4 ms·
You do realize that half of all wealth in the US is in the hands of 400 super-rich families, and that this concentration is increasing, not decreasing? Maybe y
by rbarooah 15y ago
You do realize that half of all wealth in the US is in the hands of 400 super-rich families, and that this concentration is increasing, not decreasing?
Maybe you were being ironic and I just took you too literally!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- hugh3 15y agoUhhhh, [citation needed]. Let's do some plausibility arguments here. The total net wealth of the United States is about $54.2 trillion. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States) Is that plausible? Sure, that's about $180K per person. Now, let's suppose that half that $54.2 trillion was in the hands of four hundred families. This would give each of these four hundred families $67 billion each, on average. But the Forbes Rich List currently records nobody in the US with $67 billion; Gates and Buffett have $56 and $50 billion. I guess if you count all the Waltons as one family then they've got slightly more. And of course the distribution is way tail-heavy. I don't have a list of the 400 richest people in the US alone, but the Forbes rich list implies that the ~400th richest person in the world has on the order of $3 billion. So the average out of the top 400 probably only has a few billion dollars. In conclusion, I don't believe your numbers at all.