22 Facts Proving the American Middleclass is Nearly Gone
[views:5441][posts:30]_____________________________________
[Jul 25,2010 11:12am - arilliusbm ""]
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/the-u.s.-middle-class-is-being-wiped-out-here's-the-stats-to-prove-it-520657.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC, SPY,MCD,WMT,XRT,DIA
83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
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.
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.
As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nations wealth.
Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
or 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.
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.
Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
[Jul 25,2010 11:17am - BlackoutRick ""]
Just watched Capitalism: A Love Story. Good flick. Shit is outta control. Kill the rich.
[Jul 25,2010 12:13pm - ShadowSD ""]
arilliusbm said: The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
And the worst part? The WORST fucking part? None of the bastards are hiring anybody. They want to wait as long as they can so they can say, look see, you didn't give us big tax cuts so we're not hiring, thus validating the cycle of crooked politicians who push for those cuts, when in reality the rich are now so much richer than the rest of us that they can to a great extent choose to hire when they like who's in power and not to hire when they dislike who's in power, then just blame the policies they dislike for the unemployment rate; there are limits to this of course when there's an economic crash, and there are certainly other factors at work, but there's no question they're gaming the system to the extent that they can in order to fuck all of us.
Here's what I say: tax the fuck out of them, but then they can have a huger deduction for every new employee they hire at one of their companies.
[Jul 25,2010 12:24pm - FuckIsMySignature ""]
sweet i'm living pretty comfortably... sucks to be everyone else.
[Jul 25,2010 12:27pm - arilliusbm ""]
Do you have thousands of saved up for retirement?
[Jul 25,2010 12:30pm - FuckIsMySignature ""]
nope.. i'll be dead before i need to retire.
[Jul 25,2010 12:34pm - SkinSandwich ""]
LOL class.
[Jul 25,2010 1:31pm - Pires ""]
arilliusbm said:Do you have thousands of saved up for retirement?
I have absolutely nothing in my retirement. NOTHING. Although I do have a pension setup through my job, but that will probably get raped and stripped before I see it.
[Jul 25,2010 1:34pm - ShadowSD ""]
I have zero in retirement, and what's more, I don't even have anything towards Social Security. The Die Young retirement plan sounds better and better.
[Jul 25,2010 1:42pm - the_reverend ""]
I have a crap load in my retirement.
[Jul 25,2010 1:51pm - arilliusbm ""]
I've got a decent amount saved up for someone my age but I'm starting to feel it's a waste of money.
[Jul 25,2010 1:54pm - arilliusbm ""]
And the fact that it's all "digital" numbers in a bank's computer isn't exactly thrilling. We've already put enough faith in our financial institution in the past, why have hopes of money being available when you need it most?
[Jul 25,2010 2:25pm - Alx_Casket ""]
arilliusbm said:And the fact that it's all "digital" numbers in a bank's computer isn't exactly thrilling. We've already put enough faith in our financial institution in the past, why have hopes of money being available when you need it most?
Buy gold.
[Jul 25,2010 2:36pm - arilliusbm ""]
Should have bought it 12 years ago when it was much cheaper.
[Jul 25,2010 3:15pm - #1 Opeth Fan ""]
I met this terrible person the other who told me that 99% of humanity have always been clueless, and there has always been an elite of 1% who had more of a clue than the others. I told him he was a meanie.
[Jul 26,2010 2:24am - ernie ""]
only .72 percent of Americans think statistics are real or matter
[Jul 26,2010 7:58am - Yeti ""]
ShadowSD said:I have zero in retirement, and what's more, I don't even have anything towards Social Security. The Die Young retirement plan sounds better and better.
i have nothing and have no desire to have anything saved. at the rate we're deteriorating to think that i can plan the economics of 40 years from now is ludicrous to me. it just seems so unnecessarily stressful to worry about an uncertain future and put away money i can use now, "just in case" i want to retire someday. i don't like work, but retirement doesn't interest me either, it seems that people deteriorate once they retire.
[Jul 26,2010 8:01am - arktouros ""]
bennyhillifier
[Jul 26,2010 8:04am - arilliusbm ""]
Save money for putting your future kid(s) in college. I'm sure the average tuition will be 100k a year in 20 years
[Jul 26,2010 8:07am - arktouros ""]
SAVE money? I just bought a bong yesterday that gives out free beejays.
[Jul 26,2010 8:09am - arilliusbm ""]
In unlikely disturbing future, bong buys you.
No video card?
[Jul 26,2010 8:13am - arktouros ""]
I bought a few games last week (Metroid Trilogy, Halo ODST) and I can only play one game at a time. My PC has been staying on to my surprise.
and holy shit STARCRAFT II comes out tomorrow.
SAVE money...haha.
[Jul 26,2010 8:14am - arilliusbm ""]
SCII... Shit.. Need to put my power supply and video card in
[Jul 26,2010 8:45am - ShadowSD ""]
Yeti said:
ShadowSD said:I have zero in retirement, and what's more, I don't even have anything towards Social Security. The Die Young retirement plan sounds better and better.
at the rate we're deteriorating to think that i can plan the economics of 40 years from now is ludicrous to me.
Exactly, you put it better than I did.
[Jul 26,2010 8:48am - largefreakatzero ""]
One of the biggest problems is that the Baby Boomer generation will not retire. That group is taking up a huge part of the workforce right now.
[Jul 26,2010 9:03am - arilliusbm ""]
I wouldn't retire either the way the country is going.
Unless I get off the grid..Which I plan on doing at some point.
[Jul 26,2010 4:05pm - metal_church101 ""]
Screw gold. Invest in food stamps!!!
[Jul 26,2010 6:29pm - Conservationist ""]
Do a metalcore ritual about it!
[Jul 26,2010 6:44pm - arilliusbm ""]
Only Houston Metalcore is real.
[Jul 26,2010 10:16pm - Conservationist ""]
Maybe more liberal policies will bring back the middle class.
After all, we've been steadily liberalizing since 1945. Surely they cannot be THE CAUSE!
Does Houston have metalcore? This place is easily 20 years behind on the trends, so they're just getting into war metal here.
[Jul 26,2010 10:32pm - Lamp ""]
Houston has one hell of a grindcore scene.