4 ms·
Isn’t this logically equivalent to “The most successful 10% of athletes have won 90% of olympic gold medals”? We’re using their wealth (which naturally include
by ghufran_syed 5y ago
Isn’t this logically equivalent to “The most successful 10% of athletes have won 90% of olympic gold medals”?
We’re using their wealth (which naturally includes a lot of stock because it can be held in tax-deferred retirement accounts and has the greatest growth expectation historically) to identify the top decile, then we find that they, err, own a lot of stock. How surprising.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoIf there was anything interesting with the comparison, it would be to look at the difference between total wealth inequality and stock ownership inequality and see if there was anything that is unexpected. We may expect A group owning 90% of wealth to own 90% of stocks. If this isn't the case, is this surprising? (I don't remember the wealth inequality statistics, so I'm just theorizing here).
- yathern 5y agoYou're right, it's similar. It's sort of tautological to say that the 10% wealthiest own more of the wealth. But we're talking specifically about distribution here. The top 10% could own anywhere between 10% of the wealth, and 100%. If the top 10% own 15% of the wealth, that means everyone's basically in the same boat. If they own 100% - that means 90% of people have nothing, and 10% have everything - sort of like a fiefdom. That doesn't seem great. What's the best for society? Some might think it's when 10% owns 10%, period - as evenly distributed as possible. Maybe - but I don't think I agree. Though it's not likely the 100%/0% hard line. Anyway - this article is saying that we're getting closer to the 100%/0% direction than ever before. At least in terms of stock ownership. Whether this is a good or bad thing is up to your own interpretation.