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wealth inequality

Thursday 18th of April 2024

2007 financial crisis Compared with whites, minorities absorbed heavier losses in the housing collapse. From 2005 to 2009, “inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households, compared  with just 16% among white households.” From 1984 to 2009, the wealth gap between whites and blacks nearly tripled, and in 2009, about a third of both black (35%) and Hispanic (31%) households had zero or negative worth, compared with 15% of white households. Ronald P. Formisano, Plutocracy in America, quoting from a Pew Research Center study  © 2017 Kwiple.com
2018-2019 Government shutdown Federal workers will not be receiving their paychecks. What that means in their lives is tragic in terms of their credit rating, paying their mortgage, paying their rent, paying their car payment, paying their children's tuition. He [Trump] thinks maybe they could just ask their father for more money. But they can't. Nancy Pelosi © 2019 Kwiple.com
Ask candidates … What will you do to decrease wealth inequality? © 2015 Kwiple.com
Academic achievement The fact is that good teachers get bad results in poor zip codes and bad teachers get good results in wealthy zip codes. That should be the starting point for any debate about performance. Richard Rothstein © 2017 Kwiple.com
Academic achievement In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored one and a half years behind the national average for his or her year — and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts – in both math and reading. By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts. The pandemic left students in low-income and predominantly minority communities even further behind their peers in richer, whiter districts than they were. Tom Kane and Sean Reardon, NYT, 2022/05/11 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Bankers The Bank of Mom and Dad America's No. 1 mortgage lender © 2016 Kwiple.com
Business Once great men created fortunes;  today a great system creates fortunate men. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life © 2021 Kwiple.com
By the numbers $20.6bn Increase in the net worth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, since the start of 2018 FT Wealth, March 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Estimated minimum combined net worth of Donald Trump's Cabinet members and advisers: $61,380,600,000 Number of countries whose GDP is lower than that figure: 114 Harper's Index, May 2107 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers In the 2016 presidential race, the 100 biggest donors have spent more than the 2 million smallest donors combined. Brennan Center for Justice © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Marriage has become a mark of status, increasingly the preserve of the wealthy and educated. Today, 26% of poor, 39% of working-class, and 56% of middle- and upper-class adults aged 18 to 55 are married, according to research by Opportunity America and the American Enterprise Institute. This compares with 51%, 57% and 65% respectively in 1990. The Guardian, October 7, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers One in four at Ivy League universities are legacy students. Edward Luce, Financial Times, April 27, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Projected year in which the median net worth of black Americans will be $0: 2053 Harper's Index, December 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The revised Trump plan would reduce the top individual income tax rate to 33 per cent and the corporate tax rate to 15 per cent. It would also eliminate the estate tax. The highest-income taxpayers – 0.1 per cent of the population, those with incomes over $3.7 million in 2016 dollars – would receive an average tax cut of more than 14 per cent of after-tax income. The poorest fifth's taxes would fall by an average of 0.8 per cent of taxed income. To those who hath, it shall be given. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, November 16, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The richest 1% of Americans can now expect to live up to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%. The Guardian, April 11, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The richest 1 percent of men lives 14.6 years longer on average than the poorest 1 percent of men, while among women in those wealth percentiles, the difference is 10.1 years on average. MIT News, April 11, 2016 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers While China's income inequality is more severe than other large countries, wealth inequality is worse in the US. The wealthiest 1 per cent of US households owned 42 percent of all US wealth in 2012, according to researchy led by Emmanuel Saez, economist at University of California Berkeley. Financial Times, January 15, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Charity Millionaires expect billionaires to plug charity gaps — — — — — — — — — — — Survey finds the wealthy believe giving is the responsibility of the even richer headline, Financial Times, November 15, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Children Poor kids who do everything right don't do better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. Washington Post, October 18, 2014 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Cities For all the emphasis we place on our multicutural cities, they epitomise our oligarchic reality. In the U.S., the more liberal a city's politics, the higher the rate of inequality. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Cities Our great, global cities are turning into vast gated citadels where the elite reproduces itself. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, June 14, 2103 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Class struggle I used to believe that the debate over wealth distribution should be conducted separately from the poverty debate in order to minimize attacks on antipoverty advocates for engaging in “class warfare.” But now we literally cannot afford to separate the two issues. Peter Edelman, So Rich, So Poor © 2016 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus An internet joke proposed that the only way to find out whether you had the virus was to sneeze in a rich person’s face. George Packer, The Atlantic, June 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus [A] kind of pandemic caste system is rapidly developing: the rich holed up in vacation properties; the middle class marooned at home with restless children; the working class on the front lines of the economy, stretched to the limit by the demands of work and parenting, if there is even work to be had. New York Times, March 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus [W]hen all this is over, there is likely to be a new social contract. The mystery is whether it will be more Dickensian (in the best sense) or Orwellian (also in the best sense). That is, will it pressure the rich to give more to the commons or will it absolutely oblige them? Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, March 27, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Criminal justice Wealthy murder suspect freed on bail as man accused of welfare fraud stuck in jail — — — — — — — — — — — California woman whose friends raised $35m for her is on house arrest as a man who can't afford $75,000 bail has two options: plead guilty or stay behind bars headline, The Guardian, April 25, 2017 [She murdered her father and children] [His bail is more than 15 times the amount of the alleged fraud; he lost his job, housing and possessions while jsiled awaiting trial] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Why shouldn't the president surround himself with successful people? Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption. … And most of these folks aren't political. They won't be afraid to reach across the aisle for bipartisan solutions. And that includes Mr. Trump himself. Larry Kudlow © 2018 Kwiple.com
