myito – I have to remind myself from time to time that the people I associate with are NOT average Americans – looks like you have the same challenge

the inequality between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is growing rapidly in our society – ie, wealth is being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands

this has happened in many societies throughout history – eventually the ‘have nots’ get fed up and take or destroy the wealth of the ‘haves’ (check out the history of the guillotine if you are unclear on this concept)

look at this distribution of wealth in the US (1998 stats from http://www.lcurve.org) (sorry for the dated numbers – concentration of wealth has increased even more in last 10 yrs)

Wealth class Average wealth of class
Top 1% $10,203,700
Next 4% $1,441,200
Next 5% $623,500
Next 10% $344,900
————————-
Next 20% $161,300
————————-
Next 20% $61,000
Next 20% $11,000
Last 20% -$8,900

one conclusion that could be drawn from these numbers is that the bottom 60% (and probably 80%) of our society will NEVER be able to retire without a handout from the government

myito, you and your associates represent less than 5% of the American population so be careful what you assume about the other 95%

~

check out the L-Curve chart at the top of the page on the link above – make sure that you zoom all the way in and all the way out