# Should we allow individuals to hold billions of dollars in their pockets?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-allow-individuals-to-hold-billions-of-dollars-in-their-pockets/828614>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 29, 2019, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-allow-individuals-to-hold-billions-of-dollars-in-their-pockets/828614 "2019-01-29T11:30:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 189

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2019, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-we-allow-individuals-to-hold-billions-of-dollars-in-their-pockets/828614/189 "2019-02-01T08:04:32Z")

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(I accidentally posted this first in another thread. I’ve deleted the name of an other-thread poster.)

> [@Do people generally expect to spend more money these days?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-people-generally-expect-to-spend-more-money-these-days/828726/20):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > At any rate - we do know that US wages have been stagnant for decades. Workers haven’t reaped the financial reward of all this “increased productivity”. Billionaires are richer, so YAY! I guess.
> 
> Not according to the Federal Reserve, please look at the links I posted, particularly [this one](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N). Median real income has been steadily rising since at least 1985…

Add A939RX0Q048SBEA (Real GDP per capita) to that graph and your conclusion may be less sanguine. Yes, median income is up 21.5% over the 33-year period, but per capita GDP is up 73% over the same period. _ **Workers are getting a much smaller piece of the pie.** _

‘So what?’, you say? ‘Their income is up, let them [del]eat cake[/del] talk on Androids if they can’t afford iPhones.’? But this ignores at least three points.  
(a) Your data series is for _household_ income. More households are now two-worker compared with 1984, perhaps.  
(b) American life has become more stressful. Spouse needs to work, labor unions have been destroyed, expenses like smartphones are increasingly necessary; savings like home-cooked meals are harder to achieve.  
(c) It’s human nature that one’s sense of economic well-being is gauged relative to one’s neighbors or fellow citizens.

So: Contrary to that misleading graph of median household income, there is massive on-going transfer of wealth and income from average Americans to the very rich. That is a fact.

```auto

On another matter, some Dopers are pointing to the "paper" nature of huge fortunes as a Gotcha. Yes, that paper may complicate the matter, but Bezos really is super-rich (:smack:) and some of that paper can be and has been traded (via middlemen) for Lamborghinis. Do those Dopers think the Lamborghinis are made out of paper?
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