Re: [ECON] US wealth, and envy

From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 12 2003 - 10:48:09 MDT

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    More data:
    http://www.policyideas.org/Issues/Social_Economic/Household_Wealth.pdf

    Wealth distribution per family, from US Census data. Nice exponential
    distribution... the bottom 40% averages $1,100 [sic] in net worth, vs. $10m
    for the top 1%, or $61,000 in the middle 20%.

    And so, why do we care? The politics and economics of envy:
    http://www.thismagazine.ca/current_issue/f_6.html

    Worth reading in full. Notes some economics experiments where people are
    willing to burn their own money to destroy someone else's, and pull them down.
    Irrational? They seem to do this more to people with unearned wealth, who'd
    gotten big sums straight from the experimenters as opposed to playing the game
    well. Also claims a trickle-down effect of spending, where if rewards such as
    jobs (or sex) or handed out partly because of style, you may be forced to try
    to match the style of those richer than you

    -xx- Damien X-)



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