The wealth gap IS growing. Yet another study with figures that prove it.
I have no particular dog in this fight, but I am pretty darned good with basic math. I have to say, Dick, you keep moving the bar, and the information you link to seems to either refute your own position or be totally irrelevant.
I’d recommend spending a bit of time looking at the differences between wealth, income, rate of return, value over time, and a lot of these other concepts. As they say, it’s pretty easy to manipulate statistics to say what you want, but it’s also pretty easy to change the definitions of words to achieve what you’re after.
Wealth is not the same as income. Saying that wealthier people pay less taxes is meaningless. You pay taxes on income, not wealth.
So, we are offered the nifty notion that if only people would save more money, they might retire in comparative splendor. Unless, of course, they fall afoul of one of those market correction thingys, in which case its kool-aid, Beefaroni and cat food.
Well, OK, I guess. Seems to me that it depends rather a lot on the “rational actor” version of humanity, which my experience suggests is a bit exaggerated. OK, wildly.
But lets say that happens, say someone manages to save 10% for their retirement, and is not tempted to squander the money on their ungrateful whelps, or hookers and blow.
Doesn’t that mean that they don’t spend the money? They don’t buy the refrigerators, the cars, and the all important loud shiny crap? In a culture and economy utterly dependent on consumer spending, that doesn’t seem like too great a plan. Good for banks, I suppose, but I am not wholly convinced that what is good for banks is good for me.
So, rather than take money out of the economy to give to the government, we take money out and give it to the banks? Why, that money will be loaned to small businessmen and entrepreneurs!
Who will have that much tougher a time establishing thier business in a consumer driven economy with consumers spending less.
If the consumer is saving the money, that’s good, because the consumer doesn’t flat out *need *to spend the money. But that already assumes that said consumer has discretionary income, he is not “working poor” or even more unworthy.
So your scenario assumes a state of the economy such that even the least amongst us can set aside a hefty portion of thier income to save for their golden years. But they can’t really do that now, what miracle is scheduled to arrive so that they can do that tomorrow?
I’m arguing that the share of national income of the top 1% of earners has more than doubled since 1980 (and increased even more from its low point in 1976) and also the share of wealth the top 1% have has also increased over that period, and I’ve backed my claims up with facts and evidence. I’m also claiming that bonds have outperformed stocks over the past 40 years and done the same thing. What part of it don’t you understand?
And you do pay taxes on wealth too, you pay property taxes and estate taxes.
There’s no part that I don’t understand. The problem is that you keep changing your arguments, and people like Sam and Scylla keep shooting them down because you’re having trouble with basic fundamental money and math concepts (and whether bonds or stocks have done better has nothing to do with the argument at hand). For example:
Picking 1980 means your statistic is right, but you’re being disingenuous by using it. Their share has actually decreased in the last ten years, if you look at numbers that Sam Stone gave you. You’re saying there’s a current trend toward the rich getting richer, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
When you found out this was completely wrong, you changed it to “highly-paid” people, which allows you to define the term however you wish to make it true. I’m sure I can define “highly-paid” in such a way as to make it encompass half of all earnings last year.
This was downright silly, as nobody puts their retirement money in a savings account.
And after they showed you that you were wrong, you quietly changed the 40 years to 30 years (redrawing the lines yet again).
Oh, and back to what you said to me:
Estate taxes (arguably) are on income. Property taxes are only on real property, and they’re relatively small compared to income taxes. I pay a fraction of a percent of my net worth in real estate taxes every year, but combined Federal and state income taxes vary between 1/4 and 1/2 of my earnings. The “wealth” taxes to which you refer aren’t even worth including in the discussion.
The numbers he posted are total nonsense. They’re contradicted both by the guy who is cited in his cite as their originator and a bunch of other sources including actual tax numbers and the WSJ, an organisation not known for its left-wing views, especially on taxation. All these sources show that the share hs more than doubled since 1980 and increased even more since the low point of top 1% share, 1976.
The WSJ references highly-paid executives earning over a third of national income, again based on facts and evidence. I’m just using their exact words.
And I went from 40 to 30 back to 40 years, the 30 years was just a typo. And I’m asking for a real-world scenario here. Somebody saving sixty bucks a week isn’t going to go further than their local bank for investment advice or a well-known fund like Fidelity, they don’t search out market-outperforming boutique firms with one or two offices in the country. And like pretty much every small investor they’ve been crushed by the events of the past year or so.
