Today I want to spend a few moments examining that mysterious cabal, the so-called “1%” who supposedly control 42% of all the wealth in the USA.
1% of the population of the USA is about 3,000,000 people. So, the “1%” is not some small, conspiratorial group of cigar-smoking robber barons sitting around a table at the Knickerbocker Club plotting the economic enslavement of the other 99%. It’s a whole bunch of people all over the country.
Now let’s look at some other numbers:
1. According to the annual World Wealth Report from Merill Lynch and Capgemini, in 2010 the USA had 3.1 million people with a net worth of $1,000,000 or more.
That means the “1%” is basically everybody who has $1 million or more in net worth.
2. After the top 1%, the next 19%, or about 57,000,000 of our fellow citizens – none of whom are millionaires – control the next 43% of all the wealth in the USA.
3. The Occupy Movement and other Socialist groups like to talk about how “unfair” the current distribution of wealth is in the USA. Their definition of “unfair” seems to be that they’re not in the 1%, and that “fairness” would be redistributing the 1-percenters’ money to THEM.
Simply put, redistribution of wealth = Socialism. And, as Margaret Thatcher (former Prime Minister of England, doh) put it, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples’ money.”
