Some Disturbing Statistics
From Yahoo Finance:
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn’t tell us that the “global economy” would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
• 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 nation’s 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.
So, about those bootstraps and rugged American individualism. How’s that working out, United States?
And that racist colonialist imperialist legacy that’s all about exploiting workers in the Global South?
Also, is there truly any job on Earth that is really worth millions of dollars, 10s of millions? 100s of millions? Is there any reasonable meaning to the concept of a single person being a billionaire? Obviously there is meaning, as all that wealth concentrated in a few hands means that so many do without so much. But is it really rational for this to be an economic reality?
I find the pay gap between arverage worker and executive to be the most shocking.
No one deserves to be paid millions, and no one should have to live hand to mouth.
The pay differences between top and bottom sickens me, moreso when companies “can’t afford” to keep employees on, yet still find time to provide nice fat bonuses to bosses and share holders.
IT’s sick.
Jenny
31 Jul 10 at 4:57 am
Yeah, if CEOs made even 10% of what they do now, this would probably have a significant impact on how corporations function.
A part of me just wishes that the entire idea of CEOs would go away. The best part of me.
Lisa Harney
31 Jul 10 at 5:10 am
Also, I probably should have said, I didn’t post this because of the shrinking middle class, but because it so starkly describes just how ridiculously out of control things are.
Lisa Harney
31 Jul 10 at 5:14 am
too true, but it’s true is many countries at well.
Over here in the UK politicians get paid better than university leavers, then get to claim expenses for travel and housing (which they used to pay for morgages)
Footballers over here get insane wages, it’s no wonder many football clubs go bust…
Jenny
31 Jul 10 at 8:43 am
I’m feeling rather churlish this afternoon, so I don’t know whether this will be coherent or rant salad, but here goes:
The current political system is busted and unfixable. With Dems and Repubs both in corporate pockets and minor parties effectively shut out of the political process, the US has become a fascist country, full stop (if it was it ever *not* a fascist country). The only non-violent way that this can change, I feel, is a general strike. It has to happen soon, before so much of our economy is outsourced overseas that such a strike won’t have sufficient effect. The ever-shrinking middle class will have to join in to make the strike effective, but I don’t see how that will happen as long as most middle-class folk continue our[*] death-grip on our less-than-secure resources and our race- and class-privileged entitlement (and I fear that I won’t be able to rid myself of my entitled attitudes in time, if ever). Unless we middle-class people see that we are fast becoming the new poor and the new disenfranchised, and unless we reject the intolerant and pro-capitalist messages of the Right, we won’t be able to join and fully support a general strike.
If a general strike doesn’t happen *soon* – before the 2012 elections, then I fear that widespread violence will be the result. A lot of people, including the newly poor, are going to be so resentful of the situation and of those who sit on top of the pyramid, that they will take it out on whoever they blame. Sadly, so many poor and downwardly-mobile middle-class white people have bought into the messages of the Right about how it’s immigrants to blame, POC to blame, queer people to blame that rather than burn down the houses of the CEOs, they will burn down the houses of those groups.
And I’m not even sure that a general strike would achieve the goal of a major change in the political system, and would the new political system wind up being “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”? Hence, I’m leaning more and more towards anarchism (and I don’t mean manarchistic violence for the sake of violence – I do mean seeing both government and corporations as equal hand-in-hand agents of oppression and exploitation, and getting rid of both).
I am very much in despair about the current political and economic landscape. I cannot see myself voting in November. If I vote for either major party, I’m just enabling fascism. Yet, minor parties don’t have a chance.
[*] Am I still middle-class, having been unemployed now for 20 months (preceded by nearly three years of dramatically reduced income post-transition) and having lost my home? Well, I still have my 401(K), and my middle-class entitled attitudes – how’s that for privilege. I just don’t know how to answer this question.
