The Shrinking Middle Class
The American middle class is on the verge of extinction. The gap is widening between the have’s and the have not’s. Look at the following disturbing statistics from the Business Insider.
- 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.
- 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
- 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.
- 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.
