Bombshell Study: America's Wealthy Even More Obscenely Rich Than Anybody Thought

[unhappycamper]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/bombshell-study-americas-wealthy-even-more-obscenely-rich-anybody-thought



Wealth inequality in the U.S. is even more astounding than previous statistics showed.

Bombshell Study: America's Wealthy Even More Obscenely Rich Than Anybody Thought
AlterNet / By Lynn Stuart Parramore
July 16, 2014

Just when you think you've got a handle on how bad wealth inequality is in America's Second Gilded Age, researchers find it's even worse than you imagined.

The European Central Bank has crunched the numbers and it looks like wealth inequality in the U.S. is even more astounding than previous statistics have shown. Of the 10 rich countries the researchers analyzed, America's wealthy have grabbed the largest portion of the country's wealth. The most affluent 1 percent is sitting on between 35 percent and 37 percent of the nation’s wealth, according to a working paper by ECB senior economist Philip Vermeulen. The Federal Reserve figure that has been previously cited had the 1 percent's share at 34 percent. But actually it looks like that's a lowball figure.

Economists studying wealth have been dealing with the fact that when you reach the stratosphere, wealth becomes a sort of dark matter. It's got a huge gravitational pull, but it's very hard to trace. It likes to hide, and slip over borders and between bank accounts in the blink of an eye. Vermeulen calls the billionaires whose wealth manages to evade researchers the "missing rich."

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Vermeulen warns that even what's been revealed so far doesn't give the whole picture. “The results clearly indicate that survey wealth estimates are very likely to underestimate wealth at the top." You heard that right. Even 37 percent is probably not high enough.

[brewens]

1. We have a situation now where things are so stacked in their favor that we effectively pay taxed

to the 1%. Much of what the government spends goes right to them. Look at the CEO of a weapons manufacturer. What does he rake in from us? If he's also heavily invested in the right companies, it's even more ridiculous.