{"id":577,"date":"2010-10-07T16:25:19","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T20:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=577"},"modified":"2010-10-07T16:26:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-07T20:26:36","slug":"worthlessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2010\/10\/07\/worthlessness\/","title":{"rendered":"Worthlessness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I think about my financial well-being, I tend to think of income. My\u00a0two-income, two-person household\u00a0falls well above the American median of about $50,000. So I can&#8217;t complain (though I often do). But Harvard Professor<a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/templates\/story\/story.php?storyId=130395070\"> Michael Norton, talking this morning to Steve Innskeep<\/a> on <em>Morning Edition<\/em>, paints a different picture of wealth&#8211;looking at the distribution of financial assets&#8211;net worth. Looked at in this light, 20% of Americans have 85% of the wealth, the next 40% share 15% of the wealth, and the bottom 40% net out out at zip&#8211;nada&#8211;owning nothing on the plus side of the ledger but their lives.<\/p>\n<p>Given my mortgage and other indebtedness, I may have a small piece of the 15%, or I may own nothing free and clear except my skin&#8211;hard to tell without doing more accounting than I am accustomed to doing. Most people don&#8217;t know, and most don&#8217;t want to know.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0According to Norton, when asked how much they <em>think<\/em> the top 20% owns, people guess way too low. When asked what they think the top 20% <em>should<\/em> own, they say around 35 percent. This answer\u00a0is very similar, whether the respondent is rich or poor,\u00a0and regardless of political affiliation. The\u00a0country that is\u00a0closest to this wealth distribution\u00a0is Sweden, but even in Sweden wealth is much more unequally distributed\u00a0than Americans say they\u00a0would prefer.<\/p>\n<p>You would think that this level of\u00a0cross-class, bipartisan consensus\u00a0would have\u00a0some impact on the economic debate raging in these election-year politics. However, that opinion appears to have a net worth of zero.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I think about my financial well-being, I tend to think of income. My\u00a0two-income, two-person [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}