Participants believed the mid-quintile held 11% of the nation's wealth while suggesting 22% to be ideal. The actual number is 4%.
The bottom quintile was believed to hold 3% of the nation's wealth. The ideal was thought to be 11%. The actual number is much much closer to a negative than it is to 1%.
Bard College's Edward Wolff, based on Federal Reserve studies, reports the richest 10% of us hold 73% of the country's net worth leaving 27% for those of us in the bottom 90%.
Wealth, if not inherited, is a function of savings and investment of income. Inequality of income is measured mathematically by what is known as the Gini index which is sufficiently important to be determined by both the United Nations (U.N.) and the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). A Gini of 1 would indicate that all of a nation's wealth is held by a single individual. Were it 0, the nation's wealth would be equally distributed.
In a U.N. list of 127 countries with a Gini range of 24.7 -- 74.3, the U.S.A. ranked 127th with a Gini index of 40.8. The C.I.A. ranking was 96th of the 137 countries with a Gini index of is 45. The Gini range was 23 -- 70.
Amongst developed nations, the U.S.A. has the highest level of income inequality. Moreover, the income inequality is now higher than ever recorded, about on par with 1928 and just prior to the Great Depression.
Amongst lesser developed nations, the recent civil unrest associated with rebellion to the ruling class in Bahrain, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Libya and Tunisia has been widely reported. According to the C.I.A. each, surprisingly, have a more equal income distribution than does this country.
Dr. Ritterman analogized the microbe with pathogenic social policy that has resulted in the achievement of towering inequality of income and wealth. This, Dr. Ritterman says, in the face of -- hundreds of papers and an excellent book, The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, which document the health and social costs of rising income inequality.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
