Posted by alexandra_k on September 13, 2005, at 21:40:40
these seem to be based on stats from 1998.
dunno if things would be better or worse or much the same...>The top 5 percent own more than half of all wealth... In 1998, they owned 59 percent of all wealth. Or to put it another way, the top 5 percent had more wealth than the remaining 95 percent of the population, collectively.
>The top 20 percent owns over 80 percent of all wealth. In 1998, it owned 83 percent of all wealth.
>The bottom 20 percent basically have zero wealth. They either have no assets, or their debt equals or exceeds their assets. The bottom 20 percent has typically accumulated no savings.
>A household in the middle — the median household — has wealth of about $62,000. $62,000 is not insignificant, but if you consider that the top 1 percent of households’ average wealth is $12.5 million, you can see what a difference there is in the distribution.
>The richest 10 percent of families own about 85 percent of all outstanding stocks. They own about 85 percent of all financial securities, 90 percent of all business assets. These financial assets and business equity are even more concentrated than total wealth.
>The average African-American family has about 60 percent of the income as the average white family. But the disparity of wealth is a lot greater. The average African-American family has only 18 percent of the wealth of the average white family.
>We are much more unequal than any other advanced industrial country.
>What is remarkable is that this was not always the case. Up until the early 1970s, the U.S. actually had lower wealth inequality than Great Britain, and even than a country like Sweden. But things have really turned around over the last 25 or 30 years. In fact, a lot of countries have experienced lessening wealth inequality over time. The U.S. is atypical in that inequality has risen so sharply over the last 25 or 30 years.
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
poster:alexandra_k
thread:554838
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20050728/msgs/554838.html