According to the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances (published by the Federal Reserve Board), “EQUITY” — stocks, whether held directly, via mutual funds, retirement accounts or even trust funds — is distributed as follows:
Top 1%: 36.0%
Top 5%: 66.5%
Top 10%: 78.9%

The ownership of privately held businesses (“BUS” in SCF parlance) — importantly, a larger figure than “EQUITY”! — is as follows:
Top 1%: 62.7%
Top 5%: 88.1%
Top 10%: 93.6%

(Combined, those figures are 49.9%, 77.8% and 86.6%.)

It is true that 51.9% of us have SOME “EQUITY” but most of it is in relatively few pockets. However, your point about the distribution between shareholders and officers is quite accurate as well.

We ought to be more interested in the structures that permit corporations to — quite legally! — privatize value we all create together. THAT is where the real story is.

Note to readers working at the IRS Statistics of Income division: adding a MEDIAN line to reports would be invaluable.

My articles were the first to expose the hidden subsidy in executives’ personal use of corporate jets, explaining the economics, history and side effects. You can read this also in chapters of my books Perfectly Legal (“Plane Perks”) and Free Lunch (“Without Even Asking” and “Beauty and the Bounty”).

You and some others here also seemed to miss the point of my column — that what is true of CEOs is not true of corporate officers as a whole.

The data are about corporate officers as a whole, who are for sure very well paid, but are not in league of the most overpaid CEOs, who I show with a specific example sometimes see their pay rise as shareholder wealth evaporates.

One implication of this new data is that executives at the very top are squeezing not just the rank-and-file (whose stagnant pay I have been documenting for many years) but ALSO those just below them.

So, please, carefully re-read from the start, especially the 6th and 7th paragraphs.

It is interesting that you write this article just as President Obama proposes a ‘millionaire” tax. But not to worry, according to Mr. Johnston’s figures the average CEO has nothing to worry about so why the big outcry?

Given all the people with business skills in this country, couldn’t the shareholders do better with management teams who might work for a bit less?

And to add insult to injury, most of the money that we’ve been borrowing from China and other foreign countries has been going into the pockets of the wealthy, the very ones who are being protected by our elected representatives from having to pay higher taxes. Defense contractors; the banking industry; Wall Street; the Healthcare Industry; the Oil Industry; them, and the affluent in general, are being protected by our government while the vast majority of Americans are being run through the economic meat grinder. They are extracting this money from us and sending it overseas.

It’s crazy. But what’s really crazy is that we put up with it. In fact, we just swept into Congress the Party who have made this insane tax dynamic the cornerstone of their ideology. Cut everything that helps the Middle Class and the poor and do everything that helps the rich get richer, as if trickle down economics really worked.

But in the name of bipartisanship, the Democrats are doing very little to change this dynamic. When it comes down to it, they aren’t going to do a whole lot to upset the apple cart. They may be opposed to it ideologically, but they’re even more opposed to biting the hand that feeds their campaigns. Who’s feeding their campaigns? Defense contractors; the banking industry; Wall Street; the Healthcare Industry; the Oil Industry; them, and the affluent in general.

I’m not against the rich. I’m against the rich who are using their money to corrupt our government in a way that enables them to get richer at the expense of my country.

It’s the corruption, stupid. Even before the economy, because the economy will never really be fixed for 99% of Americans until we get rid of the corruption in our government. It should be our #1 priority.

Until we do something to put an end to the corruption in our government, we are doing this to ourselves.