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Government: Rich Getting Richer, More People Poor
WASHINGTON -- Fifty percent of U.S. workers earned less than $26,364 last year, reflecting a growing income gap between the nation's rich and poor, the government reported yesterday.
There were fewer jobs, and overall pay was trending down - except for the nation's wealthiest. The number of people making $1 million or more soared by over 18 percent from 2009, the Social Security Administration said, citing payroll data based on W-2 forms submitted by employers to the Internal Revenue Service.
Despite population growth, the number of Americans with jobs fell again last year, with total employment of just under 150.4 million - down from 150.9 million in 2009 and 155.4 million in 2008. In all, there were 5.2 million fewer jobs than in 2007, when the deep recession began, according to the IRS data.
The figures are just one more indication of the toll that the worst downturn since the Great Depression has taken on the U.S. economy. They were published as demonstrations rage on Wall Street and in cities across the nation protesting a widening income gulf between average wage earners and the nation's wealthiest.
The unemployment rate remains stuck at 9.1 percent, with more than 14 million out of work and 11 million other discouraged people who have stopped looking for work or are stuck in part-time jobs. Since 1980, roughly 5 percent of annual national income has shifted from the middle calls to the nation's richest households, according to the Census Bureau.
While the average U.S income last year was $39,959, the mean income - the figure where half earn more and half earn less - was much lower, $26,364. This disparity reflects the fact that "the distribution of workers by wage level is highly skewed," according to Social Security.
Median compensation last year was just 66 percent of the average income, compared with nearly 72 percent in 1980.
Online:
Social Security Administration: http://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year2010
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14 Comments so far
Show AllAs Ronny Raygun's team used to say in the 80s: GET RICH OR GET OFF !
occupy, occupy, occupy
I wonder if the W2 forms used to collect the data are really representative of what is happening. There are a lot of ways that income can be sheltered, but only the people at the top can make use of them, so disparities may be a lot worse than cited here.
Valid point.
This will go on until instead of changing politicians around, the 99% take charge.
Direct democracy
Well folks, to quote Herman Koch Cain: " If you are poor, blame yourself ". That kind of reminds me of a con man that just wiped some elderly people out of their life savings and saying: If you are that stupid, blame yourself!
From articles on the subject recently published by Iranian PressTV:
"15% of Americans using food stamps"
Hunger in America is growing at a staggering pace. There's some 311 million people living in the US and nearly 46 million need government assistance to be able to afford to buy food.
http://presstv.com/detail/192550.html
'15.7 million US kids live in poverty'
Between 2009 and 2010, a million more American children have joined the ranks of those living in poverty, bringing the number of poverty-stricken US children to 15.7 million, a new study finds.
http://presstv.com/detail/200947.html
1. As a professional statistician, I have to point out that it's the MEDIAN income where "half earn more and half earn less", not the mean. The median is another name for the 50th percentile of a distribution. As the article points out, the average wage (which could also be called the mean wage) was much higher than the median. One way to think of the mean wage is that its what people would earn if everyone earned the same amount. So the large difference between the mean and the median indicates that some people make a whole lot more money than others.
2. The IRS data show that those reporting at least $250,000 a year made up less than 1% of taxpayers, but had a total income equal to the bottom 45%.
Another way to illustrate how biased the mean value is, is to note that if 9 people earn $50,000 a year and one earns $10 milllion a year, the median will be $50,000 (which is representative of the group), whereas the mean will be $10,450,000 over 10, or $1,450,000, which is definately not representative.
A way to measure income inequality is the Gini Index, a number that ranges from 0 (where everyone earns the same) to 1, where one person earns everything. The situation you describe would have a very high Gini Index, but here's one that has a Gini index similar to the US index:
Suppose 10 people all start with $100,000 a year. Through the miracle of the market place, the Invisible Hand transfers half of the income of 9 of these to the 10th, so that now 9 people earn $50,000 and the 10th earns $550,000. That has a Gini Index of 0.45, about equal to the US index.
The most equal countries like Sweden and Norway have Gini Indexes around 0.25. Portugal has the highest Gini Index among European countries, about 0.38.
The US has the greatest income inequality of any advanced country. It's been getting worse for 40 years and it threatens to destroy our democracy, if it hasn't already.
To compare income inequality among countries, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
Yes, the innumeracy of journalists - both corporate media and alternate media - is pretty appalling, isn't it? This could not have been a typo. You should not have to be a statistician to know this; I learned the difference between median and mean in 7th grade science class. I'm sure in Europe and other places, they learn it much earlier.
We all have systematically been forced to accept less and less. Less pay, less hours, less health care, less less less. I worked for the state and the state is the most ruthless abuser of formulas that snip and cut people down to practically nothing. Also, I was sickened because my job, working in a school, was also in a Superfund site. Of course, this info was shared with no one. I bet that was a cheap location to acquire. That's all "they" care about.
My point being, when our very own government is preying on people this way it sets a whole new standard of what is acceptable. Our government is no longer "our" government. It has been taken over by an international elite who are running this country for profit and using the work and blood of the good people of this country to acquire resources all over the globe. Resources that we pay to acquire that are then privatized and owned and operated for the wealth of a few.
These people who have captured our government don't serve us. They are only there to serve themselves. We are like the cattle of a rancher. We do not represent people but rather a unit in which these people look to extract the maximum profit from. It is actually that bad. We have cures for cancer. We could run health care for half the cost and twice in better health outcomes. But serving the people is not what this model is built to do.
We are owned servants who are being treated and processed like livestock and if people don't fight back it's only going to get worse. These people running this country are sociopaths. We need to save ourselves with every resource we can muster and we need to throw these people out now. That includes the Repubs and the DEms who all do the bidding of these international elite scum.
There are still a lot of self-satisfied boomer assholes out there, who during the past 30 years have had careers in management, high-paying tech or medicine or university or similar, and who are very comfortable believing that rewards come to those who "work hard" - i.e., them. They sit in roughly the 90-99% range. They have a comfortable cushion and they do a lot of investing. The fact that they usually aren't quite rich enough to own yachts, islands, hookers, or Manhattan penthouses just furthers their belief in their uprightness.
This is a whole other layer of enabling of the system, just beneath the highly publicized banksters and CEOs. This layer rode the wave and shares the ideology, just as much as the top layer.
You won't find too many of these people occupying any public spaces, either.