How does more rich people mean only the rich are benefiting?

Question

About 1 in 11 US households are "millionaire households" - have a million dollars or more in net worth excluding home equity. Average age of the head of such a household is late 50s.

About 1 in 4 have between $100K and $500K net worth excluding home equity. Average age early 40s.

The numbers in both groups are increasing rapidly - every year there are 3/4 of a million more millionaire households.

There ARE only 110 million households in the US.

CPI is only 2.5%. Home values are up but remember this is excluding home equity. And the number of households crossing the threshold in a year is just not consistent with the notion that it's inflation, that there was already this almost-rich class of people with $990 million and inflation put them over the top - nor is that what they report when surveyed.

That means they didn't use to be rich, which means it wasn't people who were already rich in 2003, 2000, 1981... who have benefited from lower taxes.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1229294/posts
http://www.nytimes.com/specials/downsize/21cox.html
http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1988/05/art1full.pdf
http://www.frbsf.org/econrsrch/wklyltr/el97-07.html#winners
http://www.dallasfed.org/fed/annual/1999p/ar95.html
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/25/pf/record_millionaires/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/28/news/economy/millionaire_survey/index.htm?cnn=yes
http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/28/news/economy/millionaires/?cnn=yes
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/bg1773.cfm

Chi that's simply not true and apparently you can't read. The ratio of middle class households moving up versus down has been over 9-1 pretty consistently for over 20 years now.

There is an increase in poverty but it's about 1/3 the increase in rich people - and also about 1/3 the rate of illegal immigration from poor countries.

Unless Reaganomics was put in place in the 1980s not only in the US but throughout Latin America, I don't see how you can blame our economic problems for the increase in poverty, which has basically been imported.

"The End" - first, high income people tend to have fewer children, second, the math just doesn't add up - you'd be splitting your wealth among more kids - if you have $1.5MM and you have 3 kids each would get $500K.

Perplexed, yes the dollar has fallen but that's of recent vintage - 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007 YTD. The dollar also fell in the 1970s - yet people weren't getting richer. Besides - CPI has throughout the last 20 years almost uniformly been below 3% - - these are people in the US in a dollar-denominated country - - we're not talking about the value of a British citizen's life savings converted to dollars.

B. - yes, the population IS aging, but that's my entire point - - the main differences in wealth among individuals and households derive from differences in age - in how long you've been working and saving. Lou Dobbs can bemoan the difference in pay between people with a graduate degree and people who dropped out of high school but the dropouts started working full-time 8 years earlier and have no debt, while the people in grad school, when they were in grad school, lived in tiny basement studio apartments and lived on canned veggies and mac and cheese for 3-4 years.

There are those who are born rich, there are those who are born in the 'hood or in rural poverty.

For the other 90% + of us, the differences are largely temporary and to the extent they're not, it's a result of our decisions.

Pip - except that you leave out that the migration out of the middle class is consistently over 9-1 upward. When you leave that out you make it sound like it's 5-5 or 4-6 and it's not.

Andrew you freaking moron, no, I don't state how the rich are doing, I state how there's MORE of them - and when there are 750,000 more of them every year, that tells you a lot about how everyone else is doing.

Answer 1

Largest tax hike in history under the Palosi Congress is comming....

Tax rates will rise substantially in each tax bracket, some by 450 basis points;
Low-income taxpayers will see the 10-percent tax bracket disappear, and they will have to pay taxes at the 15-percent rate;
Married taxpayers will see the marriage penalty return;
Taxpayers with children will lose 50 percent of their child tax credits;
Taxes on dividends will increase beginning on January 1, 2009;
Taxes on capital gains will increase, also beginning on January 1, 2009; and
Federal death taxes will come back to life in 2011, after fading down to nothing in 2010.

Answer 2

Two factors may be contributing to that. One is, as you noted, inflation. It doesn't take much inflation to boost someone with 999,000 net worth (in assets likely to rise with inflation) to a million. The other is the 'aging of America.' People who are moderately well off need to accumulate a lot of money to retire, and do so over a long period - and the largest cohorts of the US population (the 'baby boomers') are are between 42 & 61, so more and more of them are moving into that over 50 category that contains so many 'millionaires.'

Answer 3

You state how the wealthiest sectors are doing. If you want to evaluate how everyone is doing, then look at everyone.

The most accurate measure isn't how many people are rich, or even average income or net worth.

Median income or median networth. What is that exact middle point?

Also, if there are that many people who are doing well in terms of net worth, and the average debt in at record levels, that means that a more people also have less wealth, as well, in order to average to record debt.

How many live in poverty? How many children are in poverty? How many are without health insurance in a period of skyrocketing medical costs?

These are all pieces of the puzzle. You're looking at a single piece, noticing the color of one corner of the puzzle, and are trying to extrapolate that to the entire image.

Convenient if you already know what you want to believe, but not terribly accurate. It sounds more like spin that fact.

Answer 4

here's the big difference between how republican economics work and how democratic economics work..

republicans take people out of the middle class.. they either move up or down.. the point is they leave the middle class.

democrats stabilize the rich and expand the middle class.

the middle class is the driving force in a capitalistic society.. without a healthy middle class capitalism FAILS... so people seem to fail to realize that by expanding and improving the middle class as democrats do, they promote stronger capitalism.. and therefor a stronger society.. raising the standard of living for EVERYONE.. not just some.

Answer 5

Gosh! Has money become that worthless.
I bet if you adjust your numbers for inflation to 1970 dollars, the number of millionaires might actually be declining. I'll bet the real truth is that the rich aren't all that rich anymore.

Answer 6

That just means that rich people are having more kids to pass their riches to.

Answer 7

In the manner that for evey additional "rich" person, the US has ten new people in poverty.

Answer 8

rich people are da bomb yo, they 'be 'illin like fo' sho 'u

Answer 9

tell it to people foreclosed on