Share of total Wealth gain from 1983>2009

NYC RE depends on this sort of disparity so don't expect tons of responses.

Is that considered Socialism if you want to balance things out a little more?

Once wonders, then, why the Top 5% pays 80% of all income tax. They own 85% of everything.

PS: Did I mention that's called "Trickle Down"?

What *should* the distribution be? Please provide the details of the formulas/criteria you will use to come up with the *correct* wealth distribution percentage.

The Top 1% should have 99% of the wealth. This because it fosters social stability.

Sarcasm aside, social stability for an extended amount of time have been possible in history with a variety of distribution mix.

1. the romans maintained social stability for quite a long time. i, for one, would not elect to live under that type of stability.
2. the thought that the top 1% have somehow earned their way to 85% of the spoils is dubious.
3. if too many people can't make a decent living, what happens next?

next???
add in increasing food prices, fuel prices, bad weather...

soylent green is made of people!!!

"social stability for an extended amount of time have been possible in history with a variety of distribution mix."

Yup. Roman Empire. It lasted oodles of time.

this is always how it ends...I mean the big ending.
the ever increasing disparity between rich and poor.
The big diff is that now the scale is going global.
The middle class has changed forever.
Consider the lifestyle of the avarage Levit home owner in 1960 to the average lifestyle in China, USSR, etc.
The Levit guy look like he was living large in comparison.
The scales are rebalancing and the easy life of middle American is gone.

the good news is that none of us will be here to witness the end.
It just takes longer than you think...just like the re market.

You know what irks me the most? People in the top bands that bitch about how they are barely putting a decent life together, how they need their special tax breaks, etc. Disgusting IMO. "Leave the mortgage interest tax deduction alone for us middle-class folks barely making it, just tax the rich." No motherfucker, you are the rich. The top 10% make $115K or more, the top 5% make $160K or more, the top 1% make $400K or more. Get some friggin' perspective, think about the other 90% or 95% or 99% and how whiny you sound.

You think the top 10% or 5% or 1% should pay less taxes, fine, just say it. But let's stop pretending you're not well-off just because you're living in a modestly-sized studio/1BR/2BR that you thought was a good idea to buy at bubble-fueled prices when plenty of other options existed.

cc, I totally agree. My initial question was to see if anyone has any good ideas for a fair distribution percentage and perhaps a sustainable way of achieving it. The government, through tax and regulations is the only way to make a dent, but the government is corrupt with regards to such things for the simple reason of conflict of interest. Both major parties are owned by the rich. Tax increases on the rich happens only because some of the rich recognize the need to throw the poor a bone once in awhile, but the tax increases are offset in the future through other tax breaks or GW style tax cuts. Such cycles are broken only through a revolution, and then the cyle repeats again.

inonada, I agree with your general message, but because of cost of living adjustments, do you really believe people in the city making $115K is *rich*?

What 's annoying is indeed paying too much taxes. 15 percent flat tax for everybody seems fair to me. Not more. The rich, thru ownership benefit from relentless, compounding inflation, whereas the poor/employees/ tenants have to run faster and faster just to stay in place.
That's the system: raising taxes never changed that distribution.

"...Such cycles are broken only through a revolution..."
I think you're onto something...

I'm not against raising tax on the rich or tax credits for the poor, but these are temporary solutions where the effect generally wears off sooner than one would expect. We need to put the money from the tax increases into programs that increase social mobility. As someone who greatly benefitted from the public school system and paid back the city/state and country many times over through taxes and indirect service, I am for additional funding for scholarships linked to commitment of servicce at public schools, hospitals, etc... I would support increased pay for *quality* teachers, more *teach the teacher* programs, and better school facilities.

I would support reduced Medicare/Medicaid coverage for expensive procedures and anything that basically just prolong the inevitable, but I would support better basic/preventive coverage for a wider population.

I support energy policies that would allow the US military to get out of the middle east. We can spend the money on alternative energy (solar/wind/wave/nuclear) and fund technology advancements to better process coal (US) and oilsands (Canada) to reduce polution / emissions.

OMG. I changed my mind! I'm in the top 1%....

Liberals spew lots of myths to support their power-grabbing policies, such as that Keynesianism works, the rich don't pay their fair share, etc. This is just another one.

From Steven Conover:

Conventional wisdom says that the middle class hasn’t caught a break for at least a decade and that incomes have stagnated or declined. But new research corrects a misconception regarding middle-class income, and therefore should come as a pleasant surprise—not just to members of the middle class, but also to pundits, journalists, and of course, politicians. . . .

In the seven years from 2001-2007 (inclusive), not only did the middle class get at least its fair share of overall income growth, the income gap between the rich and the middle class actually got smaller. In an apparent paradox, the same Census Bureau database that told us that median household income was essentially unchanged in 2007 versus 2000 also tells us that the middle class enjoyed a higher income growth rate than did either the overall economy or the rich—and therefore that their income gap versus the rich had actually decreased.

http://www.american.com/archive/2011/september/middle-class

>soylent green is made of people!!!

Yes, and solar panels cost the United States $500+ million, thanks to a loan from Obama.

But we all need green, right?

>1. the romans maintained social stability for quite a long time. i, for one, would not elect to live under that type of stability.

Please, you are too picky. You went to an apartment that had a window in the shower and freaked out about it and posted about it on streeteasy. I don't think you are anyone's view of reasonable.

"inonada, I agree with your general message, but because of cost of living adjustments, do you really believe people in the city making $115K is *rich*?"

The median HH income in the US is $50K. In NYC, it's $48.5K, pretty the same. Assuming the same rough demographic distribution, a HH income of $115K puts you at roughly the 10th percentile of your own city. Does making 2.4x the median of your peers make you "rich"? Depends on your definition of "rich", I guess. But trust me, to that guy/gal earning $30K, you are rich. And you see hundreds of them every day in the city.