GallingGalla
31 Jul 10 at 10:42 am
I think this chart, from over here, pretty much sums it up. It shows the distribution of wealth in the US by income category since 1979, (with the top few percent split up pretty finely and the rest by quintiles). Basically, everyone below the top 10% is flatlined or slowly decreasing. The top 10% are going steadily upward, and the top 1% started out way above everyone else, and then spent the last 30 years spiking up and up with few breaks. So as the US economy has grown over the last 3 decades, almost all of the new money produced has gone to the super-ultra-mega rich. It’s really stark trickle-up economics.
tinamou
31 Jul 10 at 12:31 pm
As Malcolm X said when learning of the assassination of JFK, “Looks like the chickens are coming home to roost.”
The last few months I’ve had various works by Marx on my reading list along with Naomi Klein and a bunch of anti-globalist folks.
At the G20 in Toronto earlier this month the signs included ones demanding the rights of TS/TG folks along with those demanding the rights of other groups.
Class issues have the potential to unite people of variously defined identities in the interests of economic survival.
The problem is whether or not economic issues are enough to trump the divisions created by the right wing’s engagement in “culture wars”.
Suzan
31 Jul 10 at 12:40 pm
For an explanation of how in goddess’ name this happened, I highly recommend “Culture of Contentment” (1992) by John Kenneth Galbraith.
Valerie Keefe
31 Jul 10 at 12:48 pm
It’s not just the shitty economy that gets me down, but the fact that the odds are very heavily stacked against me as a trans woman who has to deal with not really being the most passable person out there. Even in the “liberal” Bay Area it’s quite depressing. One or the other I could deal with, but both feel like a double whammy to me.
There’s just so much affluence and entitlement out there I don’t think attitudes are going to change much.
Amanda in the South Bay
31 Jul 10 at 12:52 pm
One thing I find interesting is how so many people reflexively defend the ultra-wealthy. Like saying extremely high tax-rates for extremely high incomes are unfair and onerous. That somehow these CEOs and athletes and movie stars really earned 10s or 100s of millions of dollars every year with their work and it would be insanely cruel and oppressive to limit that.
Lisa Harney
31 Jul 10 at 12:54 pm
Amanda, I hear you:
Combination of transness and disability made it nigh-impossible for me to find and keep work in the mid-late 90s, and I ultimately ended up self-employed before even that fell through.
Lisa Harney
31 Jul 10 at 12:56 pm
Amanda,
One of the problems of the Bay Area is the hyper awareness of transfolks and how wearing it is, how destructive it is to constantly have people, even well meaning people read you to your face.
It is also one of the most expensive and highly competitive places to live in the country next to New York City.
I live in the D/FW area. After a lifetime in NY/SF/LA it is almost a relief to be able to afford decent housing. We have a lower rate of un-employment and in spite of the insane right wing and all the Christian extremists there is also the other faction that one hears less about, the punks and hippies as well as LGBT/T folks.
There is some thing else a lower level of the hyper awareness. I took a friend to the DMV this week and while there spotted a brother who I might have never noticed had it not been for a bunch of brothers in LA giving me all the reads.
If you aren’t totally bound up with the location expand your job search and reach out because it isn’t like 40-50 years ago, you have sisters and brothers all over the place and organized communities too.
Suzan
31 Jul 10 at 1:17 pm
Organized communities are probably what a lot of us need right now.
Lisa Harney
31 Jul 10 at 1:41 pm
I went to a demonstration a month or so ago in support of ENDA outside of Kay Bailey Hutchison’s office so yeah there are organized communities all over the place.
Suzan
31 Jul 10 at 2:40 pm
Oh, yeah, I know they exist. I’m just saying that some of us need to hook into them, become a part of them.
I’m glad you said that.
Lisa Harney
31 Jul 10 at 2:41 pm
[...] Some Disturbing Statistics – Re-printing a Yahoo! Finance article which is just as well because I can’t read Yahoo! News articles anymore due to the comments sections. [...]
Interesting posts, weekend of 8/1/10 « Feminists with Female Sexual Dysfunction
1 Aug 10 at 1:16 pm
The overall financial situation in America is unsustainable, as has been said. However, I think that at least a couple of these statistics are disingenuous.
61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
- Yes, this is bad, but it’s not entirely due to people not being paid enough. Some of it, at least, is due to people living and spending beyond their means. I do this to some extent too, though I’m taking steps to reduce my extra/unnecessary expenditures (eating out too much, mostly).
