Net worth of U.S. households skyrockets

[waste gate]

What can one say? US citizens are better off than they were before.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070308/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/fed_household_finances_1

[SUBMAN1]

What can one say? US citizens are better off than they were before.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070308/ap_on_bi_go_ec_fi/fed_household_finances_1
Yep, you might say that. I don't follow the debt trend though. I carry only one CC with debt that I don't plan to ever pay off if I can help it. Its at 1% interest percent from Amex. That is free money in my book. Leaving your money in the bank can make your more money than paying it! Just have to play the game is all and they probably hate me over it since they cancelled the card.

How it works is this - they send you little checks in the mail, and you can transfer other accoutn balances to it at only 1% interest - so you go get the stuff you want, charge it to one card, and then pay it off with those checks via balance transfer. The fine print on it is this though - if you use that particular AMex card, you get locked into 12.99% on that purchase, and all payments towards the card go to the 1% checks only - not the high interest 12.99 and you must pay off your 1% stuff before you can pay off the 12.99% part - this is supposed to make AMex rich this way. So, to win, you just never use the Amex card! You carry what is pretty much a free debt, never get locked into the 12.99 part by using the card, and Amex will get ticked at you and close your card due to inactivity!!! Win win for you!

Sorry about the rant, but I like sticking it to the CC companies instead of them doing it to me. CC's are evil though. Don't ever keep a balance on them unless you like to be poor - unless you run across something like I do above.

-S

[Bort]

What can one say? US citizens are better off than they were before.

Umm, I'm not sure how this one statistic makes that argument, at least from a political angle, but OK. :roll:

[waste gate]

What can one say? US citizens are better off than they were before.

Umm, I'm not sure how this one statistic makes that argument, at least from a political angle, but OK. :roll:

No politics involved. A news report, nothing more, nothing less.

[Skybird]

In statistics, a mean value alone is worth nothing. The question is not so much how much wealth there is if all is added together. The question is how it is distributed. Googling this, I found many statistics basing on data from 1983, 2001 and 2004. I just link to two of them.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

And this one I also give, I found the data it expresses and presents so clearly, being mirrored by more "academical" sites as well (or better said: the clear graphics in this linik mirrors their data).

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

Let's also mention that the majority of circulating dollars are outside the US, that the US is world record holder in national deficits, and that if China would decide to get rid of it'S dollar reserves this would be a doomsday scenario for the US as a global economical and financial actor. What we have seen two weeks ago was a very, very minor warning signal.

The increasing spreading between the rich and the poor is no exclusive US phenomenon. It is happening in Europe in general and Germany in special as well. On the global scale, some weeks ago the following formula circulated through world medias: the globe's top 1% of population owns more than 50% of the golobe's wealth. Whereas roughly the lower half (50%) of global population owns only 1% of the global wealth. This trend is increasing in contrast worldwide. Hardly a sign for a well-functioning system.

[Subnuts]

Would some of that "skyrocketing" come my way? K, thanks! :roll:

[bradclark1]

Would some of that "skyrocketing" come my way? K, thanks! :roll:
It's skyrocketing everywhere but Connecticut.

[waste gate]

Would some of that "skyrocketing" come my way? K, thanks! :roll:
It's skyrocketing everywhere but Connecticut.

Check Fairfield county.

[waste gate]

In statistics, a mean value alone is worth nothing. The question is not so much how much wealth there is if all is added together. The question is how it is distributed. Googling this, I found many statistics basing on data from 1983, 2001 and 2004. I just link to two of them.

http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

And this one I also give, I found the data it expresses and presents so clearly, being mirrored by more "academical" sites as well (or better said: the clear graphics in this linik mirrors their data).

http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so11/stratification/income&wealth.htm

Let's also mention that the majority of circulating dollars are outside the US, that the US is world record holder in national deficits, and that if China would decide to get rid of it'S dollar reserves this would be a doomsday scenario for the US as a global economical and financial actor. What we have seen two weeks ago was a very, very minor warning signal.

The increasing spreading between the rich and the poor is no exclusive US phenomenon. It is happening in Europe in general and Germany in special as well. On the global scale, some weeks ago the following formula circulated through world medias: the globe's top 1% of population owns more than 50% of the golobe's wealth. Whereas roughly the lower half (50%) of global population owns only 1% of the global wealth. This trend is increasing in contrast worldwide. Hardly a sign for a well-functioning system.

If this was a 'fair and equitable' world your argument may have some value. If someone told you that it was a 'fair and equitable' world you were lied to. Redistribution of wealth is a recipe for disaster and I think you know it. There have always been the very wealthy and the very poor. Punishing people for working hard in their field is not 'fair and equitable'.

