Wealth Inequality

March 5, 2013

Wealth Inequality

You may have seen this chart on the actual, perceived, and ideal distributions of wealth in the US.

Graph showing actual, perceived, and ideal distributions of wealth in the US.

Wealth inequality refers to this unequal distribution of financial assets among US residents. It’s related to income inequality, but refers to what you keep as opposed to what you get. Income inequality has also been increasing in the US. If you’re wondering where the numbers come from or why this is a problem, check out this video:

And, of course, poor people are less likely to be healthy and more likely to be fat.

NY Times Topics: Income Inequality

NY Times: Inequality is Most Extreme in Wealth, not Income

Washington Post: How fighting income inequality became Obama’s driving force

Wikipedia: Economic Inequality

Thompson and Smeeding, Inequality in the Great Recession – The Case of the United States (PDF)

Oxfam: The cost of inequality: how wealth and income extremes hurt us all

Australian income & wealth inequality

BBC: The Wealth Gap – Inequality in Numbers (UK)

Feel free to include more links in the comments.

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Living 400lbs

I blog about what it’s like to be live life at about 400lbs. :)

2 responses to “Wealth Inequality”

Mike S.

March 5, 2013 at 10:08 am

Agreed on all points. Now try explaining that to the seemingly endless parade of people with vehicles in my area with bumper stickers like “Honk if I’m paying your mortgage” or “Taking my money to help lazy people won’t solve anything”.

Total tax revenue at all levels in the US is estimated to be somewhere around 24% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Germany is at 40.5%. Denmark is at 49%. A person born poor in Germany or Denmark is more likely to earn their way until the top 10% of all earners there than a person born poor in the US is likely to do it here. They have universal health care, free college tuition to citizens, and more than twice as much vacation per year as the average American worker, lower unemployment rates than the US, and a smaller national debt when measured as a percentage of GDP than the United States.

But heaven forbid we raise taxes on the wealthy to fund our infrastructure and help the poorest among us get health care and proper education for the job market.

Reply
Fivehundredpoundpeep

March 7, 2013 at 5:10 am

I have seen the wealth inquality for myself,, all I have to do is look at the completely different lifestyle of people who “don’t get it” and the stigma I faced from poverty for years.
The voices of the poor usually do not have Internet access, I only have it via unique circumstances.

http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/search?q=poverty

I tire too of the blaming of the poor. I never can get on board with that. They have indoctrinated people to blame the poor in this country instead of the trillions spent on wars and handed to the banks-the bail outs which by the way are still going on. I do not think more taxes is the solution but believe since our manufacturing was destroyed, jobs were outsourced, etc, that the tax base in general has been massively decimated. Those who have decent jobs have become in the minority. I believe that America is in a Depression and that the unemployment rate is akin to 30% if one counts the underemployed. I believe we could have a total economic melt-down.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/03/viral-video-wealth-inequality-in-pictures.html

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/12-things-that-just-happened-that-show-the-next-wave-of-the-economic-collapse-is-almost-here

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