Income Inequality

62 Members Of The Elite Have As Much Money As The Poorest 3.6 Billion People On The Entire Planet

Dark Planet - Public DomainDid you know that the top 1% has more wealth than the rest of the planet combined? And just 62 ultra-wealthy members of the elite have as much money as the poorest 3.5 billion people on the entire planet. These brand new numbers come from a shocking report that was just put out by Oxfam, and they show that income inequality continues to grow at a very rapid pace all over the world. As you will see below, the total wealth of the poorest half of the global population has plunged by 41 percent since 2010 while the wealth of the elite has continued to surge upward. The debt-based financial system that now has the entire planet in its grip funnels wealth to the very top, and the global elite are more than happy to hoard as much of it as they possibly can. (Read More...)

20 Super Wealthy Individuals Have More Money Than The Poorest 152 Million Americans Combined

Wealthy - Public DomainDo we need any more evidence before we will finally admit that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed? As you will see below, when you add together all of the wealth of the poorest 152 million Americans, it still falls short of the combined net worth of the 20 wealthiest Americans. This is a list that includes Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. To many, the core of the problem is that people like Gates and Buffett are making too much money. But I disagree. There is nothing wrong with working hard, building a company and making lots of money. The real problem is the fact that the bottom half of the country is steadily getting poorer. Once upon a time, this nation had the healthiest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but now that middle class is dying. If we don’t do something about this, soon we may not have much of a middle class left. (Read More...)

16 Signs That The Rich Are Getting Richer And The Poor Are Getting Poorer

Never before in American history has so much wealth been concentrated in the hands of so few.  Once upon a time, children throughout the United States were taught that America was the land of opportunity where anyone can make it if they work really hard.  But today the system is designed so that wealth flows into the pockets of the rich as the rest of us struggle feverishly to stay above water.  The once great middle class that did so much to define America as a nation is slowly being squeezed out of existence.  For tens of millions of ordinary Americans, the American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Nightmare.  The labor of blue collar workers was once the engine that built the United States into an economic powerhouse, but today many of those workers have been replaced by robots and computers, or their jobs have been shipped overseas by greedy corporate executives.  Those who are in a position to exploit advances in technology and third world labor pools are becoming exceedingly wealthy, while the rest of us are left wondering why it seems as though we are working harder and harder for less and less.  The sad truth is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.  A very small percentage of Americans are sitting on massive piles of cash while an increasing number of Americans are having to rely on government handouts just to survive.  So is this a good thing for America? (Read More...)