Think you’re rich?
If you are like I am, you know that riches aren’t financial.
And you know that many people who THINK that they are financially wealthy are NOT…!
(Which always makes me wonder why they support politicians who support the truly wealthy!)
No self-interest? 
As the result of the bursting of the housing bubble, the gap between the rich and the middle class in America is larger than it has ever been! Analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, found that the richest 1% of U.S. households (by the way, this is the only group [the top 1%] that has made much financial progress at all since 1980) has a net worth 225 times greater than that of the average American in 2009, UP from the previous record of 190 times greater, in 2004. The CNNMoney.com article is entitled, “The rich are much richer than you and me.”
You may recall that the 2008 Index of Silicon Valley reported an increase in higher-end jobs and an increase in lower-end jobs, with a loss of middle-wage jobs, back in the spring of 2008. The authors of the report were concerned that the loss of middle-wage jobs might undercut the basic mechanism of the Silicon Valley economy, by making “upward mobility” more difficult.
I think it has, having worked there.
Now it looks as though the phenomenon occurs in the country as a whole. Not only did the gap between the rich and the middle class become WIDER, it happened even while the average net worth of the wealthy families DROPPED 27% to about $14 million, between 2007 and 2009, the first time that the net worth of this group has decined since the period from 1992 to 1995. The net worth of the AVERAGE American family plunged 41%, to just $62,000, during the same period of 2007 to 2009. A larger percentage of the wealth of middle-income families is in the value of their homes.
What about the poorest American households?
The poorest U.S. households have had a NEGATIVE net worth in every report dating back to 1962. In the last two years, their net worth fell to NEGATIVE $27,000 on average, or nearly twice as much as they owed two years earlier.
The CNNMoney.com article reminds us that:
“Net worth is a measure of a family’s total assets, including real estate, bank balances, stock holdings and retirement funds, minus all of their liabilities, such as mortgages and other consumer debt.”
-Bill at
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