I'm so lost in this article. How can the bottom 80% be subsisting off capital gains? And is that table saying they're netting 300+% YoY in capital gains? That number is pretty squarely in the "that can't be right" territory for me?¹
Even if I reinterpret "bottom 80%" as "top 80%" and assume we've somehow inverted everybody because it's the rich that would be spending more than their income, as they'd have significant gains … I'm still lost? Do 80% of Americans have investments? The feeling I get talking to people is that most people don't, outside of a 401k, but they wouldn't be spending from the 401k (unless they were in retirement … but that brings us back to 80%).
¹… except 2018, where they got only 7%? … and yeah, that was a bad year…
Pretty sure it's retirees. They have low income because they are not working. But many of them are very well off. The rich retirees skew the average up even though most of the bottom 80% have little investment income.
Interesting, I just pulled this the other day. Average (mean) bottom-20 household has 18 K in checking deposit assets and 200 K in total assets. even while that quintile’s income caps at $32K. America is a very rich country…
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I'm so lost in this article. How can the bottom 80% be subsisting off capital gains? And is that table saying they're netting 300+% YoY in capital gains? That number is pretty squarely in the "that can't be right" territory for me?¹
Even if I reinterpret "bottom 80%" as "top 80%" and assume we've somehow inverted everybody because it's the rich that would be spending more than their income, as they'd have significant gains … I'm still lost? Do 80% of Americans have investments? The feeling I get talking to people is that most people don't, outside of a 401k, but they wouldn't be spending from the 401k (unless they were in retirement … but that brings us back to 80%).
¹… except 2018, where they got only 7%? … and yeah, that was a bad year…
Pretty sure it's retirees. They have low income because they are not working. But many of them are very well off. The rich retirees skew the average up even though most of the bottom 80% have little investment income.
Interesting, I just pulled this the other day. Average (mean) bottom-20 household has 18 K in checking deposit assets and 200 K in total assets. even while that quintile’s income caps at $32K. America is a very rich country…
Do you remember where you saw that? The Census figures are much lower: $11k total assets at the 25th percentile, $-1.5k at the 10th.
https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
Have fun...!
https://twitter.com/asymptosis/status/1755563199238431211
https://twitter.com/asymptosis/status/1755633196522409995
Might read the title of that table again.