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This has been alluded to in other comments, but without any data. The "unexotic underclass" has virtually no money to spend compared to the upper classes. The b

by gphil 12y ago

This has been alluded to in other comments, but without any data. The "unexotic underclass" has virtually no money to spend compared to the upper classes. The bottom 40% in the US has only 0.2% of the wealth! Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#mediaviewer/File:U.S._Distribution_of_Wealth,_2007.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#mediavi...

joshuahedlund 12y ago
Wealth != income. Do you know how many lottery tickets are purchased by the "unexotic underclass"? There are those with "virtually no money to spend," to be sure, but there are plenty of working poor with a combined large amount of money passing through their hands that never generates wealth because it is immediately spent, both to meet needs (often inefficiently), and to meet wants (often with little long-term thinking, which for various reasons can be entirely rational in given circumstances). The opportunities lie in trying to identify improvements in that cashflow (which is hard to do if you are so disconnected from the "underclass" that you can't even fathom why someone would spend so much on lottery tickets, and thus how you would ever convince them to spend money on your service instead...)
- gphil 12y ago
  According to data pulled from here: http://www.wealthandwant.com/issues/income/income_distribution.html http://www.wealthandwant.com/issues/income/income_distributi... (Summary Table 1. Effective Federal Tax Rates, 2005) The bottom 20% makes around 4% of the total income, so I grant that income is not as lopsided as wealth. And sure, you could potentially build a successful business targeting that. But it certainly doesn't seem like nearly as attractive a demographic to target as the other 80% with 96% of the cash flow. For what it's worth, I favor a greater amount of wealth redistribution than we currently have not only because I think it's the morally right thing to do, but also because I think it would result in greater overall spending. (e.g. people who have a lot of surplus money now are less likely to spend those incremental savings than those who need more money to live comfortably now.)

by gphil 12y ago

joshuahedlund 12y ago

Wealth != income. Do you know how many lottery tickets are purchased by the "unexotic underclass"? There are those with "virtually no money to spend," to be sure, but there are plenty of working poor with a combined large amount of money passing through their hands that never generates wealth because it is immediately spent, both to meet needs (often inefficiently), and to meet wants (often with little long-term thinking, which for various reasons can be entirely rational in given circumstances). The opportunities lie in trying to identify improvements in that cashflow (which is hard to do if you are so disconnected from the "underclass" that you can't even fathom why someone would spend so much on lottery tickets, and thus how you would ever convince them to spend money on your service instead...)

gphil 12y ago
According to data pulled from here: http://www.wealthandwant.com/issues/income/income_distribution.html http://www.wealthandwant.com/issues/income/income_distributi... (Summary Table 1. Effective Federal Tax Rates, 2005) The bottom 20% makes around 4% of the total income, so I grant that income is not as lopsided as wealth. And sure, you could potentially build a successful business targeting that. But it certainly doesn't seem like nearly as attractive a demographic to target as the other 80% with 96% of the cash flow. For what it's worth, I favor a greater amount of wealth redistribution than we currently have not only because I think it's the morally right thing to do, but also because I think it would result in greater overall spending. (e.g. people who have a lot of surplus money now are less likely to spend those incremental savings than those who need more money to live comfortably now.)