Here are the top 5 facts about the 1% of our nation from Yahoo! Finance.
Top 1% owns 40% of the nation’s wealth. 25 years ago, the top 1% owned 33%. The bottom 80% today owns 7%.
Top 1% take home 24% of U.S. income. In 1976, the 1% took home 9%.
Top 1% own half of the country’s stocks, bonds and mutual funds: The bottom 50% of Americans own only 0.5% of these investments.
Top 1% of Americans have only 5% of the U.S. personal debt. The bottom 90% have 73% of total U.S. debt.
Top 1% take in more of U.S. income than at any other time period since the 1920’s.
What are your thoughts on this?
Here’s what Kevin on the comments of the article said:
“It doesn’t bother me so much that 1% are so rich, rather that 50% need to struggle so much. If we as a nation could enable the working class to have a decent standard of living, making life affordable with the income provided from a decent job, I doubt we’d be as concerned with how much the high enders had.”
And on the other end, here’s what Sleeper Doc said:
“No comments on what it takes to be in the top 1%??? In my case…4 years undergraduate school, 3 years graduate school, 4 years medical school, 3 years residency. My parents were not rich….paid for by joining military. At age 57 I still work 55-70 hours per week. I enjoy what I do (anesthesiologist) so I am willing to make the sacrifice. If you didn’t invest as much time or money as I did in making yourself valuable….that may be part of the difference.”
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