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In the US you need to earn only $178,611 as a HOUSEHOLD to be in the top 10%. That's less than $90K per person. Comparatively, you need to earn $663,164 to be
by iLoveOncall 2y ago
In the US you need to earn only $178,611 as a HOUSEHOLD to be in the top 10%. That's less than $90K per person.
Comparatively, you need to earn $663,164 to be in the top 1%, and more than $3M to be in the top 0.1%.
I just want to highlight this to remind that the top 10% is by far not made up exclusively of ultra-rich individuals like people on internet like to believe.
- ImHereToVote 2y agoI think what you are trying to say is that the average American is absurdly poor.
- tonyedgecombe 2y agoIt doesn't look like that from outside America.
- jonasdegendt 2y agoWhy? Because they can buy cheap TV's at Walmart? American households have a good amount of discretionary spending, but for the ticket items that actually matter such as quality housing, healthy food and healthcare my money stretches a lot further in Western Europe, for median household income that is.
- phonon 2y agoAnd top 10% household in Japan is about 10 million Yen ($67k)...
- _cenw 2y agoHard to compare without looking at healthcare, social security and similar costs cutting into net income.
- wqaatwt 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per... Even if adjusted by all those things the median American is doing very well while the Japanese are about on par with Southern/Eastern Europeans these days.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- devnullbrain 2y agoOr that almost every person commenting in this thread should be aware that 'top 10%' means them.
- iLoveOncall 2y agoYes, this. And also that while the top 10% owns 87% of the stocks, it's also very likely that the top 0.1% owns 80% of the stocks.
- dalmo3 2y agoI'm sure the top 0.1% will be blaming the top 0.001%...
- pydry 2y agoProtip: if you ever want to downplay inequality, gloss over wealth inequality and focus on income inequality to the exclusion of all else. It's VERY effective.
- iLoveOncall 2y agoThe article also uses income... Anyway, if anything the distribution based on wealth would even more starkly be hyper-focused at the top, the people in the 10-9% range aren't exactly sitting on mountains of gold.
- vincnetas 2y agoAre we sure? For me it looks like article uses ownership.
- Earw0rm 2y ago90th percentile 21-year-old has nothing. With college debt their assets are net negative. 90th percentile 65 year old has perhaps $1M+ in accumulated property wealth and retirement savings. There is some generational inequality at work, but that 65 year old also had ~zero at 21. The 90th percentile 21 year old will likely be doing very well by the time they're 65, hard to say whether better or worse than today's cohort.
- pydry 2y agoSome of those 90th percentile 21 year olds genuinely have nothing while others are in line to receive a bumper payday when their parents die.
- Earw0rm 2y agoYep, and some have a lot more or less potential ahead of them, as well as "soft power", social capital and so on. But in any case, with longer lifespans, many/most won't see inheritance until their 50s, 60s, even 70s, long past what are arguably the most expensive years (buying a home, raising kids and so on). Maybe in time to pay college fees, depending on when they have kids. Even for the relatively wealthy, it's the luck of the draw - healthcare and senior care costs many hundreds of thousands for some, and virtually nothing for others.
- chgs 2y agoTop 1% by income or by wealth. The former is less meaningful as it ignores your cost of living.
- iLoveOncall 2y agoIncome, like the article used.
- fancyfredbot 2y agoThe proportion of people who will be in the top 1% of annual income for at least one year of their lives is quite high. I am too lazy to look it up now but I think it's about 20%. The majority of people who earn a top 1% income only manage to do so for a short period. As a consequence the overlap between top 1% by income and by wealth is small. They are (broadly speaking) different groups.
- 47282847 2y agoMedian household income USA in 2023: $80,610 https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-282.html https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p60-28...
- ty6853 2y agoMedian personal has to be close to zero before redistribution payments, for all ages. It paints a pretty poor picture of what is possible. I met many uneducated immigrants on a fish processing boat in the Bering Sea making 10k a month, a job usually begging for people. They would show me pictures of their wives and children living well.
- _cenw 2y agoAnd now I'm wondering if this statistic is based on taxable income, because the extra rich mostly avoid those events too.
- bloomingkales 2y agoMoney is relative though. If we stopped printing money today, the dynamics of wealth can still exist so long as we keep the delta between "Kinda well off" and "well off" relatively fixed. I have to be careful here, because I'm not arguing against Capitalism. I'm merely pointing out the infinite nature of this thing we call a "wealth gap". There's two ways to stay the richest man in the world: a) Get more money. b) Stop people from getting more money than you. And I suppose c) Do both. If that's what you are about. A lot of people characterize corporations as a sociopath because it expresses a lot of clinical markers. I think if you frame the economy as war, you'll find similar markers. People are exhausted, shell shocked, constantly insecure, attrition or the feeling of attrition (feeling of no progress). PTSD from this everlasting war.