Interesting take-aways:
1. The 80/20 Rule holds with respect to the overall distribution of wealth in America. The top 20% owns 85% of the wealth. It would be interesting to see a bar graph of this figure in 10 year increments for the past 250 years.
The true irony is that were you to ask Americans why the distribution of wealth in America is now more concentrated you would receive diametrically opposite and contradictory answers from the Democrats and Republicans. Dems would say it’s due to deregulation while Republicans would counter that a bloated and bureaucratic Washington is to blame. Could they both be correct? (Hint: Yep)
2. I’m a bit surprised that so much debt is held by folks in the top 10% income earners. It would probably be more helpful if the info graphic creators had used the same break-down as they did with wealth (i.e. 1%, 19%, and 80%).
3. The question that comes immediately to mind when looking at the figures regrading stock ownership, I wonder what proportion of wealth does stocks represent. Opps, looks like I spoke too soon. The next section does a general break-down of wealth by asset class. Investments (stocks, bonds, etc.) represent 36% of the total. Not surprisingly, real estate equates to 50% (half) of the average Americans wealth. Again this is misleading. I want to see the break-down for 1%, 20%, and 80%. I would bet that for the “bottom” 80% (is it even possible to say that), real estate would represent +75% of their wealth. Easily!!
4. re: Inheritance- the Top 8% must have some serious political clout in America since you would have thought that this would be one of the easier areas to raise taxes. I once read that America is one of the few countries around the world where the middle-class and poor don’t begrudge the rich because they aren’t not so sure that someday they too won’t be rich. Thus, the majority in America vote as if they were protecting their “future” wealth. Weird.
5. The number of millionaires is a bit irrelevant nowadays with the value of a dollar not being what it used to be. I think we need to come up with a new term to describe folks with fortunes of a 100 million up to a billion. How about centinaires? So, let’s see the last figures recalculated for $100+
I like this new trend for information to be displayed graphically. I’d like to learn more about how I can create these infographics myself in Apple Keynote program.
