Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Some Numbers to Ponder

1. New income generated since 2009 that has gone to the top 1 percent: 95 percent

2. Financial wealth controlled by the bottom 60 percent of all Americans: 2.3 percent

3. Record combined wealth of the top 400 richest Americans: $2,000,000,000,000

4. Real decline in median middle-class incomes since 1999: $5,000

5. Percentage of Hispanic and African-American children living in poverty, respectively: 33.8 percent; 36.7 percent

6. Federal minimum wage: $7.25. What the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968: $21.72

7. Number of U.S. workers laboring at or below minimum wage: 3.6 million – the near equivalent of the population of Los Angeles.

8. Amount that food stamps will be cut in 2014: $5 billion. Subsidy to the fast-food industry, paid out as safety-net benefits to McWorkers earning poverty wages: $7 billion.

9. 24. Official unemployment rate: 6.7 percent. Alternate rate including Americans who've given up looking for work, or have only been able to secure part-time employment: 13.1 percent. Number of jobs the United States is still down from 2008 employment peak: 1.69 million. Number of Americans who were cut off from long-term unemployment benefits at the turn of the year: 1.3 million

10. Number of Americans disenfranchised from voting for felony convictions: 5.9 million. Share of those disenfranchised voters who are African-American: 37 percent. Total incarcerated U.S. population: 2.3 million. Total population on probation/parole: 4.8 million. States that could be entirely filled by all of the Americans under correctional supervision: Nevada and Kentucky

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