[faidit]

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own like 90% of stocks, and the top 1% own 50%. While the poorest 50% of the population own about 1% of the stock market.

So "publicly" traded (the term public ownership can be confusing because it can also mean state control) just means it's open for the elite to invest in.

[rmunn]

Could you link to how that measurement was taken? Because I very much want to know whether it counts things like mutual funds, or whether it only measures direct ownership of stocks. E.g. I have a bunch (though not all) of my retirement savings in an index fund that owns partial shares of the top 500 US companies (as listed by Standard & Poor's). So depending on how that S&P 500 fund is measured in those statistics, I either own shares in the top 500 companies, or I'm counted as not owning any shares. The latter would produce a very misleading statistic, because I am very much not the only person who invests in the stock market via mutual funds.

So a link would be much appreciated, in order to judge the quality of the info. As it is, I'm skeptical that the info is accurate, precisely because mutual funds are so wildly popular among the middle-class people I know (none of whom are in the top 10%, though most of them would likely be in the top 50%).

[jampekka]

These figures seem to include ownership of mutual funds.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBST01122

[nish__]

It's amazing to me how many people don't get this.

[Gormo]

Well, considering that it doesn't seem to be an accurate statement, it shouldn't be so amazing that people don't "get" it.

By far, the largest shareholders in most publicly-traded firms are "institutional investors", but those are themselves in turn usually acting as middlemen managing mutual funds, most of which consist of ordinary folks' 401(k) plans and pensions.

[nish__]

What? "Doesn't seem to be an accurate statement"? What part? Those numbers are actually conservative. According to Yahoo Finance[0], it's actually 93% of the stock market is owned by the wealthiest 10% of American households. And the bottom 50% of Americans own ~1%. You "seem" to be mistaken and you're talking out of your ass.

[0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9...

[Gormo]

The article you're citing doesn't link to its sources, but seems to be talking about direct stock ownership by households, and not explicitly stating how it's accounting for investment funds.

[nish__]

I think it's accounting for indirect ownership as well. That would be very misleading and irresponsible reporting if it weren't.

[twoodfin]

“Just”? As if there aren’t pension funds and 401(k)s and IRAs serving >100 million Americans via investment in public companies?

“Open for the elite” how?

[sfn42]

Have you considered the possibility that 401ks and pension funds etc are included in those numbers?

Open for the elite in the way that everyone else don't have enough money to matter.

The richest people are so much richer than everyone else that there's no comparison. You could grab a million average people off the street and all of you combined probably wouldn't be richer than Jeff Bezos. Think about that. This one guy is wealthier than a million other people combined, literally wealthier than an entire small country or large city, and he's not alone. There's more of them.

Those guys rule the world, everyone else are passengers.

[tapland]

:)

You still don’t have a say and the investor is also the customer. How is it democracy or keeping companies to being good for society.

[breppp]

Not sure what does that mean. Americans poor and wealthy are in the top 10% of the world wealthiest and own a huge part of the world stock value accordingly.

That's simply capitalism, money is spread unevenly across everyone, that does not make everyone an elite

[tapland]

So it’s more like the top 0.001% who have the voting majority in this wonderful democratic system we all have our life savings dumped into.

What was your attempted point? Or did you not understand the issue that was brought up?

[throwaway68108]

Is that a bad thing? Why would I want someone who can't even manage their own money to manage my life savings? If anything I'd expect a company where the decisions are in the hands of 99% John Smiths and 1% Warren Buffets to be even more short sighted, *especially* when it comes to splurging on dividends.