Your not adding correctly....15.3% are greater then 500k...obviously, the people with MORE then a MILLION are in that category as well...its not 25% its 15%...and its not that high. if you own a home or two debt free...its easy
i just highly highly doubt 1 out of every 100 families in america has $5 million of assets minus there homes. i can see 250k households but not 1 million households
you guys don't seem to understand how much things have been inflated. With all the asset "appreciation" from stocks, commodities, and real estate thanks to the endless money growh, obviously some people have collected a lot of money. But inflation-adjusted net worth probably hasn't gone anywhere.
Being a multi-millionaire isn't anything special, anymore. They've been printing 10% more money each year, so every 9 years the number you'd need to get to doubles. The real game being played here is as you think you are going higher up the ladder, you pay incrementally more tax. You had to figure they'd get it back in the end somehow.
5,000,000 is yesterday's 1,000,000. The above is true for 1971. http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl Assuming no catastrophic accidents or health issues, the average person should be able to quit their job with 5 million. 1 million on the other hand, while nice, would not allow the average middle class wage earner to never work again. I'm assuming that the above figures are net, i.e. after tax.
No, you don't exactly understand how inflation is controlled from getting to hyperinflation and truly reflecting just how much the money supply is expanding. Can't keep this game going for decades if the money gate is open without serious restraint. Check out Russian endless currency crisis during 1990s. Those who get access to the money supply multiplier benefit at the expense of those who do not or get it at the end of the wave. It's kept under control, through selected people and entities. A very clever way of doing this has been through derivatives, a somewhat esoteric and niche market. Another way is through PE firm LBOs. There are many others, CDOs, ETFs, Sector options, etc. Basically, the financial industry, which has been expanding ever since dollar went fiat. Most of the new asset classes created in the last 30 years are just tools and ways of hiding printed paper. They are also a way of creating "net worth" as the actual assets can be slowly reach into for spending cash. If it was as simple as newly printed money being spent frivilously & quickly by the rich, you would see more rapid inflation effects, even on wages. That would quickly expose the real story. This is how it happened in the past, since there were limited assets to buy, the effects were relatively quick. Now you have so many different asset classes to shuffle the money around, while slowly spending it here and there on real goods & services. And most of these assets and trading vechiles are not available or out of reach by, I would guess, 80-90% of the US population. I can see those #s being true for states like New York, Conneticut, New Jersey, California, maybe Florida & Texas, but not on average. There is an America that noone wants to acknowledge and the fact is that for every new millionaire created from pushing around worthless paper, there are 10 people going below the line of poverty due to leaking inflation, cost cutting and offshoring. Those are statistically engineered #s which are meant to instill an opinion that the American people are getting richer. The reality is that while the number of the rich may be expanding, it is at expense of the rest. Basically, the middle class is dying off, transfering the wealth to the rich and allow it to grow a little. Now you have a huge population of service labor.
I wonder where they get these figures from? Does the IRS release them? I think this is impossible, because the MEDIAN income for Americans was $46,000, but then, that's from the Census bureau. If the MEDIAN income is $46K in the US, that means 50% makes more and 50% makes less. Only 17% of households makes over $100K a year. (google it, or just look up median income on Wikpedia) If the population of the entire US is 260 million, 15.3 million would be 16.9%. That would mean EVERY SINGLE HOUSEHOLD making over $100K a year has 500K in net assets EXCLUDING their homes. EVERY, minus .1% of that group (which would fall into a statistical error). That is rediculous. All my neighbors make over $100K, and some of them drive cheap cars, and own no furniture to afford their mortgages. They all have 500K, EXCLUDING their homes? I don't think so. Especially when you consider that the 'average' American is a net consumer and not a net saver, with most statistics saying that we are supposed to be in debt up to our eyeballs, with most families 1 paycheck from disaster. Further, included in that group are new graduates who landed a $100K+ job out of school. They have $500K in net assets too? More like they are in debt up to their eyeballs just getting set up. I'd like to see where he gets his data from. You sure this was in CNN and not a supermarket tabloid?