Talk:Wealth in the United States

message: The statements in this section must certainly be false in 2011, so that this section should either be amended or explicitly disclaimed.
Dstlascaux (talk) 18:29, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Wealth Inequality and Class

message: If you are interested in contributing to this article, here are some free information sources:
*Top Wealth Shares in the United States, 1916-2000, Columbia.edu This comment was left by JHP.
:Thank you. Signaturebrendel 06:43, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggested sources

message: Why is a huge graphic on income included in this article? Should it be removed? -THB 08:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's there becuase people may include income in their definition of wealth. While doing so is technically incorrect it seems to be very common for people to fuse income and wealth. SignaturebrendelNow under review! 08:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Graphic

message: I just wanted to stop by and say Analoguni and BrendelSignature and others have done an excellent job on this article thus far, the text, the graphs are all very informative, thank you both and all. panth0r (talk) 20:54, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Nice Article

message: I flagged this statement as being a possible POV statement because it advocates a specific point of view on two contested issues: the definition of a healthy economy and the necessity of closing the gap between rich and poor to the defined state of health. The article that was cited did not significantly treat either of those questions, so I planted a flag. Svend la Rose (talk) 14:50, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: "This gap must be closed in order to ensure a healthy economy."

message: To be a complete picture of wealth in the U.S., shouldn't this article include the net worth of all non-private assets.  After all, we all benefit from public facilities, infrastructure, etc... that we don't own.  I've not been able to find any information on this.  Considering that federal and states' liabilities (debt) would deduct from this, maybe it's negative.  However, there must be enormous value in all of the government-owned property, highways, ports, buildings, and so on.  Anyway, it would be interesting to know how this compares to privately-held wealth and what the trend is.  Wmjohn6217 (talk) 04:36, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Net worth of public assets?

message: Are there any wealth distribution statistics that are more recent than 2004? johnpseudo 12:50, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: STILL Out of Date

message: Ferdinand Lundberg said in "The Rich and the Super-Rich" "Nobody, first of all, would be rich if he had not been favored by circumstances. Favoring general circumstances in the United States have been: a naturally rich virgin continent, an enlarging widely skilled population, a basic law designed to facilitate private property under earlier purely agrarian-mercantile circumstances, an expanding technology that took multiplied advantages of agrarian-mercantile law and a plethora of PURCHASABLE officials!! ... Had Henry Ford been a Swiss, operating under Swiss law, he could never, no matter how shrewd, have developed the Ford Motor Company... Had Rockefeller been a citizen of England, France, Russia, or China, functioning in any of those countries, he could never, by whatever hook, crook, or cleverness, have developed the Standard Oil Company...If the rich are entitled to their fortunes,as apologists say, one cannot go on to argue equal cleverness in their heirs! ... In the United States it is now quite common for heirs (sometimes quite stupid) to come into estates, largely UNTAXED, that make the inherited dukedoms  decried by eighteenth-century republicans and democrats seem microscopic.  No grand duchy ever came near the proportions of many American corporations and banks.  The United States is the most exaggerated case of plutocracy in all history, eclipsing all others COMBINED!"  How about adding that here?   Stars4change (talk) 22:40, 12 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: They always got RICH by good LUCK (or illegally)

message: It would be interesting to update the article taking in changes since the burst bubbles of real estate and the stock markets in 2008.
As mentioned in the original article, the wealth of the top quartile is comprised of real estate and securities (and collectibles), which lost significant market value over the last couple of years, likely erasing a considerable amount of the reported recent rise.
Thus, many of the assets of the wealthy are very volatible, nearly imaginary, and not real unless realized, only potential purchasing power.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmconoley (talk • contribs) 02:22, 17 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Phantom Wealth

message: This sentence..."In addition, wealth is unequally distributed with the wealthiest 25% of US households owning 87% ($54.2 trillion, in 2009)[2]  of the wealth in the United States[3][4].
It makes it sound like 87% of the wealth is equal to 54.2 trillion, but in reality 54.2 trillion is the total nation's total. The mistaken reading is all over the web.
It should read...In addition, wealth is unequally distributed with the wealthiest 25% of US households owning 87% of the wealth in the United States[3][4]($54.2 trillion, in 2009)[2]
I would have corrected it myself, but I was afraid I would mess something up.
Hope someone who can correct it reads this. Thanks in advance.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bill N Ellis (talk • contribs) 00:14, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Misleading construction of a key sentence needs correction.

