AlterNet: 6 Filthy Facts About the Rich

The filthiest fact is that Congress wants to cut the food benefit to hungry Americans, almost half of them children, so that money can keep flowing to the top.

-By Paul Buchheit

August 25, 2013- First of all, who are they? Mostly the 1%. But the top 2-5% have also done quite well, increasing their inflation-adjusted  wealth by 75 percent from 1983 to 2009 while average wealth went down for 80 percent of American households. The rest of the top 20% have been prosperous, realizing a 32 percent gain in inflation-adjusted wealth since 1983. The facts to follow are primarily about the richest 1%, with occasional dips into the groups scrambling to make it to the top.

1. Accumulating almost all the wealth

As evidence of the extremes between the very rich and the rest of us, the average household net worth for the top 1% in  2009 was almost $14 million, while the average household net worth for the bottom 47% was almost ZERO. For nearly half of America, average debt is about the same as average asset ownership.

The extremes are just as filthy at the global level. The  richest 300 persons on earth (about a  third of them in the U.S.) have more money than the poorest 3 billion people. Out of all developed and undeveloped countries with at least a quarter-million adults, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of  wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.

2. Creating their own wealth

In another alarming testament to wealth at the top, the richest 10% own  almost 90 percent of stocks excluding pensions. Consider what that means. The stock market has historically risen  three times faster than the GDP itself. Since the recession, as the U.S. economy has  “recovered,” 62 percent of the gain was due to growth in the stock market, which surged as much in four years as it did during the  “greatest bull market in history” from 1996 to 2000.

Many stock owners see a couple thousand dollars added to their fortunes every time they go online.

But that’s not enough for the very rich. Thanks in good part to the derivatives market, the  world’s wealth has doubled in ten years, from $113 trillion to $223 trillion, and is expected to reach $330 trillion by 2017. The financial industry has figured out how to double or triple its buying power while most of the world has proportionately less.

3. Taking ALL the income gains

If the richest 1% had taken the same percentage of total U.S. income in  2006 as they did in 1980, they would have taken a trillion dollars less out of the economy. Instead they tripled their share of post-tax income. And then they captured  ALL the income gains in the first two years of the post-recession recovery.

FULL STORY HERE: