[HN Gopher] 93% of U.S. households' stock market wealth is held ...
___________________________________________________________________
93% of U.S. households' stock market wealth is held by the top 10%
Author : Vaslo
Score : 130 points
Date : 2024-01-11 20:29 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| Bostonian wrote:
| This statistic ignores the stocks owned by pension funds on
| behalf of workers. Many government workers are still entitled to
| pensions.
| alephnan wrote:
| Pensions have been on the decline
| lapcat wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pensions_crisis
| ruined wrote:
| yeah, just like all the money in the bank isn't actually the
| bank's money. the bank still has the money
| jampekka wrote:
| Except for the money you owe to the bank that created it by
| pressing a button.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Indeed, and if you divide that pension cashflow by, say, 4%,
| you arrive at equivalent wealth figures that can be very
| significant. Say somebody retires from the military as a low-
| ranking officer. You don't think of them as particularly
| wealthy, but once you value their cashflow, you realize they're
| loaded.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The value is money/time. $1M over 40 years is only
| $25,000/yr, minus inflation and tax. Wherever that person
| lives, I don't suppose they feel 'loaded'.
| dwallin wrote:
| It ignores it, but not in favor of the bottom 90%, it looks
| like the numbers for % of pension entitlements have dropped
| significantly for the bottom 90% and went up only for the top
| decile.
|
| 50-90% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN40178
|
| 1-50% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50205
|
| 90-99% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN09151
| blakesterz wrote:
| The source from the FT has some interesting other numbers:
|
| https://archive.is/emsQK But the dirty secret
| behind this myth is that, while access to equities is widespread,
| ownership is becoming more concentrated. Two decades ago, the
| wealthiest 10 per cent of Americans held 77 per cent of corporate
| equities and mutual funds, according to calculations by Lyn
| Alden, a strategist. The poorest 50 per cent held just 1 per
| cent, leaving the middle-to-upper cohort with 12 per cent.
| Today, however, the wealthiest 10 per cent own 92.5 per cent of
| the market -- a "record high concentration", Alden notes. And
| while the richest 1 per cent owned just 40 per cent two decades
| ago, their share stood at 54 per cent in the most recent data
| from 2022.
| foobarian wrote:
| So the million dollar question... when to sell off to beat the
| boomer exit? :-D
| pydry wrote:
| When inheritance taxes become punitive. So, on the 2nd of
| never, two thousand and not gonna happen.
| superhumanuser wrote:
| Who cares of they do or don't have to pay taxes. Taxes
| shouldn't be punishment. We should strive to all pay less.
| The government wastes our money frivolously. We should be
| advocating for better appropriation and spending, not
| advocating to give them more just because you think the
| rich are an enemy.
| loeg wrote:
| Some people want wealth redistribution. Taxes are the
| only real mechanism for doing that. I understand that you
| disagree with that objective. But the proposed mechanism
| isn't the problem.
| carlob wrote:
| Having people be this rich is a problem, though: periods
| of time where the wealth is superconcentrated have never
| been good for anyone, the economy slows down, because the
| superrich never consume in proportion with what they
| have, there is social unrest and eventually wars and
| revolutions. The times where wealth was less unequally
| distributed were the '50s and '60s, whereas we haven't
| seen this kind of inequality since 1914, and we all know
| what happened in the following 3 decades...
| ok_dad wrote:
| Sure let's cut spending, but in the mean time those who
| are wealthy and benefitting most should be paying the
| most.
| ochoseis wrote:
| If society ossifies into classes with landed gentry at
| the top, it's not going to end pretty.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the ultra wealthy put all their assets into trusts or
| charities that dodge taxes and don't require selling
| anything. They can then take out loans using those assets as
| collateral when they need cash
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Are they allowed to take out loans without paying them
| back? If they have to pay them back, eventually they have
| to use that collateral which will be a taxable event. They
| might be able to delay, but they'll eventually have to pay.