Death The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced. Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Debt As the fabulous Michael Pettis explained a few days ago in an FT Markets Insight, US national debt levels will continue to rise unless we can spread the wealth more broadly, because as much as the rich can consume, they can’t consume enough to make up for a shrinking middle class, nor do they create enough jobs to make a sustainable labour market. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, July 31, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Democracy In the 1990s, the wealthy backed democracy more strongly than any other income group in America and Europe. That has turned upside down. The poor are now democracy's strongest fans, the rich its biggest skeptics.  Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Democracy There can be no real political democracy unless there is something approaching an economic democracy. Theodore Roosevelt © 2020 Kwiple.com
Democracy We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis D. Brandeis © 2017 Kwiple.com
Education If you are dumb and rich in America you have a higher chance of graduating than if you are smart and poor. Lawrence Summers © 2017 Kwiple.com
Elites Social inclusion may be a growing public mantra of the far upper class. But economic extraction remains among its core operating principles. David Callahan © 2017 Kwiple.com
Fear The shocks of recent years have made generous and effective action more politically difficult in high-income countries. Frightened people become inward-looking. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Food When the people shall have  nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich. Jean-Jacques Rousseau © 2018 Kwiple.com
Gig economy Most sharing-economy workers make under $500 a month from such firms, according to data collected by consumer-lending startup Earnest. … While the paltry sum reflects how many people are just dabbling (as opposed to working full-time), it also highlights how tricky it can be to earn a living at companies that don't actually “hire” workers. … It's perhaps telling that Airbnb paid out the most on average–$926–per month. Returns on capital (rather than labor) are pretty good these days. fortune.com, June 27, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Globalization Perhaps the only Americans who are truly safe from the negative effects of global labor markets, capital flight abroad, immigration, and labor-saving technology are the affluent owners of stock in multinational corporations. They unambiguously profit from all these forces. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Globalization Yes, our most recent round of globalization produced more wealth than the world has ever known. Unfortunately, as economist Dani Rodrik has pointed out, for every $1 of efficient gain from trade, there is typically $50 worth of redistribution towards the rich. The economic and political consequences of that are the key reason that we are now in a period of deglobalisation. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, May 22, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Government Government by organized wealth is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Franklin Delano Roosevelt © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government When aggregated wealth demands what is unfair, its immense power can be met only by the still greater power of the people as a whole, exerted in the only way it can be exerted, through the Government; and we must be resolutely prepared to use the power of the Government to any needed extent, even though it be necessary to tread paths which are yet untrod. Theodore Roosevelt © 2016 Kwiple.com
Healthcare “I am lucky I can get my teeth looked at because I'm dating a dental hygienist. But” — here he showed me his white-toothed grin — “I can't date a dental hygienist and  a cardiologist.” A childhood friend who lives paycheck to paycheck, quoted by Atul Gawande in  The New Yorker, October 10, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Higher education Ms Trump and her older brother, Donald Jnr, were admitted to the University of Pennsylvania after her her father had pledged a $1.4m gift. Both were legacy students – their father went to the same school. Mr Kushner was admitted to Harvard after his father, Charles, had donated $2.5m. These are familiar stories. A study last week showed that 43 per cent of Harvard's white under- graduates were legacy students, children of donors or staff, or athletics scholars. Edward Luce, Financial Times, July 16, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Higher education The ratio of effort to outcome is rising. The more people study, the lower the return to education. You always need more credentials, which most cannot afford. Instead of capital, losers accumulate frustration. Thomas Frank, Financial Times, February 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
History History speaks. In some form, it can be heard forever. The race-based gaps that first developed centuries ago are echos from the past that still exist today. By all accounts, they are still stark. Katanji Brown Jackson, dissent in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v.  Harvard College and University of North Carolina © 2023 Kwiple.com
Housing Since the early 1970s, the lion's share of national income growth has accrued to the wealthy, who used some their gains to build ever larger houses. The near-wealthy, who travel in the same social circles, also built bigger, and so on down the income ladder. Although median incomes grew little during the past half century, the median new house grew from about 1,500 square feet in 1973 to almost 2,400 square feet today. Without invoking the power of behavioral contagion, it's difficult to explain this change. Robert H. Frank, The Atlantic,  March 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Ideas I wonder if a single thought that has helped forward the human spirit has ever been conceived or written down in an enormous room. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation © 2022 Kwiple.com
Inequality [M]ajor inequalities in wealth and income in countries like the United States do not flow from interfirm or interindustry wage differentials. They are caused primarily by two other factors: a highly concentrated ownership of property and very large payments to top corporate executives whose decisions are, for all pracitcal purposes, independent of all effective external controls. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Economic Democracy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Inheritance The average inheritance in 2019 was $212,854, up 45% from an inflation- adjusted $146,844 in 1998, according to an analysis of Fed data by ecnomists at a unit of Capital One Financial Corp. Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2021 —————   2019 median family wealth of   families headed by someone $464,000 with a graduate degree $310,000 with at least a bachelor's degree $243,000 with a bachelor's degree $102,000 with an associate's degree $79,000 who is a high school graduate with perhaps some college $18,000 with a GED or high school dropout [According to St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary plutocrat (plū'tə krat'), n. A person who spends millions or billions furthering his interests by creating “grass roots” front organizations to do his bidding in courts of law and the court of public opinion, often by inciting outrage against alleged “elites.” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Concentrated wealth is legal but illegitimate © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Inequality breeds corruption © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Inequality is man-made by men with vested interests © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Inherited wealth is undeserved wealth © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Rename the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act the 2017 Package for Plutocrats  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Rich kids don't attend for-profit schools © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Trump officially declares class war decades after it started — — — His proposed tax plan overwhelmingly benefits him, his kids, his ilk © 2017 Kwiple.com
