How Rich Are the Richest? Here’s How
The Occupy Wall Street movement has been proven correct about the wealthiest 1 percent getting vastly richer while the rest of us 99 percent-ers are falling further behind.
Now, United for a Fair Economy parses out just what that wealth really means. The nonprofit economic justice organization notes that the 400 wealthiest families in the United States collectively own $1.37 trillion dollars—a figure that’s nearly incomprehensible. So United for a Fair Economy made that figure real with a list of showing 11 things that $1.37 trillion can buy.
- The richest 400 could pay the mortgages of every house in the whole country for 14 full months.
- The richest 400 can pay off all credit card debt for every single person in the entire United States. Imagine that! No more credit card debt looming over your shoulders!
- The richest 400 can pay for three and a half years worth of gas for every driver in the country.
- The richest 400 households can afford to triple the number of teachers in the United States, then give every single one a $30,000 raise. Teachers are being laid off everywhere, their salaries are being cut, and they are suffering. Teacher-to-student ratios in schools are abysmal. But what can we do about it when so much wealth is in the pockets of so few families?
For the full list, click here.
Cantor Cancels Speech as Occupy Philly Plans Protest
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) supposedly wants to talk about the nation’s inequality—but not to just anyone. Cantor, at the last minute, canceled an appearance this afternoon at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was slated to speak. Curiously enough, Occupy Philadelphia had organized a march from City Hall to the campus to protest Cantor’s speech. But Cantor’s not giving a reason for the cancellation.
Earlier this week, we noted that Cantor had shifted his rhetoric to seemingly take a softer line on the Occupy Wall Street movement. But despite changing his tactics from calling protesters “mobs” to suddenly going on the circuit to discuss inequality, Cantor’s “solution” is the same old rhetoric backed by the 1 percent: Don’t create jobs. Cut taxes on the rich.
Occupy Philadelphia and the rest of us 99 percenters around the country aren’t fooled.
Occupy Wall Street: ‘Working Families Are Struggling’
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Ja-Rei Wang, AFL-CIO Media Outreach fellow, writes about her experience with Occupy Wall Street in New York City.
I was one of more than 1,000 students, working families, parents, freelance artists, union members, health care providers and immigrants who weaved through Manhattan’s sidewalks to Washington Square Park to protest the growing wealth inequality in our country, rising unemployment, powerful corporate influence on politics and the need for financial reform, among other concerns. The marching contingent was made up of a diverse group of people of all ages, genders and ethnicities taking part over the weekend in Occupy Wall Street’s “International Day of Action.”
Parents marched in tow with their young children, some of whom even led protesters in chants. There were supportive honks and cheers from people passing by in cars and on the streets when protesters chanted: “We are the 99 percent! You are the 99 percent!”
The energy, spirit and camaraderie from the march followed protesters into Washington Square Park after a stop at a Chase bank to support people moving their money from large banks to local banks. At a General Assembly organized by physicians practicing in the Bronx, doctors shared their personal stories as health care providers and the stories of their patients that led them to believe we need “Healthcare for the 99 Percent.”
One doctor from the Bronx described the links between the economic crisis, persistent poverty, food insecurity, unemployment, lack of education and poor health:
Tax Cuts for Rich Cost $11.6 Million Every HOUR
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It’s really a shame Republicans in Congress don’t want to raise taxes on the super wealthy to help fund needed repairs to our nation’s bridges and roads—which in turn would create badly needed jobs for some of the nation’s 26 million unemployed and underemployed or those who have stopped looking for work.
Because tax cuts for the wealthiest 5 percent cost the U.S. Treasury—that’s you, gentle taxpayer—$11.6 million every hour of every day. That nauseating figure comes to us from a new rolling counter of the cost of Bush’s taxcuts on taxpayers by the National Priorities Project (NPP). The project notes:
Billionaire Buffett: Tax the Really Rich
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Warren Buffett, one of the world’s richest men, has said repeatedly U.S. taxes should be higher on him and his fellow billionaires and millionaires. Today he lays it on the line in a New York Times op-ed piece.
Buffett points out that he is taxed at only a 17.4 percent rate—while the office workers on his staff are taxed between 33 percent and 41 percent. While tea party Republicans in Congress fought off any moves to help balance the budget through higher taxes on the extremely rich, Buffett has this advice for Congress: Stop coddling the rich. Here’s what he recommends:
…for those making more than $1 million—there were 236,883 such households in 2009—I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more—there were 8,274 in 2009—I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
A special subset of Congress—12 members—will begin meeting after Labor Day to devise a plan that reduces the nation’s 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. They should listen to Buffett:
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
Read his full op-ed here.