| mfitton wrote:
| Could they not make sure that enough of their assets are
| in cash-flowing assets (think, rent-yielding assets, or
| treasuries, or dividend-yielding stock, etc.) that need
| not be sold and whose cash-flow can be utilized?
| twoodfin wrote:
| All those cash flows are taxed.
| loeg wrote:
| "Buy, Borrow, Die" is the talking point. Cost basis of
| the assets gets stepped up at death so the inheritor can
| pay off the loans at that point in time without paying
| taxes on capital gains.
| bluecalm wrote:
| They invest the loans and make even more money. No need
| to sell anything ever.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Boomers have been exiting for the past 10+ years.
| dwallin wrote:
| The choice of 10% is extremely peculiar.
|
| Top 1%: 40% to 54% -> +14%
|
| Top 10%: 77% to 93% -> +16%
|
| Top 10% minus the top 1%: 37% to 39% -> +2%
|
| Essentially this was all the top 1% and the rest of the 10%ers
| barely budged in ownership percent. I'd be curious to see the
| results for top 0.1% and 0.01% as well.
|
| [edit] Found the source numbers:
|
| 50-90% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN40172
|
| 90-99% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN09145
|
| 99-99.9% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBS99T999258
|
| top 0.1% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSTP1285
|
| Bottom 50% barely registers, hovering below 1%
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50199
|
| It looks like the top 0.1% barely nudged in the past two
| decades as well. I would guess that the top 0.1% is probably
| hard to account for given all the ways the wealthiest can
| distribute their wealth to make it opaque and hard to
| granularly track. Those numbers could reflect changes in
| choices of financial vehicles for the wealthiest households.
| chollida1 wrote:
| Good points made but you linked to corporate bonds held
|
| > [edit] Found the source numbers:
|
| > 50-90% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN40172
|
| > 90-99% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSN09145
|
| > 99-99.9% https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBS99T999258
|
| This is the series I think you want.
|
| Share of Corporate Equities and Mutual Fund Shares
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Can some smart person here help me understand what this means
| in terms of average holding value per household? Like how
| much stock market wealth does the average household own?
| What's the average amount of stock market wealth held by the
| first, second, third and fourth quadrille?
|
| If 93% of stock market wealth help by the wealthiest 10%
| represents $10k, that means something really different than
| if it represents $1m. Comparing percentages can be really
| confusing, particularly when talking about wealth.
| falserum wrote:
| > If 93% of stock market wealth help by the wealthiest 10%
| represents $10k,
|
| Assuming Us has round 300k population.
|
| My understanding: lets say whole market is worth 1Gz, i.e.
| sum(share*sharePirce) over (all shares in all companies) is
| 1 gadzilion, so 10% of population (30k) combined own 0.93
| gadzilion. While the rest (270k), share 0.07 Gz of market.
|
| on avg per person 0.93/30=0.031Gz 0.07/270=0.00025Gz
|
| (On average, poorer 9 deciles are poorer by a factor of
| two)
| Vaslo wrote:
| I wanted to link to this since it's the primary source but the
| amount of paywall forced me to pull this Axios summary instead.
| Thanks for posting the archive.
| exabrial wrote:
| Quite an interesting fact. I'm sure some people see this as a bad
| thing.
| windowshopping wrote:
| Did you have a way of seeing this as a good thing?
| somedude895 wrote:
| There's also a way of seeing it as just a thing.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| only if you are content with the way the US economy works,
| which requires wearing some pretty large blinders
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| actually no, I don't think anyone should look at the
| wealth spread in the US and think that it's normal or
| good. It's objectively dangerous and undemocratic. If
| someone can earn millions a day from passive investment
| but someone who actually provides meaningful goods and
| services day-to-day barely makes 50k a year, I think we
| have totally misunderstood as a society what to value and
| how to distribute resources
| exabrial wrote:
| There are plenty of people on earth living less than
| $1usd a day and would trade their situation gladly for a
| very comfortable $50kusd/year.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| imagine if i told you that i think everyone deserves to
| make a wage that allows them to thrive and have
| stability.
