{"id":64787,"date":"2023-01-19T17:08:14","date_gmt":"2023-01-19T22:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64787"},"modified":"2023-01-19T17:08:14","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T22:08:14","slug":"want-to-know-where-the-economy-is-going-watch-the-top-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64787","title":{"rendered":"Want to Know Where the Economy Is Going? Watch The Top 10%"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/charleshughsmith.blogspot.com\/2023\/01\/want-to-know-where-economy-is-going.html\">Want to Know Where the Economy Is Going? Watch The Top 10%<\/a><\/h3>\n<div id=\"post-7631231309118876908\" class=\"post-body\">\n<p><i>Should the wealth effect reverse as assets fall, capital gains evaporate and investment income declines, the top 10% will no longer have the means or appetite to spend so freely.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Soaring wealth-income inequality has all sorts of consequences.<\/b>\u00a0As many (including me) have noted, the concentration of wealth and income in the top 0.1% has enabled the few to buy political influence to protect their interests at the expense of the many and the common good.<\/p>\n<p><b>In other words, extreme wealth-income inequality dismantles democracy.<\/b>\u00a0There is no way to sugarcoat this reality.<\/p>\n<p><b>But the concentration of wealth and income isn&#8217;t limited to the top 0.1% or top 1%.<\/b>\u00a0The top 5% and top 10% have increased their share of household wealth and income, too, and this has far-reaching consequences for the economy, as the top 10% accounts for the bulk not just of income but of spending.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Federal Reserve, (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/releases\/z1\/dataviz\/dfa\/distribute\/table\/\" target=\"resource\" rel=\"noopener\">\u00a0Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989<\/a>), the top 1% owned 22.7% of all household wealth in 1989. Their share increased to 30.6% in 2022. The share of the 9% below the top 1% (90% to 99%) remained virtually unchanged at 37.4%.\u00a0<b>The top 10% own 68% of all household wealth.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>But this doesn&#8217;t reflect the real concentration of\u00a0<i>income-producing assets<\/i>, i.e. investments.<\/b>\u00a0Total household wealth includes the family home, the F-150 truck, the snowmobile, etc. What separates the economic classes isn&#8217;t their household possessions, it&#8217;s their ownership of assets that generate income and capital gains.<\/p>\n<p><b>As the chart below shows, the top 10% own the vast majority of business equity, stocks\/bonds and income-producing real estate,<\/b> between 80% and 90% of each category.<\/p>\n<p><b>This means the tremendous increases in asset valuations of the past two decades have flowed almost exclusively to the top 10%<\/b>, with the important caveat that the vast majority of the gains in income and wealth have flowed to the top 0.1%, top 1% and top 5%.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Want to Know Where the Economy Is Going? Watch The Top 10% Should the wealth effect reverse as assets fall, capital gains evaporate and investment income declines, the top 10% will no longer have the means or appetite to spend so freely. Soaring wealth-income inequality has all sorts of consequences.\u00a0As many (including me) have noted, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24078,204,4350,303,421,587,3650,868],"class_list":["post-64787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith-2","tag-democracy","tag-equality","tag-fed","tag-income","tag-of-two-minds","tag-us-federal-reserve","tag-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64788,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64787\/revisions\/64788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}