OLIGARCHS CONFISCATE OUR NATION'S WEALTH

THE AWFUL TRUTH

You have heard the Republicans complain about confiscatory taxes. Their complaint is that their clients, the just plain wealthy, the super-wealthy, and the true oligarchs, do not want their “hard won” profits to be confiscated by the government. The awful truth is: it’s the other way around---the oligarchs are confiscating the nation’s wealth.

According to G Wiliam Domhoff ( Univ California) in “Wealth Income, and Power, (9-2009 updated 1-2011) “wealth in the US is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands”. That fact probably comes as a shock to most of you (readers). Based on a recent study, most Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion have no idea just how concentrated wealth is in this nation (Demhoff quotes a study by Norton & Ariely, 2010). Who would believe that the top 20% of the population controls more than 90% of the nation’s liquid assets?

First a few definitions. Wealth is defined by Demhoff and other sociologists as what we would call “net worth”, the value of everything a person or family owns, minus its debts. The figures that most economists use to calculate this value are “marketable assets” such as homes, land, commercial properties, stocks and bonds—all those items that are readily convertible into cash, but not cars and household items, which are valuable to people for personal use but difficult to convert into ready cash for investment. Financial wealth is defined as “non-home-wealth” or a person’s or family’s net-worth, minus the family’s “home value” (net worth-minus net-equity in owner–occupied housing). This latter term is a better measure of the “liquid” assets of a person or family which may be available for consumption or investment.

According to Demhoff, net-wealth in the USA is highly concentrated in a few hands. As of 2007, according to figures compiled by the top 1% of households owned nearly 35% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (managerial, professional, and small business owners) held 51%. That means that the top 20% of the nation’s families owned 85% of all the private wealth in the nation, leaving only 15% to be distributed by the bottom 80% (the wage and salary workers)! If we were to examine the financial wealth of these groups the picture becomes even more skewed toward the higher income level, since ownership of a private home is such a large portion of middle class American wealth. Thus in a measure of the financial wealth (net wealth –home value) a better measure of liquid assets--the top 1% of households held 43% of the nation’s financial wealth, the next 19% held 50%, and the workers and salaried people held only 7%. Thus in terms of financial wealth the top 20% of the population holds 93% of all liquid or disposable privately held wealth.

So when you hear the term confiscatory taxes, or of certain classes of people unwilling to pay their fair share--review these figures for a better understanding of what they want. The awful truth is that they want all of the pie!

Get the picture?