Date: Monday, 26 August 2024
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-real-net-worth-of-the-average
https://theduran.com/the-real-net-worth-of-the-average-american-family-is-109360/
The REAL net worth of the average American family is -$109,360.
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
There are two different definitions of “average” net worth. One is “mean,” which calculates the sum total of everyone’s net worth and then divides that by the number of families (or “households”). But that measure will give a very false answer for the “average” if the distribution of family net worths is extremely unequal. For example, if there are 100 households, and only one household, that of “the King,” owns all of it, and the other 99 own none of it, then the mean net worth is still the same as-if all 100 families have exactly the same net worth: the distribution of wealth is ignored by calculating the mean.
The “median” family net worth is instead simply the family net worth that is 50% (one half) of the way down the wealth-ranking of all U.S. families. When one thinks of the “average” family, one normally is referring to the median, not the mean. It’s the real “average” family net worth.
On page 11 (17 of the pdf) of the Federal Reserve’s “Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022” issued in October 2023, the Federal Reserve says that “real median [family] net worth surged 37 percent to $192,900, and real [family] mean net worth increased 23 percent to $1,063,700,” in the latest reporting year, 2022. The fact that America’s mean family wealth is 5.5 times as high as its median family wealth, proves that America’s wealth is very unequally distributed; and, in fact, according to the World Bank’s numbers, which show the “Gini” measure of the the wealth (net worth) equality/inequality of the wealth distributions of the residents in 168 countries, America scored as the 53rd most unequal, and as the 115th most equal, of all of the 168 nations. Countries where the wealth-distribution is more equal than in the U.S. include China, Russia, Japan, India, S. Korea, Pakistan, Canada, Australia, and all of Europe and of the formerly Soviet countries, so that America was the only major world power that was among (at the very bottom of) the 54 most-equal countries — all of the countries that are even more oligarchic than America have only average or worse economies than does America. America has, in this sense, become its own “banana republic.” (For example, among the countries that ranked as more equal than the U.S. is El Salvador.)
That Federal Reserve publication shows that, in that year, 2022, there were (p. 47) 131.3 million American families. Right now, the U.S. federal debt — a debt that ALL U.S. families will be obligated to pay off — is $35,213,290,852,705, which is $104,545 per person.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, latest estimate (which is for 2022), there are 127 million families in the U.S. Furthermore, “As of July 2024, the average family size in the United States is 3.13 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.” 3.13x127,000,000 = 397 million Americans, but actually, America’s current population is 333.3 million according to the Census Bureau’s latest estimate, which is also for 2022. If the latter estimate is the case, and the average family-size is 3.13 persons, then there are 106 million U.S. families (as-of 2022), not 127 million.
Midway between 106 and 127, would be 116.5 million U.S. families. If that is the most reasonable estimate, and those families are held liable to repay America’s $35,213,290,852,705 federal debt, then that is $35,213,290,852,705/116,500,000 = $302,260 per U.S. family. This reduces the median net worth of American families down from $192,900-$302,260 = -$109,360. And the holders of that debt (those Treasury bonds etc.) will be demanding from them (who generally are politically the weakest in America and therefore the most-unrepresented by the U.S. Government): Pay up!
Many of those holders (of Treasury-bonds etc.) will be among America’s own wealthiest. These are the people who have brought America’s mean family wealth up to $1,063,700. Even after deducting their $302,260 per U.S. family U.S. federal debt, these families are still (on average) +$761,440 in net worth. So, they — and all of the foreign holders of the U.S. federal debt — will be demanding of the typical American family whose nominal net worth is $192,900, to pay $302,260 to the U.S. federal Government.
Something here is suggesting to me that anyone in America who will be creating a new child here is being extremely inconsiderate toward that new person, unless that family is more in the category of at least America’s mean per-family wealth (nominally $1,063,700) than of America’s median per-family wealth (nominally $192,900).
After all: SOMEBODY will have to be paying that (largely hidden) $1.5 trillion per year the U.S. Government is spending on its military. (That amount comes out to $12,876 per year, that the U.S. Government is accumulating each year in added indebtedness, each year, on each American family’s account — though not reported to that family.) In order to get Americans to accept this situation and to vote for the politicians (in both Parties) who create it, numerous lies are necessary, such as these. The people who will be paying the price the most will be the ones at the bottom, not of the top, of the wealth-and-power pyramid. The people who profit the most from all of this are the ones at the very top of that same pyramid. But inevitably at the end of the game, America will be left wrecked the worse, the longer that this Ponzi game goes on (i.e., the longer that the U.S. Government’s collapse gets postponed).
Of course, Americans don’t want the collapse to happen now. But the punishment of America’s bottom 99% will be even worse if it gets further postponed.
None of this is being mentioned in the U.S. Presidential contest, which is focusing obsessively on the personalities of the contestants, to the exclusion of all of the important policy-issues, which are ‘discussed’ only in bumper-sticker depth. To call this “democracy” isn’t merely false, it is ludicrous — an insult to the very term “democracy.”
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