Over all the report indicates that US citizens are better off financially than they have been in the past. The fringes will always exist.

[Skybird]

How comfortable. How easy.

[waste gate]

How comfortable. How easy.

The truth always has a simplicity to it.

[Skybird]

... but not every simplicity is true.

[waste gate]

... but not every simplicity is true.

In this instance it is.

[XabbaRus]

we have the 0% for 12 months so you can just keep switching the balance over each year to a new card. I don't have too mcuh CC debt but this helps as I don't have to worry that the debt is getting bigger. Will be paid off soon though.

[waste gate]

I have 0% credit card debt, 0% car payment debt, I have title to my Audi, My only debt is my mortgage. As all you home owners know all the interest is tax deductable. I haven't always lived within my means, I was young once, and wanted gov't and special interests to take care of me.

As I grew older and my eyes were opened I saw that hoping for the intervention of the gov't was not desirable, it wants too much in return, and I took responsibility for myself. Yes, it takes some work and delving into the details but since its my life, I was willing to do the work.

[Tchocky]

A large reason for this is gains on stocks. As we all know the Dow etc have been doing rather well in the last year. Unfortunately, a lot of this gain is from static wages increasing profits, so its not as rosy as the figures make out. Still, it's good news, although prone to ouliers as Skybird pointed out. Increasingly, economic growth in developed countries is localised at the top end, accelerating the gap between rich and poor. it's a tough nut to crack.

[Skybird]

... but not every simplicity is true.

In this instance it is.
The reality in your country prooves you wrong, somehow. It is no truth, but selective perception, I think. Not that I want to see my criticism being undestood as valid for the US exclusively. It is by tendency true for Europe and Germany as well. But I find your explanations why it all is okay basing on too much simplifying, and also a very unjust attitude towards many, many people who are sitting on the loosing side of it all. I heared it so often that it is being said by those living in prosperity and with a safe job, that those that do not get a job or are poor must accept responsebility for that alone. Maybe I had more contacts to people who prooves this mean self-righteous hard-heartedness wrong so that I know it better, than you, I don'T know. But so damn often those bastards that are living like parasites from wellfare and would not help themselves, although there may be chances opening to them, are the excuse for consevatoive hardloiners to say that all poor and wellfare-dependant people are like that. And this is simply not true. I was confronted with the tough, and often very desperate reality of those sitting on the looser's side of life. And that was heart-braking, often, for many of them try bitterly hard, but do not get a chance, and even accept themselves getting exploited in their weakness and that others make maxiumum financial use of their vulnerability and the circumstance that they cannot defend.

Leave behind those that are lazy to help themselves although they could, and think the community is responsible to pay for them, okay. But don'T dare to declare this kind of people the majority. That is nothing else than character assassination (Rufmord), and displays an extreme level of cynism and hard-heartedness.

And sinc ethis seem to be an argument here, I have no debts, too, and do not live beyond that level that I can afford by my own ressources available to me. But what does this proove? that all could live like I do? I had a whiole damn lot of luck in my life. and I know too many peoppe who had to try much much harder than I had to - and nevertheless lost ground under their feet, without their mistake. The old saying "everybody is the creator of his own fortune" may be motivating to foster a creative attitude - but in no way it describes a reality that is valid for everybody. Not even for a majority. For most people, it remains to be a myth, forever. And for everybody who makes it from dish-washer to millionaire, there are maybe a hundred who do not even try, and a thousand who try as hard as they can and even beyond braking point - and don't get a chance to make progress or see any fair reward. They may work in four jobs per week, and 16, sometimes 18 hours a day, for a cynically low wage (always take care of that inflation!) that leaves them in need to take up debts nevertheless. And then they are told " try harder", "you got what you deserve", "get a school course"...? That is mean, and cynical. The misery goes as far that the crash of the parent's lifes also already cripple the chances of their offsprings, it limits their intellectual developement, emotio9nal developement , it creates behavioral symptoms, all tbhis lowers their chances even more, even deseases and decreasing life expectancy is a factor. Poverty makes sick both body and soul.

On dollar notes there is this remark "In God we trust". When did God say "Though shall let down thy next and turn your heart into a stone to throw at him?" Maybe capitalism and religion or ohilosophy does not go too well together. Has christian America forgottent hat Jesus said "You cannot serve both God and Mammon at the same time?"

Serious. There is so much moral being displayed from the so-called "right". It often seems to me that it is not much different to that kind of "Christian" moral that did not think bad of wearing white sheets and hunting blacks in the swamps and was so proud of itself being "Christian". Back then it were the blacks that were let down. Today it is the poor that are let down.

And no, all this has nothing to do with nanny-state or socialism. Nothing.

[waste gate]

... but not every simplicity is true.

