We knew it was happening, but the statistics are astonishing. The corporate executives give themselves huge bonuses and nothing for the working class. There is a huge gap in America and it is continually getting worse. America’s greatest class is now America’s non-existent class. So we have poor and rich and very little inbetween. Look at some of these statistics.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
How can they? When you look at the next statistic…
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
This is America in general. 61%! That is a staggering number and people wonder why our economy is dying? We can’t afford to save, we can’t afford those nice new automobiles, etc.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
This is typical rich get richer. The reason it cuts off at 2007 is because of the minimum wage increase. That increase did nothing more than try to shorten the gap. However if you were making $8 before the increase, you were almost $2.50 per hour above minimum wage. You would now be $0.50 above minimum wage. Raising minimum wage doesn’t actually FIX things, things might seem better for the people who were under the new minimum wage, but then here comes inflation! Suddenly, that increase in minimum wage is nominal and the people who were making above minimum wage are now poorer. All we did was make a more level poor class.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
There’s that giant gap again.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
Funny, for a sector that needed a bail-out, they’re still earning more and more money. Wall Street and the Government, neither one can cutback when they should be. I also heard that banks that were bailed out gave out over $1 billion in bonuses. I’m all for incentives, but all that does is piss off the common consumer more. Now, I wouldn’t have nearly as much a problem with it if those bonuses were all for the workers instead of the executives at those banks, but come on. We all know where the money in America goes, straight to the executives. The working class continues to get pissed on. Unions are dying and Obama and Biden have done a piss poor job of helping them like they supposedly said they would. But then again, with Unions making sure workers get a decent wage, the executives say they aren’t making enough money and have to close the plant and move it to a third world country. Plus the downfalls of globalization and all…
Joe Biden tries to figure out why the hell the arrow on the logo points up. Everyone stares on in confusion.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
More of the rich getting richer. Once again, go figure. There’s something wrong with this picture. If this isn’t trickle down economics, what else is? This is basically, I take the money and then piss on everyone else working for me except my buddies. See? Trickle down.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
Wait a second… I thought the Obama administration was creating all these new jobs. Yet the job listings out there are smaller and smaller.
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
Invest, invest, invest, right? Who the hell can afford to? Oh wait, those guys. Not that I would want to invest in the current market. Even if it was thriving I couldn’t afford to anyway.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
We can’t compete on a Global Market until somebody in Washington wakes up and start to tariff the hell out of any product from those countries with unfair labor laws and practices. Make our manufacturers able to compete. But guess what? We won’t. So we reap what we sow.
The Global Market at work and looking outstanding.
• For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
You supposedly have a decent job and still have to go on food stamps, then something is wrong in America. Something is broken and the American Dream is fading fast. America is quickly becoming a land of, you have to have money to make money. All you need is to be born to the right people or know the right person. If you don’t, sucks to be you. Is that the Free Market that the Republican seem to love so passionately? No. The Free Market they talk about is protect the corporation and screw the workers. Neither side knows what they’re doing and they’re so set in being contrary to the other side that nothing will ever be worked out. And both sides have their followers so tied up in knots that all they know is that they HAVE to hate each other. Nobody wants to listen to each other and come up with a “best” solution. And this is why things get worse. Politics!
