rigorousintuition.ca

22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class
Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America
Michael Snyder, Business Insider -- July 15, 2010

01 ) 83% of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1% of the people.

02 ) 61% of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.

03 ) 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.


04 ) 36% of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.

05 ) A staggering 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

06 ) 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.


07 ) Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32% increase over 2008.

08 ) Only the top 5% of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

09 ) For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

10 ) 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 1.

11 ) As of 2007, the bottom 80% of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

12 ) The bottom 50% of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.

13 ) Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17% when compared with 2008.

14 ) In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

15 ) The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

16 ) In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.

17 ) More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.

18 ) 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.

19 ) 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.

20 ) Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.

21 ) Approximately 21% of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.

22 ) The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.

http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics-that-prove-the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-wiped-out-of-existence-in-america-2010-7#83-percent-of-all-us-stocks-are-in-the-hands-of-1-percent-of-the-people-1

Well, that's the fine how do ya do we've all feared and known all along. I just don't know why "they" couldn't have left well enough alone -- what is it with money and power and greed? Something tells me that there are more sadists in our midst than were ever let on. What is it with power? What is it. It becomes contagious. It destroys every thing in its path. Why why why?

Sure, I like to have power. But it needs to be cooperative -- cooperative power. At a very young age I decided to take a path of the least resistance, while maintaining my mind. So I did. Up to now, this has not worked out so well. It worked fine for awhile, granted. Financially, I got nothing.

Last week, my boss told me that I needed to tell various employees "that someone is going to get fired". I said "I cannot do that". I said that I "asked" other employees to help with some problem we were having and that everybody was very rigid with me. He said "YOU DON'T ASK. YOU TELL." I again said, I cannot do what he was asking of me. He thankfully chilled out and we got the task solved. But it took SPENDING MONEY -- money they did not want to spend. A human livelihood was less important than a bank statement. Nobody fucking matters.

There will not be a revolution until this shit I am typing on is long gone and inaccessible. And then, it will be summarily shut down. Our days are numbered. The REALIZATION of the most major heist of all time is just around the bend.

I will say, I'm sick of it though.

SHIT IS FUCKED!!!! WE ARE IN CASCADING FAILURE PERIOD. IMO.

Like Ran Prieur has written for years. You will only feel it little by little. The collapse is systemic. One domino after the other. They are funding the hate. Call it the "hate bubble". Here we are.

For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps

+1

Because I'm going blind and don't have insurance or $16,000 cash to fix it.

82_28 wrote:A human livelihood was less important than a bank statement.

I was told that "the financial health of the hospital" is more important than my eyesight, more important my ability to work or read a computer screen further away than 5 inches. And this is a publicly owned hospital. They say they'll fix my eyes after I've gone completely blind. Health care was an abstract issue for me until my eyes started to go. (not looking for sympathy here, the problem will be fixed, eventually...just offering a first-person account)

A few years back this same hospital over-billed Medicare $100 million over a 10 year period (they got caught).

82_28 - I hear what you're saying but really, on the whole, when has it been any different?

Best of luck, Elvis.

It's so grim that someone's eyesight or job could be rescued by a PENNY chip from these assholes just throwing everybody's money (NOT theirs, not theirs) around the casino.

...class warfare is getting so obvious, I wonder if and when awareness will cross The Line...

norton ash wrote:Best of luck, Elvis.

It's so grim that someone's eyesight or job could be rescued by a PENNY chip from these assholes just throwing everybody's money (NOT theirs, not theirs) around the casino.

Thanks, Norton. The hospital did grant me charity care (I'm too young for Medicare etc), so exams and tests are free but surgery they deem "not medically necessary" doesn't qualify.

I must give credit to the ophthalmologist there who was assigned to me---she's miffed that the criteria denies the surgery, and she's advocating to the bureaucracy for letting her do it. She even suggested to me that if she was in private practice, she'd just do it. So not all of them are bastards.

Unlike the private eye doctor I first went to for an exam: he asked if I had insurance, I said no, he just said, "Oh...that's too bad."

Since this thread is about statistics, here's a number:
Even though I don't have to pay, they send a statement showing the itemized fees. One of my cataracts is so advanced that the doctor had to look behind it with an ultrasound wand--not a fantastically expensive machine. We were in the little ultrasound room for maybe four minutes. The usual fee just for that? $750.

