What The One Percent Doesn't Want You To Know

Funny that I got no response to this post! Too much truth? Originally Posted by SeekingTruth

No. Too much incoherence and stupidity.

But carry on...

The one percent or to put it more accurately, the 000.5 percent who own most of the wealth in America, are invisible to most people. They are under the radar to most. The amount of wealth these elite own is unsurpassable so much so that we, the ordinary Americans, could never possibly comprehend it. Originally Posted by SeekingTruth

Really? How so? Because I keep seeing Internet posts about the top 1%, watching news programs about them, seeing them on the cover of Forbes, hearing politicians talk about them.

In what sense are they "invisible". Include examples in your response and provide footnotes to your sources. Extra credit given if you can name a specific top 0.005 percenter that we haven't hear of.

I'm assuming you meant "0.005" percent, because, well, three leading zeros in front of the decimal point makes no fucking sense.

The problem with politics is that money is used as a tool to buy power. Power against the majority, power to conquer and control. There is a small percentage of the population that were born psychopathic, with no empathy, which I believe is partly genetic and partly environmental. Most intelligent Americans realize that we have people like this running the country, in a very subtle way. They have no compassion for society as a whole, only their own self interest. Definition of "psychopathy" from Psychology Today: Originally Posted by SeekingTruth

Holy shit, Batman! Talk about lack of substantiation.

So, all of the top 0.005% are psychopaths? Why? Because you say so?

Now, I've read that a significant percentage (like 25%) of bosses have SOME sociopathic tendencies. But there is a huge gap between slightly sociopathic and begin an outright psycopath. How exactly is that link relevant?

Is Bill Gates a psycopath? He is spending all his time giving away his money. Warren Buffet thinks taxes on the top 1% ought to be raised. How exactly does that show "no compassion for society as a whole, only their own self interest"?

Men that were raised from day one to worship the military (at all costs) have been raised to think that way. There are a few younger people who have not yet been programmed by mainstream media. They are able to form an "unprogrammed" opinion. In other words, young people have more open minded thinking and have not yet been prejudiced by "old thinking". Originally Posted by SeekingTruth

Huh? What? How did we get onto guys worshipping the military?

And who are these "unprogrammed" young people? Are they anything like all those idealistic young men in Europe and America who go off to Syria to join ISIS? Those jihadis certainly haven't be programmed by mainstream media or old thinking, have they? Thank god for all those young rebels, huh?

Young people rock! They know everything!

Whenever i hear a 'Southern Accent", I know it's corrupt. Originally Posted by SeekingTruth

What have you got against Mexicans?

The people in the top 1% (or 10%) for that matter tend to change from on generation to the other. Was Bill Gates or Steve Jobs in the 1% twenty years ago? Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

Bill Gates was there 20 years ago... Originally Posted by WombRaider

And your point is?

Or, let's put it another way: What exactly should the expiration date be for people in the top 1%? 5 years? 10?

For every Bill Gates who stays in the top 1% for 20 years, there are hundreds who can't stay there more than a few years, at best.

So, again, what is your point? Other than being angry that some people are richer than you?

What have you got against Mexicans? Originally Posted by ExNYer

Top ten most corrupt states in the United States. This was written in several newspapers, including The Washington Post and Huffington Post.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ssissippi.html

The posts I make on here are based on hours of internet research, which I enjoy doing in my spare time. I don't watch mainstream news due to the fact it is owned and run by one owner, R. Murdoch. Anyone with half a brain can see how biased Fox News is. I actually get nauseaous when I see some clips on Fox News I see at the gym. They never have news channels like LinkTv or PBS playing. By the way LinkTV is available on Youtube and some cable networks. CNN and NBC are less biased, but Fox news is very obvious!

I could care less what several of the ego mainiacs and women haters on here have to say, because most of it is out of pure ignorance. Their main objective is put others down for not agreeing with their point of view. This is done in order to convince themselves they are right. They have some inkling that they could possible be wrong, hence the intense compulsion to prove they are right.

The one true fact is that 400 families in the US Control 50% of the wealth. Proven fact, you can look it up, Google it if you like. All those fact check sites, myth buster sites researched and found it true.

The one true fact is that 400 families in the US Control 50% of the wealth. Proven fact, you can look it up, Google it if you like. All those fact check sites, myth buster sites researched and found it true. Originally Posted by BigLouie

That's a great argument of a very high estate tax, which I favor. The kids didn't earn it, the old man did.

But you also have a lot of wealth that is merely on paper.

Bill Gates is worth $80B supposedly. But what that really means is that it is estimated that if he sold all of his MS shares, he would receive $80B. It isn't like he has $80B in cash lying around. Same goes for Buffett, Zuckerberg, etc. So, do you think that should be stopped? If so, how?

