THE CLASS WAR

There is a class war – the war of the rich on the poor – and the rich are winning. That war has been going on for years. Look at the facts – facts the rich and their false paid prophets do not want people to know. The truth is that in the US have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer.

Poor Getting Poorer: Facts

The official US poverty numbers show we now have the highest number of poor people in 51 years.

The official US poverty rate is 14.3 percent or 43.6 million people in poverty.
One in five children in the US 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.

9.5 million people who are working only part-time while they are seeking full-time work but have had their hours cut back or are so far only able to find work part-time are not counted in the official unemployment numbers.

2.5 million are reported unemployed but not counted because they are classified as discouraged workers in part because they have been out of work for more than 12 months.

Fifty million people in the US lack health insurance.

Women in the US have a greater lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related conditions than women in 40 other countries.

3.5 million people, about one-third of which are children, are homeless at some point in the year in the US

49 million people in the US 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.

One or two generations ago it was possible for a middle class family to live on one income. Now it takes two incomes to try to enjoy the same quality of life.

Wages have not kept up with inflation; adjusted for inflation they have lost ground over the past ten years.

The cost of housing, education and health care have all increased at a much higher rate than wages and salaries.

In 1967, the middle 60 percent of households received over 52% of all income. In 1998, it was down to 47%. The share going to the poor has also fallen, with the top 20% seeing their share rise.

A record 2.8 million homes received a foreclosure notice in 2009, higher than both 2008 and 2007. In 2010, the rate is expected to be rise to 3 million homes.

Eleven million homeowners (about one in four homeowners) in the US are “under water” or owe more on their mortgages than their house is worth.

For the first time since the 1940s, the real incomes of "middle-class" families are lower at the end of the business cycle of the 2000s than they were at the beginning. Despite the fact that the American workforce is working harder and smarter than ever, they are sharing less and less in the benefits they are creating.

Rich Getting Richer: Facts

The wealth of the richest 400 people in the US grew by 8% in the last year to $1.37 trillion

The top Hedge Fund Manager of 2009, David Tepper, “earned” $4 billion last year. The rest of the top ten earned: $3.3 billion, $2.5 billion, $2.3 billion, $1.4 billion, $1.3 billion (tie for 6th and 7th place), $900 million (tie for 8th and 9th place), and in last place out of the top ten, $825 million.

Income disparity in the US is now as bad as it was right before the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s.

From 1979 to 2006, the richest 1% more than doubled their share of the total US 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 in the US went to the top 10% earners – leaving 9% of all income to be shared by the bottom 90%.

In 1973, the average US CEO was paid $27 for every $1 paid to a typical worker; by 2007that ratio had grown to $275 to $1.

Rich people live an average of about five years longer than poor people in the US. In 1980, the most well off in the US had a life expectancy of 2.8 years over the least well-off. As the inequality gap widens, so does the life expectancy gap. In 1990, the gap was a little less than 4 years. In 2000, the least well-off could expect to live to age of 74.7 while the most well off had a life expectancy of 79.2 years.

The rich are winning their class war, and it is time for everyone else to fight back.

Stats taken from here