A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
- Guess what, I don’t have anywhere near $10,000 saved for retirement. I’m also only 26 and started working full-time just over a year ago (before that was college and grad school). Now, people in their 50s who don’t have at least $10,000 for retirement, that’s a problem.
24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
- Given that the average life expectancy in the US is around 75-80, depending on gender (heh), it makes sense that people choose to or need to work past the current retirement age of 65(ish). On the other hand, the number of employment opportunities for older people is unfortunately reduced.
I’m not saying that these statistics are wrong, nor that the economy (both for individuals/households and the country) is doing fine. It’s just that we need to take all statistics with a grain of salt.
Seamyst
2 Aug 10 at 5:39 am
The paycheck to paycheck thing – It’s entirely possible that people are living beyond their means and this is preventing them from having savings, but once you exclude the top 10%, average income is dropping all around, and much of this may very well mean not having the money to do more. You can’t really generalize from your experiences.
Same with the savings. My parents had a fairly lucrative job for nearly two decades, but due to a combination of circumstances that were not under their control, they ended up losing the house they’d purchased, having to buy a new house, and lost the job. They didn’t have $10,000 in savings before retirement.
The life expectancy statement is addressed further in the article, but it’s not really accurate to say that people are living significantly longer, nor is it necessarily a good thing that people are putting off retirement until later.
The article also links to the full report, I believe, or at least references it more directly.
Lisa Harney
2 Aug 10 at 6:01 am
Oh, I think the lifespan thing is actually debunked here, along with reasons why retiring later is a bad thing.
Lisa Harney
2 Aug 10 at 6:02 am
I think retiring later is great only if you have a comfortable, upper middle class desk job that you actually get enjoyment and satisfaction out of (I think there’s a wee bit of privilege there). For those of us who don’t, well, fuck that.
I’m awfully hesitant to blame people for living beyond their means, because as a result of being un/underemployed, many people have had to resort to maxing out credit cards and unsavoury loans and all that.
Its not just the physical reality of bring poor and living paycheck to paycheck that sucks, it is mentally draining and depressing. I keep thinking that if only someone had looked beyond me being trans and I was able to get my foot in the door, I wouldn’t be such a depressed, self loathing wreck most of the time.
Amanda in the South Bay
2 Aug 10 at 7:39 am
Yeah, I think the concept of “living beyond your means” is already problematic, and can involve assigning judgement to how people live their lives. And it can end up being rather overbearing and puritanical.
Lisa Harney
2 Aug 10 at 7:42 am
American workers fall into two categories: the vastly over paid minority and the grossly underpaid majority.
Between Reagan and Bush II we had two religious crazies who wanted to bring on Hal Lindsey’s Armageddon. backed by corporations that are so totally anti-labor.
We went from a producing society to a consuming society.
When you underpay people but give them credit to consume while selling for zero profit at point of sale with profit coming from the interest on the credit you have extended you have created modern American economics.
Only there was no Rapture and no Armageddon.
We are now in what Marx described as End Stage Capitalism. In an economic crash you face either a revolution of the left or of the right. LGBT/TQ people would probably be better with the left than with the right as the Christian crazies have already expressed an interest in genociding us.
Suzan
2 Aug 10 at 9:22 am
The high and happy lifestyles of the middle-class and up have been built on the backs of exploited people, exploited children. There is hardly any money that isn’t filthy from it.
The vaunted few, the top 1%, do I blame them? No. A democracy is largely controlled by the majority, and the majority has been middle-class. It’s the US middle-class that has been the main parasites of the world, enabling the CEOs and the military.
So I take this as good news. Sayonara, middle-class, can’t say I’m sorry to see you go.
Lee
2 Aug 10 at 6:15 pm
Oh, I don’t give a shit about the middle class. I do think the top 1% is definitely heavily complicit in all of this.
This isn’t good news because the majority of the wealth is being further concentrated upward and is thus largely irrelevant to the economy or the lower/working class.
Also, this democracy isn’t largely controlled by the majority. That’s at best a polite fiction.
Lisa Harney
2 Aug 10 at 6:18 pm
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