{"id":1237,"date":"2011-11-19T17:10:55","date_gmt":"2011-11-20T00:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/?p=1237"},"modified":"2011-11-19T17:10:55","modified_gmt":"2011-11-20T00:10:55","slug":"american-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/2011\/11\/american-pie\/","title":{"rendered":"American Pie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I started thinking about this after hearing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/topics\/economy\/commentary\/orourke-if-1-had-less-would-99-be-better\">PJ O&#8217;Rourke<\/a> on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/\">Marketplace<\/a>. This was an essay answering the question about &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketplace.org\/tags\/if-1-percent-had-less-would-99-percent-be-better\">If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We have<a href=\"http:\/\/www2.ucsc.edu\/whorulesamerica\/power\/wealth.html\"> a pie<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/rundown\/2011\/08\/wealth-how-does-the-us-slice-the-pie.html\">that represents<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.enotes.com\/topic\/Wealth_in_the_United_States\">the wealth of America<\/a>. The &#8220;1%&#8221; controls about 38% of that wealth (2011). The &#8220;20%&#8221; (that includes the 1%) controls 88% of the nation&#8217;s wealth.<\/p>\n<p>If we use a net worth of $56T (2011) then 38% = $21.3T\u00a0 and 88% = $49.3T.<\/p>\n<p>Wealth is not zero-sum. In 2007 American wealth was over $65T and the control percentages were 1-2 percentage points lower. So while the overall net worth dropped\u00a0 16% the top &#8220;20%&#8221; lost only\u00a0 -3% of their share of the pie (going from 85% to 88%). I wonder where the rest of the loss came from?<\/p>\n<p>Wealth is not zero-sum. But the pie is. It sums up to 100% whether the net worth is worth $65T or $56T. If the top &#8220;1%&#8221; keeps a lock on $20T and the net worth figures keep falling, their percentage of the pie keeps going up. and the &#8220;99%&#8221; keeps getting squeezed as their percentage goes down.<\/p>\n<p>It isn&#8217;t a matter of declaring wealth is evil or that reward for success is bad. It is a matter of saying that using wealth to promote a playing field that favors your increasing your wealth is bad. Buying the influence to set the field in your favor is bad. Gaming the system with a disregard for intent is bad. (Fraud is fraud, unless you can do enough semantic acrobatics to rob everyone blind, legally.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t disparage the 20% their wealth. No matter how you cut the pie, there will always be a 20%. But 88% of the wealth seems a bit much for 20% of the population.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I started thinking about this after hearing PJ O&#8217;Rourke on Marketplace. This was an essay answering the question about &#8220;If the 1% had less, would the 99% be better off?&#8221; We have a pie that represents the wealth of America. The &#8220;1%&#8221; controls about 38% of that wealth (2011). The &#8220;20%&#8221; (that includes the 1%) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/2011\/11\/american-pie\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">American Pie<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4NpF-jX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1237"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}