Talk:Wealth inequality in the United States

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The following was written by an individual who was concerned that the writer or writers of the article "Wealth inequality in the United States" might harbor some bias in favor of redressing such inequality. This commentator does not dispute the facts presented, but appears to dislike the original author(s) semantical choices. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.127.228.83 (talk) 03:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

NPOV Dispute

I came to this article wanting to get the facts on the loaded "Wealth Inequality" term I've heard from a lot of left-leaning sources. Here's the specific article that sent me searching, which cites a chart from "The Nation", described in its wp article as the "flagship of the left":

[[1]]

"Wealth inequality" is a loaded term by itself, since it suggests that "wealth equality" would be the norm. I don't object to the existence of the phrase, or an article about it, but given that the phrase is frequently used in a political context, the article should make the political undertones explicit.

Statements like "The lack of savings removes the poor any opportunity to accumulate wealth and better their conditions" are clearly untrue, since no poor person could ever become wealthy if they had no opportunities at all. They reflect the "this is unfair" undertone that permeates the article.

Mathematical statements like "Currently, the richest 1% hold about 38% of all privately held wealth in the United States.[2] while the bottom 90% held 73% of all debt.[10]", even if true, must be presented with care. The implication in such a statement is to wonder why the richest 1% don't hold 1% of the wealth, which is a mathematical impossibility. Even small standard deviations in wealth (that is, mostly flat income distributions) leave the top 1% of a distribution with significantly more than 1%.

This article is phrased neutrally, but its selection of terms and facts supports a political position without ever acknowledging the controversy inherent in the issue.Lunkwill (talk) 18:55, 12 April 2010

A section about the political implications of weath distribution in the United States would be helpful, I agree. The specific statement that you cite above has since been removed--I suggest we remove the NPOV tag.Sylvain1972 (talk) 14:57, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

This is a typical tactic of non-neutral parties, to invoke the power of statistics and thus some sort of scientific fact. The mere presence of percentages and mathematical relationships can lend incredibly biased statements a veneer of objectivity which many readers accept without conscious consideration of the merits of either the statement or the statistics presented. Most major media sources employ this tactic, sometimes without even realizing it themselves.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.80.152.98 (talk) 00:42, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps a bit loaded, to the extent that left-leaning pundits have adopted the term, but that doesn't automatically qualify the page for a NPOV violation. The phrase exists, and users are entitled to find out what it means. I propose making it explicit: state that the phrase has political connotations, and that people who favor a more uniform distribution of wealth regard it as a social problem. It's hard to avoid NPOV issues when the topic is, itself, a point of view (editing the page on "libertarianism" must be a ton of fun.) Statements of theories or conclusions should be prefaced with "Advocates of more uniform wealth distribution contend that ..." 68.173.53.167 (talk) 10:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Crime

Could you add some info about the connection between wealth inequality and crime? One good example is Lyle and Erik Menendez who killed their parents to get their inheritance. Can you add a link under "See also" for them? Stars4change (talk) 02:39, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Politics

many dimensions are missing from this article - wealth is also tied to lower tax rates on wealth and political influence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.16.3.247 (talk) 23:04, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Culture

I would love to see some discussion of class mobility. Some are born into the bottom quintile, but end up in the top quintile. My uncle says "Poor people have poor ways." By that he means that people who grow up poor, have life habits that increase the probability that they stay poor. A. Luxury vices (cigarettes and alcohol) B. False investments (The Lottery, and gambling in general Dashro (talk) 14:53, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Bible says "false balance"

I'd love to see you add that the Bible says in Proverbs 11:1 that "A false balance is abomination..." which means a false balance of anything in our lives, but especially wealth and work among all humans. Probably because if all people were "rich" that would help us all progress faster in all ways, like finding cures to diseases because every person would have the ability to share their experiments worldwide on the Internet until the pieces of the puzzle come together to equal a cure, etc. Stars4change (talk) 17:36, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

In its simplest form wealth is dependent on income minus expenses over time. There needs to be some discussion of consumption here, as expenses greatly influence wealth. Suissecam (talk) 17:54, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Gender

I've been looking for somewhere that shows the difference (inequality?) in wealth between genders. Perhaps this isn't the right page, though the title (other than the political usage to which it gets used) might imply that such data belongs here. However, I don't see it anywhere on Wikipedia. 84.93.173.54 (talk) 01:43, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Effect of wealth inequality

There is a section on the causes of inequality, but not on the effects. This would be valuable information.72.187.99.79 (talk) 17:22, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

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potential resource "What US progressives can learn from British efforts to fight inequality."

Why Greater Equality Strengthens Society; What US progressives can learn from British efforts to fight inequality. by Sam Pizzigati December 6, 2011. This article appeared in the December 26, 2011 edition of The Nation, for example on page 11 Sustainability.

99.190.85.17 (talk) 06:00, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

potential resource

A Proud, Angry Poor by Frances Fox Piven December 14, 2011. This article appeared in the January 2, 2012 edition of The Nation. 99.181.153.29 (talk) 03:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

potential resources

• The 2010 United States Census shows 1 in 2 people are classified as low-income or poor. (Associated Press) (NPR) (CBS News)

from Portal:Current events/2011 December 15 99.181.153.29 (talk) 03:53, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

potential resources

From Talk:We are the 99% and Talk:Occupy Wall Street/Archive 24#potential resource The 99%, the 1%, and Class Struggle ...