In this instance it is.
The reality in your country prooves you wrong, somehow. It is no truth, but selective perception, I think. Not that I want to see my criticism being undestood as valid for the US exclusively. It is by tendency true for Europe and Germany as well. But I find your explanations why it all is okay basing on too much simplifying, and also a very unjust attitude towards many, many people who are sitting on the loosing side of it all. I heared it so often that it is being said by those living in prosperity and with a safe job, that those that do not get a job or are poor must accept responsebility for that alone. Maybe I had more contacts to people who prooves this mean self-righteous hard-heartedness wrong so that I know it better, than you, I don'T know. But so damn often those bastards that are living like parasites from wellfare and would not help themselves, although there may be chances opening to them, are the excuse for consevatoive hardloiners to say that all poor and wellfare-dependant people are like that. And this is simply not true. I was confronted with the tough, and often very desperate reality of those sitting on the looser's side of life. And that was heart-braking, often, for many of them try bitterly hard, but do not get a chance, and even accept themselves getting exploited in their weakness and that others make maxiumum financial use of their vulnerability and the circumstance that they cannot defend.

Leave behind those that are lazy to help themselves although they could, and think the community is responsible to pay for them, okay. But don'T dare to declare this kind of people the majority. That is nothing else than character assassination (Rufmord), and displays an extreme level of cynism and hard-heartedness.

And sinc ethis seem to be an argument here, I have no debts, too, and do not live beyond that level that I can afford by my own ressources available to me. But what does this proove? that all could live like I do? I had a whiole damn lot of luck in my life. and I know too many peoppe who had to try much much harder than I had to - and nevertheless lost ground under their feet, without their mistake. The old saying "everybody is the creator of his own fortune" may be motivating to foster a creative attitude - but in no way it describes a reality that is valid for everybody. Not even for a majority. For most people, it remains to be a myth, forever. And for everybody who makes it from dish-washer to millionaire, there are maybe a hundred who do not even try, and a thousand who try as hard as they can and even beyond braking point - and don't get a chance to make progress or see any fair reward. They may work in four jobs per week, and 16, sometimes 18 hours a day, for a cynically low wage (always take care of that inflation!) that leaves them in need to take up debts nevertheless. And then they are told " try harder", "you got what you deserve", "get a school course"...? That is mean, and cynical. The misery goes as far that the crash of the parent's lifes also already cripple the chances of their offsprings, it limits their intellectual developement, emotio9nal developement , it creates behavioral symptoms, all tbhis lowers their chances even more, even deseases and decreasing life expectancy is a factor. Poverty makes sick both body and soul.

On dollar notes there is this remark "In God we trust". When did God say "Though shall let down thy next and turn your heart into a stone to throw at him?" Maybe capitalism and religion or ohilosophy does not go too well together. Has christian America forgottent hat Jesus said "You cannot serve both God and Mammon at the same time?"

Serious. There is so much moral being displayed from the so-called "right". It often seems to me that it is not much different to that kind of "Christian" moral that did not think bad of wearing white sheets and hunting blacks in the swamps and was so proud of itself being "Christian". Back then it were the blacks that were let down. Today it is the poor that are let down.

And no, all this has nothing to do with nanny-state or socialism. Nothing.


Its going to take me some time to work through this Skybird. If I don't get back to you quickly don't take it as an insult or agreement.

I want to be sure I understand before I respond. That language vs. meaning thing.

[IRONxMortlock]

... but not every simplicity is true.
In this instance it is. The reality in your country prooves you wrong, somehow. It is no truth, but selective perception, I think. Not that I want to see my criticism being undestood as valid for the US exclusively. It is by tendency true for Europe and Germany as well. But I find your explanations why it all is okay basing on too much simplifying, and also a very unjust attitude towards many, many people who are sitting on the loosing side of it all. I heared it so often that it is being said by those living in prosperity and with a safe job, that those that do not get a job or are poor must accept responsebility for that alone. Maybe I had more contacts to people who prooves this mean self-righteous hard-heartedness wrong so that I know it better, than you, I don'T know. But so damn often those bastards that are living like parasites from wellfare and would not help themselves, although there may be chances opening to them, are the excuse for consevatoive hardloiners to say that all poor and wellfare-dependant people are like that. And this is simply not true. I was confronted with the tough, and often very desperate reality of those sitting on the looser's side of life. And that was heart-braking, often, for many of them try bitterly hard, but do not get a chance, and even accept themselves getting exploited in their weakness and that others make maxiumum financial use of their vulnerability and the circumstance that they cannot defend.

Leave behind those that are lazy to help themselves although they could, and think the community is responsible to pay for them, okay. But don'T dare to declare this kind of people the majority. That is nothing else than character assassination (Rufmord), and displays an extreme level of cynism and hard-heartedness.

