From Mother Jones and PolitiFact....
None of our main global competitors give the ultrarich such a sweet deal.
Ultra-high-net-worth individuals by country, 2011
James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas and Anthony Shomocks, Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook, 2011 The tax plan passed by Senate Democrats on Wednesday isn't really about taxing the rich; it's about taxing the megarich. As Timothy Noah has explained in The New Republic, the plan would actually reduce taxes
on a lot of fairly rich people by renewing the (supposedly temporary)
Bush-era tax cuts for everyone except those who make more than $250,000 a
year. Even then, Democrats are only proposing a higher marginal tax
rate, which means that even people raking in far more than $250,000
will still pay lower taxes on their first quarter million in annual
earnings. Crunch the numbers, and it turns out that the biggest losers
under the Senate plan are couples who earn more than $1 million a year—mostly multimillionaires and billionaires.
While
the Senate tax plan could certainly go further in taxing the rich,
focusing on the megawealthy makes sense considering how much of our
economy is now controlled by them. According to the Internal Revenue
Service, there are 66,000 taxpayers who individually control $20 million
or more in assets, and all these people put together are worth $4
trillion—more than the net worth of the majority of the US population.
The investment bank Credit Suisse, for its part, classifies "ultra high net worth individuals" as people with at least $50 million in assets—and according to the bank's 2011 Global Wealth Databook, more of these UNHWIs live in the United States than anywhere else in the world (see chart above).
So perhaps America has lots of multimillionaires because it's a prosperous country? That's certainly a factor—but not the only one. Compared to the superrich in the six other countries with the most multimillionaires, American tycoons grab a disproportionately large share of the economic pie:
Source: The Paris School of Economics World Top Incomes Database (missing years reflect lack of current data)
Yet despite raking in such a large share of the national income, our
nation's über-wealthy pay very little in taxes by global standards:
Global Finance Magazine, 2009
But don't higher tax rates at the top slow economic growth?
Apparently not, considering the growth rates of our tax-happy
competitors.
CIA World Factbook
So why hasn't Congress already raised taxes on the rich? Perhaps
because the superwealthy have raised a lot more political money than the
rest of us.
The investment bank Credit Suisse, for its part, classifies "ultra high net worth individuals" as people with at least $50 million in assets—and according to the bank's 2011 Global Wealth Databook, more of these UNHWIs live in the United States than anywhere else in the world (see chart above).
So perhaps America has lots of multimillionaires because it's a prosperous country? That's certainly a factor—but not the only one. Compared to the superrich in the six other countries with the most multimillionaires, American tycoons grab a disproportionately large share of the economic pie:
Percent of Income Earned by Top 0.1% of Taxpayers
Source: The Paris School of Economics World Top Incomes Database (missing years reflect lack of current data)Top Income Tax Rates in the 6 Countries With the Most Ultra-High-Net-Worth Citizens
Global Finance Magazine, 2009Change in Gross Domestic Product, 2011
CIA World Factbook- Percent of donations to super-PACs this year that come from just 196 Americans: 80
- Amount the Koch brothers and their foundations plan to spend to defeat Obama: $395 million
- Total money raised by John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign: $384 million
- Number of billionaires who've made donations to Mitt Romney's super-PAC, Restore Our Future: 32
- Percentage of Americans who give more than $10,000 in any election cycle: 0.01
Front page image: Alex E. Proimos/Flickr
"Today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America." 31JUL12
"Today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America."
Bernie Sanders on Sunday, July 22nd, 2012 in a message on TwitterBernie Sanders says Walmart heirs own more wealth than bottom 40 percent of Americans
Share this story:
The Walmart home office in Bentonville, Ark. (AP photo)
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with
Democrats, tweeted a startling statistic to his followers on July 22,
2012: "Today the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the
bottom 40 percent of America."
Sanders speaks and writes frequently about wealth distribution in the U.S., a hot-button issue among liberals and a rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
The Waltons, of course, are members of the proverbial 1 percent. But are they really sitting on that much wealth? We decided to check it out.
First, what is wealth?
In economics, wealth is commonly measured in terms of net worth, and it’s defined as the value of assets minus liabilities. For someone in the middle class, that could encompass the value of their 401(k) or other retirement accounts, bank savings and personal assets such as jewelry or cars, minus what they owe on a home mortgage, credit cards and a car note.
