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1%er Complains About His Wealth

6/27/17 CNBC:

Warren Buffett says people like him are the problem with the U.S. economy.

With a net worth of more than $75 billion, Buffett is currently the second richest man alive, according to Forbes. As the CEO of investing house Berkshire Hathaway, he is hallowed as the Oracle of Omaha. But for all his personal success, Buffett says the issue really is the 1 percent.

"The real problem, in my view, is — this has been — the prosperity has been unbelievable for the extremely rich people," says Buffett on PBS Newshour.

"If you go to 1982, when Forbes put on their first 400 list, those people had [a total of] $93 billion. They now they have $2.4 trillion, [a multiple of] 25 for one," he says. "This has been a prosperity that's been disproportionately rewarding to the people on top."

Okay, Warren, put your money where you mouth is.   $75 billion given to the poorest 5 million Americans would be $15,000 per person.  Why do rich people always back candidates who want more money going to the government instead of using their wealth to help the poor?

And I Thought I Would Have To Calculate This

If you spend much time with academics, you probably already know whata Gini coefficient is: it is a measure of either income or wealth inequality: 0 means wealth or income are evenly distributed (progrssive utopia); 1 means that one person or household has everything and everyone else has nothing.  Even medieval kingdoms did not have Gini coefficients of 1.  For a lot of progressives, Idaho is everything wrong with conservative values, and places like Oregon and California are utopia.  So what are the Gini coefficients for income by state?  Not surprisingly Idaho is part of the most equal set of states.  For 2011: Idaho is 0.433; California is 0.471; Oregon is 0.449.  Amazing: a Republican controlled state has more income equality than states where Republicans don't matter.