The Gap The Gap The Gap The Gap Between The Rich And The Poor

[saturnine1979]

HONESTLY

That there is a graph of the distribution of wealth in the United States. Watch the movie if you need it simplified for you. I knew there was a definite gap between the rich and the poor, but that's just goddamned insane. Please pass that link on.

I'm doing my current 3D Design project on this. I got the idea after reading Orwell's Down

Comments

[saturnine1979]

Hold on, Tom.

First of all, he admits at the bottom of the site that the data isn't completely accurate, but the basic curve is still valid.

Second, I've been doing a lot of research on this, and all the data I've found shows that there is a MASSIVE gap between the very rich and even the "middle" class.

Some figures:
The top 1% own 47.7% of all U.S. corporations (that's in stocks, etc.)

The top 20% have 84% of the wealth, and the top 1% have 3/4 of all total wealth.

I have a bunch of stuff bookmarked at home, but that's what I got written down in my sketchbook at the moment.

Finally, "working hard" will never make you rich. In our economy, money makes money a lot faster than labor makes money. This is how we end up with the "working poor". These are people who bust their ass 40+ hours a week and barely make it above the poverty line. They are trying their damndest to climb that ladder, but there's no where for them to go. This is systematic oppression, and it's been going on since the Industrial Revolution.

Last year, a leaked memo from Wal-Mart stated that they were concerned about rising wages and benefits for their employess. They set a goal to reduce the amount of full time employees from 40% to 20%. They don't want 'loyal' employees. They want cheap labor with high turnaround.

The entire system is fucked up. That's it. There's no chance for dreams in capitalism.

[joulescole]

I don't care about views or stances at the moment, all I care about is that this guy made this graph mixed two very different kinds of data to put something that he wants into a sharp light. He does this through lieing.

Bill Gates only makes about $1 million a year. Not very many people make a whole lot more than that. The graph should end at about that forty inch mark. But it doesn't, because he threw in other, unrelated data.

If you're the kind of guy that likes to perpetuate lies because they help your cause, then sure, keep it. But I'm not.

"There's no chance for dreams in capitalism."
And I suppose everyone in North Korea and China are having all their dreams fulfilled. If you happen to know of a coutry that isn't capitalistic and things are great, I'd like to hear it. And don't say Canada. They're capitalists at their core, the same as all the Eurapeon coutries.

[saturnine1979]

Maybe I shouldn't have said "capitalism", but what I meant is that our economic system is fucked up.

There's plenty of other countries whose economics beat the shit out of ours, and are much better at distributing wealth. There's a great article here: http://www.progress.org/2006/hirsch01.htm

And this is one good example of what I'm talking about:

"...the ratio of the 90th and 10th percentile earnings is another measure of income inequality, with Mexico at 11.55 having, by far, highest inequality. The United States (5.45) was next, well ahead of the United Kingdom (4.58), Australia (4.33), and Canada (4.13). The countries with the lowest "90-10" gap were Norway (2.80), Denmark (2.85), Slovakia (2.88), Finland (2.90), and the Netherlands (2.98). The point to remember is that there are fine democracies with far more economic equality than we have."