Taxes Go Down for the Wealthy, Income Gap Worsens
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Just in time for April 15, new data shows that since 1979, the nation’s overall average tax rate—the share of income paid in taxes—has fallen slightly, but for those at the top of the earnings ladder, this share has fallen dramatically. The analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) also points out:
At the same time that the tax burden has shifted away from the wealthy, this same top income group has enjoyed massively disproportionate income gains. Between 1992 and 2007, a time in which income for the average household and top one percent grew 13 percent and 123 percent, respectively, the income for the top 400 households grew fully 399 percent.
U.S. Income Inequality Grows—Public Thinks It’s Not So Big
While the 1930s Depression raged and breadlines stretched for blocks in city after city, a poll found that the majority of the American public nevertheless identified themselves as “middle class.”
Uh, no.
But the myth of income equality, or near equality, persists even today.
This morning, the U.S. Census Bureau released data showing the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record. The top-earning 20 percent received more than 49 percent of all income generated in the country in 2009. The income gap has nearly doubled since 1968 and the United States now has the greatest income disparity among Western industrialized nations.
Public to Lawmakers: End Tax Cuts for the Rich
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A majority of the American public thinks Bush’s tax cuts should continue for families that make less than $250,000 a year but should rise to the previous level for those making more than that amount, according to a new CNN poll. Some 51 percent say the tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year, should end for the rich.
Wise. Because as Dave Dayen points out, George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are thought to cost $830 billion over 10 years, adding massively to the nation’s budget deficit. Overall,
it’s generally considered that extending all the tax cuts would increase the deficit by $3.1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is among those calling for an end to Bush’s tax cut for the rich, noting it has been a “huge windfall for the wealthy. About 40 percent of its benefits went to the tiny sliver of Americans earning over $500,000.”
A final reason for allowing the Bush tax cut to expire for people at the top is the most basic of all. Although Wall Street’s excesses were the proximate cause of the Great Recession, its fundamental cause lay in the nation’s widening inequality. For many years, most of the gains of economic growth in America have been going to the top—leaving the nation’s vast middle class with a shrinking portion of total income. (In the 1970s, the top 1 percent received 8 to 9 percent of total income, but thereafter income concentrated so rapidly that by 2007 the top received 23.5 percent of the total.)
The only way most Americans could continue to buy most of what they produced was by borrowing. But now that the debt bubble has burst—as it inevitably would—the underlying problem has reemerged.
Extending the tax cuts for the rich would exacerbate the already massive income gap between the rich and the rest of us, and so, to end with Reich:
Why make it worse?
Millionaires Killing Jobs
Today, 1.2 million jobless workers lose their extended unemployment insurance (UI) because some Senate millionaires think a $300 a week unemployment check will make people too lazy to look for a job. This group also is pushing to reduce the nation’s budget deficit rather than use short-term spending to create desperately needed jobs for the nation’s 26 million unemployed or underemployed workers.
Three things:
* The Senate yesterday failed for the FOURTH time to extend UI because Senate Republicans are blockading the bill. Economists say extending UI is fiscally prudent and essential to improve the faltering economy. Several hundred thousand more unemployed workers will lose their UI each week in addition to the 1.2 million jobless workers who already have.
* While more than 15 million U.S. workers can’t find work because there’s five workers for every one job opening, the rich are getting massively richer. The ranks of the nation’s millionaires rose 16.5 percent, to 2.87 million, last year. Their total wealth in North America rose 17.8 percent, to $10.7 trillion.
* A new poll shows the majority of the U.S. public wants government to take a larger and stronger role in making the economy work for America’s workers. Nine out of 10 agree that government and corporations should join with individuals to place the common good above greed. Another poll, by the Alliance for American Manufacturing, shows nearly three of five respondents (58 percent) say the United States no longer has the world’s strongest economy, compared with 36 percent who believe otherwise.
The Assault on Public Employees
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In this cross-post from the Huffington Post and Seminal, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee writes that attacks focusing on public employees are misdirected: the real culprits for the nation’s economic mess are Big Banks and Wall Street.
For more than a generation, America’s working families have been under a constant assault from the CEO’s and extraordinarily wealthy members of our society. While median incomes in the U.S. have stagnated since the mid-1970′s, incomes for those in the top five percent have more than doubled. Since the beginning of our new century—and aided by record-breaking tax cuts—incomes for the top 1 percent have tripled, while working families scrape by, working harder and longer and taking home less than they deserve in pay and benefits.
