Because you are talking about "shares" not money in funds where most
Americans have their retirement money. It doesn't really matter
whether that is a 401k/IRA, a private pension plan or a
union/government employee plan. A significant part of all of that
money is in equities and it is ultimately the worker's (later
retiree's) money.
The only exception I can think of is the federal government and they
have no real investments at all other than whatever our kids can bear
in taxes.
What percentage of equities, directly or indirectly through funds, are
held by the 10% of the wealthiest?
Define "wealthiest". Are you just talking about what you call the
middle class? (households making $110k+) That is going to be a pretty
big number since they will have the biggest 401ks, assuming they did
not raid them.
I am sure if you just want to talk about hedge funds and guys like
Buffett they have huge holdings but they also have stockholders
themselves. They are essentially those funds I was talking about. You
can't confuse that with individual investors.
I suppose We could actually track down what percentage of stocks are
held by the real middle class, that guy who makes $50k or so but you
really need to figure out how much is in his pension or 401k.
I tend not to believe some of the things that the left (or the right)
says until I see how they arrived at their statistic. I crunched
numbers at work long enough to figure out you can make a database say
pretty much anything you want, just by what "view" you define in your
query.
SOTU
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