[toomuchtodo]

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 93% of stocks even with market participation at a record high - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wealthiest-10-americans-own-9... - January 10th, 2024

> The richest Americans own the vast majority of the US stock market, according to Fed data. The top 10% of Americans held 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans held just 1% of all stocks in the third quarter of 2023.

(the vast majority of wealth for the non wealthy in the US is someone's primary residence real estate)

[coredog64]

In 2022, entry into the top decile required a net worth of $1.6M. My gut says folks in the top decile are over-represented here on HN.

https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/p70br...

[toomuchtodo]

Indeed, the vast majority of Americans have no exposure to equities, or limited exposure through a 401k or a pension. "Be a shame if something happened to these meager rows in a database we've been conning you is the path to financial independence and security. Won't you think of your crumbs?" But I digress. TLDR If the equities market implodes, it'll be mostly fine. The stock market is not the economy [1] [2]. The economy is demand for goods and services.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=the+stock+market+is+not+the+...

[2] https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2019/08/the-stock-market-is-...

(and I say this as someone with more exposure to the capital markets than most Americans, while hedging against irrationality, voting vs weighing machine and all that)

[bachmeier]

You have to use caution when interpreting those numbers. The bottom 50% doesn't have much wealth, so a big chunk of their wealth will decrease. It also tends to be unevenly distributed, so for those trying to improve their situation (think someone 60 years old with $50K in retirement savings), it would hit really hard. Plus a lot of those people would lose their jobs when the highest 10% cut back on spending.

[hapless]

If you have $50k in retirement savings at age 60, you are already broke

Turning it into $40k or $70k is unlikely to impact your life outcomes

[bachmeier]

That doesn't reflect the reality of life for those in the bottom half of the wealth distribution, and especially for those in the bottom quarter. $30K is a lot of money to them. The 30th percentile of income in the US in 2023 was under $30K. They're hoping to grow their $50K to $100K or $150K before retiring at 70.

[franktankbank]

So you're saying I'm invincible!

[czbond]

> (the vast majority of wealth for the non wealthy in the US is someone's primary residence real estate)

But this is not solely on the top 10% to be maligned. We should force everyone to save.... even $5-10/month adds up for the least privileged over time. We force everyone to immediately pay taxes because the money would not be there year end - we should do the same for saving because it is easier than changing human behaviour.

A lack of education at most societal levels to: be taught the impacts of forgoing now for later, think long term, act long term, resist impulse to spend on consumer or ego level goods for societal "approval" or mating.

Home are the primary source of wealth for families because it is forced payment.

It is what a good parent would do - and every person needs a "parent" for some aspect of our lives (we're all bad at something).

[toomuchtodo]

60% of Americans cannot meet their basic needs on their income. They simply do not have enough income and cashflow to get exposure to the capital markets. No amount of education fixes a system structured to extract. We took pensions away saying they were unaffordable (they weren't, those contributions just go to shareholders now), took wages away through globalization and more corporate power, and then blame the human as if this was their fault. "Have you tried eating less avocado toast?"

More people crowdfunded for basic needs like food and housing in 2025, GoFundMe reports - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/more-people-crowdfunded-... - December 9th, 2025

Most [bottom 60% of U.S. households] Americans don't earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44119317 - May 2025

[koakuma-chan]

But what is it that they can't afford? They don't have a job? Rent is too expensive?

[czbond]

Wholly agree...

[skx001]

- The above totals do not include indirect holdings-such as investments via pension funds and life-insurance companies-of which American households have some $20T.

[IAmBroom]

Which is not to say it wouldn't have repercussions downhill from the gilded palaces, but - yeah, mostly wealth of the wealthy would be harmed.

Unfortunately, any market dip means jobs lost, at least temporarily.

I personally stay all-market, and long-term, so if anything it would be a buy opportunity for me.

[anovikov]

This is a stat that we should take with a huge grain of salt. Poorer people indirectly own stocks through their participation in various pension schemes.

[kiba]

Land prices are subject to speculative bubbles as well. The only way to get rid of speculation in the real estate market is to drive the price of land down to zero by taxing it.

You also need a lot of money to purchase land, so this effectively allows banks to make a lot of money on overly inflated price of land.

Land by itself doesn't generate wealth, only improvements on top of it does. Only problem is that we tax improvement along with the land, leading to the perverse incentive that building anything increases your tax burden. We call them property tax.

[toomuchtodo]

We're getting into the weeds, but the goal is usually to own your home free and clear by the time you retire, reducing your income needs from retirement to death by not having a non discretionary housing payment. The wealth in most homes cannot be tapped until sold, death, or stripping the equity (HELOC or reverse mortgage) and hoping you die with zero.

You can sort of think of a house as an I bond you can live in [1], and the return is the equity gains (historically). You need lots of money to buy land because demand outstrips supply, there is a shortage of ~4M housing units in the US, and the pipeline for building new housing was permanently impaired after the 2008 global financial crisis. We will never build as fast as we used to as we go into structural demographic labor shortages in the US; the value of existing real estate is ancient embodied construction productivity and material costs, similar to how oil is ancient sunlight.

[1] The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 - https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/wp2017-25.pdf | https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2017-25

[kiba]

Drive down the price of land to zero via taxation and you cannot use that home to reduce your income need from retirement. It will force them to sell the property to make way for further development, since the cost of land is no longer so high that you need to borrow money from the bank to purchase land, only to pay the ongoing taxes.

[toomuchtodo]

Do you believe this is likely to happen? If so, when? 5 years? 10 years?