[andyt]

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/5-facts-wealthiest-1-percent-203405855.html

$1:

FACT #1: The wealthiest 1 percent of households own 34.6 percent of all privately held wealth, and 42.7 percent of all financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home).
Meanwhile, according to the NYU economist Edward Wolff a 2010 report, the bottom 80 percent of the population holds just 15 percent of the total wealth and only 7 percent of the total financial wealth (as a large portion of their wealth is tied up in their homes). The bottom 40 percent of Americans — that's 120 million people — hold just 0.3 percent of the wealth.
The wealth inequality is not solely because of the inheritance of "old money" among the wealthiest Americans; there is also an extreme and growing inequality in the distribution of incomes. While the top 1 percent of earners earned 12.8 percent of the total national income in 1982, their share rose to 21.3 percent in 2006, a level not seen since the Depression era. Today, an American in the top 1 percent takes in an average of $1.3 million per year, while the average American earns just $33,000 per year.

FACT #2: The United States has more income and wealth inequality than most countries that have been studied, including India and China — countries that are traditionally viewed as having unequal distributions of wealth.
The degree of income inequality in each country is assigned a "Gini coefficient" — a number that ranges from zero (if everyone in the country has the same income) to 1 (if one person in the country has all the income). According to data gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency for 2010, the United States has a Gini coefficient of 0.45, on par with such countries as Iran (0.44) and Mexico (0.48); this is higher than the Gini coefficients of 94 of the 134 countries that have been studied, including China (0.42) and India (0.37), and much higher than Canada, Australia and all of Europe. Sweden has the lowest Gini coefficient at 0.23.
The United States' Gini coefficient has been rising for decades; it was just 0.35 in the 1960s. [World map of Gini coefficients]

FACT #3: Among the 299 companies listed in the S&P 500 Index, the average CEO's compensation was $11.4 million in 2010, or 343 times more than the median pay ($33,190) of American workers. The ratio of CEO pay to median worker pay was just 42:1 in 1980, and is currently 25:1 in Europe.
According to the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which tracks executive salaries on a website called Executive Paywatch, those 299 CEOs have a combined income of $3.4 billion per year, which could pay for 102,325 average American jobs.
Bill Domhoff, a sociologist at UC Santa Cruz, claims the ballooning of chief executives' salaries in recent years has resulted from the fact that, for the most part, they set their own wages. "If you wonder how such a large gap could develop, the proximate, or most immediate, factor involves the way in which CEOs now are able to rig things so that the board of directors, which they help select — and which includes some fellow CEOs on whose boards they sit — gives them the pay they want," Domhoff wrote in a 2011 article on his website. [Graph of worker vs. CEO salaries]

FACT #4: Between 1979 and 2005, the average after-tax income for the top 1 percent increased by 176 percent, compared with an increase of only 6 percent for the bottom 20 percent. Between 1990 and 2005, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3 percent when adjusted for inflation.
This rapid widening in the income gap between the rich and poor was identified in a 2007 report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The report attributed the trend to tax policies that favor the wealthy. According to Domhoff, other contributing factors include the diminishing political clout of labor unions and decreased expenditure on social services. [Graph of widening income gap]

FACT #5: Most Americans have no idea that the wealth distribution is as concentrated as it is, but regardless of their gender, age, income level or party affiliation, they believe wealth should be much more evenly distributed than they think it is.
In 2010, Michael Norton of Harvard Business School and behavioral economist Dan Ariely of Duke University surveyed 5,522 Americans about their views on the country's wealth distribution. They found that most respondents (regardless of their genders, ages, income levels and party affiliations) guessed that the top 20 percent of Americans hold about 60 percent of the wealth (rather than the 85 percent that they actually hold). Survey respondents also guessed that the bottom 40 percent hold between 8 and 10 percent of the wealth in the U.S. (rather than the 0.3 percent that they actually hold).
Perhaps even more striking than their misconceptions were their beliefs about the ideal wealth distribution. Survey respondents said that the ideal distribution would be one in which the top 20 percent owned between 30 and 40 percent of the total wealth, and that the bottom 40 percent should hold between 25 percent and 30 percent of the wealth — about 1,000 times more than the bottom 40 percent actually do hold.

[Bruce_the_vii]

Thanks for the post Andy but the statistics are still clear as mud to me. When they say income I assume they include investment income. And there's a death tax in the USA, currently suspended. Also the counter statisitcs are devastating as well, the bottom doesn't pay any income tax while the top pay a whopping big sector of all taxes. I could care a less how much the top is gouched by the tax man but these people have the option of moving their capital offshore. And the figures are for the USA. In the last 20 years I have never seen the Canadian figures - although I sure personally enjoyed the lack of death tax when my mother passed away peacefully in her fully paid off house. These shock the people statistics give little indication on how much can be done.

[Regina]

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

[Brenda]

I don't necessarily believe the numbers in that article. They claim CEO:worker ratio is 343:1, and in Europe 25:1, which is bs. Western European CEO's get massive bonuses every year, and Eastern Europe is just freaking poor. To compare "Europe" with a country like the US, is just not fair.

[r_p]

fact 6: they rollin', we hatin'.

