Household Wealth Maldistribution

[AP]

This was at the Edwards blog...worth reposting...it cites its sources.

U.S. wealth distribution is extremely concentrated, much more so than income.

<1998 data from The State of Working America 2000/2001, Economic Policy Institute. Current distribution and of wealth is much more unequal, as it has been substantially accelerating under the Bush tax, budget, and regulatory regimes. >

Percent of wealth owners, percent of total wealth, average wealth of class
0.5% 26% (not available)
1% 34% $10,200,000
5% 57% $1,400,000
10% 69% $623,000
20% 82% $345,000
bottom
20% n/a -$8,900

The bottom 80% of wealth owners now own less than 15% of this country’s wealth.

96% of all common stocks are owned by the top 20%.

I'm interested in this 85+% of the wealth sequestered in the top-20-percenters' assets because, while this is the supposed “investor class,” the effect of their “investments” is a generation-long decrease in the overall U.S. and global quality of life.

Bush's tax-based legacy to the rich, just his tax-based legacy, is around $2 trillion (nine zeros), and growing. That doesn't even count his budgetary and regulatory largesse. God forbid wealth would flow-not-trickle down into local infrastructure projects that would provide full livelihood incomes and safety nets for the 80% of us who are now scraping over our meager share — less than 15% — of this country's wealth.

Just $1 trillion can be visualized as billion dollar grants to 1000 cities
with which each could build 10,000 $100,000 homes, which they could rent for
$500 per month and derive enough income to maintain and grow that housing
stock 5% annually (500+ per year new houses). That's giving 30,000,000 in-debt individuals (and an additional 1.5 million people per year) an opportunity not to have to pay 50% of their income for housing.

Oh, and for every $1 invested in construction, at least $3 are leveraged
into local economies. So, in addition to the 500+ new houses built in each
city in each outyear, there's an annual injection of $150 million in productive activity in each local economy.

[AP]

1. The stunning stat: bottom 1/5th of wealth holders is IN DEBT, avg'g 8.9K!

1 American in 5 has NO WEALTH AT ALL.

They're wage slaves.

[baby_bear]

2. The Bushistas want it to be 3 in 5

The middle class is of no value any more to these people; they can get their labor and their consumers in 3d world countries. We (the middle class) are merely gum to be scraped off their shoes.

s_m

[AP]

4. Middle class is the engine which creates all wealth in the US. Bush just

wants ALL the well PLUS more to be shifted to the banks and all the other big corporations and their shareholders.

We're not gum. We're their wage slaves.

[TacticalPeek]

3. This has the look of an end-game.

The prince and princess class has abandoned faith in the future of America, and are only moved by their short-term personal gain.

[AP]

5. We've crossed the threshold. Wealth distribution is more polarized today

than it was just before the Great Depression.

[xchrom]

6. 96% of all common stock owned by 20%

they want get their grubby little paws on more of the middle casses money{like they have any to spare} by privatizing social security.
and with supposedly responsible people like greenspan encouraging more debt burden on the masses -- the public can expect the squeeze to get tighter.

[AP]

7. Progressive taxation: Edwards wants to raise cap gains tax 10 pts on

income earners over 300K.

You can see who going to be responsible for that part of the tax burden.

[AP]

8. kick