The way I’m reading this is that poor and middle income folks are so squeezed that they can’t meaningfully contribute to spending on anything that isn’t a necessity. This is untenable, and really not the world I want for us.
I wonder what happened between 2016-2019 to steadily buck the trend for a few years.
The first trump administration of course
But really looks like the fed interest rate was slowly rising in that period which may have cooled the tech bubble which is where a lot of the top 10% income and wealth has come from recently. Whereas regular people are less dependent on zero interest rate tech speculation.
Interest rates may be higher now, but now they’re high enough to also effect everyone else, and the tech bubble is currently being buoyied by AI hype.
Aha, there you have it folks. Those pesky poor people are not only lazy, they also ruin the economy by spending so little!!
For anyone wondering, the threshold for a household to hit the top 10% is a combined net worth of just under two million dollars (1.92). That’s net worth, not cash on hand.
I bring this up because the way net worth is calculated can sometimes be a bit dodgy. You might officially have a net worth of two million dollars, but if you try to cash all of your assets out, you might find that you have considerably less. BUT, you can borrow against the overestimated net worth. So you’ve got that going for you. Which is nice.
Article’s not talking about wealth, though: it uses income. Top 10% combined household income is about $250k, and they account for about 25% of all income earned. Household income could be two salaries plus investments.
Yep. I guess the point I was implying, and you can really see its effects in the comment section of the original post, is that the headline is misleading and meant as rage bait. The headline implies that the 10% are the ultra wealthy in order to get people worked up. The real story isn’t about the super rich as many read this to be. In my opinion the real take on the story is how income inequality in this country is like falling off a cliff. You can be in the top 10% and easily be wiped out by healthcare debt after surviving a single bout with serious illness.
Agree. Top 10% is one of the IRS/census bureau’s breakouts, but it doesn’t really capture the scope of inequality. IMO, wealth number - $2M - sounds a lot richer than the income number - $250k - especially on the internet, where people skew younger. 10% income is about 3x median. 10% net worth is about 10x median. But in a country where 16% of people are over 65, a lot of those $2M people are retirees. Top 10% of either could easily be your neighbor, and you’d probably not notice.
The 1% numbers are much more extreme. 1% by wealth is $11M; by income $790k. The 1% threshold is about as far from the 10% threshold as the 10% threshold is from median, by either measure.
Keep in mind that rich people are a good substitute for pork.