|
| Also consider that A) things are more expensive here and
| B) our economy is debt based and many people with homes
| and cars in the US have negative income after expenses,
| just because aesthetically our poverty looks different,
| it doesn't mean that it's good. It's not comparable.
| al_borland wrote:
| Debt is heavily marketed, but ultimately a personal
| choice. For those who choose to live within their means
| and not take on debt, they don't have most of their
| paycheck going out the door to pay for last month, or
| have negative income.
|
| I've had people who make less than me tell me I live like
| a poor person. That's ok. I know I'm doing fine and they
| have since told me about some of their money struggles,
| and have a lot of debt to deal with each month.
|
| Maybe if people stopped using debt to pretend they had
| more than they do, we'd see more reasonable housing and
| car prices, as well as goods that are made with some
| quality and repairablity instead of things like fast
| fashion that simplely gets thrown away.
|
| Companies doing business in the US go to where the demand
| is. People need to stop using debt to demand junk that
| makes things worse.
|
| Step one could be ratching down the average home size. It
| has more than doubled since the 1950s, while the number
| of people in the house has gone down. A bigger home is
| naturally going to be more expensive to buy/build, but
| then it also takes more land, has higher property taxes,
| costs more to heat/cool, costs more to repair and
| maintain, has more rooms to furnish, and has more place
| to put stuff before a person needs to stop and question
| if this need all of it. Simply living in a more modest
| home or apartment can have a massive effect on a person's
| finances.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| if your opinion is that some people make millions a day
| and some people make $1 a day and thats just life and we
| shouldnt try to change that, I think you are
| fundamentally lost.
|
| Also consider: where do the billionaires in the US get
| the resources to fuel their empires? Do they get their
| cobalt from slave labor mines in the Congo? Do you think
| maybe there is some kind of connection between corporate
| greed in America and people on the other side of the
| world making $1/day or less?
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| So as long as there is someone more miserable than me, I
| can't want something better?
| bwanab wrote:
| Only if you forget to notice that the bottom 20% in the
| US lives better than the majority of the rest of the
| world.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| So what you're saying is the lifestyle of the bottom 20%
| should be good enough for the rich in the US too.
| bmitc wrote:
| That is not necessarily true nor does it negate the
| point.
| exabrial wrote:
| What he said is _most definitely true_:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2prHCbrVUw
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| "a bad thing happens somewhere in the world therefore you
| shouldn't complain"
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| That is an entirely different problem and more of a red
| herring than a talking point.
|
| "Better" is entirely relative and using a western-centric
| framework to assert a "hierarchy of goodness". However,
| it is not an objective frame, and there are plenty of
| detractors both endogenous and exogenous.
|
| What is really of interest here is one, the consolidation
| of wealth into a pinhead of the population, and two the
| egregious and worsening condition of wealth distribution
| in the US. Which I would argue exacerbates the global
| condition through manifold conductors, in essence it's
| imperialism-via-market but in equal measure an unabashed
| use of threats in other capacities to keep other
| countries in line.
|
| Most people, given the time (which they necessarily trade
| away) would, I expect, prefer a definitively ethical,
| sustainable, robust product - however this comes at a
| cost (which is what they purchase with their increasingly
| devalued time) and so what we end up with is a consumer-
| driven market where people don't have enough time to peer
| down the rabbit hole of ethics and sustainability,
| instead opting to take the wheel for what best _appears_
| to suit their demands. This is then papered over simply
| by hand waving that introducing the Western market regime
| is improving conditions globally, which I 'll again point
| out that this is relative. And I think this then suffers
| further amplification because, it seems for a great many
| decades, that the US itself has been suffering a slow
| decline. This itself has many impacts, for instance it
| has been increasingly salient that something like home
| ownership is becoming less prominent and so the social
| fabric must be altered. These dynamics may take a
| lifetime to shift to meet equilibrium, so you'll have to
| forgive the many hundreds of millions of people for their
| disinterest in global affairs when the social contract
| their forebears penned them is burning to ash.