Property and estate taxes are taxes on wealth. Your property is part of your wealth, not your income, and you’re taxed on it. And estate taxes are levied on how much you’re worth when you die – and only if you’ve achieved a certain level of wealth – on assets you already paid taxes on and when your opportunity to earn further income is limited, the ultimate wealth tax. I think that taxes on wealth like these should be included in any discussion when one person is claiming that no taxes on wealth exist. How much you have to pay or not doen’t really matter, it’s whether they exist or not, and they definitely do exist.
So far, two people have. The first likened you to the Black Night in Monty Python who got chopped to bits and was in total denial. The second is politely telling you that your head is up your ass.
So, this strategy of refusing to produce a direct link and counting on the charity of others isn’t working very well.
I’m guessing this is directed at my previous post to you discussing recent returns versus historical averages. I’m not sure what your asking me here or how it relates to that.
I alrady provided the links, just one or two people didn’t either read them or drew the wrong conclusions from them. Everybody else seems to have managed just fine.
I actually chose American Funds because they are extremely well known. They are in fact, the second largest mutual fund company in the whole world, larger than Fidelity, with over a trillion dollars in assets. One of the funds I chose to show you is their flagship fund and one of the largest funds in the world with about $100 billion dollars in assets and over 3 million accounts.
As far as choices go, it is one of the most common choices for inclusion in 401k plans, which are exactly the type of plans where an investor is likely to save $3,000 or more per year and leave it for the long term (American fund brags that their average holding period for an investor in their fund is over 15 years.)
American funds are basically offered everywhere and not just in a “boutique with one or two offices in the country.”
Since this is one of the largest and most widely held funds in the world for retirement plans and the fund of choice for millions of investors and $100 billion dollars and has been continuously offered and held for the better part of a century, you simply could not ask for a better “Real world scenario” than this.
Which is why I chose it.
An investor in this fund over the last 30 years would have received a return in excess of that in Sam’s example.
Few people have been so fundamentally as wrong on these boards as you.
Now, on to another subject. You won’t show the link but you claim that bonds have outperformed stocks over the last 40 years.
I know that’s pretty much bullshit, but it rang a bell, so I pulled up Ibbotson at work and did a little research.
When people say “stocks” they are usually referring to the S&P 500 for historical return data. When they say “bonds” there are several candidates that people use. The Lehman aggregate bond index (now Barclay’s.) That was 7 something percent and didn’t beat the SP500.
I continued to check bond indexes and finally found that if you had invested in the IIA SBBI long term government bond index 40 years ago you would have averaged 8.79% versus 8.7% for the SP500.
Thus, by cherry picking the indexes and choosing a very long term bond index which is hence more volatile one would have been able to outperform the SP500 by an average of 7/100 of 1% over 40 years.
Of course if one can choose an unordinary and unrepresentative index to represent “Bonds” why should one be forced to choose the SP500 to represent “stocks?” Why not choose small cap. That would have kicked the IIA’s ass.
But, I’m not particularly unhappy with the choice of IIA as a bond surrogate versus the S&P. It’s interesting to note that if you go back to 1926 “bonds” averaged 5.6% versus 9.4% for stocks as represented by the IIA and SP500 respectively.
You only get the interesting “bond” beat when you lack back over only 40 years starting now.
An intelligent person might ask “why?” and “what does this mean?”
Well, bonds are typically inversely correlated to stocks. When one goes down the other, often but not always, goes up. This wasn’t exactly true last year as the correction was founded in the fixed income markets. The Lehman Aggregate bond index contains corporate bonds which had a somewhat poor year along with stocks. But, in the flight for safety, government bonds had a banner year. One of their best years ever. 14.32% for the approximate 12 month duration of the selloff in equities in '08-09. This was atypically large, while the selloff in stocks was also atypically larger.
This means you have one year giving a thirty point swing. That averages out to 3/4% per year over the forty years.
Then too, we have an interesting factor also at work. A 40 year time horizon looks back to 1969. During the late 70s and early 80s this country suffered from historically unprecedented levels of infllation and bond yields were priced accordingly, and bond returns far outpaced their historical averages for a short period.
That same period begins with one of the worst bear markets in history '72-73 and ends with the absolute worst bear market in history '08-'09.
