2w ago

The fact that there isn't a revolution happening in the US right now is crazy

The tweet (and sources for the graph)

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The reason there isn't a revolution in the USA is mostly down to atomization. Suburban growth directly leads to insular communities with no sense of responsibility to the rest of their brothers and sisters. Working class families in the burbs have functionally 0 ability to organize.
To add that on, I like to underscore the gravity of the situation here with details:
The top 10% of earners starts at ~170k/yr
The top 1% start at ~820k/yr
The top 0.1% start at ~3,300k/yr (3.3 million)
If Elon Musk had 100% of his net worth in really basic bonds giving 5%/yr he'd be pulling in 22 BILLION dollars per year, forever.
The interest on his earnings alone is equivalent to 130,000 workers at the start of the top 10%. That's the entire workforce of American Airlines for comparison.
If the average person was paid like the 0.1% for 1 year they could retire and live off 65k/yr forever.
This chart is broken down by quintiles but it illustrates the disparity well imo.
Half of the wealth of the top 20% here (excluding top 1%) is in businesses or real estate they own. Most of that will be their own house and a small business, though ~~leeches~~ "landlords" mostly fall in this category too.
For the top 1% that's more like 20% of their net worth.
- No dude you mixed some numbers up - 5%/yr of 440 billion is 22 BILLION dollars per year.
  Unless you meant he could put 0.1% of his wealth (440 mil) to pull 22 million a year.
  In fact, he could put less than half of his total net worth, 200 bil, into a basic savings account returning 0.5% a year and live off of a billion dollars a year, which is equivalent to the median income of 16,666 others.
  
  While you were writing this comment I was updating my original comment because I messed up! Correct: 22 BILLION.
  
  Market 10 year average is 11%. 400B at 11% for 30 years left of his life. That's not 1 trillion dollars, not 2... Not 3... It's over 9 trillion.
  His money if allowed to be passed down and kept in the market, would make more than 1T dollars a year at that point.
  
  Yeah but his net worth is tied mostly in specific stocks.
  And beyond that broad market withdrawal rates mean you can really only safely pull about 4% without eating into the nest egg.
  But yeah it's all true - he's on track to a trillion before he dies.
  
  He doesn't really need to sell though does he. Like imagine if ceo's came out to trade and give public announcements beforehand to build trust. For instance an Apple Executive trading directly with Musk equal valued shares and telling the populous it is a good thing as these executives are showing that they believe strongly in these other companies. Next thing you know he's got his investments varied across every field, and should maintain a portfolio matching the market average whether one field struggles for a bit or not. It "looks" like they are all showing faith in each other's future gains, but in reality is is diversifying their portfolio to ensure no large setbacks
- What’s interesting is that this doesn’t even tell the whole picture.
  Because those people earning $170k/year? More than likely their net worth is negative. They owe more than they’re making, and even at that income rate and excluding long term debt, they have just enough in savings to last three months max.
  
  Yeah and those are national statistics.
  You don't hit the top 10% in New York state until you break 330k
  
  Most people that are making that kind of money are pretty smart. They have multiple investment strategies, multiple places that they store their money, and typically have some sort of easily accessible nest egg (like a mutual fund or crypto). I guarantee about 3/4 of them have enough to last AT LEAST 6-8 months without a job before things started getting a little tight.
  If your living within your means and making that kind of money, you don't really have to worry about losing a job or things breaking down, or other big issues (short of medical emergencies).
  
  That must really depend on where you live, because I know a LOT of people making that kind of money who aren’t living extravagantly, but are definitely not living within their means.
  They could be, with proper money management and a decent budget, but they generally aren’t. The type of income in that zone often tends to come with jobs that require physical presence in an area that’s really expensive to live, with expensive childcare and a need to have it; often people also own a mortgage and a car lease and eat their lunches at restaurants as part of the social networking needed to maintain employment relationships.
- Neighborhood politics, social gatherings, community hotspots has massively declined in the last two generations,
  It’s really hard to organize anything face to face?
  
  It is and while I don't think that was Eisenhower's 5d chess play it is more or less directly from cold war era policies that encouraged Americans to live anywhere besides a city.
  
  Yet if you keep the comparison until present times, you can only acknowledge the fact that the French once again rioted very violently and for months back in 2018-20. The "yellow vests" were mostly lower-income workers from far away suburbs and villages. Facebook let them organize and have a real impact on national politics and policy.
  
  It was also a significant amount of right wing agitprop opposing any reduction to fossil fuel usage...
  
  Yep, I wonder what would happen in the US if gas was suddenly taxed 50% up (much more than the yellow vests case, but it is a thought exercise)
- Are you sure it's not 220 mil or 22 billion a year
  
  Whoops it's 22 billion not million.
- The internet is also a big reason. Why put effort into fighting back when you can just removed about it on social media?
- Not sure where you're getting your income percentiles from.
  This site shows that 90th percentile (top 10%) household starts at $230k and 99th percentile (top 1%) starts at $631k.
  For individuals the same site shows that the 10% starts at $150k and the 1% starts at $430k.
  
  https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/
  Because holy shit does "dqydj.com" look sketchy as fuck. The fact you clicked on a URL called that has me worried for your safety.
  Like skipping through a minefield
  
  Ok, I see where your source went wrong. Par for the course for Investopedia, which tends to get a lot of little details wrong (and sometimes misses the mark on the applicable scope of data that someone else has reported). But they've cited the Economic Policy Institute study of 2021 incomes, which looks at the average (mean) earnings within that group, rather than the actual amount that represents the boundary of that group. So it's not that it takes $3.1 million to be in the top 0.1%, it's that all the people of the top 1% average out to $3.1 million per year. Which, for the type of power distribution for household or individual incomes, is skewed heavily by the people who have the highest amounts.
  And looking at the mean within that group can be fine, for certain purposes, but they've gone with the incorrect headline of saying "how much income puts you in the top 10%, 5%, 1%, 0.1%?" So it's a headline that is wrong, that reports on a different number within the data.
  And your own comment, saying that reaching each percentile "starts at" the reported number, is also wrong.
  Because holy shit does "dqydj.com" look sketchy as fuck.
  It just stands for "don't quit your day job" and I've found that it's a reliable resource for statistical data that's widely available (like the ASEC numbers published by the Census Bureau and left to other people to actual turn into data visualization). It's up to date, and the data matches the summary report on the Census website, so what's the problem? The summary only reports the 90th and 95th percentiles, though, so I needed to find someone who actually reported on the thresholds for 99 (and not the averages within the top 1%).
  
  TIL - Thanks for the context on dqydj.com
  Cause that would've been a straight "report spam" if I got an email from them.

104 comments