Thursday, June 9, 2011

Ghetto Capitalism


Some disturbing facts for the bottom 99.99%

#1
In the United States today, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

#2 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States.

#3 The wealthiest 1% of all Americans own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds.

#4 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#5 According to a joint House and Senate report entitled "Income Inequality and the Great Recession", the top one percent of income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.

#6 Between 1979 and and 2007, the average household income of the top 1% of all Americans soared from $346,600 to $1.3 million. During that same time period the average household income for middle class Americans increased only slightly.

#7 According to Harvard Magazine, 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

#8 More than 3 billion people, close to half the world's population, live on less than 2 dollar a day.

#9 According to a new report from the AFL-CIO, the average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year.

#10 The number of "low income jobs" in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.

#11 Since 1979, real median weekly earnings for high school dropouts has declined by 22 percent.

#12 During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years.

#13 Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week.

#14 Since the year 2000, we have lost 10% of our middle class jobs. In the year 2000 there were about 72 million middle class jobs in the United States but today there are only about 65 million middle class jobs. Meanwhile, our population has gotten significantly larger.

#15 Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States fell to seventh.

#16 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.

#17 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#18 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#19 According to Moody's Analytics, the wealthiest 5% of households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending.

#20 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#21 The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

#22 Approximately half of all American workers make $25,000 a year or less.

#23 The wealthiest 1% of the earth's population controls 39% of the wealth.

#24 It is estimated that over 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries where the income gap between the rich and the poor is widening.

#25 One year after the recent financial collapse the top 25 hedge fund managers earned a total of approximately $25 billion. That breaks down to an average of $1 billion each.

#26 Bill Gates has a net worth of somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 billion dollars. That means that there are approximately 140 different nations that have a yearly GDP which is smaller than the amount of money Bill Gates has.

#27 It is estimated that the entire continent of Africa owns approximately 1 percent of the total wealth of the world.

#28 The top 0.01% of Americans make an average of $27,342,212. The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244.

#29 58 percent of the members of Congress are millionaires while only about 1 percent of the general population is made up of millionaires.

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