Put it all together, and what it means is this. If you look back and selectively choose your time period so that it starts at the worst possible time for stocks and the best possible time for bonds, and if you selectively choose your indexes to make sure that you are choosing the most favorable representation for bonds (rather than the most commonly used one) then it is at this moment possible to create a 40 year time period in which bonds beat stocks by a paltry 7/100% of one percent per annum.
I do not know what the future holds, but I will say that this is extreme and unusual series of events that occurred to create a perfect storm where such a selective interpretation is impossible. Those events, are unlikely to recur in the same manner for the next 40 years.
Nobody else has replied to you.
I’m quoting the head of a financial research and analysis firm and you’re some guy on the internet. Given the choice between the two most reasonable ppeople are going to choose the former and not the latter.
There you go cherry picking again. You continue to maintain that the share of wealth held by the top 1% is increasing.
From the SAME CITE you just quoted extensively from:
By the way, the next measure, in 2006, showed an additional decline to 32.7%, which happens to be lower than the median value between 1922 and 2004.
Is this getting through to you yet? The percentage of wealth held by the top 1% IS NOT INCREASING. IT WAS HIGHER IN 1922 THAN IT IS TODAY, IT HAS BEEN HIGHER THAN IT IS TODAY IN HALF OF THE YEARS BETWEEN 1922 AND 2004, AND TODAY, AT 32.7%, IT IS LOWER THAN THE MEDIAN VALUE OVER THE PAST 80 YEARS.
Maybe if I shout you’ll listen.
You keep jumping around, in one second talking about wealth, and in the next talking about income. Then you’re talking about the top 1%, and suddenly you change the argument to ‘highly paid workers’. Then suddenly it’s ‘highly paid executives’. You cherry-pick data, and substitute arguments constantly.
For the record: There is no doubt that INCOME is increasing in the top quintiles. The INCOME gap between the richest and poorest is growing. No one is disputing that. But despite this, WEALTH is not increasing for the top 1%. We can have a long debate about why this is the case, but those are the facts.
One of the big stories behind this, which I have repeatedly pointed out, is that the real gap is between the uneducated and the educated. Blue collar workers are in decline, while professionals are becoming increasingly wealthy.
Thirty years ago, a two income professional family (say, a lawyer and an engineer) would have lived a nice, comfortable middle class life. Today, such a family can easily earn $300,000 - $400,000 per year, pushing them way up into the rarified income brackets. In the meantime, uneducated people who would in past years have gone into a decent manufacturing job or a trade are finding it difficult to get that kind of work, and the rise of big box stores and the service industry is substituting for those jobs.
In the U.S., illegal immigration is pushing wages down at the bottom, and globalization is putting wage pressure on American manufacturers.
That’s the real story, and I don’t think most of the people on the left would disagree with it. However, what is NOT happening is that the ranks of the uber-rich are collecting up the nation’s wealth. The rich are not getting richer - the middle class is joining the ranks of the rich. The people at the very bottom are getting left behind.
THAT is what the data shows. If you can be honest about it and clear your head of the class warfare nonsense, we can have a discussion about what’s causing this and more importantly, what can be done to help the people at the bottom without tearing down the people who are trying to climb up the ladder from the middle.
As for why the income at the top is growing but not wealth, there could be lots of reasons. For example, it might be that the people in the top 1% are increasingly people like I mentioned - professionals who now have big incomes, but may not have a lot of wealth. At the same time, the ‘old money’ wealth may be diminishing. If the ranks of the rich were being thinned of trust-fund babies and old money people, and replaced with new money professionals and entrepreneurs, I’d have a hard time seeing that as a bad thing. But the data would then show a big income increase among the wealthy (trust fund babies have small incomes - lawyers and doctors have large incomes), without a corresponding wealth increase. I don’t know that this is what’s causing it - I’m just showing one way in which such an outcome could happen.
I also suspect that we’re about to see big changes in all of these numbers. The current recession has shook up a lot. On the one hand, the middle class had a lot of wealth tied up in housing, so their share of wealth may decline. On the other hand, the wealthy also hold lots of weal estate, but they are primarily invested in stocks and businesses, and those are still way down from the last wealth measure in 2006, so I suspect their share of wealth has actually declined even further.
First of all, you’re not quoting the guy, and you won’t post a direct link.
Secondly, the source of an argument has little bearing on its worthiness. You’re committing the classical logical fallacy of the argument from authority.
Third of all, I am not offering a research opinion, so much as citing historical fact. The funds I have mentioned I have also provided links to verifying the information I’ve disclosed. I’ve given the source of the facts i’ve cited as Ibbotson which is recognized as the authority for historical rate of return data. It is easily verified.
