1mo ago

How Much Money Every American Would Have If Wealth Were Evenly Distributed In The US, According To Research

www.yourtango.com

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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$471,465. Not only is that more than the average person could even imagine
That's (roughly speaking) owning your own home w/ no mortgage. I can imagine quite a bit more than not paying rent.
- I'd argue if all houses were redistributed to their rightful owners the price of all housing would go down - but that's outside of this thought experiment I guess.
  Remember though that that's ~500k per person. So every kid, every SO, every parent. I think on average it would equate to more than just getting to own your home, even if we ignored the likely change in wealth valuations that would follow.
  
  So every kid, every SO, every parent
  Okay, so, a house in California with no mortgage.
  I'm not saying this would be a bad thing, just that this isn't "more than most people could imagine" kind of wealth. Maybe more than most people will experience in their lifetimes... but imagine?
  Ask any 10-year-old what they'd do with $1M and somewhere between their personal butler, building a rocket ship and bringing dinosaurs back you will find the limits of human imagination quickly outpace the confines of $1M.
- That's very location dependent.
  
  Okay... Your point?
  Say it's a upscale mobile home in Podunk for $100k. That leaves you with $375k. Can you imagine (per the article) other ways to spend your $375k?
  A 2026 Ferrari 896 is $350k. Can you imagine driving a Ferrari every day? Sure it's a dumb way to spend your money, but surely your imagination is capable of considering it.
  You can get a lakefront home in the Ozarks for $325k. Can you imagine vacationing from Podunk to your second home in the Ozarks? Sure it's hot and sticky most of the year, and too cold the remainder, but can you imagine it?
  A horse costs ~$2k/month to care for. Can you imagine having a couple of horses for like 6-7 years then realizing you're out of money and selling them to the glue factory?
  My point is not that anyone needs any of these things, but I hope that "most people" can imagine quite a bit more than simple having $500k per capita.
The author makes solid points as to just exactly how fucked up our wealth distribution is, but smearing it around evenly would be a disaster.
Had this conversation with a friend in the early 90s:
Mike was really upset when he found out that the government burned and shredded worn currency.
"They could just give that to the people!"
"Well, yeah, and it's well within the government's power to give us $1M each. Want them to do that?"
"Hell yeah!"
"OK, you know I have a one-man lawn service and charge $20 a lawn, right? If I had one million dollars, how much do you think I would start charging? Hell, I wouldn't consider anything less than $10,000, if that, because I already have a million dollars."
"Yeah, but you could still get a righteous meal at McDonald's for $20!"
🤦🏻‍♂️
We're not going to get anywhere talking about wealth redistribution because American's interpret that as the undeserving taking their hard earned money. We need to make the wealthy, not the merely rich, our enemies. We need to talk about how they are already taking our hard earned money.
- "OK, you know I have a one-man lawn service and charge $20 a lawn, right? If I had one million dollars, how much do you think I would start charging? Hell, I wouldn't consider anything less than $10,000, if that, because I already have a million dollars."
  Wrong. You would charge nothing because at such an unreasonable rate no one would pay you for lawn service. You would have a lawn service in name only and certainly not a "business".
  
  Except if everyone had that kind of money who is really out the mowing lawns for $40?
- unifying against a common enemy is easy as long as that enemy is easily identified. i propose the top 1% wealth-hoarders the target.
  fun fact: in the US, the top 1% each have $10 million or more. that makes it easy to remember, and easy to point to.
  
  The income at the 1%tile household income in the US is $663,000. That’s upper middle class professional level.
  somebody making that income may certainly have $10 million, it’s not a given, and it is a minuscule fraction of the robber barrons.
  I think this message would be a lot clearer if you said the top 0.1%.
- This is fucking stupid. If everyone had a million dollars to start people would still want their lawns mowed. And other people would still want more than a million dollars. So your neighbours arent going to pay $10000 dollars to not have to mow their lawn but they still would pay 20. Or maybe up to 100. Starting everyone off on an equal footing wouldnt just magically rause the value of everything, theres plenty of small business owners that make a million dollars and they don't just stop working.
  
  People would want their lawns mowed but who would mow it? I mean if my family was suddenly millionaires why would I kill myself in the heat for a few bucks a mow. There might be a big landscaping company that makes millions, but the people pushing the mower don't see that. I think you'd see a mass exit of low level workers which would cripple the economy.
- That's a really bad example of what wealth redistribution actually entails. It's not Robin hood giving the money off the rich to the poor, but rather the govt taxing the rich more, investing that in infrastructure, where Jim Bob can earn a paycheck and use it to buy a house.
  That way people get infrastructure and housing, wist the rich have slightly less money sitting idle on a bank account. That way the money gets invested in the county and for the people and everybody benefits.
  Jim Bob loves his country more as it provided the means for him to buy his home and make some kids, he enjoys the benefits of healthcare, so he in unafraid to go to the doctor, he lives longer so he can see his grandchildren growing up.
- You're gonna love it when you try to loop in the age-old tradition of wage theft to the conversation. It's currently topping the charts in the US for another year, folks! (That's what. Two centuries or something now?) Above on-site theft like shoplifting, etc., and even employee theft — despite what the news tells us. Every minute shorted from your break, every tipped manager, etc.
That wealth has been plundered from around the world. But sure, let's have Americans keep it all...
- you may have confused this for an actual plan. it's just a math equation showing how uneven the wealth distribution is. there's no "letting them keep it all", they already are going to keep it all. it's just that most of it is kept by a handful of the most despicable people in the world.
We likely should eliminate money. The concept seems to lead to issues.
- if you eliminate money, people and small communities will come up with their own money. all it would do is fragment the market, which btw i'm not a-priori against.
- That might need to be one of the last things, though. You need savings to strike.
While it wouldn't last, it would at least help some people. Unfortunately even in controlled experiments money tends to funnel upwards.
- If you take all the wealth in an area and split it evenly among that populace there is no "upwards" - everyone is equal in terms of wealth. Money funnels "upward" because of wealth disparity, if someone owns more wealth than the average person than on average some of the average person's money goes to that wealthier person in the form of rent or interest on debt or profits from the factory or what have you.
  If all wealth was distributed this way it would look like everyone owning their own home and a portion of their place of work and their car, etc etc. I'm not saying money wouldn't pool again over time, or that a new upwards wouldn't be established, but I don't think you phrased it fairly. The way you said it felt to me like an assumed hierarchy of better people and worse people - when in reality it's just wealthy people and not wealthy people.
  
  I feel like equitability needs to factor in, somewhere.
- When water pools, you break up the blockage and then it can flow again
  
  what if it pools in the sea?
This would be much more compelling if it clearly outlined just the portion controlled by the top 1%.
There's no need to mix the rest of us up in this, before the ultra-rich start paying their fair share.
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.
- No they're talking the wealth of the 1%, which is not the infrastructure of the US.
  
  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
- It's in factories, equipment, structures, land, intellectual property, team cohesion, national reserves, loans to foreign countries.
  We know that community ownership of those things causes them to perform better. The idea of the benevolent genius billionaires has been conclusively tested and disproved.
  Every country, even the United States, already have laws that prevent individuals from hoarding those things to prevent competition.
  We stopped enforcing those laws, once individuals had enough money to bribe their way past those laws. The billionaires have also seized control of enough media to convince many average people that what they are doing isn't a crime.
  It's still a crime.
  
  We know that community ownership of those things causes them to perform better.
  Do we? I don't think so.
  Don't get me wrong, I'd definitely prefer community ownership of these things. But I think community ownership going better is very situational.
  The idea of the benevolent genius billionaires
  Meh - I haven't seen any of those around. Certainly wasn't expecting any.
  But neither of those is the point. Saying, if wealth were evenly spread around, everyone would have such and such amount of money is, I think, misleading at best. It sounds like you'd have that much in available money, to spend on yourself. But you wouldn't - or if everyone treated it like that, the economy would collapse, and your wealth with it.
  In a way, I think it actually highlights how 'little' billionaires have! That $400k or so is not really that much, when considering a house, car, children's education, healthcare - and don't say healthcare is provided by the state, because now the state's wealth is evenly distributed to you, so socialised healthcare comes back out of your pocket.
  Take away the "reinvested profits": the factories, the machines, the "stuff we use to make stuff", and distribute only the spending money of America equally amongst Americans, and the median household will grow - by the sounds of things - much less wealth than I might expect!
  That's not to take away from the manifold abuses and theft of the rich at the top of the economic pile against the poor (and the not-so-poor). Nor to say we don't need reform. And again I say, I would prefer the capital and means of production etc to be in community/shared ownership: even if that means new problems. Just that I think this particular claimed metric of shared wealth is misleading.
- It's in factories, equipment, structures, land, intellectual property, team cohesion, national reserves, loans to foreign countries
  That's called 'capital' and 'the means of production'. A guy once wrote a very informative book about that.
  
  Ah, probably another dull, academic book no one read. No real influence on the world. Bottom marks. En' gels find it boring too.
The wealthy hoarding the money makes it more valuable.
Give it to the people and it will lose a lot of value.
This says a lot about economics and how wealthy these people actually are.
- If not using something that is supposedly meant to be used makes it more valuable, then that something's value is made up.
  Hey wait a minute... Is.... Is capitalism just a big scam???
Americans would squander it all within a few years and the collective wealth of the country would collapse within a decade. Half the country voted for Trump.

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