Top 1% Got 93% of Income Growth as Rich-Poor Gap Widened
whygohome
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Top 1% Got 93% of Income Growth as Rich-Poor Gap Widened
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-0 ... dened.html
Too long to copy and paste, but still a decent read. There's a good video and interactive chart as well.
Some excerpts:
"The chief executive officer of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) earned $1.3 million in salary every year since 2007. Still, as the economic recovery took hold from 2009 to 2011, Hemsley, 60, exercised stock options worth more than $170 million and made at least $51 million from share sales, making him the object of an “Occupy Lake Minnetonka” protest on the ice outside his lakeside home each winter. "
"The recovery that officially began in mid-2009 hasn’t arrived in most Americans’ paychecks. In 2010, the top 1 percent of U.S. families captured as much as 93 percent of the nation’s income growth, according to a March paper by Emmanuel Saez, a University of California at Berkeley economist who studied Internal Revenue Service data. "
"The earnings gap between rich and poor Americans was the widest in more than four decades in 2011, Census data show, surpassing income inequality previously reported in Uganda and Kazakhstan. The notion that each generation does better than the last -- one aspect of the American Dream -- has been challenged by evidence that average family incomes fell last decade for the first time since World War II. "
"In this recovery it’s proved better to own stock than a house. For stockholders like Hemsley, the value of all outstanding shares has soared $6 trillion to $17 trillion since June 2009, the recession’s end. Even after a recent rebound, the value of owner-occupied housing, the chief asset of most middle- income families, has dropped $41 billion in the same period, part of a $5.8 trillion loss in home values since 2006. "
“Income inequality of the scale we have today is destroying our democracy,” retired American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall said in an interview. Crandall, 76, says he became so frustrated at what he sees as selfishness among his peers that he started writing a blog on his Lenovo laptop. “Anyone else willing?” he titled his first entry in August 2011, which argued that people should pay higher taxes.
"Two-Tiered Society"
“People should be furious,” said Albers, a pharmacist and health economist, citing a Census Bureau estimate that 80,000 children in his state had no health insurance in 2011. “It’s another example of a two-tiered society.”
Hemsley owed his options to grants made from 1999 to 2002, when he was president of UnitedHealth, which is the largest U.S. health insurer and serves 78 million people worldwide.
A 1974 graduate in accounting from Fordham University, Hemsley was chief financial officer of Arthur Andersen LLP before joining UnitedHealth in 1997. He still has the quiet, analytical manner of an accountant in contrast to his more outspoken predecessor William McGuire, said David Durenberger, a former U.S. senator from Minnesota and a senior health policy fellow at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. The former senator once ran into the CEO, with his family, on a Christmas Day flight. They were in coach, Durenberger said.
“Every other corporate type in America that makes anything over a couple million bucks a year thinks they’re worth a private jet,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-0 ... dened.html
Too long to copy and paste, but still a decent read. There's a good video and interactive chart as well.
Some excerpts:
"The chief executive officer of Minnetonka, Minnesota-based health insurer UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) earned $1.3 million in salary every year since 2007. Still, as the economic recovery took hold from 2009 to 2011, Hemsley, 60, exercised stock options worth more than $170 million and made at least $51 million from share sales, making him the object of an “Occupy Lake Minnetonka” protest on the ice outside his lakeside home each winter. "
"The recovery that officially began in mid-2009 hasn’t arrived in most Americans’ paychecks. In 2010, the top 1 percent of U.S. families captured as much as 93 percent of the nation’s income growth, according to a March paper by Emmanuel Saez, a University of California at Berkeley economist who studied Internal Revenue Service data. "
"The earnings gap between rich and poor Americans was the widest in more than four decades in 2011, Census data show, surpassing income inequality previously reported in Uganda and Kazakhstan. The notion that each generation does better than the last -- one aspect of the American Dream -- has been challenged by evidence that average family incomes fell last decade for the first time since World War II. "
"In this recovery it’s proved better to own stock than a house. For stockholders like Hemsley, the value of all outstanding shares has soared $6 trillion to $17 trillion since June 2009, the recession’s end. Even after a recent rebound, the value of owner-occupied housing, the chief asset of most middle- income families, has dropped $41 billion in the same period, part of a $5.8 trillion loss in home values since 2006. "
“Income inequality of the scale we have today is destroying our democracy,” retired American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall said in an interview. Crandall, 76, says he became so frustrated at what he sees as selfishness among his peers that he started writing a blog on his Lenovo laptop. “Anyone else willing?” he titled his first entry in August 2011, which argued that people should pay higher taxes.
"Two-Tiered Society"
“People should be furious,” said Albers, a pharmacist and health economist, citing a Census Bureau estimate that 80,000 children in his state had no health insurance in 2011. “It’s another example of a two-tiered society.”
