Tag: Gabriel Zucman

Must-Read: Gabriel Zucman: GSPP Policy Research Seminar: Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data

Posted on by Brad DeLong

Must-Read: Gabriel Zucman is talking at Berkeley on November 30 on the sharpness of the peak in wealth accumulation. It’s not any sort of broad-based phenomenon, it’s all at the peak–the surge in incomes at the very top, coupled with their inability or unwillingness to increase their spending to match…

Gabriel Zucman : GSPP Policy Research Seminar: Wealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913: Evidence from Capitalized Income Tax Data: “We estimate wealth by capitalizing the incomes reported by individual taxpayers…

…accounting for assets that do not generate taxable income…. Wealth concentration has followed a U-shaped evolution over the last 100 years: It was high in the beginning of the twentieth century, fell from 1929 to 1978, and has continuously increased since then. The rise of wealth inequality is almost entirely due to the rise of the top 0.1% wealth share, from 7% in 1979 to 22% in 2012–a level almost as high as in 1929…. The increase in wealth concentration is due to the surge of top incomes combined with an increase in saving rate inequality…. Monday, November 30, 12:10–1:00 Room 105, GSPP (Corner of Hearst and LeRoy, across from Cory Hall.)

Wealth Inequality in the US since 1913 Gabriel Zucman

A Few Finger Exercises with the Saez and Zucman Wealth-Concentration Estimates…

Posted on by Brad DeLong

From Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman (March 2014): The Distribution of US Wealth, Capital Income and Returns since 1913:

DeLong Saez Zucman Finger Exercises numbers

From today’s perspective, the $800K per capita in today’s purchasing that the circa-1949 average member of the “merely rich”–those between the 99%ile and the 99.9%ile–had looks extraordinarily small. Why, a 3% rate of spending relative to assets would leave them with only $24K per capita to spend! Barely enough to give you the median standard of living in 2014! (OK, OK: a much bigger house and a much more comfortable commute than the median today–but no electronic toys and air travel a very exceptional treat.) Even the truly rich of 1949–the upper 15,000–would find that a 3% rate of spending relative to assets would give them only the upper-middle class standard of living today or, well, me: the kind of style of life at which one stays at the Crowne Plaza or the Holiday Inn Express because more fancy seems not worth it given other demands on one’s cash.

Looking at it the other way, our truly rich today–the top 0.01%, the top 30,000–have a standard of living that, if one trusts the real income figures, was only matched by the top 0.0003%–the top 400 in 1949…

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