percent, equivalent to the rate recorded during the 1930s Great Depression. On the other hand, the families with income of more than $150,000 a year have an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, a percentage that is normally associated with full employment.

The analysis also showed that majority of middle-income workers is forced into working in lower-wage positions where they are replacing lower-skilled and low-income workers.

"This was no 'equal opportunity' recession or an 'equal opportunity' recovery," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "One part of America is in depression, while another part is in full employment."

The report also studied the 'underutilized' levels among people. 'Underutilised' workers refer to people who are either unemployed or 'underemployed' in part-time jobs instead of full-time work.

Among households with less than $20,000 annually, the underutilized workers constituted about 40 percent. While about 21 percent in the $20,000-to-$39,999 category are underutilized,15 percent within $40,000 to $59,999 group and just 7.2 percent among people earning more than $150,000 fall into the strata.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Isgrimnur »

Those numbers don't surprise me, as I would imagine that there's a huge overlap between those categories and the ones that I post monthly in the turmoil thread.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by stessier »

Kraken wrote:Employment gap between rich and poor widens
The rates of unemployment for lowest-income families (earning less than $20,000) have reached 21 percent, equivalent to the rate recorded during the 1930s Great Depression. On the other hand, the families with income of more than $150,000 a year have an unemployment rate of 3.2 percent, a percentage that is normally associated with full employment.

The analysis also showed that majority of middle-income workers is forced into working in lower-wage positions where they are replacing lower-skilled and low-income workers.

"This was no 'equal opportunity' recession or an 'equal opportunity' recovery," said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "One part of America is in depression, while another part is in full employment."

The report also studied the 'underutilized' levels among people. 'Underutilised' workers refer to people who are either unemployed or 'underemployed' in part-time jobs instead of full-time work.

Among households with less than $20,000 annually, the underutilized workers constituted about 40 percent. While about 21 percent in the $20,000-to-$39,999 category are underutilized,15 percent within $40,000 to $59,999 group and just 7.2 percent among people earning more than $150,000 fall into the strata.
That seems like a silly way to phrase the problem. Restated, the article says "those with skills we are willing to pay a lot for are well employed, those who we don't value as much have trouble finding work." News at 11.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by Kraken »

The newsworthy part is the downward pressure. As more and more people take jobs that are "beneath us" we squeeze out the more marginal workers who are better suited to menial work.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by LawBeefaroni »

Kraken wrote:The newsworthy part is the downward pressure. As more and more people take jobs that are "beneath us" we squeeze out the more marginal workers who are better suited to menial work.
Or menial jobs are taken over by machines and/or 1 person doing the work of several with the aid of machines.

Imagine when all the truckers hit the unemployment line.

Ubiquitous, autonomous trucks are "close to inevitable," says Ted Scott, director of engineering and safety policy for the American Trucking Associations. "We are going to have a driverless truck because there will be money in it," adds James Barrett, president of 105-rig Road Scholar Transport Inc. in Scranton, Pa.

Economic theory holds that such basic changes will, over time, improve standards of living by making us more productive and less wasteful. An idle truck with a sleeping driver is, after all, just a depreciating asset.
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Re: The New Gilded Age

Post by noxiousdog »

Not only will there be money it, there will be a lot of money in it.

It will be faster, more energy efficient, and safer.
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