• 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
It is great that the number of millionaires has grown! That is what we want to happen. Why do people think that it is good to be middle class? That is a crazy union piece of propaganda.
As for people not saving for retirements. That is a rational decision given that my 401 K is not doing so well and I have very limited investments that I can make in it.
Also your stats do not take into account the progress of technology that constantly keeps prices going down despite the giant amounts of electronic money created by the central banks of the world. Even the poorest folks have air conditioning, running water, cars, TVs etc.
Really this is a shot at the Government-Educational-Union complex at work. The folks managing these financial disasters have convinced people from the time they are born that they are dependent and that they can simply vote themselves more money.
All this talk of declining middle class is rubbish by people who don’t understand statistics.
What is a millionaire? A 65 year old man with a retirement account, pension fund, a house, a usable car, an insurance plan, a modest savings, and a regular income from his level of seniority at work is a millionaire. He’ll be damned if his net assets are not worth at least a million after all those years of hard work.
So what does this say? That the number of elderly people have increased a “whopping 16%” in a First World country with servicable medical care? GOD FORBID!
Class warfare is rotten politics, rotten economics, and rotten humanity (as the French Revolution). And seeing this idiotic article, class warfare is also a rotten lack of attention in your college statistics class.