And sinc ethis seem to be an argument here, I have no debts, too, and do not live beyond that level that I can afford by my own ressources available to me. But what does this proove? that all could live like I do? I had a whiole damn lot of luck in my life. and I know too many peoppe who had to try much much harder than I had to - and nevertheless lost ground under their feet, without their mistake. The old saying "everybody is the creator of his own fortune" may be motivating to foster a creative attitude - but in no way it describes a reality that is valid for everybody. Not even for a majority. For most people, it remains to be a myth, forever. And for everybody who makes it from dish-washer to millionaire, there are maybe a hundred who do not even try, and a thousand who try as hard as they can and even beyond braking point - and don't get a chance to make progress or see any fair reward. They may work in four jobs per week, and 16, sometimes 18 hours a day, for a cynically low wage (always take care of that inflation!) that leaves them in need to take up debts nevertheless. And then they are told " try harder", "you got what you deserve", "get a school course"...? That is mean, and cynical. The misery goes as far that the crash of the parent's lifes also already cripple the chances of their offsprings, it limits their intellectual developement, emotio9nal developement , it creates behavioral symptoms, all tbhis lowers their chances even more, even deseases and decreasing life expectancy is a factor. Poverty makes sick both body and soul.
:yep:
Very, very well said!

I was once of the same mind as many "conservatives". i.e. that you deserve what you get. You work hard, you will be successful. etc. etc. However I have had the privilege to spend the last seven years living and travelling in Asia and the realities of life here have forced me to completely alter my perspective.

I've seen the rich countries, I've seen the poor. The poor countries are of course the most shocking but its not poverty itself that is sickening. It is the inequality. When you visit a large, air-conditioned shopping mall packed with well to do people buying the latest Calvin Klien shirts etc. while literally just outside (and I mean on the other side of the complex walls) live a thousand people without access to water, medicine and in many cases food, you see that something just isn't right. These people work HARD! They will do almost anything to get the money they need but they still can't get out. The vast bulk of them work harder and longer than any of their shopping mall bound countrymen could even comprehend but they remain poor. Their only mistake was to be born into such a situation. Things are not quite so dire in wealthier countries (i.e. US, Uk etc.) but the same situation still applies for many poor people.

I challenge any "conservative" to travel (I will qualify this - no five star hotels. Let's give a generous budget of $1000/mth for expenses) in Africa or Asia for three months or more and still maintain a "work hard = millionaire; you're poor = you didn't work hard enough" attitude when they return to their country.
________
Colorado medical marijuana (http://colorado.dispensaries.org/)

[Skybird]

:yep:
Very, very well said!

I was once of the same mind as many "conservatives". i.e. that you deserve what you get. You work hard, you will be successful. etc. etc. However I have had the privilege to spend the last seven years living and travelling in Asia and the realities of life here have forced me to completely alter my perspective.

Ha! From your past comments over the past days I could have sworn that you have seen some part of the world! You often showed a wider perspective in what you said so far. Travelling is a desirable tool of education, and learning. It was not seven years, only close to one and a half year for me, in the ME area, mainly Iran and Turkey.

Haven't noticed you before, but since I did I already understood that your postings are worth to be red. Hope you stay with us.

[IRONxMortlock]

Ha! From your past comments over the past days I could have sworn that you have seen some part of the world! You often showed a wider perspective in what you said so far. Travelling is a desirable tool of education, and learning. It was not seven years, only close to one and a half year for me, in the ME area, mainly Iran and Turkey.

Haven't noticed you before, but since I did I already understood that your postings are worth to be red. Hope you stay with us.

The "worth to be red" part was a pun right?;)

Call me an elitist but I think travelling beyond one's boarders and cultural comfort zone is an intellectual must for anyone who claims to understand "the way things are".:p

I spend most of my time in the SH3 forums but I'll be sure to drop by from time to time. I'm leaving Japan permanently in two weeks though so I might drop off the grid for a month or two until I get settled again.
________
AngelSexx01 (http://www.girlcamfriend.com/cam/AngelSexx01/)

[Wim Libaers]

Ha! From your past comments over the past days I could have sworn that you have seen some part of the world! You often showed a wider perspective in what you said so far. Travelling is a desirable tool of education, and learning. It was not seven years, only close to one and a half year for me, in the ME area, mainly Iran and Turkey.

Haven't noticed you before, but since I did I already understood that your postings are worth to be red. Hope you stay with us.
The "worth to be red" part was a pun right?;)

Call me an elitist but I think travelling beyond one's boarders and cultural comfort zone is an intellectual must for anyone who claims to understand "the way things are".:p


Like the "travelling beyond one's boarders" part? ;)