| swells34 wrote:
| Well, it's a bad thing for 90% of American households no
| matter how you look at it. Additionally, based on the
| comment from dwallin, it's likely a bad thing for 99.9% of
| American households. This is an odd state of being for a
| democracy, you'd think that we'd support laws that benefit
| the majority, since the idea of democracy is that the
| majority sets policy.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Well, it's a bad thing for 90% of American households
| no matter how you look at it.
|
| It sounds like you believe that if the ownership share of
| the top 10% went up, then the average wealth of the
| bottom 90% went down. The latter does not follow from the
| former. Both can have seen increases in wealth.
| bmitc wrote:
| Nearly every measure you can think of for standards of
| living, health, education, etc. is negatively affected by
| the increase of wealth inequality.
| BeetleB wrote:
| This is a generalism in response to a precise statement.
|
| It's a simple question: Has the wealth of the lowest 90%
| gone up or down?
|
| (And 90% is too coarse. Would be good to see it for every
| decile.)
| exabrial wrote:
| This is precisely correct, ironically downvoted. The
| 90%/10% is a distraction, the pool of wealth is nearly
| unlimited as long as we have natural resources (energy,
| materials).
|
| This trend will continue until resources are no longer
| exploitable, or people trying to enrich themselves
| created artificial scarcity or restrict their trade.
| agent327 wrote:
| It implies you are not living in a communist society, and
| therefore allowed a measure of control over your own life. It
| means you have the right to own property, while making it
| less likely that you'll be sent to a reeducation camp, or die
| of starvation.
|
| Meanwhile, if you want the Bezoses, Zuckerbergs, and Musks of
| this world to stop being so rich, there is actually a simple,
| straightforward way to achieve this: STOP GIVING THEM MONEY.
| Don't order crap of Amazon. Don't look at ads on social
| media. Don't buy that luxury electric car. It's not them
| taking all the money, it's us giving it to them.
| beezlewax wrote:
| Lol
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| I think your comment goes against the site's guidelines,
| but damned if it isn't exactly the response that the
| parent post deserves.
| CatchSwitch wrote:
| Marx failed to consider voting with your wallet
| kiba wrote:
| Sure, but not everybody's going to do that. It's a very
| small lever to affect causality.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I don't use Amazon, Tesla, or Facebook and it's not
| working.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Right, because other people--who are also free to choose
| what they value--are pushing back.
| EricDeb wrote:
| Right and we the voters set the tax policy and the
| wealthiest can freely decide if they want to remain in
| the US.
| rixthefox wrote:
| > don't look at ads on social media
|
| If Google has its way, you won't have a choice. How do you
| convince companies not to advertise on X or YouTube?
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| > It implies you are not living in a communist society, and
| therefore allowed a measure of control over your own life
|
| OK red scare calm down. I think you overestimate how much
| control capitalism gives you. Criticizing the economy does
| not make you a commie. If you wanna lay down and accept
| oligarchy because you are afraid of communism be my guest,
| but I would highly suggest you fight for slightly better
| circumstances for yourself and your neighbors.
|
| > STOP GIVING THEM MONEY If oligarchy was limited to Bezos,
| Zuck, and Musk that would be easy! But billionaires kind of
| own everything? Our food supply is controlled by a handful
| of megacorps, our communication network is administered by
| a few others, real estate is a game for giant investment
| groups, health care is a fucking joke... It's impossible to
| elect to not participate in the economy, or at least its
| impractical for everyone to live off the grid.
|
| Listen I know you think that communism means the goberment
| controls everything (it doesnt), but at least I can vote
| for my gov reps. I don't get a fucking vote when Blue Cross
| Blue Shield is deciding where I can go to the hospital.
