Al in Ohio
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Mostly true but what the media is generally horrible about is providing context.
So for instance this site nerdwallet.com provides some pretty good debt numbers,and I cross checked them with the Federal Reserve numbers. (I should add I trust Feds numbers cause in my experience banks seem to be pretty good about keep track of loan balances etc.) As opposed to a census worker spending an hour asking somebody questions like "in the last 3 months how much did you receive in dividends"
Here are some highlights.
Now 11 trillion in debt sounds huge, but not so huge in the context of 16 trillion economy.
But more importantly look at the dramatic increase of the wealth of the country $65 trillion at the peak in 2007 and with the stock and housing markets both rebounding we will almost certainly see a record in 2013.
The chart is unadjusted for inflation or population growth and according to Wiki but even after adjusting for those two factors you end up with doubling of wealth from 1970 to to day. As the wiki article illustrated while the rich clearly got much richer since 1989 (i.e the same time as the documentary) even those in the bottom 20% got richer. The only group that got poorer is those without high school diploma (like Mr. Stanley) and that it turn is a shrinking group.
But of course this type of context is never provided by the media.
I really find your facts insightful, but finding an inflationary adjusted and per capita can have an enormous impact on the real value of wealth per capita, especially if adjusted for "real" inflation and not what the FED reports. If real inflation is somewhere between 3-6% per year and you compound that each year and adjust for that since 1970 your doubling is going to reduce to less than 20% of that due to inflation erosion alone over a 43 year period. (Assuming a generously low average 4% annual inflation rate - knowing it was over 7% over the decade of the 70's and about 5.5% in the 80's ) we have a present worth value of that doubling reduced by 1/(1.04) to the n where n is 2013-1970= 43 periods or 1/5.4= .185 So you need to multiply that perceived wealth by .185 to account for inflation. Now for population adjustment by census figure googled on wikipedia: At 1970 203M. At 2010 it 307 M. That's a factor of 2/3rds less people to account for that reported 1970 era wealth.....so overall adjustment for both===>. .66x .185 = 0.122
So doubling when adjusted to account for today's dollars compared to back then and also adjusted for an increase in our population changes " doubled wealth per capita ends up being only "one fourth" as much wealth. This is interestingly close to adjusted income comparisons over that period for the same job skill.