I’m curious also how this is calculated.
My kids are in college and high school. They have little money, no wealth. They technically live hand-to-mouth. I assume they will become productive citizens, save money, and eventually will have wealth.
But for statistical purposes there’s 3 Americans with no wealth, while my wife and I seemingly have much more greater and unequal wealth than they do.
My kids are in college and high school. They have little money, no wealth. They technically live hand-to-mouth. I assume they will become productive citizens, save money, and eventually will have wealth.
But for statistical purposes there’s 3 Americans with no wealth, while my wife and I seemingly have much more greater and unequal wealth than they do.
Great points.
If you want to see real wealth divisions, look at Venezuela or Brazil, or any African country.
Of course, the countries with the worst wealth distributions have zero interest in publicizing their numbers, so left-wing academics don't have to talk about them.
Look at the spending habits of your neighbors and you’ll see why so many people don’t manage to accumulate any wealth.
An Amazon Prime truck makes deliveries to our neighbors virtually everyday.
As Thomas Sowell often points out in discussions on wealth or income, the articles written about such studies are always written as though the people are fixed within their group for life. The leftist world is always groups or class for manipulation purposes. In reality, we generally transit through from group to group.
In my youth, I was a dropout ditch digger. In my early adult years I was lower middle class due to behavior, not income, in early middle age I was upper middle class, and in late middle age until retirement I was in the top 2% of income (not wealth.). In retirement I am low income, but have no debt and have nice property.
Due to effort, age, maturity, conduct, and God’s grace I have been in all those income groups. The focus on wealth is because they want to group people and manipulate them into adopting thievery for law.
I am getting to be an old man, but there is one thing I have noticed throughout my life:
The ‘poor’ people always manage to wear expensive clothes. Not expensive, like having a good job expensive, but expensive in terms of Nike shoes and pro sports jerseys. They may live in a shabby house and drive shabby cars and only have a few of these items, but they do have them. They spend their money instead of saving and investing it.
The poor are constantly giving their money to the rich through these vain purchases. They are where they are because of the choices they make.
You're comparing apples and oranges. Young people in school have had little time to climb the financial ladder and accrue wealth. You and your wife have worked at least 20 years to raise children to that age. You've had time to accrue wealth. There will always be "inequality". People have different ability and motivation to improve. The person that flips hamburgers by day and watches TV all night has a different result from a software engineer that works all day and spends evenings acquiring new skills and certs that offer upward mobility in salary. It would be unjust to not have significant inequality of wealth when there has been a significant inequality of effort.