Law One of the striking things is that if you're middle class, if you're upper middle class, if you're a single-digit millionaire like Hulk Hogan, you have no effective access to a legal system. Peter Thiel, billionaire entrepreneur who paid the millions of dollars in legal fees for Hulk Hogan's invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media for posting a tape of him having sex with the wife of his friend, Bubba the Love Sponge © 2016 Kwiple.com
Longevity  If you’re among the most fortunate in America, you will live about as long as the most fortunate anywhere in the world. … But sifting through the [death] certificates, it will become clear that the fates of the dis-  advantaged are much more country-dependent. Even the most disadvantaged in Japan and Switzerland typically make it to 60. In France, Germany and Britain, they die at about 55. In the US, it’s just 41. … For men at the bottom of the US economic ladder, it’s even worse. My calculations suggest the average age of death in that group is just 36 years old, compared with 55 in the Netherlands and 57 in Sweden. John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, October 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Longevity The rapid decline of life expectancyv for America's poorest has come against a backdrop of falling poverty [rates] and rising [disposable] incomes. … In most wealthy countries, if you’re desperately unlucky in the longevity stakes, you succumb to cancer before you reach 60. But if you’re unlucky in the US, you die from a drug overdose or gunshot wound by 40. Which brings us again to the most shocking statistic: among the least fortunate 10 per cent of American men, the average age at death is 36. John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, October 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Looks It used to be said that by a certain age a man had the face that he deserved. Nowadays, he has the face he can afford. Martin Amis © 2017 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Being a teacher or tutor for other people's home-schooled kids © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Redlining by online lenders © 2016 Kwiple.com
Mergers and acquistions Rule #1: Sacrifice everyone else on the altar of preferred shareholders © 2015 Kwiple.com
Meritocracy American meritocracy has become precisely what it was invented to combat: a mechanism for the dynastic transmission of wealth and privilege across generations. Daniel Markovits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Millennials Even before coronavirus, she [Ana Hernández Kent, a policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis] calculates that the typical older millennial family's median wealth – what they own minus what they owe – was around a third lower than where they should be compared with previous generations at the same stage of life. Financial Times, July 9, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Millennials The St Louis Fed estimates as many as 16 per cent of US millennials do not have the immediate means to cover an emergency expense of $400. For black millennials in particular, that figure rises to 32 per cent. Financial Times, July 9, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Money Money, it seems, was made to flow uphill. David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal © 2016 Kwiple.com
Money in politics I'm against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it's doable, I'm going to do it. Sheldon Adelson, who does it to the tune of about $100,000,000 per election © 2015 Kwiple.com
Money in politics In the 1980s, about 10 percent of all campaign spending came from one-tenth of 1 percent (0.01 percent) of the voting age population. By 2012, more than 40 percent of spending came from this tiny sliver of wealthy Americans. … [I]n 2012 the combined contributions of the 3.7 million small donors to the Obama and Romney campaigns amounted to less than the total contibutions of the 159 largest individual super PAC contributors. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Oligarchs Today — in a moment when the Russian invasion of Ukraine has  turned the spotlight on Russian oligarchs — he [Benjamin Page] says: “The evidence has piled up in such a way that it's maybe not unreasonable to call some of America’s wealthiest people oligarchs. I think that's the way I’d put it.” He pauses. “Lots of evidence.” Jaime Lowe, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Oligarchy The road to oligarchy has been paved by a relatively small number of hugely wealthy people with outsized influence over the rules of the game. For the last four decades they have used their growing power and wealth to alter the American system in ways that  further enlarge their power and wealth, compounding and concentrating their dominance over the system. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
Participation in politics When [E. E.] Schattschneider analyzed these processes more than a half century ago [1960], he famously concluded that “the flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.” Since then, the accent has only gotten thicker: unions have declined, business lobbies have become more numerous and more sophisticated, and campaign donations and spending have reached all-time highs. Nicholas Carnes, White-collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Pluralism The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent. E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: A Realist's View of Democracy in America © 2021 Kwiple.com
Political inequality The unequal accumulation of political  resources points to an ominous possibility: political inequalities may be ratcheted up, so to speak, to a level from which they cannot be ratcheted down. The cumulative advantages in power, influence, and authority of the more privileged strata may become so great that even if less privileged Americans compose a majority of citizens they are simply unable, and perhaps even unwill- ing, to make the effort it would require to overcome the forces of inequality arrayed against them. Robert A. Dahl, On Political Equality © 2017 Kwiple.com
Politics America's political inclination is to distribute power rather than wealth. Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 7, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Populism In explaining the populist vote in many countries, the inequality of attention is at least as important as economic inequality. Timohty Garten Ash, New York Review of Books, December 12, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Post-truth Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. … Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. Timothy Snyder, New York Times, January 9, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Poverty Everyone is happy talking about eliminating poverty, because this looks like an admirable and ethical response to the problems of inequality, while leaving the structures of power untouched. David Kynaston © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poverty When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Reich wingers say I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.” Tom Perkins, billionaire venture capitalist, “Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?,” Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2014 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Enlarging Fortress America at the expense of the non-rich is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Enrich and empower the few by discrediting government © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Favor the fortunate © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Immunize corporate executives against criminal prosecution © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republican say Letting the rich do whatever they want to is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say People with the deepest pockets deserve the loudest voices © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The poor must suffer disease that the rich may flourish © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Preaching economic nationalism with no economic plan other than to make big corporations and the rich even richer relative to the rest is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The rich need bigger tax cuts © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Wealth and renown trump wisdom and virtue © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Wealthcare, not heallthcare © 2015 Kwiple.com
