What definition of wealth is being used here? If wealth just measures value of assets over debt, then there can be a huge difference in quality of life between two people who both have approximately zero wealth.
My guess is that such a definition is what's being used, and really what's being polled here is understanding of the relationship between income, consumption and wealth (surprising conclusion: most people aren't very good at anything involving math). Of course people in the bottom tiers will have almost no wealth -- they spend their entire income on consumption. People responding to the poll are probably thinking of things more in terms of how resources should be allocated. It would be more interesting to see some measure of consumption among the various tiers.
Quote: “The principal wealth concept used here is marketable wealth (or net worth), which is defined as the current value of all marketable or fungible assets less the current value of debts. Net worth is thus the difference in value between total assets and total liabilities or debt. Total assets are defined as the sum of: (1) the gross value of owner-occupied housing; (2) other real estate owned by the household; (3) cash and demand deposits; (4) time and savings deposits, certificates of deposit, and money market accounts; (5) government bonds, corporate bonds, foreign bonds, and other financial securities; (6) the cash surrender value of life insurance plans; (7) the cash surrender value of pension plans, including IRAs, Keogh, and 401(k) plans; (8) corporate stock and mutual funds; (9) net equity in unincorporated businesses; and (10) equity in trust funds. Total liabilities are the sum of: (1) mortgage debt; (2) consumer debt, including auto loans; and (3) other debt.
This measure reflects wealth as a store of value and therefore a source of potential consumption. I believe that this is the concept that best reflects the level of well-being associated with a family’s holdings. Thus, only assets that can be readily converted to cash (that is, ‘fungible’ ones) are included.”
Please note that this is only the source of the numbers The Atlantic used in their comparison. The Atlantic did the actual poll asking people for how they think the distribution looks.
Thanks. So, it's assets less debt. This is a huge flaw in the study. Even if everyone in the country had exactly the same income and savings rate, you'd still expect a triangle distribution of wealth because of differences in age (graded by years of saving followed by years of retirement on the downward slope). In reality, you have a huge number of people living with a high quality of life with almost no savings (house fully mortgaged, some small equity in their car maybe). Any measurement that counts these people the same as homeless is deeply flawed.
And then we're going to compare that bogus metric with what random people think it might ought to be after a few moments of thought. How many of the respondents do you think asked for a paper and calculator before giving their answer? This whole article is terrible rhetorical slight of hand.
I also use a more restricted concept of wealth, which I call “non-home wealth.” This is
defined as net worth minus net equity in owner-occupied housing (the primary residence only).
Non-home wealth is a more liquid concept than marketable wealth, since one’s home is difficult
to convert into cash in the short term. Moreover, primary homes also serve a consumption
purpose besides acting as a store of value. Non-home wealth thus reflects the resources that may
be immediately available for consumption expenditure or various forms of investments.
There's a substantial and growing body of social science research that indicates that inequality leads to a whole host of social ills--see Wilkinson and Pickett.
There's also an intuited sense that when so very many people (1 in 4 children now!) are underfed, and so very many have no real access to medical care (1 on 6 americans), when education is becoming ever more inaccessible, and when the few institutions that have successfully defended workers from a hardscrabble life of hopeless poverty are virtually destroyed, AND there are a few people who don't really work harder (and certainly NOT billions of times harder!) than the rest of us, but enjoy quirks of market, law, and birth to amass vast wealth, that something might be wrong with the system that allows them to do that.
We're trapped in an economic system that concentrates resources and power, whose foundations we have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to accept that we treat them as immutable laws of nature, rather than inventions to serve us--all of us, not just the ultra-wealthy. Laws of nature, we might be stuck with. Inventions of our own making, we might could improve upon.
Food insecurity != being underfed. Food insecurity is a measure of a person's subjective feelings about food. If an obese person reduces his consumption from 4500 cals/day to 4000 (i.e., from 9 cheeseburgers to 8) due to perceived financial strain, he is "food insecure".
If I cared enough, I'd also dispute your claims about education and health care as well.
It's not hard to check that everyone, rich and poor alike, receive more of each than ever before - more people go to college than ever before, and more people get medical treatments today that didn't even exist 20 years ago.
As for the rest of it, it's just complaints too vague to refute.
Of course, there's also a substantial and growing body of research that indicates that ill-advised attempts to "equalize wealth" also lead to social ills, such as a pile of 100 million or so dead bodies.
Ah, yes, the brutal regimes of modern-day Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and others in Northern Europe!
where people aren't routinely bankrupted by medical debt, and don't enter adult life or the adult workforce straddled by terrible student loan debt, and workers have rights!
Obviously, the sort of inequality we have in the U.S.--now greater than that of imperial Rome--obviously that's the right way to be, and the only way society (or at least a tiny fraction of it) can thrive. Right? That's what you're saying, right?
I must have seen polls like this 5 times in the last year. They don't reveal much except that people are very bad at comparing large numbers with small numbers.
But what assumptions are people making? It's easy to say you want equality of wealth, but life is more complex than that. There are clearly paths in life that can take you down to the lowest low or to the highest high, both from the same starting point. I went to high school with kids who's parent all had similar social status and weath, but our personalities created a wide wealth gap between us.
My guess is that such a definition is what's being used, and really what's being polled here is understanding of the relationship between income, consumption and wealth (surprising conclusion: most people aren't very good at anything involving math). Of course people in the bottom tiers will have almost no wealth -- they spend their entire income on consumption. People responding to the poll are probably thinking of things more in terms of how resources should be allocated. It would be more interesting to see some measure of consumption among the various tiers.