On Oct 24, 2011, at 9:38 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> There really isn't much data on wealth. With income, you've got things like the PSID or, if you work for the Treasury, tax returns. No one really has any idea on wealth. I read a bunch of papers when I was researching Wall Street and the consensus seemed to be that 50-75% of wealth "dispersion" is the result of inheritances and the appreciation of inheritances. I imagine they dissipate over time. Look at all those old WASP fortunes created when Morgan bought the family steel company. Poor dears have to work for a living now, even if they do go to St Paul's.
Fair enough, although I suspect there's an important cleavage between the existence and the availability of "data." *Somebody* knows, or could know if they thought it mattered to maintaining their dominance, but we're not yet organised enough to make that compelling for them.
I happen to be related, by marriage, to the 1% (probably even to the 0.1%, but who's counting?) and my sense is that the dissipation is only partial, and functionally-structurally unimportant. In the one case that I know personally, 2 of 4 progeny significantly dissipated their inheritance through exorbitant (obscene, really) lifestyles, but are definitely still in the 1%. The third only has to work in order to top up the trust-fund dividends, and lives with more anxiety as a result than I would wish on anybody (except him). The fourth will never need to work, has Oprah on speed-dial, and makes more in a month off rent and investments than I could make in a good year at my very respectable USG-approved consulting rates. My conclusion: since 25% is still a helluva lot more than 1%, wealth is more sticky than not - although we may never know how much so, until we expropriate the paperwork and analyse it.
A tactically crucial anecdote from Paul Foot's fantastic lectures on the Peasants Revolt (podcasts of which are available for download on line): They didn't go for the gold; they went for the paperwork.
Occupy the data!
PS: Google images of "Newport Rhode Island mansions" if you want to see where we should eventually host radically democratic permaculture summer camps for our emancipated, revolutionary offspring. ;-)