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2011/1111toc.html in Dollars and Sense by Alejandro Reuss ...

A few people, on the other hand, get much of their income not from work but from ownership of property—profits from a business, dividends from stock, interest income from bonds, rents on land or structures, and so on. People with large property incomes may also draw large salaries or bonuses, especially from managerial jobs. Executive pay, though treated in official government statistics as labor income, derives from control over business firms and really should be counted as property income.

Between 1979 and 2007, the income share of the top 1% of U.S. households (by income rank) more than doubled, to over 17% of total U.S. income. Meanwhile, the income share of the bottom 80% dropped from 57% to 48% of total income. “We are the 99%,” the rallying cry of the #OccupyWallStreet movement, does a good job at calling attention to the dramatic increase of incomes for those at the very top—and the stagnation of incomes for the majority.

Within article capitalist, bank profits, executive compensation, Collective bargaining, Performance-related pay, Bankers' bonuses,

SOURCES:

• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Real Hourly Compensation, Private Business Sector, Series ID number: PRS84006153;
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Output Per Hour, Private Business Sector, Series ID number: PRS84006093;
• Congressional Budget Office, Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007 (October 2011);
• James Heintz, “Unpacking the U.S. Labor Share,” Capitalism on Trial: A Conference in Honor of Thomas A. Weisskopf, Political Economy Research Institute, University of Massachusetts-Amherst (September 2011).

99.181.153.29 (talk) 03:57, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Foreign Affairs resources

• Why the Rich Are Getting Richer by Robert C. Lieberman January/February 2011
• The Broken Contract; Inequality and American Decline by George Packer November/December 2011
• How Inequality Damages Economies; Research Proves That a More Equal World Would Be More Stable by Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry January 6, 2012

99.181.133.138 (talk) 23:31, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Vanity Fair resource

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% "Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret. by Joseph E. Stiglitz May 2011, "In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. "

99.181.131.215 (talk) 23:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

PBS resource

Financial gains over the last decade in the United States have been mostly made at the "tippy-top" of the economic food chain as more people fall out of the middle class. The top 20 percent of Americans now holds 84 percent of U.S. wealth, as Paul Solman found out as part of a Making Sen$e series on economic inequality. summary of Land of the Free, Home of the Poor airdate Aug. 16, 2011 with Transcript of Judy Woodruff, Warren Buffett, Jeffrey Brown, Dan Ariely, David A. Moss, Richard B. Freeman, and various citizens.

99.181.131.215 (talk) 23:21, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

Resource

Potential resource, including page 1 (of 3) internal links, from Talk:We are the 99% ...

• Among the Wealthiest One Percent, Many Variations by Shaila Dewan and Robert Gebeloff published NYT January 14, 2012 (frontpage of 15th).
  • http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html?ref=business What Percent Are You?
  • http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/newsgraphics/2012/0115-one-percent-occupations/index.html?ref=business The Top 1 Percent: What Jobs Do They Have? January 15, 2012 by Jeremy White, Robert Gebeloff, Ford Fessenden and Shan Carter; Source: IPUMS
  • http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?DocID=2972
  • http://www.cbo.gov/publications/collections/tax/2010/pre-tax_income_shares.pdf
  • http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/r/recession_and_depression/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier
  • http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/social_security_us/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier
  • http://www.russellsage.org/blog/r-mascarenhas/wealthiest-1-percent-and-common-good
  • http://www.scribd.com/doc/75022549/Wealthy-Americans-Philanthropy-and-the-Common-Good
  • http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/standard_poors_caseshiller_home_price_index/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier
  • http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf

Excerpt (compared with Income inequality in the United States, wealth inequality much higher), ...

The cutoff for the 1 percent varies depending on how income is calculated. On the low end, an analysis of census data puts the cutoff at $380,000 for a household and provides a wealth of demographic characteristics that were used in this article. On the high end, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which uses a broader measure of income that includes capital gains, yielded a cutoff of $690,000 in 2007, the most recent year of data available. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan group, makes projections based on Internal Revenue Service data and adjusts for people who do not file taxes. It puts the cutoff at $530,000 per tax return in 2011. Even by that gauge, though, $380,000 would still put a family well above the 95th percentile. There is little current data that would allow a measurement of the 1 percent by wealth.

• • http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/scf_2007.htm

99.181.142.231 (talk) 04:40, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Resource

• The New American Divide "The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why."; excerpt ...

  For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway. "The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. "On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day." Americans love to see themselves this way. But there's a problem: It's not true anymore, and it has been progressively less true since the 1960s. People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality. ...

See Occupy movement in the United States

"Mr. Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute with a book, "Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010" (Crown Forum) to be published on Jan. 31." 99.181.144.253 (talk) 01:20, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Resource from We are the 99%; CBO (Congressional Budget Office) info

A chart showing the disparity in income distribution in the United States. Wealth inequality and income inequality have been central concerns among OWS protesters. CBO data shows that in 1980, the top 1% earned 9.1% of all income, while in 2006 they earned 18.8% of all income.