Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. His description of capitalism as the “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole”, nevertheless, remains up to date in to-days world .
It is all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the working class and poor are not. A study from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated.
American workers are the most productive in the world. US worker productivity increased 80 percent from 1973 to 2011, eight times as much as hourly worker compensation. The average worker is responsible for $63,885 of wealth per year. Yet more than a third of households make less than $30,000 a year.
The US have the highest percentage of low wage workers in the world–almost 25 percent. The people who bring us our food–farm workers, food processers, restaurant workers and grocery workers–usually make poverty wages.
The people who we trust to take care of our children, parents, grandparents and sometimes ourselves when we are sick or disabled; people who work in nursing homes and hospitals; nannies, childcare and Head Start workers–all of these crucial workers are all too often making poverty wages. Fifty percent of personal care workers live in poverty. Most of them are women, and 40 percent of female-headed households live in poverty.
Most of the companies are highly profitable and say they cannot afford to pay workers more but they pay their CEOs and other high level employees outrageously high salaries even when business goes down.
It is all too easy to find statistics that show the rich are getting richer while the working class and poor are not. A study from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington noted that the median annual earnings of a full-time, male worker in the U.S. in 2011, at $48,202, were smaller than in 1973. Between 1983 and 2010, 74% of the gains in wealth in the U.S. went to the richest 5%, while the bottom 60% suffered a decline, the EPI calculated.
American workers are the most productive in the world. US worker productivity increased 80 percent from 1973 to 2011, eight times as much as hourly worker compensation. The average worker is responsible for $63,885 of wealth per year. Yet more than a third of households make less than $30,000 a year.
The US have the highest percentage of low wage workers in the world–almost 25 percent. The people who bring us our food–farm workers, food processers, restaurant workers and grocery workers–usually make poverty wages.
The people who we trust to take care of our children, parents, grandparents and sometimes ourselves when we are sick or disabled; people who work in nursing homes and hospitals; nannies, childcare and Head Start workers–all of these crucial workers are all too often making poverty wages. Fifty percent of personal care workers live in poverty. Most of them are women, and 40 percent of female-headed households live in poverty.
Most of the companies are highly profitable and say they cannot afford to pay workers more but they pay their CEOs and other high level employees outrageously high salaries even when business goes down.
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