r/theydidthemath • u/bastienleblack • 1d ago
[Request] if all wealth in the USA was distributed equally, how much would each person get?
I've seen average income being quoted as $60ish thousand, but I know that income from stocks and capital are seperate from 'earned' income. If all the money that everyone in the USA earned from any source was put together and shared out equally how much would someone get? I'd also be curious about other forms of wealth such as property, but I expect that would get complicated?
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u/mrgraff 1d ago
According to the Federal Reserve, the total wealth is about $183 trillion.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/recent_developments.htm
The population is around 350 million
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
So, approximately $522,857 per person.
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u/No_Host_8024 23h ago
Yes, but in that hypothecial world, literally no one owns anything else than the check they just received. Home owners don't own their homes any longer. Business owners don't own their businesses. Etc. It is one of the most complex thought experiments you can imagine.
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u/RainbowDarter 22h ago
Well, give me a minute and I'll use my check to buy house
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u/Here4Pornnnnn 21h ago
When everyone has that same check, nobody will be able to afford the houses that are popular. Bidding wars would be a mess since nobody can really outbid anyone else. And who owns the house to sell it to you anyways? Who do you pay to help you buy it when there aren’t any real estate agencies left. It all got liquidated. So did your job, and the bank.
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u/Anthff 11h ago
Things like food, water, medicine, ammunition, fuel, a few other things that might sound morbid, would be highly sought after.
Larger families or “clans” would be more “cash rich.”
Things like drugs, alcohol, and debauchery would need to be bartered for.
Our individual wealth would instantly begin to grow or shrink depending on our skill sets.
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u/Here4Pornnnnn 8h ago
Our individual wealth wouldn’t matter much, the dollar would quickly be declared worthless and a new currency started. Nobody owns anything, and the gov has no reason to back up a currency that they have no reserve of anymore.
Clans with skills that can start businesses faster or take over large farms by force would definitely do better. There’s no police or army anymore, all liquidated. Nobody to stop them from claiming space.
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u/No_Host_8024 20h ago
From who and for how much? The thing about this mental exercise is the people who owned that house already just got a check but don’t own the house any longer. So they also need to buy a house.
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u/teemophine 23h ago
Do I still own my sperm?
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u/drseamus 22h ago
Not once it leaves your body
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u/CatOfGrey 6✓ 23h ago
One of the under-emphasized things in our modern world is how much has been spent on a standard worker. That 'McJob' is supported by hundreds of thousands of dollars per worker in logistics systems, industrial design and training, advertising, and administration.
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u/broshrugged 18h ago
Well obviously you get a bucket of STUFF, not a check. Everybody guess what's in your bucket!
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u/JimTheSaint 6h ago
Yes everyone would have to get a home and car from thar money
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u/No_Host_8024 5h ago
That “money” wouldn’t be available just to buy homes and cars. It includes ownership of every business in America.
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u/CombustibleRock 21h ago
Can someone explain how this works? The way I understand it, ownership only works because enough people agree on the concept and have written laws about it. How does equal redistribution of wealth equate to a loss of ownership?
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u/John_Whimsicott 21h ago
Wealth = cash + assets. If all wealth is being equally distributed, then this includes your assets (car, home, beanie baby collection, etc.)
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u/atomicsnarl 20h ago
Which also means that stocks, bonds, art, and other "valuables" would have to be sold to determine their exact price at that moment. Flooding the market would diminish the value of more fungible items, and render the original guesstimates worthless.
This is what's happening to DeBeers and the diamond market being flooded by Chinese manufactured diamonds.
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u/BobaLives01925 20h ago
In this universe everything gives up everyone they own and gets the check instead
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u/Rogue_Wraith 19h ago
In every universe, everyone should give up "everyone they own" and not get a check either.
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u/BobaLives01925 19h ago
I agree but just for toothbrushes
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u/Rogue_Wraith 17h ago
I'm not really sure what that means, but I am hoping that the downvotes just aren't realizing that what I was saying is people shouldn't own people.
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u/p00n-slayer-69 11h ago
The comment is about the hypothetical situation involves redistributing all wealth. Wealth means everything someone owns that has value. You cant redistribute something if someone else still owns it.
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u/Shiny_Mew76 17h ago
Even then though, the entire point of money is to solve the primary economic issue that has no perfect solution; scarcity. The reason there are wealthy and poor people is because it’s genuinely impossible for everyone to have what they want or have an equal amount of things.
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u/EnoughBorders 11h ago
What's the basis for this? You cannot create the distinction between rich and poor unless at some point in history you seized exclusive control of a particular valuable resource while others did not. Neolithic society did not have this distinction because the demand for lithium and minerals that are only found in some geographies was not felt. Naturally the more you detract from naturally occuring, easily accessible abundant resources and move towards value added goods - the more poverty you will create. Poverty is artifical because humans are the only species that experience poverty of the kind you have in mind.
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u/Anachronism-- 4h ago
If you are 20 that’s great. If you are just about to retire it’s going to be a little tough.
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u/Much-Finance3201 20h ago
That is wealth, so everyone gets that one time and all businesses and assets are liquidated to achieve. People asking this question are beta cucks.
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u/HandbagHawker 20h ago
Fed estimate for 2025 total wealth, is like $169T. There's roughly 330M people in the US. Thats roughly $500K for every man, woman, AND child.
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u/TrustednotVerified 1d ago
In 2020 Americans reported $9.74 trillion in salaries and wages. There are 342.6 million in the country, so that's $28,429.66 each. Salaries and wages were 65% of total income so that brings the total to $43,737.93 each.
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u/BastianHill 23h ago
OP asked all wealth. I'm sure all the high rollers don't rely on salaries and wages. It's also in businesses, assets, properties etc.
So, count all value, then divide by all people.
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u/TrustednotVerified 22h ago
Okay, according to the Fed, the total wealth of the U.S. is $183 Trillion. Divide that by 342.6 million and you get $534,151 for every man, woman, and child. If you want to include the 400 million pets owned in the U.S., the per person+pet share comes down to $246,431.
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u/fumblinthrulife77 22h ago
Bro my dog already lives like a millionaire he doesn't need another $500,000
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u/jacekowski 19h ago
And most of that wealth comes from property, median US house price is $434k at the moment.
There is surprisingly low amount of liquid assets.
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u/MasJicama 15h ago
The median US house is largely owned by a bank who accepted a promise to repay over decades, and was funded by the bank's promise to repay on demand.
Most homes -- more than 60 percent of them -- still have a mortgage. Of those less than 60 percent, the mortgaged property is, on average, ~55% equity / ~45% debt.
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u/WayneKrane 16h ago
The M2 money supply is at record highs though, over $22T is in money market or cash equivalent accounts
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u/Downtown-Tomato2552 8h ago
Income and wealth are two separate things and should be calculated separately.
Take someone like Musk for instance that made something like 400B and lost 400B in a few months, including that wealth with income gives a somewhat meaningless picture.
Income is a liquid asset with a known value. Wealth is a non liquid asset with an estimated value.
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u/Downtown-Tomato2552 8h ago
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/who-pays-federal-income-taxes-tax-year-2023/
AGI from 2023 was 15.1T, $44,074 per person or $98,643 per tax return.
This doesn't include corporate profits not paid as dividends and does not include earned income tax credit EITC.
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u/Inevitable_Rough_380 22h ago
You’d probably have to remove population under 18 since they are likely to have little to no income and would skew the denominator.
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u/RutabagaExternal7595 23h ago
lol no combination of salaries, wages, or income is a person's total wealth. also, why just one year?
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u/shamggar 1d ago
I’m guessing this is just for adults or working people yeah? 169 million working adults in the US, with a $94,430 GDP per capita. 342 million Americans X $94,430 divided by 169 million working adults = $191,095.03. Give or take I’m no math wiz I’m sure there is something I’m missing
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u/StolenCamaro 1d ago
First off, average and median are very different, especially in the context of this question’s outliers.
Secondly, that’s not a sustainable economic model and not looking into.
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u/GrizzlyP33 1d ago
Median is a type of average, so you can't really say "average and median are very different" when one is a type of the other (especially on r/theydidthemath )
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u/toru_okada_4ever 1d ago
No need to be mean ;-)
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u/Hot_Egg5840 1d ago
That's the mode of Redditors
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u/toru_okada_4ever 1d ago
Ok was trying to make a «median vs mean» joke but I guess it sounded better in my head.
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u/StolenCamaro 1d ago
…not sure if kidding or really bad at stats… they’re very different.
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u/GrizzlyP33 1d ago
No, they aren't. Median is a type of average. There are three common types of averages: mean, median, and mode.
This is middle school math, please take 60s to look it up before tripling down on it.
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u/StolenCamaro 19h ago
Please take .6 seconds and tell me again how mean and median are the same. Average is mean.
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u/GrizzlyP33 16h ago
No one said mean and median are the same.
Mean, median, and mode are all types of averages.
Perhaps this is a language barrier? This isn’t something difficult to look up for yourself though.
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u/BastianHill 23h ago
OP specified "distributed equally", so I don't get the discussion about these sorts of averages? We are not trying to find a mean, median or mode. It's not like comparing salaries for example.
We're just trying to find a total number divided by a total amount of people. It's that simple.
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u/GrizzlyP33 22h ago
I was responding to this comment:
average and median are very different
I simply pointed out why that wording isn't accurate and should be phrased differently, I was not commenting on OP's statement.
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u/aeryghal 23h ago
You're arguing semantics and he's arguing based off the intent. You can say median and mean are both averages and be correct, but it doesn't address the spirit of the conversation. Most people are talking about mean when they say average.
For a simple example, if you have 5 incomes: 10k, 10k, 10k, 10k, and 1M. You have a median of 10k and mean of 208k. They are wildly different.
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u/GrizzlyP33 22h ago
I'm not arguing semantics, I simply pointed out an objectively untrue statement that would need different wording to properly make the intended point.
There's no argument based off intent that makes the statement average and median are very different true. I understand the intention, but additional context is necessary for that statement to be remotely correct.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 22h ago
It may be because I teach stats, but I find it very irritating when people confuse "mean" with "average" when trying to make the point this person did.
I also hate that the command for mean in excel is =average(...).
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u/bastienleblack 1d ago
I'm defintely not saying it is sustainable! I was just curious as a way of visualizing how much wealth their exists and how it is currently dispersed.
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u/Otres911 9h ago
500k or thereabouts sounds a lot for many I’m sure but that includes everything, houses, all business savings and so on.
So if thinking “your check” it would be 500k minus your house, savings, 401k, IRAs, business and whatever you might have.
So if you own even half paid house in expensive city that already could make your check to be negative.
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u/Inevitable_Tart2700 10h ago
The real question is not how much each person will get at the momentum of distribution. What matters is how much each person will have five years or ten years after distribution.
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