People take for granted the "stupid" choices their wealth affords them, like paying $3000 in rent or $750K to buy a little 1BR apt when you can do the same a few miles away for a third the price.

i don't think there need to be higher taxes. i think there needs to be a better system of auditing the government and and streamlining their spending. i don't there is any need to actually privatize any major government programs and institutions. the cost difference is in the responsible accounting. the tax revenue in the us is astronomical, there is no need to RAISE any more money. the change that needs to happen is in the way it's spent.

Sunday, here's a fun exercise. This website has nice data on income distribution in the US. NYC looks very similar, I'd guess. Getting the numbers to add up to the same total income, tell me what target income distribution you'd like to see.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html

"People take for granted the "stupid" choices their wealth affords them, like paying $3000 in rent or $750K to buy a little 1BR apt when you can do the same a few miles away for a third the price."

agreed. people who complain about being "only" middle class in manhattan but don't move to secure the lifestyle they feel is appropriate for their family are annoying. people who complain about anything and don't actually act to change their situation are annoying, period.

Interesting fact. Suppose total income were the same and we capped income at $115K, where the 10th percentile currently sits, and distributed the rest equally. People below $115K would be boosted by around $15K. The 12% or so "rich" people at $115K would make about double the median of $65K.

inonada, $115K is certainly *comfortable* and obviously better than $50K. However, surely you know that someone making $115K is not *netting* 2.4x the one making the median after taking into account fed tax rates/credits and various program eligibility. Again, I agree with your message, just disagree with your definition of *rich*.

Saying someone making $115K in Manhattan is just as rich as someone making $115K in Raleigh just doesn't make sense to me.

A couple who makes $250K today and bought a 2b apt for $400K in the late 90's is rich.
A couple who make $250K today and bought a similar apt in the same building for $1.2M 10 years later is not rich!
This real estate bubble has consumed so much people's income that it has left them without enough $ left to preserve the comfortable lifestyle that their income should have granted them.
Inonada is right! The middle class people making over $250K who are complaining are the suckers who bought at inflated price and are now left without any saving because most of their income goes to pay the mortgage, school debt, public schools for the kids & other credit card debts.

It's tough to get by on $115K in Beverly Hills too, I'm sure. Probably entire swaths that are unaffordable to you. But so what? There is always some richer. People need to get over it, especially when 9 out of 10 of their peers living in the same city are poorer.

Where would you draw the line? When 99 out of 100 people are poorer. That's $400K.

"People take for granted the "stupid" choices their wealth affords them, like paying $3000 in rent or $750K to buy a little 1BR apt when you can do the same a few miles away for a third the price."

The rent would not be $3000 and the 1BR would not be at $750K, if the renter/buyers with less wealth were not making the same "stupid" choices of paying $2700 in rent or $675K to buy a little 1BR for something a few miles away...

inonada: "Where would you draw the line? When 99 out of 100 people are poorer. That's $400K."

I would not argue about $400K.

sledgehammer, very good points in your last post.

Wealth is not defined by income. Not at all. But by assets. Now there is a very strong correlation between the two but they are different.
It is a given that real estate owners( even having bought at the peak) will be far wealthier in time than renters. Business owners will be far wealthier in time than their employees....etc.
Accumulating assets brings wealth. Burning income does not. The difference between the 2 groups only gets wider with time no matter the tax system. The wealth distribution in Norway ( very high income tax) is the same as hong kong ( flat tax).
I sense a profound hatred/ jealousy towards " the rich" in the answers. But a rich society ( like the US) is a far better place to live than a poor egalitarian one ( like Cuba, or Turkmenistan). New York city a better place than Detroit....etc
Don't eat the rich. You need them.

"It is a given that real estate owners( even having bought at the peak) will be far wealthier in time than renters."

Except for those who end up defaulting or renters who buys later at a lower price.

"Business owners will be far wealthier in time than their employees..."

Except for the countless business owners who end up going bankrupt.

>agreed. people who complain about being "only" middle class in manhattan but don't move to secure the lifestyle they feel is appropriate for their family are annoying. people who complain about anything and don't actually act to change their situation are annoying, period.

Oh, so horribly annoying. So annoying I'm going to shoot myself. But I'll do it outside, or my wife will be so annoyed with the mess.

Kudos to Evan Neely and his brilliant comment on the NY time article below:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/us/politics/republicans-call-obamas-tax-plan-class-warfare.html

"...Why is it that the Republicans think a "class war" can only be declared from below? As many people have noted, since (at least) the Reagan administration, there have been attempts legally to control the distribution of income so that it goes mainly to upper income brackets, despite economic "growth." Maybe it's not class warfare in any strict sense of the term "warfare," but it looks a lot like people with economic leverage are using their powers to ensure the increase of that the money that enables that leverage..."

"Oh, so horribly annoying. So annoying I'm going to shoot myself. But I'll do it outside, or my wife will be so annoyed with the mess."

you can always leave a really nice note appologizing for the mess of your life and maybe some money to pay for cleaners to come and do a thorough cleaning. reeeally get in the cracks and get those bits of skull and brain out of the carpet. i'm sure after the initial shock and burst of anger at seeing your blood and guts all over her furniture and once the cleaners finish their job and leave, she will feel much better about her situation. all the furnityre will look good as new, you won't even be able to tell that a few short hours ago all that stuff was covered in chuncks of your offensive bodily tissue.

This is amazing! People making >250k in the US need to be THANKFUL for their BLESSINGS of wealth they earned from the system of America and working class. Show some REAL PATRIOTISM and GIVE BACK to help support millions of Americans less fortunate than them!