There is a truly disturbing report out of Chicago that highlights the massive wealth gap in our country. The Springleaf Financial Strength Survey, found that 33 percent of Chicagoans are living paycheck-to-paycheck and have less than $250. Nationwide 43 percent of families are living paycheck to paycheck.
The Chicago figures are worse than the nation as a whole, which themselves are pretty dismal. Twenty-four percent of families have less than $250 in their account.
This follows a report that wealth has risen to a record $263 trillion, but people (with a net worth of $1 million or more) represent a mere 0.7 percent of the planet’s population control 41 percent of its wealth.
Source: CNN
JT: run the text of the article through WordPress. If I employ a word like itchBay the machine will censor it. If WordPress can spot an itchBay that is not in Pig Latin then it can correct a spulling error.
There is a Michael Brown symposium in Ladue, Missouri this week. The La Due people who have been critical of Ferguson are discussing ways to end the cycle of poverty which produced the 300 pound cigar stealing fleeing felon who assaulted a cop and got shot and killed. To end poverty as he knew it they are focusing on food stamps (which is now a credit card and not a bundle of stamps), Aid To Dependent Children, and microwave cooking. Michael Brown Senior and the red haired mom have rejected interviews because they are off to the UN. AL Sharptongue has already said his peace but he did not address the core issues. The Mayor of Saint Louis, the County Executive of Saint Louis County, the Chief of Police and the Mayor of Ferguson have all said that a No True Bill may or may not be True. Time will tell. In the meantime if you live in Canfield Hills on the far east side of Ferguson. are 14 years old and female, then now is the time to hook up with Michael Brown Senior and get knocked up so that you can get “your check”. Route 66 runs through Saint Louis. Go there to get your kicks. Don Lemon and the CNN crew will be there soon at the abandoned Northland Shopping Centre to bring you the news of broken windows and looting. The tag line will be: My Hands Are UP! Don’t Shoot! I just wanna Loot!
Lloyd is important. He shows the enabler mentality of the Dem party. The co-dependency is remarkable. They keep blacks poor and angry, throw them a few cookies now and then, and get 90% of the black vote. If Malcolm X had lived this would have been much different. He say the paternalism and enabling of white liberals the core problem for poor blacks.
Stereotyping the poor is not the reason for economic injustice. Having a phone, Internet, shoes and clothes is not living the high life. Why is it that those with the least are criticized the most? Why are those with little power to change things blamed when things don’t change? Why are the less fortunate (unlucky to be born poor) treated as second class citizens when the most fortunate (lucky from birth) are treated as royalty?. Blaming those with nothing for the sins of those with everything is simply BS.
The great flick, Being There, comes to mind.
Why, any good republican gardener worth his or her salt knows that you water the leaves at the top of the tree. Yep, that way the tree will be OK.
issac – you realize there is no coorelation between gardening and economics. Except one. Money is like manure. It doesn’t do any good unless it is spread around.
Ed, My thoughts too. It’s all about priorities. As a firefighter I can’t tell you number of times I’ve gone to a trailer fire and the people live like pigs but then they have the big wide screen TV. I went to one where we were trying to resuscitate a guys mother and he wouldn’t even get off of his fat ass to give us her information. It was good to see our chief rip him a new one.
I forgot tattoos. Gotta get me a new tat. Forget about “saving money”, that’s for suckas.
I have to wonder how many of those living paycheck to paycheck pay for cable TV, a cell phone, internet service, the latest Air-Jordans, alcohol, cigarettes etc. I suspect for many this is just a short sighted lifestyle choice, with the expectation that if things go bad, big gov will step in and “do something.”
SWM didn’t like it when I needled Dems yesterday here for sleeping in every morning. I know she’s not one of the lazy ones and knew she would prove it this morning. Dems HATE to be called lazy. That’s the charge they ALWAYS throw @ Rep. The have the “Rep are stupid. lazy, and heartless” on a boilerplate.
Obama has shown the poor, black and white, only lip service. He does not relate to them. He has Al Sharpton visiting the WH often. They text each other! Sharpton is Obama’s cover so he can hang w/ his real peeps, the rich and famous. But hey, some of the rich are black!
