{"id":164542,"date":"2015-07-08T02:32:04","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T02:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=164542"},"modified":"2015-07-08T03:22:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T03:22:50","slug":"u-s-wealth-concentration-the-most-accurate-current-estimates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/u-s-wealth-concentration-the-most-accurate-current-estimates\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Wealth-Concentration: The Most-Accurate Current Estimates"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

CURRENT REALITIES:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Wealthiest Tenth (10%) of Americans\u00a0Own 75% of America<\/span><\/a>; They\u00a0Draw 40% of All U.S. Income<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wealthiest Hundredth (1%) of Americans\u00a0Own 43% of America<\/span><\/a>; They\u00a0Draw 20% of All U.S. Income<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Wealthiest Thousandth (0.1%) of Americans\u00a0Own 22% of America<\/span><\/a>; They\u00a0Draw 8% of All U.S. Income<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wealthiest Ten-Thousandth (0.01%)\u00a0Own 11.2% of America<\/span><\/a>; They\u00a0Draw 5% of All U.S. Income<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Wealthiest 0.0025% (Forbes 400) Own\u00a02.75% (of all trackable privately-held wealth, not including \u2018non-profits\u2019 that are controlled by them).<\/span><\/p>\n

That last (2.75%) is\u00a0this $2.29 trillion<\/span><\/a>\u00a0divided by\u00a0this $83,296 billion<\/span><\/a> (representing all of the privately owned wealth in the U.S.),\u00a0in the final quarter of 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n

Incidentally, the wealthiest tenth are\u00a0worth over $1 million and draw incomes above $200,000<\/span><\/a>; so: they\u2019re all \u201cmillionaires\u201d in common parlance; all<\/i> of the \u201ctop 10%\u201d are.<\/span><\/p>\n

Following will be mirror-images of the above-cited breakdowns:<\/span><\/p>\n

Poorest 90% of Americans Own 25% of America; They Draw 60% of All U.S. Income.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poorest 99% of Americans Own 57% of America; They Draw 80% of All U.S. Income.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poorest 99.9% of Americans Own 78% of America; They Draw 92% of All U.S. Income.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poorest 99.99% of Americans Own Less Than 88.8% of America; They Draw Less Than 95% of All U.S. Income.<\/span><\/p>\n

Poorer 50%: Comprehensive figures for the wealthier and poorer 50% of Americans haven\u2019t been published as recently. However,\u00a0for the year 2010<\/span><\/a>, the wealthier 50% of Americans owned 98.9% of America, and the poorer 50% of Americans owned 1.1% of America. That was the year after the crash had supposedly ended in 2009. The last prior year in that same study was 2007, the economic peak, and it showed the wealthier half owning 97.5% of America, and the poorer half owning 2.5% of it. In other words: the losses from the Wall Street economic crash went overwhelmingly to the poorer half of the U.S. population (their wealth going down from 2.5% to only 1.1% of America\u2019s total), because of the bailouts to Wall Street. Wall Street complains about \u201cwelfare programs,\u201d as if it\u2019s the poor who get bailed out; but those complaints are merely part of Wall Street\u2019s \u2013 and their billionaires\u2019 \u2013 scams that are targeted to sway fools. The figures show the exact opposite to be the actual truth. America is overwhelmingly a kleptocracy by the top against everybody else; not a \u201cwelfare state for the poor.\u201d That\u2019s just aristocrats\u2019 scam, pumped by the economists they hire, and by the \u2018news\u2019 media which are controlled by aristocrats, and believed by suckers they fool.<\/span><\/p>\n

HERE ARE THE TRENDS:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Right before the crash, in 2006 and 2007, the top 1%\u00a0owned 33.8% of America<\/span><\/a>; they\u00a0drew 21.4% of all U.S. income<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Congressional Research Service study,\u00a0“An Analysis of the Distribution of Wealth Across Households, 1989-2010,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0found that between the economic peak in 2007, and the end of the opening phase of the Wall Street bailouts in 2010, wealth-inequality in America soared, rising even faster than it had been rising during the George W. Bush years. As a consequence, whereas in 2007, the top 1% owned 33.8% of America, by 2010 this figure had risen to 34.5% \u2013 and the latest figure is 43%; so, this soaring is continuing (it wasn\u2019t occurring only at the start of Obama\u2019s Administration). What was bad under Bush has thus become lots worse under Obama, despite all of Obama\u2019s rhetoric against wealth-inequality. And yet the Wall Street bailouts continue (under the guise of \u201cQE\u201d), as if the trickle-down policies of Obama and the Republicans had \u201cended\u201d the \u201crecession\u201d for Americans generally, instead of only for the top 1% \u2013 which latter was the reality, and which reality makes a mockery of economists, who say that the\u00a0\u201crecession ended in 2009.”<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cEnded,\u201d for whom? The policy is to bail out the megabanksters who made trillions from the MBS scams that brought the economy down \u2013 those people were bailed out when they were deep in the hole \u2013 while not bailing out their homeowners and cheated investors, who never recovered; statistics show they continue to suffer from those crimes. As a consequence, under Obama, wealth has risen only for the wealthiest of Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, incomes have been rising slightly for everyone else. For example, the \u201cBottom 99% Incomes Real Growth\u201d during \u201c2009-2014\u201d was\u00a0only 4.3%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 less than 1% per year \u2013 while for the \u201cTop 1%\u201d it was\u00a058%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0during that 5-year time-expanse. But that \u2013 bad as it is \u2013 is nonetheless an improvement, on income.<\/span><\/p>\n

