Chris Butler_

CNBC's Specious Reporting on the Housing Plan

mediapro-

You write that:

"The top 1% control 40% of all financial wealth in the U.S. The top 20% another 52%, leaving the rest of us (80%) America's financial wealth at a whopping 8%."

The point that well-meaning socialists like yourself fail to address when quoting this tired statistic is your (unexamined) first premise. I assume you think that it's wrong that so much wealth be controlled by so few people? If so, why is this distribution "unfair" or otherwise repugnant to you?

What makes wealth (if not inheritance, which you point out in your second point)? Could it be talent? Ingenuity? Luck? Risk-taking that others will not engage in?

Or are we to believe that it's because the top 1% of financial wealth owners stole it, or came to it by fraud? If this is your take, please provide some evidence to support your claim.

If the cause of wealth is any of the four possibilities mentioned above, then I think we have to conclude it was a "fair" distribution.

Don't get me wrong - I love soicalists/liberals. They make me laugh. They provide entertainment to issues otherwise deemed too "dark" to be entertaining. At the risk of losing that comedic element, I'd like to see them explain their first premises more often. It is not a foregone conclusion that a skewed wealth distribution is "unfair" or not desireable.