----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad DeLong" <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU>
>
> There's a big difference between the top 1% of households and
the top
> 5% of households.
==============
Agreed; although the cost of job loss for most the folks in those wealth and income brackets are pretty much zilch. Cronyism etc. It's when thats combined with differences in portfolio "management" etc. during business cycles that one sees movement within that bracket no?
>
> Let me enunciate as gospel the rule-of-thumb that Bob Litan and
I
> agreed on: that more than 3 times your current consumption level
> strikes you as absurd and wasteful luxury. The median family
income
> in America today is going to be about $54,000 this year. Taking
a
> rough guess at the progressiveness of the tax code, you would
need an
> income of about $220,000 to get you to the point where, from the
> perspective of the median, you are starting to buy stupid and
> pointless luxuries that nobody really needs... That gets you
down to
> 2% of families in the upper class.
>
>
> Brad DeLong
==================
Ok but what about the workers who need them to by the pointless luxuries in order to pay the rent? Just why should only 5% of any country's population have the cost of job loss be zero? Seems to me to be a massive violation of equality before the law given cumulative causation, inheritance/bequest laws and the State's approach to unearned incomes in an intergenerational context.....
Ian