It does not include income -- what people earn in wages. For that reason, someone who earns a good salary but has little savings and owes a lot of money on their house would have a negative net worth.
In fact, because so many Americans invest in real estate to buy a home, middle-class wealth has been one of the biggest casualties of the housing-driven recession.
From 2007 to 2010, typical families lost 39 percent of their wealth, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, done every three years. In 2007, the median family net worth was $126,400. In 2010, it was $77,300, according to the survey.
Where the Waltons fit in
Six members of the Walton family appear on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. Christy Walton, widow of the late John Walton, leads the clan at No. 6 with a net worth of $25.3 billion as of March 2012. She is also the richest woman in the world for the seventh year in a row, according to Forbes. Here are the other five:
No. 9: Jim Walton, $23.7 billion
No. 10: Alice Walton, $23.3 billion
No. 11: S. Robson Walton, oldest son of Sam Walton, $23.1 billion
No. 103: Ann Walton Kroenke, $3.9 billion
No. 139: Nancy Walton Laurie, $3.4 billion
That’s a grand total of $102.7 billion for the whole family.
Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California-Berkeley, compared the Waltons’ cumulative net worth with that of the overall population, as cited in the Survey of Consumer Finances. (She used the Waltons’ wealth from 2010, which was valued at $89.5 billion.)
Allegretto found that in 2007, the wealth held by the six Waltons was equal to that of the bottom 30.5 percent of families in the U.S. In 2010, the Waltons’ share equaled the entire bottom 41.5 percent of families.
That 41.5 percent represents nearly 49 million families, notes Josh Bivens at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. While median family wealth fell by 38.8 percent, Bivens wrote, the wealth of the Walton family members rose from $73.3 billion in 2007 to $89.5 billion in 2010, or about 22 percent growth.
Other analysis
At Forbes, source of the richest 400 list, Tim Worstall wrote a response to the Waltons wealth claim. He did not dispute the accuracy of the statistic but offered some broader perspective.
"Wealth is always more unequally distributed than income," Worstall wrote. "By the way, it isn’t even true that all of those households with zero or negative wealth are what we would call poor, either. It’s entirely possible to have no net assets while having a good income, even a high income. All you need to have is debts higher than your assets: something that will almost certainly be true of anyone with student debt and fresh out of college, for example."
He added: "If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25 percent of Americans."
Bivens, for good measure, calculated the comparison of the Waltons vs. all Americans after removing households with a negative net worth -- those that drag down the overall average and make the Waltons’ advantage look greater. He found that the Walmart heirs’ $89.5 billion "is still equal to the combined net worth of the bottom 33.2 million families (about 28.2 percent of the total)."
Our ruling
Sanders tweeted that "the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America."
The statistic correctly compares the combined net worth of the bottom 41.5 percent of American families with the six Walton family members. We think the additional points -- that many people with a negative net worth are not necessarily poor and that percentages about wealth distribution can be deceiving -- are important and interesting. Nevertheless, Sanders’ claim is solid. We rate it True.
Subjects: Economy
Sources:
RawStory.com, "Sen. Sanders warns of ‘frightening trend’ towards oligarchy," July 17, 2012
Email interview with Michael Briggs, Sanders spokesman, July 24, 2012
Forbes.com, The Forbes 400, updated March 2012
Federal Reserve Bulletin, "Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2007 to 2010: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances," June 2012
Economic Policy Institute, "Inequality, exhibit A: Walmart and the wealth of American families," July 17, 2012
Forbes.com, "Six Waltons Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 30% of Americans," Dec. 14, 2011
Berkeley Blog, "The wrecking ball," July 16, 2012
Written by: Molly Moorhead
Researched by: Molly Moorhead
Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holan
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/31/bernie-s/sanders-says-walmart-heirs-own-more-wealth-bottom-/
Sanders speaks and writes frequently about wealth distribution in the U.S., a hot-button issue among liberals and a rallying cry of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.
The Waltons, of course, are members of the proverbial 1 percent. But are they really sitting on that much wealth? We decided to check it out.
First, what is wealth?