message: *  Report: Extreme US Poverty Surges Since 1990s  November 03, 2011 VOA News
* http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/1103_poverty_kneebone_nadeau_berube.aspx The Re-Emergence of Concentrated Poverty: Metropolitan Trends in the 2000s
Concentrated Poverty, Opportunity and Well-being, Cities, U.S. Poverty METROPOLITAN OPPORTUNITY SERIES, Number 26  Elizabeth Kneebone, Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Policy Program (Brookings.edu)
* The Expansion of Chicagoland and Midwestern Poverty posted Nov 3, 2011 at 02:52 PM by Whet Moser Chicago (magazine)
99.109.125.146 (talk) 23:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Brookings Institute]] resources 

message: Apart from looking like it's been slapped together from two op-eds from opposing points of view, we don't mention basic demographic changes like the increase in single-parent households which has driven much of the increased difference between household and per capita economic measures outside the high end of the upper class. Nevard (talk) 00:40, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is pretty poor 

message: The figure showing total household wealth 1.  is not adjusted for inflation and 2. is not on a logarithmic scale, which makes earlier years virtually unreadable.    A log figure with points for nominal and inflation adjusted dollars (with the method used for inflation adjustment specified) is needed.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.171.75.108 (talk) 04:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  First figure is problematic 

message: I appreciate the difficulty of finding decent statistics, but the ones in the article and on the charts are 5+ years out of date . . . plus you have to remind yourself that the data used in the 2007 statistics is a year or so out of date by the time it is transformed a "statistic". So what is here is 6-7 years out of date. Ick. What's written here is no longer a reliable "snapshot" of wealth in the US in late 2012. Steer clear of this article. BillWvbailey (talk)
: 2007 is definitely very stale, especially considering the recession started in ~2008.  However, there is now data available at least for 2010, so we should really re-work these graphs. A lot has changed!
: -SColombo (talk) 14:08, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amen to the out-of-date tag stuck on the article 

message: Hey, I'm sure the Richistan book is good, but is putting only that as further reading really kosher with the rules for promoting books? I vote that we add some more relevant books or delete this one.
Crasshopper (talk) 18:12, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Richistan 

message: There is a "Wealth Distribution" section in the 2-4-8 Tax Blend article with an updated table and analysis. EugenePatrickDevany 15:44, 20 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Wealth Distribution

message: The US median family income is very different from what most people think. Here is some information for the article:
http://middleclasspoliticaleconomist.blogspot.com/2012/07/us-trails-at-least-15-oecd-countries-in.html
Pipo.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.203.72 (talk) 14:06, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  US family wealth 

message: Is the estimated $118 trillion "total wealth of the United States" the amount of privately held wealth, or does it also cover government holdings (i.e., state and federal buildings, parks and lands, military bases and equipment)? bd2412 T 16:03, 5 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is "total wealth of the United States" the privately held figure? 

message: Citation #2,
"'Americans' net worth up for 3rd straight quarter'. U.S. Federal Reserve. 2010-03-11. Retrieved 2010-03-11"
used to cite the information in this line,
", wealth is unevenly distributed, with the wealthiest 25% of US households owning 87%"
is from a figure in citation #3,
"'Growing Wealth, Inequality, and Housing in the United States.' Zhu Xiao Di. Feb. 2007. Joint Center for Housing Studies."
There are many sources for the "dead link" of number 2 on the internet, including the Wayback Archive.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.37.24.220 (talk) 17:47, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  citations are messed up 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100313080143/http://news.yahoo.com:80/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_net_worth to http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100311/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/us_net_worth
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Maybe this should be merged with Affluence in the United States? Benjamin (talk) 03:15, 19 November 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes this should be merged Affluence in the United States, because this article discuss only one aspect and other article discuss several. Raymond3023 (talk) 05:41, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

text: *I agree with your proposition. A lot of the information on this page is redundant with the information presented in Affluence in the United States. Wealth and affluence are roughly the same, so there is no reason to have two separate topics.--Frosticious (talk) 03:00, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:  Klbrain (talk) 09:01, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  merged 

message: This article is so hopelessly out-of-date that its title has become inappropriate. One table has been updated to 2013, but nearly all the charts only go up to 2007. It's now 2018.
If it can't be updated, it should be either merged into some article with "history" in the title, or eliminated completely.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:8A0:F91B:E101:94DF:F9AB:70C8:DA24 (talk) 08:50, 30 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update or eliminate