It's not about class? When it comes to inequality, America has no equals

1. Incomes in the United States have been getting more unequal since the late 1970s



By 2000, the top one percent of the population was getting a bigger share of after-tax income than the bottom 40 percent. In other words, 2.8 million Americans were out-earning 110 million. 

2. It wasn't always this way.

This pattern of steadily rising inequality is a sharp departure from the experience of our parents and grandparents.





3. Wealth is even more concentrated than income.



In 2001, according to NYU economist Edward Wolff, the richest five percent of American households controlled over 59 percent of the country’s wealth; the richest 20 percent held 83 percent of the wealth; the bottom 80 percent had 17 percent; and the bottom 40 percent just 0.3 percent.

Nearly 31 percent of black households and more than 13 percent of white households had zero or negative net worth.

4. When it comes to inequality, America has no equals *



* among the developed nations

http://www.inequality.org/facts.cfm

welfare and healthcare. Even though the economy improved, corporations were working their employees to death under Clinton and it is worse now, to create another big distraction to the crimes of the Bush Crime Family, Bilderbergers, Illuminati and their other supporters.

Mario Cuomo said at this time that HMOs would not have been able to destroy healthcare if people were not being forced to work 24/7.

the corruption is simply beyond belief. The hyper-inflation we will all face form this profligate, deficit spending is astronomical. Already gold is soaring in anticipation of a plummeting dollar. new orleans will prove to the world that the dollar is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on humanity...It's only backed up by bush's ever-increasing debt. ~~~The devastation about to be unleashed on New Orleans will make Katrina seem like a summer breeze.

This could turn out to be the most disgusting, greedy, and heartless act thus far.

~Placing rove in charge of the rebuilding of New Orleans is just another attempt to foil the Fitzgerald Grand jury, when Fitzgerald returns indictments against Rove Bush will paint Rove as indispensable to the recovery of the Gulf and Fitzgerald’s indictment as a partisan attempt to interfere with recovery attempts.

Having rove in charge of the recovery will give Bush “a legitimate reason” to pardon Rove thereby burying the investigation into Plame’s outing. Rove has NEVER been in charge of anything except partisan politics; to suddenly place him in charge of the largest public works program in the memory of the vast majority of Americans alive today has to be more than an attempt to shovel billions to Halliburton and cronies (Any Bush hack could do that with the blessing of Congress). Rove must be seen as indispensable to the well being of the nation, as usual the republicans place partisan politics above EVERYTHING, EVEN THE DEATHS OF THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS (SEE 9/11/2001)

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=22797&mode=thread&order=1&thold=0

~Such as the sometimes ghoulish Congressional attempts to transform the entire Gulf Coast into a giant laboratory for the social Darwinist agenda radical Republicans have mostly failed to inflict on the nation at large.


Well, they certainly better re-think and have a care here, because they are toying with setting off a socio-economic time bomb that could wreak havoc and make Katrina's natural devastation look like a party aftermath...

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David Cay Johnston. These two books are perhaps the most incendiary political tomes out there today. The concentration of wealth in this country is resulting in the exact same causes of the collapse of other economic empires of the past: Spain, Netherland, Great Britain, and now us.

Perfectly Legal shows how bad conditions are getting for what's left of the Middle Class.

When the wealthy offshore the jobs and capital and everyone else is stuck with 'the bill' for government, you have to ask yourself where the Supply Siders ever got it right. Marginal propensity to consume accounts for something with Keynsians, after all. Now I hear that Bushco is using a little noticed program of Capital Repatriation to the tune of $350 billion this year only in order to try to balance the books. Nice try but no cigar until that program becomes permanent and with rising taxrates beyond the current 5%.

Corporate welfare and CEO's paid scandalous amounts, well, if "shareholders" are willing to be screwed...how long do you think that can go on ?

These statistics are similar pre-revolutionary Russia and China. Americans will never rise up though, as long as they can put themselves in debt getting their fixes of SUVs and electronics.

for those of us near the bottom rung like myself. Now I don't mind frugality and poverty, I've somewhat chosen to live a simple life but the costs of necessities are simply getting beyond the affordability of so many. Energy costs in particular will skyrocket in the next few years no doubt. And that's okay if it means everyone shares in the burden, but that isn't how it is working and the solutions are made impossible by those who are benefitting from our plight.

Great graphic display for those who don't see it every day in their lives. I'm afraid we are all living in "interesting times".

by a prof from Penn or some other eastern school about class mobility in a cross section of industrialized societies. The prof stated that he expected to find a high degree of class mobility in the US vis-a-vis other developed nations. He was shocked to find that there were only two studied nations with LESS class mobility than the US: Britain and South Africa. (Perhaps some enterprising DUer could scare this up on Google.)

Which only proves what was already known by those paying attention.

Haven't seen these recent figures but the pattern has been there for a while. To hell with the poor of the earth. Give them religion.:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

The measuring of class mobility changes is simply one more piece of a puzzle that reveals a picture of America on the decline. However, the implication of a reduction in class mobility is most ominous for African Americans. The reason being is that class is one of the inherited legacies and disadvantages born from centuries of slavery and discrimination. Hence, blacks are disproportionately pooled in the lower classes as a resultant of America never reconciling or repairing the damage it inflected from centuries of oppression. The researches estimated that class leaves a five generation advantage or disadvantage, on average, upon descendants emanating from wealthy or poor families. Given that, blacks have an inherited disadvantage born from America’s suppression, oppression and repression of black people, that gives whites a contemporary advantage in contemporary competition for opportunity. This we all know.

you see this pattern. Governments have been forced to intorudce policies on the orders of the World bank, IMF, WTO etc which promote significant disparities between rich and poor. The anti-globalization and counter-globalization movements have been screaming about this for twenty five years. These are the policies of Reagan and Thatcher. Sadly there will be no real changes until these policies bite hard in the US and Europe.
They won't have enough fundie churches to hold teh sheeple when they really catch on. The winter oil bills will wake up a few more of them.

It's going to get very ugly but there will be changes.

right to the top and leave the rest behind. The result is all too obvious and painful.

? In a comparison of eight European and North American countries, Britain and the United States have the lowest social mobility
? Social mobility in Britain has declined whereas in the US it is stable
? Part of the reason for Britain's decline has been that the better off have benefited disproportionately from increased educational opportunity

Researchers from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) have compared the life chances of British children with those in other advanced countries for a study sponsored by the Sutton Trust, and the results are disturbing. 

Jo Blanden, Paul Gregg and Steve Machin found that social mobility in Britain - the way in which someone's adult outcomes are related to their circumstances as a child - is lower than in Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. And while the gap in opportunities between the rich and poor is similar in Britain and the US, in the US it is at least static, while in Britain it is getting wider.

A careful comparison reveals that the USA and Britain are at the bottom with the lowest social mobility. Norway has the greatest social mobility, followed by Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Germany is around the middle of the two extremes, and Canada was found to be much more mobile than the UK.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.htm

and happy New Year. Britain is the most class ridden society on earch.