Quote Originally Posted by melodious fellow
You have to have fairly large investments to recieve dividends..

I have investments and do not recieve dividends because I havn't invested more than a few grand. Many lower class and working class families like my own do not have huge resources for investing, and thus do not recieve dividends.
Stock dividends do not have to do with how much you invest --- it is only related to the stock you purchase and wheter the stock is set up to pay dividends. If you buy one share of a stock that pays dividends, then you are paid dividends the same way as a person who owns a million shares of the same stock. (He gets a million times as much because he owns a million times as many shares, but you both get them at the same rate per share). If you buy a million shares of a stock that doesn't pay dividends, then you don't get any dividends.

You're right about how working class people don't invest in general, so they don't get dividends. But if they did invest, they would get dividends the same as a rich investor would, assuming they invested in the same stock.