... on Slashdot, and that's saying something.
Apparently, they define wealth as basically net worth - assets minus liabilities. Well, how much of the 99% actually has a NEGATIVE net worth, and does that drag down the numbers?
Well, how the hell ELSE would you define wealth? Is your point that people with a negative net worth shouldn't count? Of course, everyone is pretty rich... as long as you exclude everyone who's, you know, not rich.
It may be that by this measure the top 50% has more wealth than the whole country put together. Be outraged! You're part of the 100% that has less money than the top 50%!
WTF does this even mean?
Dude, seriously, think before you post. I know, this is Slashdot, I must be new here, etc.
My point was that some (I suspect most) of the debt in this country is voluntary. I had a student loan at one point in my life, but I made sure it was relatively small because the terms sucked. I paid it off quickly after graduating. I sympathize with people who are not able to pay theirs off as quickly, but that is a risk you take in getting a loan. I believe most Americans could live just fine without getting mortgages and loans and incurring credit card interest. I even believe most people would EVENTUALLY have a better standard of living by doing so - they just have to accept a lower standard of living up front. I include myself in this - I hope I don't sound like I'm talking down. I also know I would be healthier in the long run if I ate less and exercised more.
Regarding my math, I'll try to explain what I mean. I'm not suggesting they define wealth differently, I'm just trying to interpret the numbers. When I drive down the road and hear that 1% of people own 50% of the wealth, I look around and think ... they surely don't own 50% of the cars. 50% of the land? 50% of the money in banks? It just doesn't sound very plausible. I don't have the data from the study but yes, I would like to know how the numbers come out if they count negative net worth as zero because including negative numbers can give weird results.
For example, let's say your wealth is $900,000 and mine is $100,000. Between the two of us, then, you have $900k/($900k+$100) = 90% of the wealth. But if you have $900k and I have negative $100k, I *could* say you have $900k/($900k - $100k) = 112.5% of the wealth, but to me it would make more sense to just say you have 100%. They do a similar thing when calculating Gini coefficient - they throw out negative incomes.
Now in the 1% study, maybe they did zero out negative wealth. I don't know for sure one way or the other (If anyone knows for sure, I'd like to hear).
There, I took some more time to think and as a result I'm posting later in the day and probably no one will ever read this.