Category: Income Inequality

World’s Richest 1% gained $40 Trillion in a decade: Oxfam

Obscene wealth inequity that only feeds refugees, war, famine, income inequality, injustice, and tyranny. Is it any wonder the world is going up in smoke:

The world’s richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, Oxfam said Thursday, ahead of a G20 summit in Brazil where taxing the super-rich tops the agenda.

Despite this windfall, taxes on the rich had plummeted to “historic lows”, the NGO added, warning of “obscene levels” of inequality with the rest of the world “left to scrap for crumbs”.

…Oxfam said that the $42 trillion figure was nearly 36 times more than the wealth accumulated by the poorer half of the world’s population.

Despite this, billionaires “have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5 percent of their wealth” across the globe, the NGO said.

Almost 1 in 3 American retirees are considering temporary work and un-retirement as cost of living soars

For the average American we can’t live on what we make, even retirees. This is not prosperity or close to it, despite the establishment telling us otherwise:

Retirement may no longer be a time to kick your feet up and relax. Instead, a growing number of seniors may find themselves back in the working world after they thought they were done

A survey of U.S. seniors between the ages of 62-85 by Indeed Flex has revealed that almost a third of retirees are considering doing between one and three shifts of temporary work per week.

retirees can't live on their benefits.

The Wealthy saw their Incomes Rise 18.5% in 2021. The Bottom 90% of Americans saw a Drop

It’s the same old story. The 1 percent are plundering our country. Income inequality in America is the worst it’s ever been for country. And it’s one of the worst in the Western world, if not on the planet.

Source: Truthout:

New data shows that the gap between the top wealthiest Americans and the working class reached new heights last year as multimillionaires in the top 1 percent experienced the highest wage raises in real, inflation-adjusted dollars while the wages of the bottom 90 percent fell.

In 2021, the top 1 percent of earners saw their annual wages rise by 9.4 percent. The raise for the wealthiest of the 1 percent was even higher, with the top 0.1 percent’s wages rising by 18.5 percent.

This stands in stark contrast to the wage trend for the bottom 90 percent, who received a 0.2 percent pay cut in 2021 in real wages. This allowed the top 1 percent to seize nearly 15 percent of all wages last year — and, in fact, the top 1 percent was the only group that saw its wages rise in 2021. Meanwhile, the bottom 90 percent saw its share of wages sink to a record low of 58.6 percent.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that Americans are dying at third world levels:

And this is isn’t about the pandemic. Income inequality has been on the rise for decades. It’s an inherent part of the system. It’s a natural consequence of a two-party system that is owned by the 1 percent.