> The wealthiest 1 percent of American households own 40 percent of the country's wealth, according to a new paper by economist Edward N. Wolff.

Given that the US has 25% of the world's wealth, and the lower 99% of the US population has 60% of the US's wealth, it stands to reason that "the 99%" have a full 15% of the world's total wealth. Given that the US has ~4% of the world's population, surely resolving "the wealth disparity" is more likely to lower their position than raise it.

The top 10% has 75% of U.S. wealth, the top 20% has 87% of U.S. wealth. So carrying on about the 99% as if wealth is distributed in anyway evenly within that group is more than a bit silly. Especially when you look at the bottom 50% having a pittance, somewhere between 1-2% of U.S. wealth.

The next natural group after discussing the 1%'s wealth, isn't the other 99% just because 100-1=99...

So really your argument falls apart for me because most of the 99%, the bottom 70%, end up owning just about 1% of the world's wealth. And that's a fairly small slice of pie to be split between 227 million people. And before you show me the math that it's actually quite a bit per person. Don't forget that in reality the bottom 60% only has almost as much wealth as the whole next 10% and that most of the population isn't seeing the wealth you're describing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...

In any event, I was not aware of that purported wealth distribution, but the median income in the US is $59k and the median income of the world is 9k. We can argue cost of living and so forth, but it is no exaggeration to say that nearly everyone in the US today is living on the upper crust of humanity in terms of wealth and lifestyle.

Across the political spectrum people tend to agree that keeping jobs in the US is a good thing while ignoring that that perpetuates the very form of wealth inequality they decry when talking about national politics. Not that I think they're wrong to argue that the government should favor its own citizens over others internationally, but it does seem rather hypocritical to me.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-bir...

I do not deny that there is wealth inequality in the US nor do I have any elegant solutions to it, but I perceive a lot of self-interested hypocrisy around the issue. Surely fighting wealth inequality means cheering when manufacturing jobs are sent overseas, and the corporation's US base means that we can use economic leverage to enforce safety / wage standards on these new jobs in India / China / Mexico. This brings up the global median income, surely a good thing for anyone concerned with income equality.

The other problem is all the people crying about jobs going overseas aren't the same people crying for wealth equality necessarily. So again, it's incorrect to lump everyone and every viewpoint together when it's really a huge spectrum.

And on top of all that I would argue that arguing wealth inequality in the U.S. is fine because it exists in the rest of the world is a red herring. For starters, no nation, not even the U.S. is solely responsible for the state of the world and economies in every other country. And secondly, no nation is under any obligation to address the world's problems before addressing its own. And it's not effective to avoid the issue by shifting the scope around arbitrarily.

I am arguing a few other things:

* That it is hypocrisy for anyone to argue against wealth inequality in the US, but decry jobs going overseas

* That it is wrong to not care about wealth inequality in the world while moaning that we're only in the top 95th percentile of human wealth

* That things in the US are nowhere near as bad as they are commonly portrayed

>> The wealthy pay the vast majority [...] already

> I don't get why this is always trotted out?

Surely the context of the conversation explains why.

I am paying 0 (none, nada, nothing) income tax. But I am a taxpayer.

This[1] source paints a better picture, and I didn't even bother verifying the data - at least it considers other kinds of taxes.

[1]https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/taxday2017.pdf

Without the numbers, its kind of meaningless.. that is like saying bill gates moves to a town of 50 people, and suddenly pays 99.999% of the taxes.. its expected, unless you give the mean, median, etc, of income.. not just of how much he paid.

So they pay the majority. Good. They can pay more too.

In practice of course it is politically easier for government to borrow the money and spend more than income, until Greece happens.

Anyway, charging high-income employees more for SS and then paying them less on retirement would ruin the illusion that it is a retirement plan and not simple theft from the future.

I agree with your comment that it's easier to borrow the money. Look at our current government, that was supposedly fixated on budget deficits then when Obama is gone they pass a giant tax cut, increase the deficit (with the wish and a prayer that the deficit would go away), and now that there's clearly going to be a much larger deficit their answer is not cancel or reduce the unneeded tax cut for rich people - they want to cut benefits - this was all predicated before the tax cut.