Paul C, I think we can agree on that.
schlorrs, We will soon see $70 a barrel oil…..deflationary. Now, if it drops to $60 we will see economic dislocations in oil producing states that could spread into the general markets.
bfm, As you know the rich have put their capital in the markets in both stocks and bonds and have seen enormous returns. They also scooped up some good real estate during the crash. Tax policies have been very favorable to them. Now they have all the capital so it is going to be difficult to change things. Economic mobility would certainly help.The tax rates changed last year but don’t know that it will make a big difference.
swm – with the rate being paid by banks it is not in your best interest to have your money tied up in savings accounts, you are actually losing money against inflation. Almost anyplace else is a better investment.
@swarthmoremom: “the mean income of the top decile increased 10 percent between 2010 and 2013.”
And that is only part of the story. It is as though the US is running two economies in parallel, one for the bottom 90% and one for the top few percent who get all the economic increases.
Bloomberg tells us that as recently as 2012 the top 1% received nearly 93% of all income growth:
“The recovery that officially began in mid-2009 hasn’t arrived in most Americans’ paychecks. In 2010, the top 1 percent of U.S. families captured as much as 93 percent of the nation’s income growth, according to a March paper by Emmanuel Saez, a University of California at Berkeley economist who studied Internal Revenue Service data.”
Even Reagan understood that when the economic pie gets bigger everybody should get a bigger piece. Those in power today seem to have missed that detail.
I don’t understand that this is a surprise. ???? SWM points out an important situation. We are still paying for the bailouts with inflation. I don’t know where people keep coming up with the low inflation rates, but I don’t see it. Every time I go to the store, it costs more, and we just found out our health ins. is taking another hike. I’ll stand behind my take that the gov should have done its job by following its own regulations and fire-selling off the assets of the banks and putting the bankers in the pokey in ’08. It would have hurt a bit, but with those assets spread back out, I feel people would have acted quickly to fill in the vacuum left by those huge banks. But, we saved them, and by all accounts, business is as usual–same-ol’, same-ol’. Back to serfdom and TV. Now, the next time things go south, we’ll be bailing out insurance, banking, and investments, thanks to Clinton and the repub congress for pulling out Glass-Steagall. The hat trick may not come together next time…
Professor there are some typos in the headline. Not that I am one to talk :p
http://gawker.com/rich-get-richer-poor-get-poorer-1631000921 “n the years since The Great Recession of 2008, our nation has, on average, made great strides towards economic recovery. On average. In reality, all of the money has gone to the rich.
Yesterday, the Federal Reserve released its annual Survey of Consumer Finances. You can read it here. Or, you can read our extremely short and less detailed but nevertheless accurate summary of its findings, as follows: since 2010, the rich have fully recovered and even made gains from the pre-recession era, whereas the non-rich have not gotten a god damn thing. When you average this all out you can still show statistical gains, so, hell with it! “Between 2010 and 2013, mean (overall average) family income rose 4 percent in real terms, but median income fell 5 percent, consistent with increasing income concentration during this period.” In the past three years, the lower class has seen its income decline; the middle class has stayed roughly flat; and the upper class has seen its income rise. The three little pigs of capitalism are all doing just fine.
Some details from the Fed:
Across the distribution of families grouped by usual income, all but the highest quintile saw declines in median income between 2010 and 2013, with second and third quintiles seeing the largest declines (7 percent and 6 percent, respectively). Median income increased 2 percent for the top income decile. Mean income declined strongly for the bottom two quintiles and barely budged for those between the 40th and 90th percentiles, whereas the mean income of the top decile increased 10 percent between 2010 and 2013.”
Professor, you seem surprised that the minions have so little. The trickle down, voodoo, economics policy that has infested American economics since Reagan is not designed to trickle down too much from on high.
The gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest fifths of the country more than tripled between 1979 and 2007 (the period for which these data are available), according to data the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) issued last week. Taken together with prior research, the new data suggest greater income concentration at the top of the income scale than at any time since 1928.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3220
It doesn’t take an economics rocket scientist to realize that pushing more bread to the top leaves fewer crumbs for those below.
Welcome to the new Roaring (for the wealthy) 20’s.
Lloyd – you can blame this on Reagan but Obama and Chicago takes the blame for all of this.
Maybe this is a Chicago thing but what is a ‘ban account’? Is this something coming to other communities? Is this part of the “Chicago way”?
For a understanding of this and similar “problems” I suggest http://economistsview.typepad.com/