Market Watch is your typical main stream financial web site. In other words, it is useless. The article, The richest 10% of households now represent 70% of all U.S. Wealth is the usual egalitarian clap trap.
The article starts with the following:
The rich are getting richer. It is a refrain that has certainly been uttered before, and likely will again…
Actually, in the Western world, we are all getting richer. Being poor 50 or 100 years ago is very different than being poor today. The “poor” in this country have cell phones, air conditioners, cars etc.
He continues:
Deutsche Bank’s Torsten Sløk says that the distribution of household wealth in America has become even more disproportionate over the past decade
Wealth is not distributed. It is earned. There was a total of 873 touchdowns in the 2018 NFL season. Patrick Mahomes, the QB for Kansas City Chiefs, has the number one spot with 53 touchdowns. Would you say the distribution of touchdowns last year was disproportionate to Patrick Mahomes in the 2018 NFL season?
People who talk about wealth or income distribution talk as if their is some living organic creature handing out wealth. No such entity exist. Government’s can steal wealth and distribute it to others, but the wealth must first be earned.
He quotes Sløk :
So in some sense the source of higher inequality is Fed policies, which pushed stock prices and home prices higher. But the lack of changes in redistribution by fiscal policy is also playing a role
The critics of the Federal Reserve have been saying this for over a 100 years. Printing money pushes up assets prices. Rich people have assets. Central banks were created by governments. They have nothing to do with the free market or Capitalism. Despite all of this each generation gets wealthier. Capitalism creates more wealth than governments can destroy.
He now pulls out the big guns. A rich man who says capitalism has failed:
Billionaire Ray Dalio said capitalism is no longer working for most Americans, adding that the expanding wealth gap is creating a volatile environment with disturbing parallels to the economic and social upheaval of the 1930s, he said in a blog on LinkedIn last month.
Ray Dalio is your typical clueless billionaire. Capitalism is making us all wealthier. Dalio is having trouble observing the world around him.