[Peace] Re: [Announce] Unity March this Saturday

[C. G. Estabrook]

Income disparities don't capture the real nature of economic inequality in 
America, because the rich don't take their money in income but, say, capital gains.

The distribution of wealth is much more unequal than the distribution of income. 
  The bottom 60% of households possess only 4% of the nation's wealth while it 
earns 26.8% of all income. The top 20% has 50% of the income but 85% of the wealth.

Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small number of families. The 
wealthiest 1 percent of families owns roughly 34.3%  of the nation's net worth, 
the top 10% of families owns over 71%, and the bottom 40% of the population owns 
far less than 1%.

In spite of our fixation on income, we're told the contrary by an unimpeachable 
source. Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, made the case 
for wealth:

    	"Ultimately, we are interested in the question of relative standards of 
living and economic well-being. We  need to examine trends in the distribution 
of wealth, which, more fundamentally than earnings or income, represents a 
measure of the ability of households to consume."

Edward N. Wolff, "Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising 
Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze" (June, 2007).


Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> The numbers I've seen for the income of the top 10% of our population is 
> about $150,000 in 2008 (This probably refers to household income rather than
> individual income). In 2006, about 20% of households earned $100,000 or more.
> --mkb
> 
> On Sep 30, 2009, at 1:39 PM, John W. wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 9:46 AM, Brian Dolinar <briandolinar at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:briandolinar at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Nationwide, new figures show that in 2008, the top ten percent of Americans
>> earned 11.4 times more than those living below the poverty line.
>> 
>> 
>> This last sentence HAS to be a misprint.  If the income of those living
>> below the poverty line averaged, for the sake of round numbers, 
>> $10,000/year, then the average income of the top ten percent of Americans
>> would be only $114,000/year.  That seems awfully low to me, for the top ten
>> percent.
>> 
>> John Wason