Economic disparity/US

Overview

Economic disparity has become an issue of particular significance in the United States because of both its unusual severity since approximately 2005 and because of the fact that this continues despite continued economic growth in the US up to that time. (The US economy shrank a little in 2009, and the numbers are not yet available as to what effect this has had on economic disparity, though preliminary indications are that it has continued to worsen.)

Related Pages

• US economy

Links

News

• 2018/01/22 [L..T] Vast majority of new wealth last year went to top 1% “A new billionaire is created every other day. The three richest Americans have the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the U.S. population. And 82% of the global wealth generated last year went to just 1% of the world's population.”
• 2014/05/15 [L..T] Hedge Fund Titans Hum a Happy Tune as They Target Public Schools «Hedge fund flacks hail this growing charter presence as a new window of opportunity for underprivileged kids in failing traditional schools. But many educators consider charters a diversion of badly needed public tax dollars into unaccountable private entities that cream off top students and refuse to take in the most challenged.»
• 2014/04/02 [L..T] The lie behind the shrinking labor force "The frightening truth is that our economy is failing to generate enough jobs. Of the jobs it does generate, too many pay stagnant or declining wages; fast-growth sectors like retail and food service are often at poverty scale. This despite the fact that we are supposedly recovering from the Great Recession, and U.S. stock markets have more than doubled since 2008."
• 2014/03/31 [L..T] Snapshots of inequality "...we also know that capitalism goes through periods in which economic inequality is more extreme and less so. So what kind of moment are we looking at now? What is the shape and contour of inequality in the U.S. today, six years after the recession that cratered in 2008?"
• 2014/02/19 [L..T] The Increasingly Unequal States of America
• 2013/01/01 [L..T] Fiscal cliff: America goes to the brink, but millions already fell into poverty Whatever the outcome of the political haggling, Congress has failed the 50 million Americans below the bread line.
• 2012/12/29 [L..T] Chris Hedges Explains How Entire Regions Within the US Are Treated Like Exploited Colonies a recent interview conducted with Chris Hedges surrounding his latest book Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.
• 2012/11/20 [L..T] Wealth Inequality in America “Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.”
• 2012/04/19 [L..T] CEO pay is 380 times average worker's - AFL-CIO “Chief executives at some of the nation's largest companies earned an average of $12.9 million in total pay last year -- 380 times more than a typical American worker, according to the AFL-CIO. [..] Average CEO pay rose 14% compared to 2010, when they earned $11.4 million on average, according to the union group.”
• 2011/10/03 [L..T] How Unequal We Are: The Top 5 Facts You Should Know About The Wealthiest One Percent Of Americans “It may shock you exactly how wealthy this top 1 percent of Americans is. ThinkProgress has assembled five facts about this class of super-rich Americans...”
• 2011/09/04 [L..T] Voters' zero-sum faceoff with wealthy campaign donors "While most citizens gripe about politicians or "the system" for operating beyond their influence--do any voters understand the "how" and "why" when elite interests wield far greater force?"
• 2011/06/01 [L..T] Overworked America: 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil "Why "efficiency" and "productivity" really mean more profits for corporations and less sanity for you."
• 2011/03/01 [L..T] It's the Inequality, Stupid “Eleven charts that explain what’s wrong with America.”
• 2011/02/03 [L..T] Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time “First, respondents dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality. Second, respondents constructed ideal wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution. Most important from a policy perspective, we observed a surprising level of consensus: All demographic groups – even those not usually associated with wealth redistribution such as Republicans and the wealthy – desired a more equal distribution of wealth than the status quo.”
• 2010/09/30 [L..T] Wealth Inequality “[...] Mike Norton and I recently conducted a study in which we asked Americans to first guess at the distribution of wealth in the United States, and then we asked them to perform the thought experiment and lay out what they think would be the ideal distribution of wealth if they were to enter society and be placed randomly in a class.”
• 2010/09/09 [L..T] Why the Rich Need the Poor
• 2010/05/17 [L..T] Protesters Take Over Banks, K St. “It didn't take long for the handful of irritated Bank of America employees to abandon their desks and make for the doors. Their office, a small Bank of America branch on Massachusetts Avenue, had been more or less taken over by a boisterous rally of 75 or so protesters from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the organizer behind two days' worth of Wall Street-themed protests in or near Washington.”

to be filed

• 2013-06-08 US Inequality Now Literally Off the Chart "The ILO report places the US Gini coefficient at 47.7, or almost half way toward the extreme where one rich household gets everything and everyone else gets nothing."
• 2007-08-01 How the U.S. Middle Class Became 10% Poorer: a change in measurement standards intended to make them more accurate, not a real change
• 2007-07-30 Is the US Heading for 'Developing Nations' Inequality Levels? by Paul Harris, The Observer UK
• 2007-03-26
  • Who's Gorging and Who's Getting Roasted in the Economic Barbecue? by James M. Cypher. Includes some recent history about Bush's tax breaks for the rich.
  • Bush Reorients Rhetoric, Acknowledges Income Gap

video

• 2012-11-20 Wealth Inequality in America: numerical visualizations of the current situation