Rule of law  I don't get tough with anyone, Mr. Gittes. My lawyer does. Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) to J. J. “Jake” Gittes (Jack Nicholson), in Chinatown, written by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Segregation Segregation did this to Gary. When the jobs left, the whites could move, and they did. But we blacks didn't have a choice. They wouldn't let us into their new neighborhoods with the good jobs, or if they let us, we sure as hell couldn't afford it. Then to make it worse, when we looked at the nice houses they left behind, we couldn't buy them because the banks wouldn't lend us money. 78-year-old black Gary, Indiana, resident quoted in The Guardian, March 28, 2017  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say A rising tide lifts all boats © 2015 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Harrington has shewn that Power always follows Property. James Harrington portrayed by John Adams © 2019 Kwiple.com
Snapshot He was able to get elected on an ideology where you don’t redistribute between the rich and the poor but rather you protect Americans, especially white male Ameri- cans, against anybody who looks foreign. The risk is that neoliberalism is replaced by this form of neo-nationalism in order to avoid redistribution. Donald Trump portrayed by Thomas Piketty, New York Times, April 1, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Affluent places are now pulling away from poorer ones … This geographical divergence has dramatic consequences. A child born in the bottom 20% in wealthy San Francisco has twice much chance as a similar child in Detroit of ending up in the top 20% as an adult. Boys born in London's Chelsea can expect to live nearly nine years longer than those born in Blackpool. Opportunities are limited for those stuck in the wrong place. The Economist, October 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Rising immobility and rising inequality aren't like two pieces of driftwood that happen to have shown up up on the beach at the same time, he [economist Alan Kreuger] noted. They wash up together on every shore. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Since most of Washington's spending on economic mobility comes through tax expenditures – subsidies that individual filers claim via their IRS returns – there is clearly foreknowledge of the outcome. The poor do not file tax returns. The rich have accountants. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Them that's got are them that gets Ray Charles © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union c 10% pissers, 90% pissed-upons © 2016 Kwiple.com
State of the union About 78 per cent of US workers live pay cheque to pay cheque, according to a 2017 study by CareerBuilder, a jobs portal. A survey the same year by the Federal Reserve found that nearly half of American families could not cover a $400 emergency expense without borrowing or selling something to do so. Financial Times, January 20, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Democrats work to raise the bottom and cap the top Republicans work to push most middlers to the bottom and raise the remnant to the top  © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union E pluribus ad paucos © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union  Everybody knows the game's been rigged © 2015 Kwiple.com
State of the union In the system we now have, power and wealth are inseparable. Great wealth flows from great power; great power depends on great wealth. Wealth and power have become one and the same. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union c Labor can't strike, but capital goes on investment strikes by threatening to move if its demands for wage cuts, tax cuts, subsidies, negligent regulatory regimes, union-free workplaces and judicial toadies aren't met © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Once again wealthy Americans and business interests have a great deal of political power. Once again the Senate is filled with multimillionaires; the Supreme Court is overturning popular legislation; and both major parties appear to be swayed by the wishes of the business and financial communities. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union Rising stocks and rock-bottom interest rates have delivered a big perk to rich Americans: cheap loans that they can use to fund their lifestyles while minimizing their tax bills. Banks say their wealthy clients are borrowing more than ever before, often using loans backed by their portfolios of stocks and bonds. …  The loans have special benefits beyond the flexible repayment terms and low interest rates on offer. They allow borrowers who need cash to avoid selling in a hot market. Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
State of the union So let me repeat: The combined trends of increased inequality and decreasing mobility pose a fundamental threat to the American dream, our way of life, and what we stand for around the globe. And it is not simply a moral claim I'm making here. There are practical consequences to rising inequality and reduced mobility. Barack Obama, 2013 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Stealth politics The practice of “stealth politics” [remaining silent about public issues] raises questions that go beyond the general issue of unequal, money-based political influence. Stealth politics also weakens political accountability. Stealthy billionaires can quietly use their money to promote ideas that are narrowly self-interested and in conflict with the views of most ordinary citizens. By remaining largely silent about their views and obscuring their financial contributions, billionaires can fly under the radar – promoting policies that most citizens reject but drawing little attention. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Success Nothing succeeds like address. Fran Lebowitz, “The Nail Bank”  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Dare to let the children plan your vacation — — — — — When Marcos asked to visit Fiji after seeing ads for an underwater hotel there, his parents said no because the family had traveled to the South Pacific last year. They gave Marcos and Maya a say in planning a trip to Indonesia this summer, however. citation headline and excerpt, Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest No man is above the law, no man.  Neil Gorsuch, during his Senate confirmation hearing for appointment to the Supreme Court  --> © 2018 Kwiple.com