Hemsley owed his options to grants made from 1999 to 2002, when he was president of UnitedHealth, which is the largest U.S. health insurer and serves 78 million people worldwide.
A 1974 graduate in accounting from Fordham University, Hemsley was chief financial officer of Arthur Andersen LLP before joining UnitedHealth in 1997. He still has the quiet, analytical manner of an accountant in contrast to his more outspoken predecessor William McGuire, said David Durenberger, a former U.S. senator from Minnesota and a senior health policy fellow at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. The former senator once ran into the CEO, with his family, on a Christmas Day flight. They were in coach, Durenberger said.
“Every other corporate type in America that makes anything over a couple million bucks a year thinks they’re worth a private jet,” he said.
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Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
Does democracy apply to us serfs?
Reminds me of the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. Robber barons (or captains of industry, if you admire their free market skills) like Carnegie and Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and Stanford. We had an extremely small, practically non-existent, middle class with a small percentage of people at the top (who had 95% of the wealth but only made up about 1% of the population :think: ) and a very large lower (read: poor) class. Now we just need some progressive politicians (wehre's Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?) and a progressive American populace to make our own change!
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
According to a new report in The Washington Post, the median net worth of the current Congress rose 5% during the recession while it fell 39% for the average American. The wealthiest one-third of lawmakers saw their net worth rise 14%.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/wealth-gap-between-congress-average-americans-164000800.html
Top 10 Wealthiest Members of Congress (by household assets, 2010) according to The Washington Post:
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) $448.1M
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) $380.4M
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) $231.7M
Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) $143.2M
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) $136.2M
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) $101.1M
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. VA) $99.1M
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) $85.6M
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) $73.2M
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) $69.0M
....
I think we know who the 1% really are. Funny that we put our hopes into them fixing things for us.
At least democrats would agree to a tax hike on themselves
They are OK with raising taxes because it will get them re-elected. They are not affected.
but more to the issue.. no one cares that romney is rich it how he begrudges anyone who needs some help from the government etc. it's how he talks about the people that aren't as lucky (47%). Thats what common folk have an issue with.. He acts above people who haven't got similar riches.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
I'm just amazed that the democrats are playing a Jedi mind-trick on us so that we want to raise taxes on ourselves.
jedi mind trick's are the way of all politicians.. the are expert vote chasers and marco manipulators.
Sha la la la i'm in love with a jersey girl
I love you forever and forever
Adel 03 Melb 1 03 LA 2 06 Santa Barbara 06 Gorge 1 06 Gorge 2 06 Adel 1 06 Adel 2 06 Camden 1 08 Camden 2 08 Washington DC 08 Hartford 08
Now, we just have to sit and wait for the trickle down like the worthless serfs that we are.
Technically we have had crony capitalism in place for hundreds of years. By that measure this shouldn't surprise anyone...who do you think got the bailed out by the fed? where do you think most of the stimulus money ends up? Who do you think gets the gov't contracts? When the fed creates money, who do you think benefits?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
That will help.
how so?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
To be honest... we're not far off of the conditions that started the French Revolution. A tiny percentage of absurdly-rich people, thrilling at the masses of poor, starving people that they trod upon. A time of obscene opulence, mass starvation, and the people rising up against the .01%.
With Anne Romney's "you people" narrative, we already have our Marie Antoinette.
I'm with PoD!
Let's spare Robespierre this time though. And Mike, you know what the French revolution was about: the PEOPLE got fed up with the ARISTOCRACY. We can draw similar parallels to today.
Anyway, for more insight check out the Rush tune "Bastille Day." That will clear everything up.
You're absolutely right, Mike. On the surface though, as far as policy, Republican ideas are still on the books.
I think our population has become too lazy or beaten down to ever revolt. What would it take or people to finally say "That's fucking enough!"
Leave me alone, man; there's celebrities dancing on TV.
Fast food, boob tube culture.
"The have NOTS haven't a clue."
In all fairness, we aren't anywhere near the same conditions. If you want to interpret our situation as that dire, we should also hold everyone involved in policy making accountable, and that includes President Obama.
Holding someone accountable should not include voting for them because the other guy might be worse.
I am unsure that being poor in America at all equates to being poor in the aristocracy of the late 1700's. I think it demeans what the lower class went through in France.
The aristocracy was blood line based, while we have an upper class that continues based on blood, we also have those succeed who weren't a part of it. that didn't happen back then.
Some countries in Africa, they are seeing the same conditions,
here, not a chance.
I would say that opportunity is the main difference. Most have it in one form or another here despite what you read. It may not be an opportunity to become the wealthiest man alive, but bill gates and steve jobs came from somewhere.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Where would I plug in my hair dryer?