[bootlegga]

Regina Regina:

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

If you want to get ahead in this world, you've got to work hard to do so. Success almost never comes to the lazy.

[andyt]

Regina Regina:

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

Really? A good education will put you in that 1%?

[andyt]

Brenda Brenda:

I don't necessarily believe the numbers in that article. They claim CEO:worker ratio is 343:1, and in Europe 25:1, which is bs. Western European CEO's get massive bonuses every year, and Eastern Europe is just freaking poor. To compare "Europe" with a country like the US, is just not fair.

So what's the ratio in Western Europe? And if it's as high as the US, does that make it any better? How is it the US was functioning very well when the ratio was much lower?

[r_p]

andyt andyt:

Regina Regina:

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

Really? A good education will put you in that 1%?

not necessarily, but it'll give you a running start.

[BartSimpson]

Regina Regina:

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

The problem with the traditional paradigm of going to college to get a good job is that you always end up working for someone else.

Where's the school that teaches entrepreneurial skills? If the whole system is geared to making plebes out of people then who will be the job creators?

And then if you do the hard work to become a job creator what thanks do you get? You get greedy people like Andy and Eureka wanting to seize what you've worked for.

Yes, Andy, I called you greedy.

Because to me the worst kind of greed is the kind that demands that other people pay your way through life.

[andyt]

r_p r_p:

andyt andyt:

Regina Regina:

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

Really? A good education will put you in that 1%?

not necessarily, but it'll give you a running start.

Very unlikely, you mean. But that shows the problem, everybody is Joe the Plumber and thinks they'll be a 1 percenter any time now.

[Brenda]

andyt andyt:

Brenda Brenda:

I don't necessarily believe the numbers in that article. They claim CEO:worker ratio is 343:1, and in Europe 25:1, which is bs. Western European CEO's get massive bonuses every year, and Eastern Europe is just freaking poor. To compare "Europe" with a country like the US, is just not fair.

So what's the ratio in Western Europe? And if it's as high as the US, does that make it any better? How is it the US was functioning very well when the ratio was much lower?

I have no clue, and I don't care. The system is way different, the tax-system is way different, so you just cannot compare the two.
There are 27 countries in the EU alone, and that is not all of Europe. How can you compare that to 1 country?

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Regina Regina:

To me the article only supports the fact that you need a good education to get a good job that pays well.

The problem with the traditional paradigm of going to college to get a good job is that you always end up working for someone else.

Where's the school that teaches entrepreneurial skills? If the whole system is geared to making plebes out of people then who will be the job creators?

And then if you do the hard work to become a job creator what thanks do you get? You get greedy people like Andy and Eureka wanting to seize what you've worked for.

Yes, Andy, I called you greedy.

Because to me the worst kind of greed is the kind that demands that other people pay your way through life.

OK. So you envision a society where everybody pay exactly the same amount of tax to the govt?

Actually, people have paid your way thru life. You were paid by the military, which is a socialist institution supported by people's taxes. Your education was subsidized by people's taxes (my graduate education wasn't, since I went to a private school.), and you work for the government that is supported by the taxes you hate so much. I'm greedy, you're a hypocrite.

[andyt]

Brenda Brenda:

andyt andyt:

Brenda Brenda:

I don't necessarily believe the numbers in that article. They claim CEO:worker ratio is 343:1, and in Europe 25:1, which is bs. Western European CEO's get massive bonuses every year, and Eastern Europe is just freaking poor. To compare "Europe" with a country like the US, is just not fair.

So what's the ratio in Western Europe? And if it's as high as the US, does that make it any better? How is it the US was functioning very well when the ratio was much lower?

I have no clue, and I don't care. The system is way different, the tax-system is way different, so you just cannot compare the two.
There are 27 countries in the EU alone, and that is not all of Europe. How can you compare that to 1 country?

So pick one country in Europe. Pick the one you think will be the closest to the US in terms of that ratio.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

OK. So you envision a society where everybody pay exactly the same amount of tax to the govt?

The exact same percentage, yes.

andyt andyt:

Actually, people have paid your way thru life. You were paid by the military, which is a socialist institution supported by people's taxes.

Overall, Andy, my military service has cost me far more in lost income than I made from the military, and that includes the pension. As to the VA health benefits, I don't use them. My HMO (evil people that they are) have covered my knee surgeries and it's ironic that until the HMO fixed me up I was 100% disabled.

Bottom line, I served because I wanted to. Not because I needed the money.

andyt andyt:

Your education was subsidized by people's taxes (my graduate education wasn't, since I went to a private school.), and you work for the government that is supported by the taxes you hate so much. I'm greedy, you're a hypocrite.

I don't hate taxes, Andy, what I hate are jacktards who masturbate themselves over the prospect of using taxes to punish productive people. Time and again, Andy, you've revealed your true colours that you see taxes as a means not of raising revenues, but as a weapon against anyone with one dollar more to their name than you have.

I seriously don't mind taxes for good things, like high speed rail, light rail, transportation infrastructure, defense, and etc. What offends me is when the heavy hand of government is used to take money from one group of people in order to give it to another group of people. That's just theft under the colour of authority and I utterly oppose it.