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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

84% of wealth in the stock market is in the hands of the top 10%

Not sure about housing.

I did not believe this to be true, but after researching it turns out that your figure is accurate for 2016 and that it's likely only gotten worse since then.

Page 19 of this document produced by the NBER states that indeed, the wealthiest 10% own 84% of all publicly traded stocks, mutual funds, trusts, or various pension account assets:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24085/w240...

It has many other interesting insights that are worth quickly reading through, for example you mention you are unsure about housing, but that report says the top 10% own 41% of all housing in the U.S.

The other interesting figure is debt, where the top 10% owe 28% of all debt.

Thanks for the link. I’m on mobile and only got a second hand source on my comment below. I totally agree it must be worse now. It would be interesting to see the latest numbers.

67.4% of Americans own a home. You don't need to be in the be in the top 10% to benefit.

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf

That's not exactly what "home ownership rate" means. Home ownership rate is the proportion of occupied homes which are owned by their occupants. If your town has one hundred occupied homes, then 67 of those occupied homes would be owned (or being paid for on mortgagee) by the people living inside.

Adult children living at home, adults living in homes with roommates, people underwater on their mortgage, etc would all count towards a higher home ownership rate.

Rising housing prices help people underwater on their mortgage get above water.

I wouldn’t call ownership a benefit for the 71% of home owners with a mortgage.

> Zillow’s Negative Equity 2012 Q3 data; we find 29% (20.6 million) of homeowners own their home outright

https://www.zillow.com/research/free-and-clear-american-mort...

At least one Nobel prize-winning economist has noted that home ownership is not all that it's made out to be.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-15/the-econo...

Just flip it around, would plummeting housing prices benefit homeowners with a mortgage? No, that's a disaster (see the 2007 housing crash). Borrowing, especially at the extreme low rates, on an appreciating asset is great, paying debt on a depreciating asset is a nightmare.

Flip what around? A mortgage doesn’t give you the benefits of being wealthy. Whether the market is good or bad. Anyway, the point is moot as the parent report shows the top 10% also own 41% of the houses, so the initial argument stands that the wealthy are benefiting the most.

10% of the population is 33 million people. There's a sleight-of-hand going on here where people whine about a tiny number of billionaires and CEOs screwing over the masses and then point to statistics that actual show the average upper middle class household doing very well.

I bet a large fraction of the posters on here who complain about being oppressed by economic inequality are themselves part of the top 10% too (and have benefited greatly from the trend towards more inequality).

Quit down playing the inequality. Let me make the math easier. Of 10 people, one owns 86% of the stock. The other 9 fight for the other 14%. You are trying to justify that and it’s unfortunate. Also, the few billionaires are still very much a problem. However, the top 10% still displays a large inequality, quite the opposite of “doing very well”. And, I’m glad there are 10%’ers who are pro-equality, they aren’t complaining about being oppressed. They are displaying solidarity with the less fortunate and I hope they are showing it by voting for pro equality measures and politicians (an oxy-moron, I know, but there’s a few good ones).

More like one owns 86% of the stock, 4.5 own no stock at all, and the remaining 4.5 fight it out.

45% of Americans do not own a shred of stock at all, including indirectly through mutual funds or retirement accounts [1].

1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...

True, it’s hard to relate to the people defending the status quo in these comments. I think I am usually pretty good at understanding the other side of the argument, but tough for me here.

Much of that stock market wealth is tied up in the retirement accounts of people who are about to retire or are retired. A large portion of it is the elites without a doubt, but much of it is just people who've been contributing to a 401k for the last 50 years. Obviously they should both be in the upper percentages of income/wealth as well as own much of the stock market. They've been contributing for years and years.

Can you provide source for these numbers?

It's always interesting to me when people react like this to an internet comment without sharing any research they did themselves.

To me a forum like this is like when I'd be sitting around in uni wondering aloud about some problem and someone will say "Well, maybe if you use the fact that the functions which invert the sign of the √2 and √3 parts in Q(√2, √3) are automorphisms, then you can see that the group containing them and their composition is just Z2×Z2".

The truth of that part isn't important. It's the fact that it's a good faith hint. It's my job to go find the truth given this mild heuristic.

They're the ones doing me the favour so I have to contribute in order to get more information. In this case, I can attempt to find an error in the proof or to ask clarification. But if I were to ask them to write out a proof then I'm being a fool and I'll get fewer hints from them in future.

I noticed that most people who really know their field don't cite their assertions. It makes sense. So now I'm not surprised when people don't provide a citation. It's just a hint. They didn't sign up to be my tutor.

It's always interesting to me when people react like this to an internet comment without sharing any research they did themselves.

I didn't do any particular research here, because it conflicts with the preexisting knowledge I have about the subject, and because my experience tells me that figures like these, which can be, and especially when they actually are used to further political narrative, are often misleading, and/or wrong. However, I didn't want to accuse the commenter of any bias or misconduct, hence I phrased my question to leave out my skepticism.

The truth of that part isn't important. It's the fact that it's a good faith hint.

You actually hit the spot: you can assume good faith when sitting around in uni and asking people to help you calculate Galois groups. You cannot assume good faith when talking to strangers online on politically charged topics: even if they are themselves operating in good faith, it is highly likely that they were fed, as you call them, "hints", by bad faith actors. Hence, I ask for sources.

I noticed that most people who really know their field don't cite their assertions. It makes sense. So now I'm not surprised when people don't provide a citation.

That's because they can rely on their authority and experience to establish trust, and they have reputation to protect in case their assertions are actually completely wrong. None of this is true when talking to random, anonymous people online.

I was about to comment the same. The parent saying “not just the elites have benefited” is ignorant.

https://money.com/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/

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