“RE: We pay (all together) about 35% of our income to the top 1%...I am not understanding this.. in what sense do I pay (as in involuntarily taken away from me ) 35% of my income to someone like Warren Buffet?”
I based that on the two numbers that the top 1% get 24% of income, and own 43% of financial assets. I’m not sure of the relative size of wages to corporate profits, so I split the difference and say 35% of all the money that flows around goes to the top 1%.
You know that game where you go in a glass booth and money swirls around and you have 60 seconds to grab as much as you can? I view the economy as money swirling around. The 1%ers grab about 35% of it.
Or to put it another way, which is maybe more valid. As we work and pay bills and pay taxes, we support our families, and the federal government, and the 1%ers. A portion of our wealth generation goes to paying for the military, welfare and social security. A larger portion goes to pay for the 1%ers’ lifestyles. A guy who inherited a fortune and lives off it doesn’t actually do work or produce goods, but he stills buys Maseratis and Picassos. About 35% of your productivity ends up going to guys like him.
And I’m sorry if I’m upsetting people, but this is the truth. And it is also true that the last time we tried this wealth imbalance was 1929 and see what happened then. The 1%ers are kind of like welfare queens on steroids. Just because they wear nice clothes doesn’t make them any less a burden on society. Again, this is math. A member of the billionaire boys club is as much of a burden for those who work for a living as a whole lot of people on welfare.
RE: A guy who inherited a fortune and lives off it doesn’t actually do work or produce goods, but he stills buys Maseratis and Picassos. About 35% of your productivity ends up going to guys like him.
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Source : WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/01/14/the-decline-of-inherited-money/
1. According to a study of Federal Reserve data conducted by NYU professor Edward Wolff, for the nation’s richest 1%, inherited wealth accounted for only 9% of their net worth in 2001, down from 23% in 1989. (The 2001 number was the latest available.)
2. According to a study by Prince & Associates, less than 10% of today’s multi-millionaires cited “inheritance” as their source of wealth.
3. A study by Spectrem Group found that among today’s millionaires, inherited wealth accounted for just 2% of their total sources of wealth.
Each of these stats measures slightly different things, yet they all come to the same basic conclusion: Inheritance is not the main driver of today’s wealth. The reason we’ve had a doubling in the number of millionaires and billionaires over the past decade (even adjusted for inflation) is that more of the non-wealthy have become wealthy.
So it’s not just that the same old rich folks are getting richer. The more-important shift is that the rich are getting more numerous.