The Trump Presidency (Act V - The One Where Everybody Dies)

Status
Not open for further replies.
Fast Eddie B said:
That does not sound right.

From a CNN article:

“Less than a third of people ages 18 to 29 owned stocks on average between 2009 and 2017, according to a Gallup survey released in April. Nearly two-thirds of Americans between 30 and 64 own stocks.”
Click to expand...

Better, but owning stock vs not does not capture the full picture:

New York University economist Edward Wolff conducted a careful study of stock ownership in 2013 and found that 81 percent of the stock market worth is concentrated in the top 10 percent of households by wealth.

I spoke with Wolff and he was kind enough to update the numbers. It's gotten worse: 84 percent of the stock in the United States is owned by the top 10 percent of households by net wealth.

These are incredible statistics. More than 93 percent of the stock is owned by the top 20 percent of households. The bottom 80 percent of households owns only about 7 percent of stock.

By the way, this includes direct ownership of stocks and indirect ownership through mutual funds, trusts, IRAs, Keogh plans and other retirement accounts. Everything.
Click to expand...

Linky.

But if we want to read the original claim strictly:

On average across the United States, only 18.7% of taxpayers directly own stocks. Now, these numbers only include stock portfolios, not the roughly half of Americans who participate in the market through an employer-sponsored retirement plan, according to a Pew analysis of Census Bureau data.
Click to expand...

Linky.
 
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.

Lots of factors in play. Lack of education in financial matters. Huge advertising budgets for state lotteries. The simplicity of buying a lottery ticket compared to opening and maintaining a brokerage account.

I guess my point is the majority of Americans could be invested in stocks if they wished to do so, but make a choice to spend discretionary dollars elsewhere.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.

Lots of factors in play. Lack of education in financial matters. Huge advertising budgets for state lotteries. The simplicity of buying a lottery ticket compared to opening and maintaining a brokerage account.

I guess my point is the majority of Americans could be invested in stocks if they wished to do so, but make a choice to spend discretionary dollars elsewhere.
Click to expand...


Why don't you make the same comparison with spending at movie theaters and stocks? How about family vacations vs stocks? Or how about ice cream vs stocks?

Oh I know why. Because you prefer to pretend that buying lottery tickets is not entertainment. Instead you want to insult people by pretending it is done as a financial investment by a stupid person.
 
Molinaro said:
Why don't you make the same comparison with spending at movie theaters and stocks? How about family vacations vs stocks? Or how about ice cream vs stocks?
Click to expand...

I kinda did, when I used the generic term “discretionary dollars”. Lottery tickets are only one such, used as an example since such vast sums are spent there.

Oh I know why. Because you prefer to pretend that buying lottery tickets is not entertainment. Instead you want to insult people by pretending it is done as a financial investment by a stupid person.
Click to expand...

I went so far as to offer potential reasons why people may end up choosing lottery tickets over investing in a mutual fund, let’s say. I don’t see anything in my post that stated, or even implied, intelligence was a factor.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I went so far as to offer potential reasons why people may end up choosing lottery tickets over investing in a mutual fund, let’s say. I don’t see anything in my post that stated, or even implied, intelligence was a factor.
Click to expand...

To a lot of people, lottery tickets are the stupidest form of entertainment.

I'm one of them. "Oh look, net loss again!" doesn't seem like a fun game or quality entertainment to me. But my mom seems to derive some mysterious pleasure out buying a lottery ticket every once in a while and watching the TV to see if she won.

To each their own, I guess.
 
Molinaro said:
Why don't you make the same comparison with spending at movie theaters and stocks? How about family vacations vs stocks? Or how about ice cream vs stocks?

Oh I know why. Because you prefer to pretend that buying lottery tickets is not entertainment. Instead you want to insult people by pretending it is done as a financial investment by a stupid person.
Click to expand...
With due respect, I'd think most lottery purchases are made with the hope of a financial payoff, whereas movie tickets are purely for entertainment.

No doubt that some view it as pure entertainment. I'm not sure that most do so.

I'd rather that the government didn't raise funds this way.
 
phiwum said:
With due respect, I'd think most lottery purchases are made with the hope of a financial payoff, whereas movie tickets are purely for entertainment.

No doubt that some view it as pure entertainment. I'm not sure that most do so.