Good Question. If your are single and you make at least $400,000 per year, you would be taxed at 39.6 per cent. The 39.6 is the tax percentage of the highest tax bracket. I don't know if you could go by job title. For example not all doctors make $400,000 per year. Originally Posted by flghtr65

Vast majority of physicians do not make anywhere near $400k per year.....same with lawyers.

The one true fact is that 400 families in the US Control 50% of the wealth. Proven fact, you can look it up, Google it if you like. All those fact check sites, myth buster sites researched and found it true. Originally Posted by BigLouie

That statement is not even remotely close to being factual.

The aggregate net worth of the nation is over $80 trillion, while that of Forbes 400 households was reported recently to be just under $2.3 trillion, less than 3% of the total.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...se-at-the-top/

http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/

I suspect what you meant to say was that the aggregate net worth of the top 400 households is at least equal to that of the bottom half of the net worth distribution, as was widely reported a couple of years ago. But, of course, that statement is altogether different from the one quoted above.

Nice video JD. Thanks to ExNYer and CM! This has been fun!

Before I start on all of this it is important to note that under Bush the percentage went from 25% to 50%.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101038089

The 400 richest Americans are now worth a combined $2 trillion, according to Forbes.

$2 trillion is more than the combined net worth of half of all Americans. The bottom half, of course.
$2 trillion is more than the annual GDP of Italy, Mexico or Canada.
$2 trillion is equal to the Federal Reserve's holdings of publicly traded U.S. Treasurys.
$2 trillion is the estimated size of the underground economy, mostly unreported income.
$2 trillion would fund all government spending through July of this year.
$2 trillion is equal to about two-thirds of all taxes to be collected in the U.S. for 2013.
$2 trillion would pay for all of the existing home sales in the U.S. in 2012 AND2013 year-to-date.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/...-more-wealth-/

The second part of Moore’s claim -- that the net worth of half of all Americans is less than that of the Forbes 400 -- is more complicated.

Moore cited a December 2010 Federal Reserve Board report that said the net worth for all U.S. households was $53.1 trillion in September 2009. That was the same month Forbes released its top 400 list.

That’s a starting point -- $53.1 trillion is the net worth for everybody.

Moore also cited a March 2010 "working paper" by Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University and Bard College. Wolff was a key source in Moore’s claim that was rated Mostly True by PolitiFact National.

Wolff’s paper said that as of July 2009, the three lowest quintiles of U.S. households -- in other words, the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households -- possessed 2.3 percent of the nation’s total net worth.

Moore then multiplied that 2.3 percent by the nation’s total net worth of $53.1 trillion and got $1.22 trillion.

In other words, he was saying the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households had $1.22 trillion in net worth, which is less than the $1.27 trillion in net worth for the Forbes’ 400 wealthiest Americans.

Of course, if the net worth of 60 percent of households is less than that of Forbes’ 400 wealthiest, the net worth of 50 percent of the households -- which is what Moore claimed -- would also be less.

We contacted Wolff, who said he had reviewed Moore’s calculations.

"As far as I can tell, they’re fine," he said.

Three economists -- Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute -- agreed.

We made one more check.

Since Moore’s statistics were for 2009, we sought figures for 2010.

The 2010 net worth of the Forbes 400 was $1.37 trillion, Forbes reported in September 2010. That same month, the total U.S. net worth was $54.9 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Board report cited by Moore.

Wolff hasn’t updated his 2009 figures. So we used his 2.3 percent figure again, multiplied by the 2010 total net worth of $54.9 trillion, and found that the net worth of the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households was $1.26 trillion in 2010.

That’s less than the 2010 net worth for the Forbes 400.

How could it be that 400 people have more wealth than half of the more than 100 million U.S. households?

Think of it this way. Many Americans make a good income, have some savings and investments, and own a nice home; they also have debt, for a mortgage, credit cards and other bills. Some people would still have a pretty healthy bottom line. But many -- including those who lost a job and their home in the recession -- have a negative net worth. So that drags down the total net worth for the poorer half of U.S. households that Moore cited.

We also want to add one cautionary note, from Mitchell of the Cato Institute, about Moore’s methodology: The Federal Reserve uses hard numbers to calculate the net worth of all households, but Forbes uses assumptions and interviews along with hard numbers in estimating the net worth of the Forbes 400.

There’s no way to know how the differences between the two affect the net worth numbers, but Moore used the data that are available and there’s no indication he "cherry-picked" figures for a desired result, Mitchell said.

With that caveat, our assessment indicates that as of 2009, the net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals exceeds the net worth of half of all American households.