With your unreasonable attitude of refusing to supply a direct link, I’ve done the research myself, and found the circumstances under which what you argue could be considered true that I might understand it.
As an industry insider I don’t expect the general public to posess my level of knowledge but you have a displayed a truly staggering level of ignorance on the subject matter at hand:
-You’ve been dumbfounded by the concept of compound interest over time (strictly 7th grade home ec stuff)
-You think the 2nd largest mutual fund company in the world is a “boutique” with only one or two offices nationwide, innaccessible to the the general public.
I find you fascinating as you posess the hatrick of total ignorance over your subject matter, cosmic stupidity, and an imperviousness to reason.
If we could harness your brainpower, we could make toast.
OK, here’s the direct link to the data analysis guy. For those of you who don’t know, not including our financial industry guy here, this publication is the sister publication to the WSJ. The in-house Wall Street publication :
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB123819638720161459.html?page=sp
You need to scroll three-quarters down the page.
Here’s the guy you originally cited in his own words :
MM: What have been the trends of wealth inequality over the last 25 years?
Wolff: We have had a fairly sharp increase in wealth inequality dating back to 1975 or 1976.
Prior to that, there was a protracted period when wealth inequality fell in this country, going back almost to 1929. So you have this fairly continuous downward trend from 1929, which of course was the peak of the stock market before it crashed, until just about the mid-1970s. Since then, things have really turned around, and the level of wealth inequality today is almost double what it was in the mid-1970s.
Income inequality has also risen. Most people date this rise to the early 1970s, but it hasn’t gone up nearly as dramatically as wealth inequality.
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
I’ll let that speak for itself.
Interesting. Arnott uses the 20 year treasury as his proxy for bonds. Close to what I found with the long term gov. index.
Interesting, but still cherrypicking. Using one bond to represent all bonds is hardly good analysis. I suppose I could pick an individual stock and claim it represented all stocks and produce an analysis with different results.
Arnott’s point is that you just can’t buy stocks you have to get them at a good price, or you can underperform. In fact, he says he’s bullish on stocks now.
Far from contradicting me, your cite supports what I’ve said.
Yeah.
*But that superior showing can be deceiving because there were long stretches in which stocks underperformed, most recently in the 41-year period that ended on Feb. 28…
“The widely accepted notion of a reliable 5% equity risk premium is a myth,” contends Robert Arnott, chairman of money manager Research Affiliates, in a paper to be published this spring in The Journal of Indexes.
“We’ve had 30 to 40 years of building this cult of equities, where if your time horizon is long enough, it doesn’t matter what you pay for stocks,” Arnott tells Barron’s. “That’s dangerous.”
It’s especially dangerous for investors, from individuals to endowment to pension funds, who were counting on equities to outrun fixed-income holdings and deliver supersized returns.*
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB123819638720161459.html?page=sp
I’ll let that speak for itself. My work here is done.
EDIT: forgot to put the quote in. 
His OWN data does not support his statement. By the way, that data is not his original research. It comes from the IRS. I found the 2006 number from the IRS excel spreadsheets available to anyone online.
He says there was a ‘continuous downward trend from 1929 until the mid 1970’s’. This is not true. Not even remotely. The share of wealth of the top 1% declined between 1929 and 1933. Then it rose between 1933 and 1939 (at which point is was higher than it is today). It then declined again from 1939 until 1949. Then it began to rise continually until 1965, at which point it was AGAIN higher than it is today. It then declined from 1965 until 1976, stayed flat until 1979, then began to increase again between 1980 and 1998. From 1998 until today, it has been in steady decline, and has dropped almost 6% from 1995 to today.
Again, that’s using HIS numbers.
This is a graph of those numbers. It doesn’t show 2006, which extends the downward curve to the right. Are you going to look at that, and seriously tell me the picture it gives you is one of the nation’s wealth collecting at the top 1% of the population? And look at the years between 1929 and 1976, which he says shows a ‘fairly continuous decline’ in the share of wealth held by the top 1%. Do you really think that graph supports his statement?
Getting a 403 error on the graph, is there someplace else we can see it? Very interesting argument here by the way.
Oh, and Dick Dastardly, your arguments are making as much sense as a Creationist trying to prove why Evolution is false… but keep it up, your blinding stupidity is funny as hell!