Wealth Inequality in America

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there's a chart SR recently that I can't get out of my head

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Harvard Business professor and economist ass more than 5,000 Americans

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how they thought well was distributed in the United States

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this is what they said they thought it was dividing the country into five rough

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group at the top bottom

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and middle 3 20 percent group they asked people

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how they thought the wealth in this country was divided NES them

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what they thought was the ideal distribution and ninety-two percent

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that at least nine outta 10 a.m. said it should be more like this

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in other words more equitable than they think it is

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now that fact is telling admittedly the notion that most Americans know that the

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system is

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already skewed unfairly to what's most interesting to me

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is the reality compared to our perception the ideal

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is as far removed from our perception is reality

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as the actual distribution is from what we think

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exists in this country so ignore the ideal for a moment

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here's what we think it is again and here

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is the actual distributional shockingly skewed

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not only to the bottom 20 percent and the next 20 percent

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the bottom forty percent of Americans barely have

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any the wealth I mean it's hard even see them on the chart

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but the top one percent has more of the country's wealth

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then nine out of 10 Americans believe the entire top 20 percent should have

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mind-blowing but let's look at it another way because

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I find this chart kinda difficult to wrap my head around instead let's reduce

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the 311 million Americans to

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just a representative 100 people make it simple

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here they are teachers coaches firefighters construction workers

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engineers doctors lawyers some investment bankers the CEO

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may be a celebrity culture now let's line him up according to their wealth

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poorest people on the left wealthiest on the right just a steady row folks based

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on their net worth

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color coding like we did before based on which 20 percent quintile they volunteer

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now let's reduce the total wealth the United States

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which was roughly fifty four trillion dollars in 2009

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to this symbolic pi love cash and let's distributed

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among our 100 Americans well appear socialism

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all the wealth of the country distributed equally we all know that

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will work

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we need to encourage people to work can work hard to achieve that goal American

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Dream and keep our country moving forward

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so hears that night deal

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we asked everyone about something like this occur

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this isn't to bed we've got some incentive as the wealthiest folks are

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now about

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10 to 20 times better off in the poorest Americans

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but hey even the poor folks aren't actually poor

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since the poverty line is stated almost entirely off the chart

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we have a super healthy middle-class with a smooth transition into wealth

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and yes Republicans and Democrats alike chose this curve nine out of 10 people

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ninety-two percent said this was a nice ideal distribution of America's wealth

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the let's move on this is what people think

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America's wealth distribution actually looks like not as equitable clearly

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but for me even this still looks pretty great

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yes the poorest 20 to 30 percent are starting to suffer quite a lot compared

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to the ideal

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in the middle class is certainly struggling more than they were

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while the rich in wealthier making roughly a hundred times that of the

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poorest Americans

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in about ten times that if the still healthy middle-class

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sadly this isn't even close to the reality

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here is the actual distribution of wealth in America

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the poorest Americans don't even register

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they're down to pocket change and the middle class

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is barely distinguishable from the poor in fact

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even the rich between the top 10 in 20 percentile

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are worse off only the top 10 percent or better off

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and how much better off so much better off the top

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to 25 percent were actually of the chart

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at this scale and the top one percent

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this can were his stack of money stretch is ten times higher than we can show

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here's his stack of cash re stacked all by itself

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this is the top one percent we've been hearing so much about

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so much green in his pockets that I have to give him a whole new column his own

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because he won't fit on my chart 1 percent of America has

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forty percent of all the nation's wealth

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the bottom eighty percent 8 out of every 10 people

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work a Dr these 100 only has

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seven-percent between them in this

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only gotten worse in the last twenty to thirty years

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while the richest 1 percent take home almost a quarter

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the national income today in 1976

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they took home only nine percent meaning their share of income has nearly tripled

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in the last thirty years

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the top one percent own half the country stocks bonds and mutual funds

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the bottom 50 percent of Americans only

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half a percent these investments which means

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P aren't investing they're just scraping by I'm sure many of these wealthy people

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have worked very hard for their money

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but do you really believe that the CEO was working

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380 times harder his average

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employees not as lowest-paid employees not the janitor

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but the average earner in his company the average worker needs to work more

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than a month

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turn with the CEO makes in one our

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we certainly don't have to go all the way to socialism to find something that

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is fair

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for hard-working Americans we don't even have to achieve what most of us consider

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might be

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ideal all we need to do is wake up

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in reliance that the reality in this country

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is not it all what we think it is

 

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