We rate Moore’s statement True.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/03/...-of-americans/

Moore is almost right when he said the Forbes listers have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population. As you can see from the chart below, in 2007, the bottom 50% of American households (that is about 57 million households) had $1.61 trillion in wealth in 2007, the latest period for which such data is available. The Federal Reserve defines wealth as all financial and nonfinancial assets, including bank accounts, investments, houses, cars and debt.

The net worth of Forbes listers was a combined $1.537 trillion that year, but their wealth fell to $1.37 trillion for the 2010 list. (In an email, Moore cited The Campaign for America’s Future for his source).

We don’t know the current numbers for both groups. Presumably the Forbes listers are worth more today than they were last fall, given the stock market run-up. And the wealth shifts of the bottom 50% are unclear, though a report from the Federal Reserve shows the bottom 40% lost less on a percentage basis than any other group, simply because they had less real-estate and stocks).

As Moore, not a Forbes Lister but a self-confessed millionaire, told me, “Robert, please note: in my speech I used the words ‘more than’ but I had written ‘as much as.’ As that was the last year stats were available, I would guess that the 400 now have ‘more than,’ as most of the worth of the bottom 50% is in their homes, which have sunk in value since 2007.”

Fair enough. And again, his stat is basically correct for 2007.

Yet the part that begs clarification is the idea that this intense wealth concentration is new or somehow linked to the bailout.

The Forbes listers and the bottom have each held around 3% of the nation’s wealth for the past 20 years. (Reliable and comparable data don’t go further back than that.) Some years they tipped to 3.3%, other years to 2.7%, but basically their shares have move remarkably in parallel through so much economic change. (The Forbesers, of course, pay far more taxes, but that is another argument.)

The stats are undeniably troubling. But the fact remains that the wealth shares of the rich haven’t diverged from the bottom since the early 1980s. (The top 1% have also held roughly the same share of wealth since the the late 1980s.)

Stories of sudden wealth gaps funded by tax bailouts, of Wall Street heists and financial “coup d’etats” make for rousing speeches. But unfortunately, it is nothing new.

Do you think America could or should rebalance the wealth of the Forbes listers and the bottom halfers?

So how good is it to be in the top 400?

- The 400 richest Americans saw their incomes double between 2001 and 2007 – a period when the incomes of the average American declines. The windfall was so massive, and so hitched to the Bush tax cuts, this group has been dubbed the “Bush 400.” Or as Dubya called them: “my base”…

- The shift in wealth upward isn’t new. It’s actually ben 50 years in the making, and has been a result not of accident, but rather of public policy.

Before I start on all of this it is important to note that under Bush the percentage went from 25% to 50%.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101038089

The 400 richest Americans are now worth a combined $2 trillion, according to Forbes.

$2 trillion is more than the combined net worth of half of all Americans. The bottom half, of course.
$2 trillion is more than the annual GDP of Italy, Mexico or Canada.
$2 trillion is equal to the Federal Reserve's holdings of publicly traded U.S. Treasurys.
$2 trillion is the estimated size of the underground economy, mostly unreported income.
$2 trillion would fund all government spending through July of this year.
$2 trillion is equal to about two-thirds of all taxes to be collected in the U.S. for 2013.
$2 trillion would pay for all of the existing home sales in the U.S. in 2012 AND2013 year-to-date.

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/...-more-wealth-/

The second part of Moore’s claim -- that the net worth of half of all Americans is less than that of the Forbes 400 -- is more complicated.

Moore cited a December 2010 Federal Reserve Board report that said the net worth for all U.S. households was $53.1 trillion in September 2009. That was the same month Forbes released its top 400 list.

That’s a starting point -- $53.1 trillion is the net worth for everybody.

Moore also cited a March 2010 "working paper" by Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University and Bard College. Wolff was a key source in Moore’s claim that was rated Mostly True by PolitiFact National.

Wolff’s paper said that as of July 2009, the three lowest quintiles of U.S. households -- in other words, the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households -- possessed 2.3 percent of the nation’s total net worth.

Moore then multiplied that 2.3 percent by the nation’s total net worth of $53.1 trillion and got $1.22 trillion.

In other words, he was saying the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households had $1.22 trillion in net worth, which is less than the $1.27 trillion in net worth for the Forbes’ 400 wealthiest Americans.

Of course, if the net worth of 60 percent of households is less than that of Forbes’ 400 wealthiest, the net worth of 50 percent of the households -- which is what Moore claimed -- would also be less.

We contacted Wolff, who said he had reviewed Moore’s calculations.

"As far as I can tell, they’re fine," he said.

Three economists -- Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Daniel Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute -- agreed.

We made one more check.

Since Moore’s statistics were for 2009, we sought figures for 2010.

The 2010 net worth of the Forbes 400 was $1.37 trillion, Forbes reported in September 2010. That same month, the total U.S. net worth was $54.9 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Board report cited by Moore.

