A little math lesson for the 99%

A little math lesson for the 99%
| May 20, 2012 | 8:47 pm | Action

by James Thompson

It is well-known that the top 1% control 42% of financial wealth in this country. What does this mean for the 99%? This brief paper will be a quick and simple look at this from the perspective of the 99%.

In 2009 the estimated total net family household wealth for the entire country was $54.2 trillion. The population of the United States was 305 million in 2009. Let’s talk about equitable wealth distribution.

As indicated above, this is a very simple analysis. If you do the simple math and divide $54.2 trillion by 305 million people, that would mean there should be $177,049.18 for every man woman and child in this country in 2009 ...

More here: http://houstoncommunistparty.com/a-little-math-lesson-for-the-99/

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3 replies	Author	Time	Post
A little math lesson for the 99% (Original post)	TBF	May 2012	OP
okay	FirstLight	May 2012	#1
Main point is that there is plenty of money in this country	TBF	May 2012	#2
The number for net worth is also striking.	limpyhobbler	May 2012	#3

Response to TBF (Original post)

Wed May 23, 2012, 10:33 PM

FirstLight (13,081 posts)

1. okay

wealth redistribution is not going to happen without a huge fight by those who OWN the police, govt etc...

this article may have some good number crunching, but it is hard to follow without graphs...especially for those of us who lose grasp of anything bigger than a few decimal places... :/

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Response to FirstLight (Reply #1)

Wed May 23, 2012, 11:14 PM

TBF (31,869 posts)

2. Main point is that there is plenty of money in this country

so that all could live quite comfortably - no reason for the top 400 families to be hoarding most of it.

Redistribution is most commonly done by taxing and I would suggest starting by reversing the cuts to capital gains taxes that we've had the past 30 years. That alone would bring in tons of revenue. I don't think anybody would really expect it to be done overnight, just food for thought ...

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Response to TBF (Original post)

Fri May 25, 2012, 06:40 AM

limpyhobbler (8,244 posts)

3. The number for net worth is also striking.

Michael Moore said 400 people had greater net worth than the lower 60% of households.

So the bottom 60% of households possessed just $1.22 trillion of that $53.15 trillion, less than the Forbes 400.

(From his website March 7, 2011. He explains his math on there.)
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/forbes-400-vs-everybody-else

I'm not sure how financial wealth is measured, or net worth for that matter. Either way it is very striking.

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