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RICHEST 10 PERCENT OF U.S. HOUSEHOLDS OWN 89 PERCENT OF STOCKS
The wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households now own 89 percent of all stocks, according to U.S. Federal Reserve data, up from 87 percent in the Fed’s study a year ago (“The FU, K-Shaped Recovery Worsens Wealth Inequality,” 9 Sep 2020).
The richest 1 percent own 54 percent of all equities and mutual fund shares held by households, the Fed reported.
Since March 2020, U.S. billionaires added $2.1 trillion to their net worth; from March 2020 through October of this year, the number of U.S. billionaires rose from 614 to 745, Business Insider reported.
During 2020, the median household income slumped 2.9 percent and the official poverty rate ticked up 1.0 percent, according to the U.S. census bureau.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: We often cite George Carlin’s comment that “it’s one big club and you ain’t in it.”
The club you ain’t in now includes even fewer people who also have become richer.
History shows that income inequality is a factor in social unrest and political revolution. Rising inequality in the U.S. already is bringing people into the streets. Wealth inequality will become an even more central issue in upcoming U.S. elections and will draw more people and energy to anti-establishment political movements.
IT GIANT CDW BUYS SIRIUS COMPUTER FOR $2.5 BILLION
CDW, an online technology consulting firm and retailer of hardware and software, will pay $2.5 billion in cash to buy Sirius Computer Solutions from private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, CDW announced.
Sirius provides IT services to about 3,900 large and mid-size organizational clients.
The purchase will expand CDW’s annual sales from $900 million to $1.3 billion, the company said in a statement announcing the deal.
The sale price returns a gross profit of almost six times the $414 million Clayton Dubilier paid for Sirius in 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Upon purchasing Sirius, Clayton Dubilier installed a new financial chief and a new head of mergers and acquisitions.
In 2020, Sirius bought Advanced Systems Group and Champion Solutions Group, helping boost net sales to $2.04 billion last year.
ONE TELECOM CONGLOMERATE BUYS ANOTHER
Boulder-based Zayo Group Holdings, an international provider of fiber-optic services, is in talks to buy Uniti Group, a real estate investment trust that owns Windstream Holdings, a broadband company serving rural areas and which recently exited bankruptcy.
The talks, which began in June, included a price of about $15 a share for Uniti, valuing the trust at around $3.5 billion, insiders told The Wall Street Journal, but now a disagreement over price has slowed progress.
Uniti was spun off from Windstream and continues to make lease payments to the broadband provider, accounting for almost three-quarters of Windstream’s revenue, according to the WSJ.
Zayo Group is co-owned by DigitalBridge Group, which invests in digital infrastructure, and Sweden’s EQT AB. The two took Zayo private in 2019 in an $8-billion deal.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: We mention this pending sale to highlight the complexities and convolutions that Bigs will go through to enrich themselves with yet another rearrangement of ownerships.
RICH GET RICHER, MIDDLE CLASS IS LOW CLASS
Want to read a line of pure bullshit?
Pay attention to what the Bankster Gang, the U.S. Federal Reserve has to say.
In Slavelandia U.S.A. if you make $27,000 per year you are among the middle class.
Great!
The average monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in 2020 was $1,098 a month… and it’s gone up.
Health spending per person in the U.S. was $10,966 in 2019… and it’s gone up.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ the average American spends $8,000 a year on food… and with inflation rising, prices will go higher.
Yes, just food, shelter and health costs add up to $32,000 per year… and forget about the cost of an average car, which according to J.D. Power is merely $40,638.
Clothing? Furniture, entertainment, vacations, transportation, gas, auto repairs, etc., etc.? Even if you’re making 35K, 40K, 50K… you’re not doing OK in the U.S.S.A.
Overall, the Federal Reserve says the middle class includes 77.5 million households… with salaries ranging to $141,000.
And, as reported by Breitbart on 9 October, the middle class now represents the smallest share—26.6 percent—of America’s financial wealth ever, since the Fed began calculating such figures.
The top one percent of America’s earners, however, have, for the first time, exceeded the middle class, and now account for 27 percent of the nation’s financial wealth; that one percent includes approximately 1.3 million households earning over a half-million dollars yearly.
So there’s now more wealth in the hands of that one percent than is held by the entire middle class; see “SPOTLIGHT: BIGS GET BIGGER, RICH GET RICHER” (19 Oct 2021).
Over the past 30 years or so, the middle class’s share of private and corporate business and real estate has been shrinking; at the same time, the top 20 percent of earners have increased their share by about 10 percent.
TRENDPOST: It’s not just the middle class’s share of the nation’s wealth that’s shrinking; the middle class itself is shrinking; see “HOW THE MIDDLE CLASS IS SHRINKING” (18 Aug 2020) and “ERADICATION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS” (15 Sep 2020).
Breitbart notes that in 2018, for the first time on record, the federal, state and local tax rates for the wealthiest 400 Americans were lower than those for all other U.S. income groups; the economic upper crust are paying at a lower rate than working middle class Americans.
The trend predates the COVID War, but the COVID War has exacerbated it. Last year, for example, as millions of Americans dealt with joblessness and lockdowns took an enormous toll on small and medium-sized businesses, America’s billionaires increased their wealth by 40 percent; see “$4 TRILLION FOR BILLIONAIRES AS MIDDLE CLASS SHRINKS” (23 Mar 2021) and “COVID WAR MAKES THE RICH RICHER” (29 Jun 2021).
TREND FORECAST: The rich will continue to get richer, while the middle class now joins the poor in getting poorer. And the world will continue its march toward what Trends Journal has long warned about, the New World Disorder; see, for example, “STATE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: STANDING STILL” (15 Aug 2018) and “2020 NEW WORLD DISORDER” (10 Dec 2019).