I'd rather that the government didn't raise funds this way.
Click to expand...

I get the sense that most people look at it as mostly entertainment. But engaging in a sort of suspension of disbelief about the plausibility of winning is part of the fun for them. Something like that.
 
America.

Do you know what your ignoramus of a President sounds like? At his best?

A dimwit who calls up, at 2:30 in the morning, the AM radio show, Coast to Coast.

I've seen--and I do not exaggerate--numerous pro wrestlers who are far and away his intellectual superior. He's as riven with unreality as that lot of late night conspiracy theorists who rant on about chemtrails and alien abductions.

The blathering idiot is an internationally recognized, painfully obvious buffoon who is dragging down into the muck the formerly respected name of the USA.

And that's leaving out of it his borderline traitorous self aggrandizement.

I only hope Mueller is permitted to bring to conclusion his investigation, without the criminal interference Drumpf would so love to interject.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.

Lots of factors in play. Lack of education in financial matters. Huge advertising budgets for state lotteries. The simplicity of buying a lottery ticket compared to opening and maintaining a brokerage account.

I guess my point is the majority of Americans could be invested in stocks if they wished to do so, but make a choice to spend discretionary dollars elsewhere.
Click to expand...



Rough numbers:

125M adults in the USA

Assume that 25M adults own stock - it makes the numbers easy.

So, 70B (amount spent) / 100M (lottery players you think have invested unwisely) = approximately 700 USD per person per year.

How well does the stock market work for people investing 700 USD / year? What's the return on that? What are the fixed costs one would have to pay before earning the 7-14 dollars it would earn?
 
Don't have time right now, but maybe someone can calculate $20/week, earning the average rate of return from the S&P 500, and calculate its value over 20 or 30 years.

Compounding interest can result in some pretty large numbers, even with inflation figured in. Kind of a "guaranteed win" down the road.
 
It's only a guaranteed win if you don't have to file for bankruptcy, right? Or if you'll definitely never need any sort of means tested government assistance?
 
Fast Eddie B said:
Don't have time right now, but maybe someone can calculate $20/week, earning the average rate of return from the S&P 500, and calculate its value over 20 or 30 years.



Compounding interest can result in some pretty large numbers, even with inflation figured in. Kind of a "guaranteed win" down the road.
Click to expand...



Done, using future valid on 1000 investment over 20 years with annual return of 9.8% comes to 6487. That assumes no additional contributions.

9.8 is 90 year average for s&p 500

Of course it is also assumes people will invest in an indexed fund and not some risky derivatives they don't understand


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
seayakin said:
Done, using future valid on 1000 investment over 20 years with annual return of 9.8% comes to 6487. That assumes no additional contributions.

9.8 is 90 year average for s&p 500

Of course it is also assumes people will invest in an indexed fund and not some risky derivatives they don't understand


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
The Impact of Saving $20 per Week

20 a week for 20 years at 5% is 36,100 according to this site.
20 a week for 20 years at 10% is 65,000.
 
T
3point14 said:
Rough numbers:

125M adults in the USA

Assume that 25M adults own stock - it makes the numbers easy.

So, 70B (amount spent) / 100M (lottery players you think have invested unwisely) = approximately 700 USD per person per year.

How well does the stock market work for people investing 700 USD / year? What's the return on that? What are the fixed costs one would have to pay before earning the 7-14 dollars it would earn?
Click to expand...
Seems like you might be failing to consider that some lottery purchases actually generate a return.
The original post indicated that 70B is the total take for lotteries each year- it did not mention how much of that is paid back as winnings.
 
Fast Eddie B said:
I think it’s worth considering why so few Americans own stocks.

For those is grinding poverty, it probably is not an option.

Yet in 2014 (a year Google seems to like) Americans spent $70 billion on lottery tickets. And I believe these sales are skewed towards lower income individuals.
Click to expand...

The lottery is a lot like freemium games. Most don't spend any money, some spend a small amount, and a small section that has gambling addiction tendencies spends a ton. A friend used to work at a gas station and would tell me about the people that would come by on payday. They'd spend their entire check on scratch offs, scratch them right there and turn in the winners, buy more, rinse and repeat until they lost everything.

But then again everyone buys stuff that others would consider a useless waste.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom