New post at policy shop. Excerpt:
Of course the fixation on stocks is rather predictable. All sorts of people hold stock, but the wealthy especially. According to the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, while 17.9 percent of all families have stock holdings, 52.4 percent of those in the wealthiest 10 percent of families do so. Just 4.3 percent in the poorest 25 percent of families hold stock. The numbers are even more skewed when you look at the amount of stock held. In 2010, The median family held $17.8 thousand of stock, the median family in the wealthiest 10 percent held $131 thousand of stock, and the median family in the poorest 25 percent held just $1.1 thousand of stock.
The joy over the return of the stock market is a thinly veiled celebration of the returning net worths of the wealthiest among us, that being who economic and financial reporting is primarily targeted at. Just remember that the next time you see the state of the stock market is used to describe the overall state of the economy.