Doug Henwood wrote:
On Aug 4, 2006, at 5:17 PM, ravi wrote:
I am curious: what does retirement account mean here?
Here's the Fed's def <http://www.federalreserve.gov/PUBS/oss/
oss2/2004/bull0206.pdf>:
From a previous post:
about half of all U.S. households have a retirement account, with a
median value in 2004 of $35,000.
.
The people who calculated this figure live in another universe.
FedWorld, where the numbers are real, and the people represented by
those numbers aren't.
Median means squat in this context... 1000 households with x dollars and
one millionaire with x times 10,000 dollars and the median is...? BTW,
is the savings figure for the American public still a negative number?
Maybe it's all going into their retirement fund instead.
1/2 of US households DO NOT have anything resembling $35,000 in a
retirement plan.
A more realistic use of the phrase "1/2 of US households" is '1/2 of US
households are 3-4 paychecks, a year at the most, ahead of bankruptcy
or homelessness.'
Leigh
http://leighm.net/
