5 Ugly Extremes of Inequality in America That Will Make Your Jaw Drop to the Floor 1. $7.25 per hour vs. $3,000,000.00 per hour ($3 Million) Each of the Koch brothers saw his investments grow by $6 billion in one year, which is three million dollars per hour based on a 40-hour work week. 2. A single top income could buy housing for every homeless person in the U.S. On a winter day in 2012 over 633,000 people were homeless in the United States. Based on an annual single room occupancy (SRO) cost of $558 per month, any ONE of the ten richest Americans would have enough with his 2012 income to pay for a room for every homeless person in the U.S. for the entire year. These ten rich men together made more than our entire housing budget. 3. The poorest 47% of Americans have no wealth. In 1983 the poorest 47% of America had $15,000 per family, 2.5 percent of the nations wealth. At the other extreme, the 400 wealthiest Americans own as much wealth as 80 million families -- 62% of America. The reason, once again, is the stock market. Since 1980 the American GDP has approximately doubled. Inflation-adjusted wages have gone down. But the stock market has increased by over ten times, and the richest quintile of Americans owns 93% of it. 4. The U.S. is nearly the most wealth-unequal country in the entire world Out of 141 countries, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon. Yet the financial industry keeps creating new wealth for its millionaires. According to the authors of the Global Wealth Report, the worlds wealth has doubled in ten years, from $113 trillion to $223 trillion, and is expected to reach $330 trillion by 2017. 5. A can of soup for a black or Hispanic woman, a mansion and yacht for the businessman. Thats literally true. For every one dollar of assets owned by a single black or Hispanic woman, a member of the Forbes 400 has over forty million dollars. Minority families once had substantial equity in their homes, but after Wall Street caused the housing crash, median wealth fell 66% for Hispanic households and 53% for black households. Now the average single black or Hispanic woman has about $100 in net worth. alternet.org/economy/5-ugly-extremes-inequality-america-will-make-your-jaw-drop-floor
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 22:59:17 +0000
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