| hobs wrote:
| Pretty sure the word you were thinking was "taxes", "taxes"
| is the thing that we once made rich people pay and it
| funded a lot of stuff so even if they made a lot of money
| it didn't matter as much.
| EricDeb wrote:
| I mean while we're at it we should also make heroin legal
| and easily accessible with ads for it. There's a simple
| solution if a lot of people get addicted just STOP GIVING
| HEROIN COMPANIES MONEY
| twojacobtwo wrote:
| Let's be serious. This is just one logical fallacy after
| another.
|
| One doesn't have to be communist to think that there needs
| to be some control levers on wealth inequality. Even if
| communism were required, communism does not necessarily
| lead to reeducation camps and starvation. Layered and
| purposefully obscured ownership structures make it nearly
| impossible to 'stop giving money' to the ultra wealthy.
| Even if everyone stopped giving money to the ultra wealthy,
| they're not going to stop being ultra wealthy unless
| they're especially stupid with their current holdings.
| Further, how does one stop giving money to those who
| partially or fully own monopolies on necessities?
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| The idea that we as consumers are responsible for the
| actions of the rich or giant companies is ludicrous. The
| only way to affect meaningful change is through the state.
| Vaslo wrote:
| There is a another way to look at it, though maybe not very
| positive. It tells me that though they probably have
| preferred stock and other types of investments I don't have
| access to, I should invest in whatever they invest in. People
| with that much wealth and power are going to fight to the end
| to keep it, I might as well ride along.
| bmitc wrote:
| This is naive. They will never let that happen. Those at
| the top regularly insider trade, manipulate the market, and
| perform all sorts of lobbying to make sure the game is in
| their favor. You are not playing with the same rules as
| they are.
|
| For example, just look at the contribution limits for IRAs
| and Roth IRAs. They are disgustingly low, limiting people
| with salaries just barely big enough to afford a mortgage
| with an hour commute. Now, why is that? It's because it
| keeps the middle class in place while the upper class has
| several loopholes they exploit to put generational levels
| of money into these accounts. The story goes on and on.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "while the upper class has several loopholes they exploit
| to put generational levels of money into these accounts."
|
| What would be an example here?
| Spivak wrote:
| This is a weird take, even if the game is rigged no
| amount of market manipulation can defeat just buying and
| holding.
|
| Those are limits on tax advantaged accounts. You can put
| any amount of money you want into whatever market and
| have the growth taxed at capital gains rates. If you're
| talking about backdoor Roths you can (and should) take
| advantage of it, it's not a rich-person only thing.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| No one is stopping you from buying a low cost index fund,
| which is in fact the best long term investment strategy
| for most people.
| onion2k wrote:
| It makes the logistics easier if there's a revolution.
| EricDeb wrote:
| Because it is. We've voted for policies that have allowed such
| inequality to thrive.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I agree that inequality is not a good thing, but a large part
| of the outrage is just the fact that it seems unfair.
|
| We can read articles like this, but there are also
| interesting facts like how a huge percentage of poor
| Americans have a problem with obesity, something only kings
| and aristocracy could suffer from just a handful of
| generations ago. Or die from overdoses (they have free
| resources to spend on recreational drugs).
|
| Our poor people have transcended the traditional problems of
| poor people, they are no longer dying from starvation but now
| obesity. They don't die of overwork but from recreational
| abuse of dangerous substances. I don't disagree with anything
| in the article but it is worth looking at from a historical
| perspective.
|
| I think my point is that yes things are unequal, but it's
| also worth remembering how much the floor has been raised as
| well. I would prefer to try continuing to raise the floor
| rather than lowering the ceiling.
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| Related to the classic:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| What are the statistics by age group?
