But, this blog is not really about the football game. The blog began when I happened upon the NFL Ticket Exchange that Sunday Morning and saw the price of tickets to the game. They ranged from $6,000 to $7,216, and that was not even for the best seats!
I scrolled on to the betting, and if you could not afford a bet on the game, you could bet on the color of the liquid dumped on the winning coach after the game, or other ridiculous things during the game to bet on.
It made me think about both how the game brought Americans together and how wealth and poverty separate us. The disparity in wealth in America is significant, but the urge to spend money--beyond your means or not--seems to be part of the fun.
At the website The Ascent I found a study on the Most Wasteful Spending Habits Among Americans. Their survey found that 95% of their respondents believed that people in the United States waste more money than they should. Among the examples responders mentioned were overpaying for luxury items when less expensive items would do as well, and upgrading to the "latest version" when what they already own was just fine. Among some of the specific acts of wastefulness to which they admitted were: frequenting fast-food places, buying overpriced beverages, impulsive buying, purchasing name brand when generic is comparable, and overpaying for digital services.
At Yahoo!finance, their research found that 1/3 of Genz's spend more money than they make, and about the same amount don't budget at all.
However, some Americans would have looked at those surveys and shrugged their shoulders, feeling that they barely had enough money to survive, let along reflect on wasteful spending. What I read led me to continue researching the wealth inequality in America.
The Institute for Economic Equity provides quarterly dates on racial, generational and educational wealth inequality based on average U.S. household wealth. These statistics can be found on line for those of you interested in details. I will only offer some general comments that I found helpful to understand how family wealth is determined: Family wealth is what a family owns, minus what they owe. Another important statistic to consider is whether family wealth is going up, staying about the same, or going down. Records are also kept determining wealth gaps among groups, specifically White families, Black families, and Hispanic families.
In addition, records are kept by age, determining the generational wealth gap, as well as the wealth gap by family education. Further, they look at overall wealth inequality, without regard to ethnicity, age, or education. In the U.S. Wealth Inequality Survey of February 5, 2024, the top 10% of Americans by wealth had 6.5 million on average, and as a group they held 66.6% of total household wealth.
The biggest gap in wealth seems to be with regard to education, and although Blacks and Hispanics have made advances, and there are now many who have leaped into the higher levels of wealth, overall they remain in the lower brackets.
All of which brings me back to the Super Bowl and the extreme display of wealth. On playing fields and in universities, as well as independent businesses, people of all colors can be found. Wealth Inequality in America is changing, perhaps too slowly and still too unfairly, but it is changing. While learning how to manage money and avoiding foolish spending may never make you a millionaire, it still may make a difference. Perhaps that will never buy you a $7,000 ticket to the Super Bowl, but it might buy you a big screen TV and a steak dinner to celebrate if your team wins.
The world is changing rapidly, and AI is already here and will obsolete many things taken for granted in the past. But good sense and hard work can still make a difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment