The top 1 percent is trying to distract everybody else about inequality by pretending that our safety net is
too generous for the bottom 1
percent.
Five years after Lehman Brothers fell, taking the global economy along with it
and creating misery for millions of people, the number of Wall Street CEOs serving time in jail for their role in the crisis is ZERO --- and they walked
away with millions.
Recently in Washington D.C. Mayor Gray vetoed legislation that sets a $12.50 “living wage” for workers at Wal-Mart and all other big-box retailers that locate in the District. The Economic Policy Institute
says the mayor “has taken the side of the exploitative rich.”
By coincidence, on the same day as the veto, Bloomberg News ran a detailed analysis of the tax avoidance strategies that billionaire Alice Walton and other heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune have used to shield their inherited billions from the federal estate tax.
According to a newly released World Ultra Wealth Report, 65,505 Americans hold a combined wealth of more than $9 trillion.
Another report shows that last year America’s really rich (in the top 0.01 percent) saw their incomes soar by over 32 percent. The incomes of the nation’s bottom 99 percent rose all of 1 percent.
And there's also a new world record for the "global ultra wealthy". Researchers have counted 199,235 people whose combined wealth is $28 trillion, up $2 trillion from last year.
Suffering Under the Weight of Inequality: The super-rich tend to save a much higher percentage of their incremental income, or invest it in fixed assets like vacation homes. These forms of saving and investment do not trickle down to create significant wage income for others.
The People Who Break the Rules Have Raked in Huge Profits and Wealth and It's Sickening Our Politics
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