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The Wealth Report

April 19, 2008 Here’s a wonderful blog.  It’s called

 
 Robert Frank looks at the lives and culture of the wealthy.

It’s posted daily in the Wall Street Journal.  So much is made lately in politics about class envy and class warfare, soak the rich, penalize the rich, the rich are not paying their fare share etc. that it’s interesting to read recent PNC Wealth Management survey of 1,500 Americans with $500,000 or more in investible assets.  It “found that 69% of respondents made most of their fortune through work, business ownership or investments. Only 6% made their wealth by inheriting it, while 25% made it through a combination of inheritence and earnings.”

Think of the businesses that were started like Google (GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT) or Exxon (XOM), where the owners are fabulously rich and see how many are employed in the businesses:  GOOG has  16,805 employees, MSFT has 79,000 and XOM 107,100.

In Another Reason the Middle Class Resent the Rich The Wealth Report reports on a Pew Research survey of the middle class and found conflicting views of the rich:

•     They are split on how the rich got there. Fully 47% of those surveyed say the wealth of the wealthy is mainly the result of having good connections or being born into wealth, while 42% say it’s mainly the result of hard work, ambition and education.

•    Those in the upper classes (56%) are more inclined to cite hard work, ambition and education as reasons behind their wealth than are those in the middle (42%) or lower (32%) classes.

•   Asked if success in life is determined by forces outside one’s control, the upper class disagreed (69%) more than the middle (62%) or lower (51%) classes.

Clearly, the class warfare that is practiced in this country is detrimental to our economic health because it spreads disinformation about the way to wealth and the impact of new business on the employment needed for our growing and changing population.

Thoughts? Email them to landfair3554@comcast.net

PS, I feel so strongly about this issue of class warfare that I'm co-posting it at my blog Mover Mike.

Posted by Mike Landfair on April 19, 2008 | Comments (0)