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| Equities went up 5x over that time period. Of course it
| exacerbated the difference in equity holdings. Had equities gone
| down 50% over that time period, we'd have seen the opposite.
| bmitc wrote:
| That doesn't follow.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| It does when you consider a good chunk of people have 0 at
| the start... and new people come in but less people "leave"
| when the market is going up rapidly. Households is not a
| static pool.
|
| If that doesn't compute... look at the chart in the article.
| Is it just a strange occurrence that the chart almost
| perfectly follows the stock market itself? That magical dip
| in 2008... ?
|
| This is basic math. The article is bs.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I can feel it when reviewing my stock portfolio. I pet it the
| best I can but it's a feeble miserable creature.
| wnevets wrote:
| _obviously_ that means 90% of American households aren 't about
| that hustle & grind life and need to work harder.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Hustle and grind life is for the plebs. True wealth comes from
| asset ownership. Source - that one book author thats billions
| in debt.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| Also true wealth is inherited. People making it big thanks to
| their merits are as rare as lottery winners. Probably even
| rarer.
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| To me, this reads the same as "90% of emails are processed by a
| couple hundred servers at Google". I buy ETFs because I don't
| want to directly handle investments.
| lottin wrote:
| > according to calculations by Lyn Alden
|
| But what "calculations" is she doing exactly? The source that
| she's quoting says 53.7% not 93.0% [1].
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01122
| Dig1t wrote:
| I would be very interested to see how this compares to land. What
| percentage of the top X % owns all the land.
|
| I think it's probably a more equitable mix as I know a lot of
| Americans who's generational wealth is tied up in land and not
| the stock market.
| bmitc wrote:
| Well Bill Gates is the biggest private landowner in the U.S.,
| so it likely correlates highly.
| scottyah wrote:
| He's the biggest private _farmland_ owner, at 270,000 acres.
| The largest private landowner (from a google search, I didn
| 't vet much) is the Emmerson family with 2.411 acres.
|
| Farmland-wise, he owns a drop in the bucket- there's an
| estimated 900 million total farm acres.
| bmitc wrote:
| Thanks for the correction.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| *Largest farmland owner. The largest landowner is John
| Malone, the telecoms mogul, or the Emmerson lumber baron
| family if you're counting shared ownership.
|
| https://www.landgate.com/news/largest-landowners-in-the-
| unit...
| legitster wrote:
| > Editor's note: This story and chart were corrected to reflect
| that it is 93% of U.S. households' stock market wealth (not 93%
| of the stock market) that is held by the wealthiest 10% of those
| households.
|
| This is actually kind of an important distinction. If you add
| back in things like pension funds that distributes things a _lot_
| more generously.
|
| Also, I am not sure if 1 in 10 people I know even own stock
| directly. 1/10th of the population is still a lot of people and
| it almost surely skews more by age than any other metric.
| Retric wrote:
| Pensions don't increase their payouts when the market is
| booming and you can't include them in a will. So is it's really
| not stock ownership as you just get the downsides without the
| upside.
| loeg wrote:
| Is the goal financial security in retirement, or perfectly
| uniform stock market ownership distribution? Annuities suffer
| from similar problems but like, if the retiree has sufficient
| income, at the end of the day, who cares if they personally
| own part of the stock market?
|
| People see these power law distributions and are surprised?
| But like, do you actually want enforced uniform wealth
| (communism)?
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Communism is more like "off the books" wealth in a lot of
| ways. In capitalism the people who control sections of the
| economy "own" them in the same way one owns a shoe. In
| communism people still control sections of the economy, it
| just isn't shown on paper. They do extract personal benefit
| from that control, it's just in the form of a weird and
| inefficient black market barter system.
| charred_patina wrote:
| I think the issue is more that power laws distributions
| have a lot of negative externalities. Inequality is
| correlated with a lot of societal problems.
|
| > People see these power law distributions and are
| surprised? But like, do you actually want enforced uniform
| wealth (communism)?
|
| This is a really all-or-nothing take. A handful of people
| are arguing for enforced uniform wealth, most people are
| just pointing out that our current economic system is
| marginalizing a growing number of people each year, while
| enriching a handful of giga-wealthy individuals.