In economics, wealth is commonly measured in terms of net worth, and it’s defined as the value of assets minus liabilities. For someone in the middle class, that could encompass the value of their 401(k) or other retirement accounts, bank savings and personal assets such as jewelry or cars, minus what they owe on a home mortgage, credit cards and a car note.
It does not include income -- what people earn in wages. For that reason, someone who earns a good salary but has little savings and owes a lot of money on their house would have a negative net worth.
In fact, because so many Americans invest in real estate to buy a home, middle-class wealth has been one of the biggest casualties of the housing-driven recession.
From 2007 to 2010, typical families lost 39 percent of their wealth, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, done every three years. In 2007, the median family net worth was $126,400. In 2010, it was $77,300, according to the survey.
Where the Waltons fit in
Six members of the Walton family appear on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans. Christy Walton, widow of the late John Walton, leads the clan at No. 6 with a net worth of $25.3 billion as of March 2012. She is also the richest woman in the world for the seventh year in a row, according to Forbes. Here are the other five:
No. 9: Jim Walton, $23.7 billion
No. 10: Alice Walton, $23.3 billion
No. 11: S. Robson Walton, oldest son of Sam Walton, $23.1 billion
No. 103: Ann Walton Kroenke, $3.9 billion
No. 139: Nancy Walton Laurie, $3.4 billion
That’s a grand total of $102.7 billion for the whole family.
Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at the University of California-Berkeley, compared the Waltons’ cumulative net worth with that of the overall population, as cited in the Survey of Consumer Finances. (She used the Waltons’ wealth from 2010, which was valued at $89.5 billion.)
Allegretto found that in 2007, the wealth held by the six Waltons was equal to that of the bottom 30.5 percent of families in the U.S. In 2010, the Waltons’ share equaled the entire bottom 41.5 percent of families.
That 41.5 percent represents nearly 49 million families, notes Josh Bivens at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. While median family wealth fell by 38.8 percent, Bivens wrote, the wealth of the Walton family members rose from $73.3 billion in 2007 to $89.5 billion in 2010, or about 22 percent growth.
Other analysis
At Forbes, source of the richest 400 list, Tim Worstall wrote a response to the Waltons wealth claim. He did not dispute the accuracy of the statistic but offered some broader perspective.
"Wealth is always more unequally distributed than income," Worstall wrote. "By the way, it isn’t even true that all of those households with zero or negative wealth are what we would call poor, either. It’s entirely possible to have no net assets while having a good income, even a high income. All you need to have is debts higher than your assets: something that will almost certainly be true of anyone with student debt and fresh out of college, for example."
He added: "If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25 percent of Americans."
Bivens, for good measure, calculated the comparison of the Waltons vs. all Americans after removing households with a negative net worth -- those that drag down the overall average and make the Waltons’ advantage look greater. He found that the Walmart heirs’ $89.5 billion "is still equal to the combined net worth of the bottom 33.2 million families (about 28.2 percent of the total)."
Our ruling
Sanders tweeted that "the Walton family of Walmart own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of America."
The statistic correctly compares the combined net worth of the bottom 41.5 percent of American families with the six Walton family members. We think the additional points -- that many people with a negative net worth are not necessarily poor and that percentages about wealth distribution can be deceiving -- are important and interesting. Nevertheless, Sanders’ claim is solid. We rate it True.
About this statement:
Published: Tuesday, July 31st, 2012 at 3:57 p.m.Subjects: Economy
Sources:
RawStory.com, "Sen. Sanders warns of ‘frightening trend’ towards oligarchy," July 17, 2012
Email interview with Michael Briggs, Sanders spokesman, July 24, 2012
Forbes.com, The Forbes 400, updated March 2012
Federal Reserve Bulletin, "Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2007 to 2010: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances," June 2012
Economic Policy Institute, "Inequality, exhibit A: Walmart and the wealth of American families," July 17, 2012
Forbes.com, "Six Waltons Have More Wealth Than the Bottom 30% of Americans," Dec. 14, 2011
Berkeley Blog, "The wrecking ball," July 16, 2012
Written by: Molly Moorhead
Researched by: Molly Moorhead
Edited by: Angie Drobnic Holan
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/31/bernie-s/sanders-says-walmart-heirs-own-more-wealth-bottom-/
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