On your quote, “If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25% of Americans”, is that actually true?
Presumably that 25% have a mortgage, hence one might assume they have negative wealth. But they also have a whopping great asset in the form of a house, which (unless they are in negative equity) will be worth more than the mortgage.
So who are these people with no assets and massive debts? (Or debts greater than assets.) Just students with huge loans?
john77
@ Andrew M
“Presumably that 25% have a mortgage”
No, these people don’t own houses – they are the bottom 25%!!! They live in rented property or a caravan (“trailer”) and they have debts on their credit card on which they are paying interest.
Maybe there are a few with mortgages and negative equity but most of them have neither.
Do you live in the same parallel universe as Robert Reich? If someone with $10 is better off than X, and X has “a whopping great asset in the form of a house, which will be worth more than the mortgage”, then you also have a different arithmetic to me (and Tim).
Will Honeycomb
Nice piece.
You might want to get your moonlighting Daily Telegraph sub-editor to reconsider “The Walton’s as a whole…”. One of your grocer errors, as it were.
Oswald Thake
I always read it as ‘Comment is free, but facts are expensive!’
Dennis The Peasant
After proving himself to be of no consequence when employed by the Clinton Administration, Reich has moved to a second career as an all-purpose blabbermouth for all things progressive. He’s your basic, generic Ivy League boob, and he’s grip on economics is every bit of shaking as Richie’s.
Come to think of it, it’s somewhat amazing Reich isn’t prattling away somewhere in the bowels of the Obama Adminstration.
Dennis The Peasant
shakey, not shaking…
ZT
Dennis, please, please, start blogging again. We all miss you. I still have your sited bookmarked, hoping for the Second Coming.
Short answer: No. And when Reich is involved, all answers are short 😛
Please- let the beatings begin!
A professor of public policy – so no maths required in his job.
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/author/rreich/
On your quote, “If you’ve no debts and have $10 in your pocket you have more wealth than 25% of Americans”, is that actually true?
Presumably that 25% have a mortgage, hence one might assume they have negative wealth. But they also have a whopping great asset in the form of a house, which (unless they are in negative equity) will be worth more than the mortgage.
So who are these people with no assets and massive debts? (Or debts greater than assets.) Just students with huge loans?
@ Andrew M
“Presumably that 25% have a mortgage”
No, these people don’t own houses – they are the bottom 25%!!! They live in rented property or a caravan (“trailer”) and they have debts on their credit card on which they are paying interest.
Maybe there are a few with mortgages and negative equity but most of them have neither.
Do you live in the same parallel universe as Robert Reich? If someone with $10 is better off than X, and X has “a whopping great asset in the form of a house, which will be worth more than the mortgage”, then you also have a different arithmetic to me (and Tim).
Nice piece.
You might want to get your moonlighting Daily Telegraph sub-editor to reconsider “The Walton’s as a whole…”. One of your grocer errors, as it were.
I always read it as ‘Comment is free, but facts are expensive!’
After proving himself to be of no consequence when employed by the Clinton Administration, Reich has moved to a second career as an all-purpose blabbermouth for all things progressive. He’s your basic, generic Ivy League boob, and he’s grip on economics is every bit of shaking as Richie’s.
Come to think of it, it’s somewhat amazing Reich isn’t prattling away somewhere in the bowels of the Obama Adminstration.
shakey, not shaking…
Dennis, please, please, start blogging again. We all miss you. I still have your sited bookmarked, hoping for the Second Coming.
ZT
It’s that Galbraithian “public intellectual” thing, isn’t it?
Och, pick on someone your own size, Worstall.
“Och, pick on someone your own size, Worstall.”
Why should midgets get a free pass?
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What ZT said