I saw an interesting piece on IPTV last night

[Thav]

(Iowa public TV)
http://www.iptv.org/video/detail.cfm/22483/mlnh_20110921_999999_is_economic_inequality_factoring

It was a news piece, and they had a response on a poll they did earlier. They had 3 pie charts showing wealth distribution in the US and asked people to choose which one is right.

One professor (I'm horrible with names, so I don't have it) took issue with their representation of the numbers, saying they didn't factor in two important things into wealth: Medicare and Social Security. The news program covered his opinion on it.

It was quite interesting - if you do factor in Medicare and SS into the "wealth" equation, the bottom 2/5th's show a 17% share of the country's wealth, vs a 0.3% without. While his argument is compelling, it really doesn't affect the bottom line of individuals. I cannot use my social security or medicare "wealth" right now, therefore it's non-existent. It only benefits retirees, and then it depends on if the retirees actually get a benefit from it. A lot of people in long-term care facilities turn over their SS and medicare payments to the facility to cover the cost of living there, so they really don't see much benefit from either - except for the basic food, health care, shelter.

While I was watching this, I was thinking about the attack on medicare and social security. The republicans want to get rid of those programs. If those programs went away, 16.7% of the nations wealth, under the professor's logic, would be displaced. I guarantee you the bottom 40% of the nation wouldn't hold on to it, it'd get shifted up to the upper 0.1%. If those programs went away, the bottom 40% of the nation would have even LESS wealth - as more resources would be taken up in health care.

It was an interesting piece, and really puts another light on the GOP's actions.