michalchik
Asset Distribution
Distribution of money and property in the US 2005.
I have seen a lot of graphs on income/wealth and percentile rank but they we always done misleadingly. The differences were compressed using logs or breaks. The categories were all the same size giving the impression that there were just as many rich people as poor people. The subject chosen was misleading such as taxable income where the few have lots of way to hide their wealth and which doesn't take into account accumulation. I decided to do a graph that would as best as possible show how much money Americans have depending on where they rank in wealth.
Source of the Data,
www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_502.pdf
I will work on improving this graph because even it is not fully informative.
Note the following:
1) At the scale the assets of the first 40% of Americans are not visible. Americans in that group average 2,300 dollars. I stretched this graph out until I could see it and it became pages long.
2) I could not figure out how to break up the 99th-100th percentile of the graph without distorting it but even among the richest 1% the wealth disparity is enormous. It looks a lot like this graph when you scale it proportionately.
Think about this:
A) Can democracy function with this much disparity?
B) Can a justice system function with this much disparity?
C) Can news media function with this much disparity?
D) Can a consumer driven economy function with this much disparity?
E) Can the creative potential of the American People be unleashed when the majority of Americans have virtually no capital?
F) Will tax breaks for the top 1% really help spur innovation and create jobs?
G) Did you know it was this extreme?
H) It has gotten worse since 2005
I) For 30 years this disparity has been growing.
Asset Distribution
Distribution of money and property in the US 2005.
I have seen a lot of graphs on income/wealth and percentile rank but they we always done misleadingly. The differences were compressed using logs or breaks. The categories were all the same size giving the impression that there were just as many rich people as poor people. The subject chosen was misleading such as taxable income where the few have lots of way to hide their wealth and which doesn't take into account accumulation. I decided to do a graph that would as best as possible show how much money Americans have depending on where they rank in wealth.
Source of the Data,
www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_502.pdf
I will work on improving this graph because even it is not fully informative.
Note the following:
1) At the scale the assets of the first 40% of Americans are not visible. Americans in that group average 2,300 dollars. I stretched this graph out until I could see it and it became pages long.
2) I could not figure out how to break up the 99th-100th percentile of the graph without distorting it but even among the richest 1% the wealth disparity is enormous. It looks a lot like this graph when you scale it proportionately.
Think about this:
A) Can democracy function with this much disparity?
B) Can a justice system function with this much disparity?
C) Can news media function with this much disparity?
D) Can a consumer driven economy function with this much disparity?
E) Can the creative potential of the American People be unleashed when the majority of Americans have virtually no capital?
F) Will tax breaks for the top 1% really help spur innovation and create jobs?
G) Did you know it was this extreme?
H) It has gotten worse since 2005
I) For 30 years this disparity has been growing.