Tax evasion When tax evasion is possible for the wealthy, there can be no consent for taxes. And without taxes, there are no resources to finance schools, hospitals, and roads; nor to redistribute wealth, even slightly, to ensure the equality of opportunities. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Taxes Operating largely out of public view – in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service – the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government's ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans. New York Times, December 30, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Taxes There is nothing built into the economy that says you can't tax unrealised capital gains. It's not an immutable law of economics, it's a deliberate policy choice, a choice that, based on the explosion of inequality in the US in recent decades, appears to be a pretty bad one. Wealthy investors like me, a former Wall Street executive, simply should not be allowed to pick and choose when we want to pay taxes on our investments. Morris Pearl, Financial Times, June 14, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same period. We're going to call this their true tax rate. The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That's a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%. ProPublica, June 8, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes  Trump tax cut heralds $1tn bonanza for US investors — — — — — — — — — — — • Buybacks and dividends to set record • Returns to exceed R&D and wages headline, Financial Times, March 5, 2018 [print edition] © 2018 Kwiple.com
Taxes What is commonly referred to as the tax code might be better described as two codes: one that forces most Americans to account for every nickel of income they earn, and another that allows the wealthy to reveal or conceal [it] at their discretion. David Cay Johnston © 2017 Kwiple.com
The tech bro's I Have a Dream Speech I was the middleman. I made money off the platform. I used contract workers and their assets. I offered no benefits, no guaranteed pay. I made them liable for insurance claims. I automated  to  minimize  employees. I ignored local laws & governments. I ran ads  featuring  smiling  people. I danced the I'm-a-job-creator jig. I  raised  billions  from  investors. I ignored  user's  privacy  rights. I hired tax avoidance lawyers. I hired Washington insiders. I put money  in tax havens. I dug up dirt on my critics. I whooped, “Struck it rich, struck it rich, Thank God Almighty, I struck it rich.” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Technology … a contrarian indicator of this growing industrialization of the service economy is the rapid and parallel growth of the concierge economy, in which very high- income consumers use their financial muscle to escape reliance on the defective, mass-produced services available to middle- and lower-income consumers. So there are concierge doctors on Park Avenue and mass-production doctors with HMOIs … In the concierge economy, the relationship between technology and work is turned on its head and information systems are used to supplement rather than replace the skills of employees. There are no digital scripts at the Goldman Sachs private bank. Simon Head, Mindless © 2016 Kwiple.com
Vietnam War One aspect of the conflict, by the way, that I will never ever countenance is that we drafted the lowest-income level of America, and the highest-income level found a doctor that would say that they had a bone spur. That is wrong. That is wrong. If we are going to ask every American to serve, every American should serve. John McCain © 2017 Kwiple.com
Violence All workable social systems are predicated on creating reliable forms of cooperation among an extensive population and then distributing the fruits of that cooperation in ways that prevent the outbreak of catastrophic violence. Josiah Ober, The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality According to Knight Frank [the global property consultancy], the threshold to join Monaco's wealthiest 1 per cent is $7.9m, the highest in the world; second-placed Switzerland has a threshold of $5.1m. … In the next four years,  the number of people worth $30m or more will have grown by 141,055, collectively worth more than $4.23tn, according to Knight Frank. Financial Times, May 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality According to Pew [Research Center], the gap in wealth between upper- income households and lower- and middle-income households in 2016 was the highest since the Federal Reserve began collecting such data in 1983. There are also signs of greater strain on lower-income white households, many of which voted for Mr Trump last year, with 17 per cent of them having a net worth of zero or below. Financial Times, November 13, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality According to the UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the 160,000 or so households in that group [the 0.1 percent] held 22 percent of America's wealth in 2012, up from 10 percent in 1963. If you're looking for the kind of money that can buy elections, you'll find it inside the top 0.1 percent alone. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality All wealth is collective by nature in the sense that it relies on the work of hundreds, thousands, millions of engineers, technicians, the accumulation of knowledge.  Then, private property is a social construction that we invent in order to organize economic and social relations. It’s a very useful social invention as long as you keep under control how much you can accumlate, how much power you can concentrate, etc. But none of these assets are their  assets. They are a product of a collective process. No one invented anything by himself or herself. Thomas Piketty, New York Times, April 1, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality American elites have stored more wealth than they can consume. This creates three problems for everyone else. First, elites invest their surpluses in replicating their advantages. … The second response to having such vast wealth is to create other kinds of scarcity [especially of nonmaterial goods like Ivy League acceptances]. … The third challenge is the hardest to fix. … Kids must study harder and for longer than their parents to find jobs that do not often repay the effort. Edward Luce, Financial Times, February 8, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality America's wealth inequality is even greater than that of income — the top 1 percent has more than 40 percent of US wealth, almost twice the share of income. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The average full-time Amazon employee made $37,930 in 2020. In order to accumulate as much money as Bezos ($172 billion) … an employee would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch (4.5 million years ago, when hominids had just started standing on two feet!). Mona Chalabi, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Being rich in today's America means not having to come across anyone who isn't. Exclusive prep schools, elite colleges, private jets, gated communities, tony resorts, symphony halls and opera houses, vacation homes in the Hamptons and other exclusive vacation sites all insulate them from the rabble. Robert Reich, Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2014 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Between 2013 and 2015, the wealthiest 14 people saw their wealth increase by $157 billion. This is their wealth increase, got it? Not what they are worth. Increase. That $157 billion is more wealth than is owned by the bottom 40 percent of the American people. One family, the Walton family, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent. Bernie Sanders © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Billionaires increased their combined global wealth by almost a fifth last year to a record $6tn (£4.5tn) – more than twice the GDP of the UK. There are now 1,542 dollar billionaires across the world, after 145 multi- millionaires saw their wealth tick over into nine-zero fortunes last year, The Guardian, October 26, 2017 Average billionaire's wealth: $6,000,000,000,000 / 1,542 = $3,891,050,583 Median wealth per U.S. adult in 2016: $44,977 Avg. billionaire's wealth vs. med. U.S. adult's: $3,891,050,583 / $44,977 = 86,512 times © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality By Molding Tax System, Wealthiest Save Billions ————— Hiring an Army of Lobbyists and Lawyers to Exploit Loopholes and Steer Laws frontpage headline, print edition, New York Times, December 30, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The central issue is we're developing into a plutocracy. We've got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they're rich because they're smart and constructive. And they don't like government, and they don't like to pay taxes.  