Some Stats from the States

In the United States today, the richest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The wealthiest 1% of all Americans now own more than a third of all the wealth in the United States. The wealthiest 1% of all Americans own over 50% of all the stocks and bonds. The top one percent of income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had risen to 21.0 percent. Between 1979 and and 2007, the average household income of the top 1% of all Americans rose from $346,600 to $1.3 million. 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans. The top 1% of all American households own nearly twice as much of the corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago. The average CEO made 343 times more money than the average American did last year. One year after the recent financial collapse the top 25 hedge fund managers earned a total of approximately $25 billion. Bill Gates has a net worth of a 50 billion dollars. That means that there are approximately 140 different nations that have a yearly GDP which is smaller than the amount of money Bill Gates has. The top 0.01% of Americans make an average of $27,342,212. The bottom 90% make an average of $31,244. The wealthiest 5% of households in the United States now account for approximately 37% of all consumer spending

Ten years ago, the United States was ranked number one in average wealth per adult. In 2010, the United States fell to seventh. The U.S. poverty rate is now the third worst among the developed nations tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The top fifth of households in 2009 took home 50% of the nation's income. The middle fifth received 15% and bottom fifth a mere 3%. One in six Americans are now being served by at least one government anti-poverty program.

The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States. 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth. As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets. The number of "low income jobs" in the U.S. account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States. During this economic downturn, employee compensation in the United States has been the lowest that it has been relative to gross domestic product in over 50 years. Half of all American workers now earn $505 or less per week. Half of all American workers make $25,000 a year or less. 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010. One out of every four American children is on food stamps. It is projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18. The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006. Over 50 million Americans are on now Medicaid. 50 million Americans could not afford to buy enough food in order to stay healthy at some point over the last year. 10 million Americans are currently receiving unemployment insurance. The number of Americans receiving long-term unemployment benefits has increased over 60 percent in just the past year. In 2010, it takes the average unemployed American worker over 8 months to find a job. 55 percent of the U.S. labor force has experienced either unemployment, a pay decrease, a reduction in hours or an involuntary move to part-time work since the recession began. 28% of all U.S. households have at least one member that is looking for a full-time job. One out of every seven mortgages were either delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter of 2010. Only the top 5 percent of all U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. 25 percent of Americans now have a credit score below 599, which means a very bad credit risk. 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck. The purchasing power of 2009 incomes had shrunk to about the same levels they were a decade or more before. In real terms households in the bottom quintile earned less in 2009 than they did in 1989 — twenty years earlier.

80 percent of the world's population lives in countries where the income gap between the rich and the poor is widening. The wealthiest 1% of the earth's population controls 39% of the wealth. 3 billion people, close to half the world's population, live on less than 2 dollar a day. In China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour. It is estimated that the entire continent of Africa owns approximately 1 percent of the total wealth of the world

Three US companies – Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control nearly 90% of the world’s grain trade. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86%, and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet.

Figures from this website