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185

How Much Money Every American Would Have If Wealth Were Evenly Distributed In The US, According To Research (www.yourtango.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de to c/leftism@lemmy.world

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Writing for the outlet, Andrew Lisa explained that Americans hold a combined $160.35 trillion in wealth. To the average person, that sounds like quite the payday, but someone in the top 1% probably wouldn’t see it that way. According to Lisa, “The bottom 50% of the country shares less than 3% of that enormous pie, while the most fortunate 10% gorge on nearly all of it.”

There are approximately 340.11 million people in the U.S. If they all shared that $160.35 trillion, each person would come away with $471,465. Not only is that more than the average person could even imagine, but it only compounds when you consider how it would add up for families. For example, a couple would hold a combined $942,930, and a family of four would have $1.89 million. Because, of course, in an ideal world, wealth would be distributed evenly regardless of age.

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[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

That misses, if I'm not mistaken, that that wealth is not in available money to use. It's in factories, equipment, structures, land, intellectual property, team cohesion, national reserves, loans to foreign countries.

If wealth were spread around evenly, then the market allowed to operate again, any one person could trade their 'wealth' for spending money and consume food/games/house/etc from it. But if most Americans spent it all as spending money, the country would collapse.

And practical advice: that's (related to) why, if you want to start building wealth for yourself or your children, it's important to put some of your money into 'assets' that are doing something. A new goat for your farm, an improved chainsaw, an educational course, or stocks and shares (which essentially means lending your wealth to someone else to make something with it and they give you back part of the profits). Rather than consuming it all.

Just... Try not to grow it into an empire that exploits the poor and needy for your further benefit.

[–] turtlesareneat@discuss.online 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

No they're talking the wealth of the 1%, which is not the infrastructure of the US.

[–] barkingspiders@infosec.pub 7 points 3 weeks ago

It kind of is though, the wealthy don't keep those trillions of dollars in savings accounts, they keep it in assets, which in some cases are literally factories and warehouses and large machines and in other cases just proxies for those things. It's complicated but not untrue to frame it that way

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