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How Much Money Every American Would Have If Wealth Were Evenly Distributed In The US, According To Research (www.yourtango.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Writing for the outlet, Andrew Lisa explained that Americans hold a combined $160.35 trillion in wealth. To the average person, that sounds like quite the payday, but someone in the top 1% probably wouldn’t see it that way. According to Lisa, “The bottom 50% of the country shares less than 3% of that enormous pie, while the most fortunate 10% gorge on nearly all of it.”

There are approximately 340.11 million people in the U.S. If they all shared that $160.35 trillion, each person would come away with $471,465. Not only is that more than the average person could even imagine, but it only compounds when you consider how it would add up for families. For example, a couple would hold a combined $942,930, and a family of four would have $1.89 million. Because, of course, in an ideal world, wealth would be distributed evenly regardless of age.

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's in factories, equipment, structures, land, intellectual property, team cohesion, national reserves, loans to foreign countries.

We know that community ownership of those things causes them to perform better. The idea of the benevolent genius billionaires has been conclusively tested and disproved.

Every country, even the United States, already have laws that prevent individuals from hoarding those things to prevent competition.

We stopped enforcing those laws, once individuals had enough money to bribe their way past those laws. The billionaires have also seized control of enough media to convince many average people that what they are doing isn't a crime.

It's still a crime.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

We know that community ownership of those things causes them to perform better.

Do we? I don't think so.

Don't get me wrong, I'd definitely prefer community ownership of these things. But I think community ownership going better is very situational.

The idea of the benevolent genius billionaires

Meh - I haven't seen any of those around. Certainly wasn't expecting any.

But neither of those is the point. Saying, if wealth were evenly spread around, everyone would have such and such amount of money is, I think, misleading at best. It sounds like you'd have that much in available money, to spend on yourself. But you wouldn't - or if everyone treated it like that, the economy would collapse, and your wealth with it.

In a way, I think it actually highlights how 'little' billionaires have! That $400k or so is not really that much, when considering a house, car, children's education, healthcare - and don't say healthcare is provided by the state, because now the state's wealth is evenly distributed to you, so socialised healthcare comes back out of your pocket.

Take away the "reinvested profits": the factories, the machines, the "stuff we use to make stuff", and distribute only the spending money of America equally amongst Americans, and the median household will grow - by the sounds of things - much less wealth than I might expect!

That's not to take away from the manifold abuses and theft of the rich at the top of the economic pile against the poor (and the not-so-poor). Nor to say we don't need reform. And again I say, I would prefer the capital and means of production etc to be in community/shared ownership: even if that means new problems. Just that I think this particular claimed metric of shared wealth is misleading.

this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2025

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