Wolff hasn’t updated his 2009 figures. So we used his 2.3 percent figure again, multiplied by the 2010 total net worth of $54.9 trillion, and found that the net worth of the poorest 60 percent of U.S. households was $1.26 trillion in 2010.

That’s less than the 2010 net worth for the Forbes 400.

How could it be that 400 people have more wealth than half of the more than 100 million U.S. households?

Think of it this way. Many Americans make a good income, have some savings and investments, and own a nice home; they also have debt, for a mortgage, credit cards and other bills. Some people would still have a pretty healthy bottom line. But many -- including those who lost a job and their home in the recession -- have a negative net worth. So that drags down the total net worth for the poorer half of U.S. households that Moore cited.

We also want to add one cautionary note, from Mitchell of the Cato Institute, about Moore’s methodology: The Federal Reserve uses hard numbers to calculate the net worth of all households, but Forbes uses assumptions and interviews along with hard numbers in estimating the net worth of the Forbes 400.

There’s no way to know how the differences between the two affect the net worth numbers, but Moore used the data that are available and there’s no indication he "cherry-picked" figures for a desired result, Mitchell said.

With that caveat, our assessment indicates that as of 2009, the net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals exceeds the net worth of half of all American households.

We rate Moore’s statement True.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2011/03/...-of-americans/

Moore is almost right when he said the Forbes listers have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of the population. As you can see from the chart below, in 2007, the bottom 50% of American households (that is about 57 million households) had $1.61 trillion in wealth in 2007, the latest period for which such data is available. The Federal Reserve defines wealth as all financial and nonfinancial assets, including bank accounts, investments, houses, cars and debt.

The net worth of Forbes listers was a combined $1.537 trillion that year, but their wealth fell to $1.37 trillion for the 2010 list. (In an email, Moore cited The Campaign for America’s Future for his source).

We don’t know the current numbers for both groups. Presumably the Forbes listers are worth more today than they were last fall, given the stock market run-up. And the wealth shifts of the bottom 50% are unclear, though a report from the Federal Reserve shows the bottom 40% lost less on a percentage basis than any other group, simply because they had less real-estate and stocks).

As Moore, not a Forbes Lister but a self-confessed millionaire, told me, “Robert, please note: in my speech I used the words ‘more than’ but I had written ‘as much as.’ As that was the last year stats were available, I would guess that the 400 now have ‘more than,’ as most of the worth of the bottom 50% is in their homes, which have sunk in value since 2007.”

Fair enough. And again, his stat is basically correct for 2007.

Yet the part that begs clarification is the idea that this intense wealth concentration is new or somehow linked to the bailout.

The Forbes listers and the bottom have each held around 3% of the nation’s wealth for the past 20 years. (Reliable and comparable data don’t go further back than that.) Some years they tipped to 3.3%, other years to 2.7%, but basically their shares have move remarkably in parallel through so much economic change. (The Forbesers, of course, pay far more taxes, but that is another argument.)

The stats are undeniably troubling. But the fact remains that the wealth shares of the rich haven’t diverged from the bottom since the early 1980s. (The top 1% have also held roughly the same share of wealth since the the late 1980s.)

Stories of sudden wealth gaps funded by tax bailouts, of Wall Street heists and financial “coup d’etats” make for rousing speeches. But unfortunately, it is nothing new.

Do you think America could or should rebalance the wealth of the Forbes listers and the bottom halfers? Originally Posted by BigLouie

Yea and when the rich go broke... We are fucked... The re-education camps await us, THANKS Ozommunists and why Louie do you have your finger in your belly button?

Yea and when the rich go broke... We are fucked... The re-education camps await us, THANKS Ozommunists and why Louie do you have your finger in your belly button? Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB

That whole statement shows that your hatred of Obama has clouded your reasoning. The riches 400 go broke? Just how would that happen. Note that when all hell was breaking loose under Bush and the Republicans the total wealth of the richest 400 DOUBLED. "Re-education camps" wow you sure are giving Chicken Little a run for the money here. "Ozommunists"? Let's see under Bush the market crashes and the entire financial industry almost failed, under Obama the market is at 18,000 and all the banks and investment firms are fine. The richest 400 are doing better than ever. Tell me again just how they are going to go broke. No kidding around with cute slogans, tell me, how are they going to go broke.

TYhere is something that I fail to understand about the people that bitch about successful people. I suppose this is actually in revference to the communists among you. Why is it that you want the workers to own the means of production but none re willing to step up and do it together collectivly. There is absolutely nothing in this nation that prohibits workers from owning the means of production all they have top do is put up the money in equal amounts to build, buy, or create that environment.

My thoughts on this may be off as I cannot believe that any person could believe that what somebody else has built should be taken from them and given to others without being compensated for the full value. Anything less would be criminal theft.