Paul Volcker © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the total number of billionaires around the world rose by 412 to a record of 3,228, [Shanghai-based] Hurun [Research Institute] said. China added 259 billionaires last year, more than the rest of the world combined, according to Hurun. Wall Street Journal, March 2, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Economic disparities are also growing by race. In 1963, median family wealth was $43,000 higher for whites than for African Americans. By 2013, it was $123,000 higher (and $120,000 higher than for Hispanics, for whom there isn't data from 1963). Even in the few years since the financial crash, wealth inequality has grown along racial lines. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Economic inequality begets political inequality, which, in turn, makes it harder to address economic inequality. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists from the University of California at Berkeley, earlier this year estimated that US billionaires had collective wealth of $4.25tn, of which $2.7tn represented untaxed gains. Financial Times, July 24, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Every billionaire is a policy failure. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's slogan, written by Dan Riffle, her policy adviser © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Every piece of the pie picked up by the 0.1 percent, in relative terms, had to come from the people below. But not everyone in the 99.9 percent gave up a slice. Only those in the bottom 90 percent did. At their peak, in the mid-1980s, people in this group held 35 percent of the nation’s wealth. Three decades later that had fallen 12 points–exactly as much as the wealth of the 0.1 percent rose. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality A family with a billion-dollar fortune that does absolutely no planning to avoid the 40% tax on large estates and no paid work whatsoever can comfortably take out $15 milliona year to live on (after taxes, adjusted for inflation) in perpetuity until the end of history — while still growing the estate. That's how mind-bogglingly large a billion-dollar fortune is. Salvatore Babones, Sixteen for '16 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. Matthew 25:29, a.k.a. the “Matthew Effect” © 2060 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Matthew 13:12 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The fortunate man is seldom satisfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he “deserves” it, and above all, that he deserves it in comparison with others. … Good fortune thus wants to be “legitimate fortune.” Max Weber, “The Social Psychology of the World Religions” © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Forty years ago, wealthy Americans helped finance the U.S. government far more than now through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans help finance the government mainly by lending it money. Robert B.Reich, Beyond Outrage  [2012] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  From the late 1940s, to the early 1970s, workers and investors did share in the wealth generated by a strong, growing economy. But since then that social compact has frayed: worker productivity has risen by about 70 per cent, but hourly pay has grown by only 12 per cent. Meanwhile, corporate profits have hit record highs. US workers are more educated, more skilled and do more to create corporate profits, but they share far less in the fruits of that labour. Leo Strine, Delaware Supreme Court chief justice, Financial Times, October 1, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  Full floor condominiums priced from $16,000,000 From an advertisement for 111 West 57th Street, New York City, a 1,438-foot-tall residential middle finger © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Given the scale of rising wealth concentrations, opportunity capture and unequal political representation are a serious and worrying trend. For instance: … The bottom half of the world's population owns the same as the richest 85 people in the world. “Working for the Few,” Oxfam report, 2014 — the bottom half is nearly 3,500,000,000 people © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Having a wage but no wealth increasingly means settling for a lower standard of living. In recent decades and in rich countries the share of total income accruing to owners of capital (in the form of profits, rent and interest) has risen, while the share paid to labour (in the form of salaries and benefits) has dropped. This means the income of people with lots of capital will diverge from those who have none. Economist, February 16, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  The housing-value gap between households earning more than 200% of their area's median income and other homeowners widened significantly over the decade. In 2010, high-income homeowners held 28% of of all U.S. housing wealth. By 2020, that figure rose to 42.6%. The share of housing wealth held by middle-income households declined to 37.5% in 2020, from 43.8% in 2010. Low-income housing wealth fell to 19.8% in 2020, from 28.2% in 2010. Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality How the Rich Fish — — — — — — — — — — — In their quest for the best fishing, avid anglers are spending $200,000 to $750,000 to create and stock personal streams with computer-controlled conditions headline, Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality I care not how affluent some may be, providing none are miserable in consequence of it. Thomas Paine © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality I don't know why They're so hard on me and you? We don't do nothing in the jook joints Rich folks don't do. But the rich folks have clubs And licenses and such. Only trouble is, we Can't afford that much. “Puzzlement” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality I think not having the estate tax  recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze, or women or movies. Chuck Grassley, Republican Senator from Iowas, explaining why estates worth more than  $5.5/$11 million left by individuals/couples shouldn't be taxed but smaller ones should © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality If we now examine the development of the distribution [of property since the end of the eighteenth century] as a whole, we see that the reduction in inequalities took place mainly to the benefit of what  may be called the patrimonial middle class, that is, the 40 percent between the poorest 50 percent and the richest 10 percent. Thomas Piketty, A Brief History of Equality © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality If you don't ride a Harley, you ain't rich. catchphrase © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality In between the top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent is a group that has been doing just fine. It has held on to its share of a growing pie decade after decade. And as a group, it owns substantially more wealth than do the other two combined. In the tale of three classes (see Figure 1), it is represented by the gold line floating high and steady while the other two duke it out. You'll find the new aristocracy there. We are the 9.9 percent. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality In the United Kingdom, the United States and around the world, executive compensation has become the locomotive of our contemporary inequality. To “predistribute” wealth more rationally, we would need to slow that engine down. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality In the US, while the average millennial had 30 per cent less wealth than the average boomer by age 35, the richest 10 per cent of the cohort are now about 20 per cent wealthier than their boomer counterparts were at the same age, according to a recent study by researchers in Cambridge, Berlin and Paris. Not all millennials are created equal. John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, April 12, 2024 © 2024 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality It is romantic to build utopias; it is moral to fix what is broken. We don't need billionaires. We need their billions back. For the cities that already exist. For the people in them. For goodness' sake. Jenny Lee, Financial Times, February 27, 2018 on billionaire's penchant for funding such projects as building new cities from scratch, funding the development of floating cities outside tax zones in international waters © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  It's time to reward hard work in America — not just wealth. Joe Biden, 8:39 PM – Dec 3, 2020 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality It was another record year for the wealthiest people in America, as the price of admission to the country's most exclusive club jumped nearly 18%. The minimum net worth to make the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans is now a record $2 billion, up from $1.7 billion a year ago. The group's total net worth climbed to $2.7 trillion, up from $2.4 trillion, and the average net worth rose to $6.7 billion, up from $6 billion. Forbes, “2017 400 Richest Americans” 2017 Average wealth per US adult = $388,585 $2,700,000,000,000 / $388,585 = 6,948,286 2017 Median wealth per US adult = $55,867 $2,700,000,000,000 / $55,867 = 48,329,067 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Just eight of the richest people on earth own as much combined wealth as half the human race. That's a notable change from last year, when it was reckoned to take 62 of the superrich to match the assets of the 3.6 billion people in the poorer half of mankind. New York Times, January 16, 2017 — Wealth of the eight in billions of dollars — Jeff Bezos Bill Gates Mike Bloomberg Amancio Ortega Warren Buffett Carlos Slim Helú Lawrence Ellison Mark Zuckerberg  $45.2 $75.0 $40.0 $67.0 $60.8 $50.0 $43.6 $44.6 — Average wealth in dollars — $426.2 billion / 8 = $53.27 billion $426.2 billion / 3.6 billion = $118.39 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Just 62 people own as much wealth as the 3.5 billion people in the bottom half of world's income scale, the charity Oxfam reported on Moday in it's annual study of inequality, which found that the gap between rich and poor has continued to widen at an alarming rate. As recently as five years ago, the fortunes of 388 billionaires were needed to reach that halfway mark. The study … noted that a global network of tax havens contributed to the divide by allowing the rich to hide trillions of dollars in assets from their countries' governments. New York Times, January 18, 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The median U.S. household net worth is $118,200. Bezos has $172,000,000,000. So … how does that compare? Mona Chalabi, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022, whose answers are physical comparisons — e.g., if household worth = size of a white blood cell, then Bezos' worth = size of a finback whale [An arithmetic comparison is that Bezos' net worth of $172,000,000,000 = net worth of 1,455,161 median households, which contained 2.64 people in 2022, which means his net worth in 2022 = that of at least 3,841,625 people, which is more people than live in 24 states or  in any city other than New York and Los Angeles] © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Most of the inequality in colonial America was between regions, so when [Peter] Lindert and [Jeffrey] Williamson broke down the data by regions, they found even greater egaitarianism. New England's Gini coefficient was .367, the Middle Atlantic .376, and the free South .341. Those numbers are similar to America in the late 1960s period (the Gini in 1968 was .371). As a comparison, the South, including slaves, had a Gini coefficient of .464, almost identical to 2012 America (.463) after tax and transfer payments. In other words, America today is almost exactly as unequal as the slave-holding South in 1774. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Nobody deserves what the market will bear © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Nobody should be born with a silver spoon in his mouth, or, if he is, it should choke him. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality One hundred and forty-five people became billionaires last year, according to UBS. Data gathered by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index reveal that in 2017 the world's richest 500 people became $1tn richer. That is more than three times the GDP of Denmark. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the three richest men in the US own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the country's population.  Jenny Lee, Financial Times, February 27, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality One of the signers [of an August 2019 Business Roundtable statement proclaiming a “fundamental commitment to all  our stakeholders”] was Jeff Bezos, the multi-billionaire CEO  of Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary.  Just weeks after the statement appeared, Whole Foods announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce — at a total annual savings of what Bezos himself made in just two hours. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Perhaps the best evidence of the power of an aristocracy is to be found in the degree of resentment it provokes. By that measure, the 9.9 percent are doing pretty well indeed. The surest sign of an increase in resentment is a rise in political division and instability. We're positively acing that test. You can read all about it in the headlines of the past two years Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Psychologists have found that wealthy people are more likely to lie  and cheat when gambling or negotiating, to cut people off when driving, and to en-  dorse unethical behavior in the workplace. It is not that the rich oppose the existence of rules: rules safeguard their property … But wealthy people's status can lead them to believe their own needs and desires are more important than any rules, so much so that they absolve themselves from complying with the rules altogether. Ngaire Woods, Foreign Affairs, July/Augsut 2022 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The rich should certainly worry about which way the wind is blowing. According to a survey by Pew Research, Americans' views of why people are rich have changed significantly over the past few years. A growing share of respondents said the main reason people were rich was because they had more advantages than others; between 2018 and 2020 the figure rose from 42 to 65 per cent. Rhymer Rigby, FT Wealth, October 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The richest of the ultra rich, the world's bilionaires, now total over 2000. The least of these billionaires now hold 279,000 times more personal wealth than our planet's typical adult. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The richest 1 per cent of Americans now account for more than half the value of equities owned by US households, according to Goldman Sachs. Since 1990, the wealthiest have bought a net $1.2tn in company stakes, while the rest of the population has sold more than $1tn. … As of September 2019, the bottom 90 per cent owned $4.6tn of equities, or 12 per cent of the total, the analysts noted. Financial Times, February 10, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Right now, the top 10 per cent of households in the US own 87 per cent of equities. Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, May 30, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Since the beginning of the pandemic, the total net worth of America's billionaires, all 686 of them, has jumped close to a trillion dollars. In September, nearly 23 million Americans reported going without enough to eat, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ben Ehrenreich, New York Times Magazine, Novenber 8, 2020 [That's close to $1,457,725,948 per billionaire] [~ $1,000,000,000,000 / 23,000,000 = ~ $43,478 per food insecure person] © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor saying © 2017 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit. Rutger Bregman, at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, January 2019, on the one measure guaranteed to mitigate wealth inequality © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality These two families' vast wealth (reportedly above $175 billion for the Waltons, and $120 billion for Charles and David Koch in 2018) is as large as the total wealth of a staggeringly large proportion of Americans—as of 2016, the most recent year for which a reliable comparison could be made, the Waltons and the Kochs held as much as the total wealth of the bottom 50 percent. Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power and Profits © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Three decasdes ago … the top percentage point of Americans by wealth only controlled 46 per cent of all US equities held by households. By the end of September 2019, that pro- portion had hit a record 56 per cent, amounting to $21.4tn, according to [Goldman Sach's] calculations. That includes both public stock and ownership stakes in private companies. Financial Times, February 10, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality To those that have it shall be given. That is the doctrine of Mr Trump. It is also the old Republican trickle-down doctrine in purest form. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, May 2, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent of American households hold close to the same amount of wealth. That's one of the statistics most frequently cited to describe the problem of economic inequality in the United States today. Here are some others: Nearly two-thirds of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. An estimated 41 percent — 135 million people — are considered either poor or low-income. Eighteen percent of households earn less than $25,000 a year. Even before the pandemic hit, one in four Black families had a net worth of zero. New York Times, July 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality We are the people of good family, good health, good schools, good neighborhoods, and good jobs. We may want to call ourselves the “5Gs” rather than the 9.9 percent. We are so far from the not-so-good people on all of these dimensions, we are beginning to resemble a new species. Matthew Stewart, The Atlantic, June 2018 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality We have an institutional setup where you accumulate wealth by using public infrastructure, public education, the health system, and then once you have  accumulated the wealth, you push a button and you transfer it somewhere else. Remember the ProPublica study before the summer of 2021 where they looked at billionaires in the U.S.? They pay almost zero federal income tax, as compared with their wealth.  If you pay no tax, it's easier to accumulate more wealth, and that's what continues. Thomas Piketty, New York Times, April 1, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality We need to place as much emphasis on the “predistribution” of wealth as its redistribution. We need ot identify the economic institutions and policies that guide excessive rewards to the rich and powerful — and make them over. Sam Pizzigati,, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Wealth management loans at JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley have grown 50 per cent in the past four years, compared with only 9 per cent for their overall loan book. … JPMorgan and Citi are now lending more to a small number of ultra-high net worth clients than to their millions of credit card customers. A decade ago, JPMorgan was lending five times as much to credit card customers as it did to private clients. … Controversially, the borrowings can also serve to lower taxes. Instead of selling assets to raise cash — and facing a capital gains tax — high net-worth clients obtain funding by borrowing against the value of their investments. Financial Times, May 27, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality [W]ealthy Americans wield a lot of influence. By investing money in politics, they can turn economic power into political power. Thus the United States suffers from what can be called “unequal democracy.” Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality When Donald was still in diapers, he and his siblings had a trust fund. His share was about $12,000 a year, which in the late nineteen forties was roughly four times the typical income for a married couple with children if the husband held a full-time job. David Cay Johnston, The Making of Donald Trump  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality When economists measure inequality, the most common number they use is called the Gini coefficient, which captures the dispersion of income for households from zero (completely equal) to one (completely unequal). Based on their social tables, [Peter] Lindert and [Jeffrey] Williamson were able to construct a Gini coefficient for early America. In 1774, the Gini coefficient for American households, including slaves, was .441. It was .409 without slaves. To put that into perspective, the Gini coefficient for America in 2012 was .463. What that means is that America in 2012 was actually more unequal than the America of 1774 — even including slavery. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution © 2021 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  Where there is inequality of estates, there must be inequality of power. James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana © 2019 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality While most American families are treading water, upper-income households now have a median net worth that is nearly 70 times that of the country's lower-income families, a record high, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. Financial Times, April 13, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality While offshore assets are rising, there is evidence that the number of clients is falling, and so the average wealth per client seems to be booming. Since the financial crisis, the main Swiss banks have been refocusing their activities on their “key private banking” clients, those with more than $50 million in assets. Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality With black individuals deeply underrepresented in Silicon Valley and largely absent at the highest levels of major corporations, little of the wealth created in the stock market or the technology boom has gone to black families. Today, typical black households have just one-tenth the wealth of typical white households, according to Federal Reserve data. New York Times, June 6, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
 
Wealth inequality The world wealthiest subset – the 1426 richest individuals on the planet – are worth $5.4 trillion, which is roughly twice the size of the entire British economy and more than the combined assets of the 250 million least wealthy Americans. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism Average wealth of a 1426er: $5,400,000,000.000 / 1,426 = $3,786,816,269 Average wealth of a 250,000,000er: $5,400,000,000.000 / 250,000,000 = $21,600 $3,786,816,269 / $21,600 = 175,315 Average wealth of a 1426er = combined assets of 175,315 250,000,000ers © 2017 Kwiple.com