DQYDJ

>I agree, which is why everyone who lives off an income rather than assets (which is ~99.5% of us)

I think you're greatly underestimating how many people can "live off [...] assets". This page shows household net worth by percentile[1]. Based off that, you can probably live off investments starting at around the 90th percentile ($61k annual income with 5% withdraw rate), if you live modestly in a low CoL state. Once you get around the 95th percentile you can probably live comfortably in a high CoL state ($129k/year, translates to 87th percentile in california), and by the time you get to the 99th percentile, you can probably live as well as dual earner households with high paying careers ($555k).

[1] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/

[2] https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-by-state-calculator/

I would strengthen your statement to say that almost everyone can't afford it. Median household income is around $67K in the US, and the median household assets (minus the house) at age 65-69 is $75K. So even if a third of your income is being replaced by social security, a typical household has not even two years of income saved. A 25th percentile household has less than 5 months! Most people save basically nothing, on net. Even 75th percentile households only have 4 years of income. Assuming reasonable investment returns, that's only saving 2.5% on average. Pensions aren't expensive, retirement is expensive! People, even ones who can easily afford it, often won't save.

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles-by-age/

> As far as the second part of your comment, you should get your head out of the clouds and look around at working-class America. Perhaps 20% of retirees own a significant amount of stock, or own a house worth enough to cash out of. The US median home price didn't even cross $250k until 2018. https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

Those "retirees" also do not have enough money to retire. To retire and live off the interest of a theoretical 5% interest savings account for 30 years requires you to already be wealthy. If you're a working-class baby boomer, you may have gotten that from your house when you sold it and moved into a bad neighborhood or an apartment. But that's just about the only way other than Social Security and old pensions that you're going to keep eating.

Humans have a natural desire for fairness, so it is reasonable to want a tax system where the rich (who benefit most from society) pay a similar amount in taxes to the average person, as a proportion of their wealth.

The median family's net worth[0] in the US is about $120k, and the median household federal tax burden[1] is about $10k per year, which equates to an 8.3% annual wealth tax. Unfortunately I don't think anyone is proposing such a tax for billionaires in the US, which just shows how one-sided the Overton window is there.

[0] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

Even if we're talking about wealth and not income, the amount necessary to be in the top 10% wealth is...not that much.

It's about $800,000 in net worth: https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/

This is largely attainable for the majority of Americans when you factor in the value of one's home, retirement accounts, and general lifetime savings. Keep in mind we're not talking about how much net worth the majority of Americans have at any snapshot-in-time, we're talking about the maximum net worth attainable in one's lifetime, and what that looks like for the majority of Americans.

There's absolutely no evidence that the top 10% wealth holders has been a static group of people over the last 60 years.

Net worth calculators[^1] would put this woman at the 88th percentile of wealth in the US. Yes, I think that counts as wealthy.

I obviously think it's mostly absurd if you think a woman who bought 50 years ago in SF has a house worth only 50K. The vast majority of houses in SF that would have cost 50K, 50 years ago. The average home in 1976 was $65K,[^2] and the median home price last year in SF was $1.4M, at effectively the 90th percentile of American net worth. If you don't think top 10% of wealth in America counts as wealthy, then I don't know what to tell you.

[^1]: https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator/

[^2]: https://imgur.com/1976-article-on-housing-prices-sf-bay-area-7NCYct6