| cperciva wrote:
| It depends? With defined contribution plans the payout
| absolutely depends on the market returns.
|
| Even with defined benefit plans there's an indirect
| connection -- with higher expected returns, employers will
| offer larger pensions.
| chasing wrote:
| It's cool that capital gains taxes are so low versus income
| taxes. /s
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I wonder to what extent the distribution is influenced by the
| significant number of people that plow their savings into paying
| down their mortgage even when it makes no financial sense (e.g.
| their mortgage interest rate is 3%). I know many people that do
| this and don't have any stock market investments beyond their
| retirement account.
|
| People at different percentiles of net worth do not have the same
| asset distribution.
| claudiulodro wrote:
| It does make financial sense for many though, because risk
| exists. In a big downturn would you rather be laid off with a
| paid-for house or laid off with a mortgage and a bunch of
| stocks that just plummeted in value?
| hateful wrote:
| I think what's more important is that we used to get interest on
| our savings accounts, and now we have to gamble with corporations
| to make any returns.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| I'm making 5.3% on a savings account and have been making at
| least 4% for over a year. When the overnight rates go up, move
| cash into FDIC insured high yield accounts. If you're still
| getting no interest on your savings, you're being robbed.
| danaris wrote:
| ...So can we please stop talking about measures that improve the
| stock market like they're _meaningfully_ helping average
| Americans, rather than the very wealthy?
| al_borland wrote:
| Anyone with a 401k is helped by the stock market trending up.
| The ultra wealthy make a lot, but it raises up all those
| retirement accounts too. Without the power of compounding in
| those retirement accounts the average American would be
| screwed.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I can't help but think of all the media organs, the WSJ,
| Bloomberg, FT, Economist, CNBC, Fox Business, et al who cater to
| this small segment of the population. It must be incredibly
| alienating to see all this attention paid to well off people when
| you're on the outside.
| charred_patina wrote:
| > I can't help but think of all the media organs, the WSJ,
| Bloomberg, FT, Economist, CNBC, Fox Business, et al who cater
| to this small segment of the population.
|
| I never thought about how small their audience actually is.
|
| That said, I never felt a sense of alienation reading these
| articles/watching these shows, it really just feels like
| listening to someone out of touch with reality. I am mostly
| curious why anyone would bother watching/subscribing to this
| media, since the amount of information you gain from them is
| enough to influence you emotionally, but not enough information
| to gain you a market advantage.
|
| I mean wouldn't you be better off just paying someone to manage
| your wealth for you or owning shares of a mutual fund? It's
| like these programs are for people with enough wealth to care
| about the market, but not enough knowledge to invest it
| effectively. People who are going to be picking stocks
| successfully are reading 10-Ks and crunching numbers in excel,
| not listening to Squawk Box.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I don't see how this affects the average person, nothing really
| changes to your personal equations
| tzs wrote:
| Almost all articles of the form "X% of the Y is held by the top
| Z%" where X > Z leave off one important thing: what % of Y
| _should_ be held by the top Z%?
|
| One's first though might be that in a truly equitable society,
| we'd have X = Z for all Z. E.g., the top 10% have 10% of Y, the
| top 20% have 20% of Y, and so on.
|
| But upon a few moments more thought one will realize that is only
| mathematically possible if everyone has the same amount. If Y is
| stock owned by households, for example, such equitability in
| ownership can only happen if every household has the same amount
| of stock.
|
| The moment even a single household ends up with either more or
| less stock than a single other household, then the % held by the
| top Z% will be >Z%.
|
| This is true for anything, not just financial things. E.g., the
| top 10% of the winners of the Best Album of the Year Grammy Award
| have won more than 10% of the Best Album Grammy Awards. The top
| 10% of pimps manage more than 10% of the whores who work for
| pimps. The top 10% of pizza sellers by sales sell more than 10%
| of all pizza sold. The top 10% of muggers are responsible for
| more than 10% of muggings.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-11 23:01 UTC)