TLDW
This guy probably has some good points on some particular issues, but as with faux news or whoever when I hear gross distortions about whatever that I am pretty sure are inaccurate, to promote a “theory” I lose my hard on, rapidly. the largest block of owners of the the DJIA and NASDAQ etc, are Retirement Accounts, both Employer managed Retirement Plans or 401(K)s, Union Retirement Funds, IRA’s and so on.
eta, not that there isn’t yuuge income/wealth inequalities in our Society, there is. This guy just exaggerates it, The old bromide of the average Joe working smarter and harder becoming a zillionaire is
more myth than fact.
Well, The Washington Post is closer to his estimate than yours:
I imagne a block of owners as a percentage and value of stocks as a percentage are two different things, really
First, there’s a bit of a myth that through indirect holdings, like holdings of stock in a pension fund, the stock market has become democratized, and everyone’s all in. Not so. Wolff’s data shows that while stock ownership has increased over the past few decades, in 2013 (his most recent data point), less than half — 46 percent — of households owned stocks, either directly or through their holdings in some sort of fund (e.g., a retirement account). Contrast that with the 94 percent ownership rate of the top 1 percent.
The figures below show that, since the late 1980s, about 80 percent of the value of the market has been held by the top 10 percent. Within that top 10 percent, the share of stock wealth held by the top 1 percent is about equal to the share held by the 90-99th percentiles; both groups’ shares are twice as large as the share that the entire bottom 90 percent holds.