INEQUALITY

Good read.


". . . But the scale of America’s income concentration at the top, and the fact that no other country has seen such extreme shifts, has sent people searching for other causes. The typical American chief executive now earns 300 times the average wage, up tenfold from the 1970s. Continental Europe’s bosses have seen nothing similar. This discrepancy has fostered the “fat cat” theory of inequality: greedy businessmen sanction huge salaries for each other at the expense of shareholders. . ."

Here is another link.

How about this one that reiterates:

". . . The top 1 percent of households control 40 percent of the wealth. Financial wealth is even more concentrated. The top one percent control nearly half of all financial wealth (net worth minus equity in owner-occupied housing) . . ."

This last stat is nothing new, but it still is amazing. Especially when you consider that the top 20 percent of the households basically have "most" of the wealth.

How about this stat:

". . . Microsoft CEO Bill Gates owns more wealth than the bottom 45 percent of American households combined. In the fall of 1997, Gates was worth more than the combined Gross National Product of Central America -- for you geography buffs, that's Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua and Belize. By the fall of 1998, Gates' $60 billion was worth more than the GNPs of Central America plus Jamaica and Bolivia . . ."

Two more links: 1 2

Link 2 (Census) supports what I seem to experience in Los Angeles:

". . . Black households had the lowest median income in 2005 ($30,858) among race groups. Asian households had the highest median income ($61,094). The median income for non-Hispanic white households was $50,784. Median income for Hispanic households was $35,967.

The three-year-average (2003 to 2005) real median income for American Indian and Alaska Native households was $33,627. The three-year-average median income for Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander households was $54,318. (Because of the relatively small populations of American Indians and Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, the sampling variability of their income data is larger than for the other racial groups and may cause single-year estimates to fluctuate more widely. To moderate these fluctuations in income, the Census Bureau uses 3-year-average medians when comparing the incomes of the American Indian and Alaska Native and the Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander populations with other racial groups.) . . .

. . . Poverty rates remained statistically unchanged for blacks (24.9 percent) and Hispanics (21.8 percent). The poverty rate decreased for non-Hispanic whites (8.3 percent in 2005, down from 8.7 percent in 2004) and increased for Asians (11.1 percent in 2005, up from 9.8 percent in 2004).

The three-year average poverty rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives was 25.3 percent. The three-year average poverty rate for Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders was 12.2 percent. (Because of the relatively small populations of American Indians and Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, the Census Bureau uses 3-year-average medians. . ."