Throughout Obama\u2019s first term, 2009-2012, the \u201cBottom 99% Incomes Real Growth\u201d had been\u00a0only 0.4%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 less than 1% throughout that entire four-year period. The \u201cTop 1%\u201d received\u00a095%<\/span><\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cIncomes Real Growth\u201d then. And yet, even though even the incomes<\/i> of the bottom 99% of the U.S. population were stagnant throughout that four-year period ending in 2012 (all of Obama\u2019s first term), economists still say that the \u201crecession ended in 2009.\u201d And the reality was even worse than this incomes-picture shows, because, in terms of wealth, which is even more important than income, there hasn\u2019t yet<\/i> been a \u201crecovery,\u201d in the U.S., for the bottom 99% of Americans. What there has been, instead, is continuing scams, misinforming the public, about what\u2019s actually happening, and what happened, and what caused it to happen. It\u2019s just a racket.<\/span><\/p>\n

THE DEEPER MEANING:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Under Presidents G.W. Bush and Barack Obama, economic inequality in America has been more extreme, for more years, than under any Presidents in all of the previous U.S. history<\/span><\/a>. But, at least, Bush didn\u2019t pretend to care about it. Obama does<\/span><\/a>. He pretended to a concern for justice which he never really had<\/span><\/a>; he was always merely faking<\/span><\/a> liberalism. It was thus entirely true-to-form that President Obama had his Solicitor General present an argument to the U.S. Supreme Court that lying in politics is Constitutionally protected \u201cfree speech.\u201d<\/span><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

But what, then, is really left of \u2018democracy\u2019 in the U.S.? After all, even before Obama, democracy in America was already dying, if not yet dead<\/span><\/a>. And what meaningful democracy can even possibly exist in a nation where lying in politics is constitutionally protected \u2018free speech,\u2019 which no state may penalize, under any conditions? How may \u201cthe people\u201d even conceivably rule in a republic where politicians can reasonably be expected to win only lying-contests, because not to lie in such a nation is not to be politically competitive there at all? Can democracy really consist of contests in deception<\/span><\/a>? Is such a political race-to-the-bottom consistent with democracy?<\/span><\/p>\n

Or, is it instead the case that such extreme wealth-disparities as exist in the U.S. are the natural result<\/i> of decades of politics being (perhaps increasingly within recent times) little more than lying-contests? Is that the deeper truth, behind the deplorable figures here?<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this extreme inequality the result of state-imposed reduction of \u2018democracy\u2019 to being basically contests in deceiving the public? Is that what it\u2019s really all about \u2013 a racket, basically, against the public, for and on behalf of the aristocracy?<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this extreme inequality the intended result, or is it merely the result of the stupidity of those who just happen<\/i> to win high national office in the United States?<\/span><\/p>\n

Do the farm animals just happen to end up as burger-meat? Or is that what they are there for? We know. Do they?<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse CURRENT REALITIES: Wealthiest Tenth (10%) of Americans\u00a0Own 75% of America; They\u00a0Draw 40% of All U.S. Income. Wealthiest Hundredth (1%) of Americans\u00a0Own 43% of America; They\u00a0Draw 20% of All U.S. Income. Wealthiest Thousandth (0.1%) of Americans\u00a0Own 22% of America; They\u00a0Draw 8% of All U.S. Income. Wealthiest Ten-Thousandth (0.01%)\u00a0Own 11.2% of America; They\u00a0Draw 5% of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":164543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,941,96,3027,398,545,49,531,964,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-164542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-billionaires","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-equality","14":"tag-income","15":"tag-inequality","16":"tag-usa-news","17":"tag-wall-street","18":"tag-wealth","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}