Wombaticus Rex wrote:...class warfare is getting so obvious, I wonder if and when awareness will cross The Line...

Saw a protest sign that read:
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back."

Saw a bumper sticker today that read:
"Each night when I go to sleep in my car I'm grateful to know I've helped save all those banks."

Upping because this is a powerful meme-bomb, a lot of important facts in one article here....

Saw this today, it's David McNally via Richard Seymour. The stat about the food stamps is almost unbelievable.
____________
The best description I have heard comes from an economist who I won't name for the moment because he's a real shithead. But he did nail this one when he said, "What the United States is experiencing is a statistical recovery and a human recession." That's precisely what's happened. A few statistical indicators have moved up, but for the vast majority of working class people, the recession continues.

If you add in the nearly 10 million who are involuntarily underemployed--they're taking part-time work because they can't find full-time work--you've got about 27 million people unemployed or underemployed in the U.S. economy right now. That translates into an unemployment rate of over 17 percent, and for Black and Latino workers, it's an unemployment rate of around 25 percent.

According to the Economist, one out of every six U.S. workers has taken a wage cut in this recession, and amazingly, four out of every 10 African Americans has experienced unemployment during this crisis. Looking at food stamps, an additional 37 million people went onto food stamps in the U.S. in 2009, and 40 percent of those recipients are working for a wage. They're not unemployed--they're simply the working poor that can't make ends meet.

As for the next statistic I'm going to give you, this one was so overwhelming that I did check it to be sure. Half of all U.S. children will now depend on food stamps at some point during their childhood, and the figure runs at 90 percent for African American kids. Imagine that--in the heartland of global capitalism.

Food stamps are very profitable for JP Morgan.

Thanks, I didn't know that. Hmmm.

J.P. Morgan works with more than 35 U.S. state governments [36? 37?] to accept and process forms and payments from constituents, provide electronic and card-based disbursements, improve accounts payable processes and achieve cost-savings throughout the procure-to-pay cycle.

Yeah, I correspond with a guy who works in that dept, we both share a common visceral hatred for the day jobs we rely upon for money. Although I have to say, between the two of us, I think he hates his job a lot more, and touches a whole lot more lives with his occupation than I do with mine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... warns.html

Banking system on verge of new crisis, hedge fund Noster Capital warns

The banking system could be on the brink of another crisis, according to one hedge fund manager who has taken a series of short positions against some of Europe's largest financial institutions.

By Harry Wilson, Financial Services Correspondent
Published: 5:30AM BST 03 Aug 2010
Barclays

London-based fund Noster Capital is betting against five major European banks, including Barclays in the UK, Spain's BBVA, and Switzerland's UBS.
Pedro Noronha, chief executive of Noster Capital, said he thought many people still failed to understand the extent of the problems facing many banks and were "complacent" about the risks the industry faces.

"Two months ago everybody was in a panic about the sovereign debt crisis, and now it's like everybody is going on holiday and everything is fine," he said.

Talking about the results of last month's stress tests of 91 major European banks, Mr Noronha was scathing, saying the process was flawed. "The point of a stress test is that you stress something until it breaks. These tests included a ridiculous definition of tier-one capital and allowed some banks with... 1.7pc to show levels above 6pc," he said.

The other banks being shorted by Noster Capital are Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo and UBI, which Mr Noronha said faced significant dangers over their exposure to Eastern Europe and a stuttering Italian recovery.

However, he claims the biggest danger remains the US housing market, where he said there was the potential for a new shock as more Americans default on home loans as mortgages come up for refinancing.

Mr Noronha points to a new wave of low-quality "Alt-A" and "Option ARM" mortgages that face refinancing, which he warns could lead to a new fall in US real estate values, which could translate into a further series of losses for financial institutions still exposed to the US property market, which triggered the original crisis in 2007.

I think we're about to see some major upside-down assumptions on the part of the general populance.

The banks may WANT to instigate another crisis. Why shouldn't they? They made out like bandits in the last one!

It's like wondering why the MIC seems to lazy about stopping the wars. They WANT the wars to go on.

Banks in crisis, what a great recipe to be handed billions of dollars.