Owning a private business: The upper 1% owns nearly half of all private-company wealth today, up from about 30% in 1990, the Fed reports.
Again, these are not the same people as the ones in 1990, these are new “one-percenters” whose ideas, work ethic, or savvy entrepreneurialism facilitated their move up the ladder. People move up and down the spectrum—thank goodness.
Stocks and home prices soared in the low-interest years that followed the onset of the Great Recession in 2008.
‘People who owned homes, who owned stocks, who owned retirement accounts, they did very well,’ Princeton’s Zidar said. ‘And a lot of people don’t own homes, and a lot of people don’t own stocks, so they missed out on that opportunity.’
Would de Visé prefer the prices of real estate and stocks never climbed, or declined in value? Would that achieve more equality?
Between 1979 and 2021, the wages of Americans in the top 1% grew by 206%, after adjusting for inflation, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. In the same years, wages for the bottom 90% grew by only 29%.
Again, this is a different group of people. Most of us people in the middle or upper middle class started in the bottom quintile.
The author made $4 an hour coming out of college in 1974, had $10 in the bank, no car, no home, and no stocks along with a $2,000 student loan, which he paid off (not the government). He had a negative net worth. He was poor. We can assume most people in his boat moved up the economic ladder pretty well if they worked over 45 years straight as he did. Thank goodness for capitalism and opportunities, unlike socialism and communism which allow little or no economic mobility.
The stagnation of wages and wealth among middle-class Americans, experts say, feeds a growing sense of economic ennui. Middle-class Americans have reason to fear for their economic future.
They sure do if the government keeps seeking to control everything we do and buy!
‘When people feel like they don’t have a chance, or perhaps even more dangerously, when they feel like their kids don’t have a chance . . . that inequality of opportunity is what really gets people upset,’ said John Friedman, chair of the economics department at Brown University.
Isn't that what Americans do when they grow up?
Yes. What you choose to do with your money matters. Long term thinking has a different outcome from short term thinking.
Buying a used Toyota has a different outcome from taking out a loan on a new Lexus. Buying stock has a different outcome from buying bling. Cooking at home most days has a different outcome from eating at restaurants most days.
Choose wisely.
You can start out poor or middle class and become a billionaire because of a brilliant invention. Or you can become a Democrat politician and become a near-billionaire at least. LBJ, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and many others.