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reformist2

(9,841 posts)
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 09:40 AM Mar 2013

The one financial stat I'd love everyone to memorize: The net worth of Americans is $64 TRILLION.

Last edited Fri Mar 22, 2013, 10:24 AM - Edit history (2)

I think this number should be on everyone's minds whenever discussing taxes, minimum wages, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or when combating the absurd notion that "we're broke." Assuming just a 5% annual return on assets (which is far lower than the rate most actuaries use), that means the average annual increase in net worth alone is $3.2 trillion, practically enough to pay for the entire national budget.


Edited to add that over 40% of that total - $26 trillion - resides with, you guessed it, the 1%!* And that 80% of all net worth lies with that Top 10%.**

==========

2012 US Household Net Worth: $64.8 trillion (3Q 2012 Federal Reserve 'Flow of Funds' Report)

Flow of Funds report (Household Net Worth figures are in the Summary Statistics section at the beginning, and then in detail in one of the tables at the end - search for 'Balance Sheet of Households'): http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1.pdf

*http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net-worth-of-the-1.aspx

***http://www.businessinsider.com/average-family-net-worth-collapses-40-in-three-years-2012-6?op=1

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brewens

(13,397 posts)
1. Precisley! The problem is that we've been looted for 30 years or more.
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 09:54 AM
Mar 2013

All the productivity, resouces and technology we needed has been there all the time. We could all have been much better off had things been run fairly.

The people at the top want us to hate poor people for taking without earning anything, though many of them do work hard. The thing is that we have people at the top raking in fortunes that couldn't possibly do anything worth what they are taking. Even worse, they take all that money for screwing us!

krispos42

(49,445 posts)
2. 64.8 trillion divided by 310 million equals...
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 10:01 AM
Mar 2013

$209,032 per person. So a family of 4 is worth, on average, over $836k.

Hmph.


The average seems okay. I'd be hugely interested if the average if you took out the top 1%, though.

pampango

(24,692 posts)
3. And per capita income in the US is $49,000. The problem isn't that we don't generate enough income
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 10:09 AM
Mar 2013

and wealth it's that it is distributed so grossly unfairly.

pampango

(24,692 posts)
5. Even the high 30's would be fine (that's what Germany, France and Sweden have) BUT
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 10:43 AM
Mar 2013

that income level works if you live in a progressive society with a high level of public services, public transportation and an effective safety net. If you do live in such a society then a high 30's per capita income leads to a very nice middle class life style.

Our problem is that the rich do get the extra wealth here AND they escape taxation on it. Our public services are underfunded, public transportation is a joke in most places and the safety net has been reduced to the point of absurdity.

The fact that our actual per capita income is $49,000+ simply puts lie to the republican claim that we need to cut taxes and regulations in order to grow the economy if there is to be enough wealth to go around. We already have plenty of income and wealth per capita - probably 20% more than an average European - it's just that we do such a terrible job of distributing the benefits of all the wealth that is created here. Europe creates significantly less wealth per capita but spreads it around so equitably that they end up with much stronger middle classes and better lives for their people in general.

hfojvt

(37,573 posts)
11. I did a bunch of dividing here
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 12:33 PM
Mar 2013
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=732414

but I went with per household rather than per capita.

However, using tax figures includes a lot of teenagers who are filing their own taxes while living at home, so those numbers are kinda skewed downwards since a teenager or even a college student making $7,000 a year working part-time is calculated to be part of the bottom 50% when often that income just adds to the family income of a family in the top 25% or top 50%.

bhikkhu

(10,708 posts)
6. That 49k is the median household income, not per capita
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 10:52 AM
Mar 2013

the average household size is 2.48 or so, and you wind up with a per capita income of about $19,600.

bhikkhu

(10,708 posts)
8. That's GDP per capita
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 11:06 AM
Mar 2013

Which is a whole different thing - what businesses produce as a dollar value, rather than what people are paid, more or less.

A good set of facts are here: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/us/

It gives our income per capita as $26.7k. I suppose there's more than one way to calculate it, but that should be a good ballpark figure.

pampango

(24,692 posts)
12. My real point is that however you measure it US per capita income/wealth is higher
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 03:28 PM
Mar 2013

than in Europe. GDP per capita divides what an economy produces by the number of people in the country.

GDP per capita is often considered an indicator of a country's standard of living; although this can be problematic because GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita

The US figure was $48,100; Sweden was at $441,500; Germany at $39,500; France at $35,200; the EU as a whole $32,600.

What's more important to me is not the actual figures but the fact that European countries produce a better quality of life and stronger middle class and does it with economies that produce less per capita than that of the US. Per capita income figures are undoubtedly much less than these GDP per capita figures but I bet they are a good deal higher in the US than in Europe.

bhikkhu

(10,708 posts)
14. No argument with that at all - our income inequality is ridiculous
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 08:16 PM
Mar 2013

We should all be in good shape, given the country's wealth, but we aren't because of how that wealth is distributed.

I still like one argument for "socialism", where the wealthy naturally work towards a greater concentration of wealth, but that the wealthy living in societies where wealth is distributed more evenly have a much higher subjective satisfaction with their position.

Which is a little complicated to explain - but wealthy people naturally strive toward social conditions (greater inequality) that lead to general unhappiness (not just the poor, but the wealthy as well are more unhappy the more stratified society is). In effect, as stewards of society they fail, and they pay the price themselves.

On the other hand, where government is an adequate counterbalance and redistributes wealth (to not shy away from the phrase), people in general are happier - including the wealthy. It should be a truism that denying dignity, equality and material subsistence to any group within a population makes the whole population wretched.

reformist2

(9,841 posts)
9. I like this concept of "average net worth" - it only highlights the absurdity of the inequality.
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 11:53 AM
Mar 2013

The more I think about the situation, the more I think we are in the Dark Ages when it comes to economic justice.

hfojvt

(37,573 posts)
10. taking out the top 10%
Fri Mar 22, 2013, 12:05 PM
Mar 2013

leaves $12.96 trillion for the bottom 90%. With 110 million households, 90% of them would be 99 million households. Divided into 12.96 trillion leaves $130,909 per household. Which is a decent sum of money, but more if there are only one or two in the household than if there are 5 or 6.

Taking the whole $64.8 trillion into 110 million households gives $589,000 per household.

Taking out the top 1% leaves $356,290 per household.

Whereas the average net worth of the top 1% of households would be $23,363,363

and the average net worth of the top 10% of households is $4,712,727.

If you remove the 16.9% of households with zero or negative net worth, the net worth of the remaining households (not including the top 10%) is $161,173.98 but in 2002 there were another 15.5 million households with less than $10,000 in net worth (many of them young families)

muriel_volestrangler

(101,153 posts)
16. Median familiy net worth figures
Mon Mar 25, 2013, 08:08 AM
Mar 2013

ie 50% of families are worse off than this one, 50% better off. Note that the blue columns are with a different calculation method, so cannot be directly compare with the red (though 1962 can be compare with 1983). Figures are in 2010 dollars.



http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/12/chart-of-the-day-median-net-worth-1962-2010/

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-12/american-families-are-poorer-than-in-1989

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