Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, addresses the growing class divide taking place in the United States and inequality in an article... "Of the 1, by the 1, for the 1%."
Stiglitz is a professor at Columbia University and author of numerous books, most recently Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.
"It’s not just that the people at the top are getting richer," Stiglitz says. "Actually, they’re gaining, and everybody else is decreasing... And right now, we are worse than old Europe."
Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth.
The top 1 percent have the best of most everything, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to buy them: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.
Through history, something the top 1 percent eventually learn.... but too late.
Good piece... take the time to read it.
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... some relative stats came across recently...
... of the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income, the effective federal income tax rate, what they actually pay, fell from almost 30% in 1995 to just under 17% in 2007, according to the IRS.
... for the approximately 1.4 million people who make up the top 1% of taxpayers, the effective federal income tax rate dropped from 29% to 23% in 2008. It may seem too fantastic to be true, but the top 400 end up paying a lower rate than the next 1,399,600.
---- between 1948 and 1979, the richest 10% of families in the US claimed 33% of average income growth.... between 2000 and 2007, the richest 10% claimed a full 100% of average income growth in the US.
---- business taxes were cut from 46 to 34% 25 years ago... but today 115 of the big 500 companies listed on Standard and Poor’s paid federal and other taxes of less than 20% over the last 5 years... GE's rate last yer was 7%.
---- top 5% US households claim 63% of the entire country’s wealth.... bottom 80% hold just 13% of the growth.
---- last year, John Paulson, a hedge fund manager “earned” $4.9 billion (that's in ONE year folks!!)... ten years ago it took 25 such managers to collectively earn that much.
... last year the top 25 hedge fund managers pocketed a total of $22 billion.... it would take over 440,000 people each earning $50,000 a year to match that amount.
---- there are now more people living in poverty in the US than at any time in the last 50 years.... foreclosure filings were nearly 4 million in 2010, up 23% since 2008.
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair
