hertz
Posts: 1315
Joined: 8/7/2010
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quote:
The official poverty numbers show we now have the highest number of poor people in 51 years. The official poverty rate is 14.3 percent or 43.6 million people in poverty. One in five children is poor; one in ten senior citizens is poor.
One of every six workers, 26.8 million people, is unemployed or underemployed. This “real” unemployment rate is over 17%. There are 14.8 million people designated as “officially” unemployed by the government, a rate of 9.6 percent.
Outside 'City A', 33,000 people showed up to seek applications for low cost subsidized housing in August 2010. When 'City D' offered emergency utility and housing assistance to help people facing evictions, more than 50,000 people showed up for the 3,000 vouchers.
There are 49 million people here who live in households which eat only because they receive food stamps, visit food pantries or soup kitchens for help. Sixteen million are so poor they have skipped meals or foregone food at some point in the last year. This is the highest level since statistics have been kept.
Income disparity is now as bad as it was at the end of the 1920s. From 1979 to 2006, the richest 1% more than doubled their share of the total income, from 10% to 23%. The richest 1% have an average annual income of more than $1.3 million. For the last 25 years, over 90% of the total growth in income went to the top 10% earners – leaving 9% of all income to be shared by the bottom 90%.
In 1973, the average CEO was paid $27 for every dollar paid to a typical worker; by 2007 that ratio had grown to $275 to $1.
This country has the greatest inequality between rich and poor among all Western industrialized nations and it has been getting worse for 40 years. The World Factbook, published by the CIA, includes an international ranking of the inequality among families inside of each country, called the Gini Index. This country's ranking of 45 in 2007 is the same as Argentina, Cameroon, and Cote d’Ivorie. The highest inequality can be found in countries like Namibia, South Africa, Haiti and Guatemala. This country's ranking of 45 compares poorly to Japan (38), India (36), New Zealand, UK (34), Greece (33), Spain (32), Canada (32), France (32), South Korea (31), Netherlands (30), Ireland (30), Australia (30), Germany (27), Norway (25), and Sweden (23).
Know where it is yet?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/25-0
I think this sort of stuff might explain the popularity of socialism amongst neighbours of the US. Why would anyone with any sense outside North America want to follow the US's lead into such serious economic and social dumbassery?
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RE: South America - saviours of the world! - 
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