Obama may be finally apologising (he'll be doing a whole lot more of that soon) for lies about medical insurance and the train-wreck that has been the 'Obamacare' roll-out but I think he may soon have more to worry about: Zero hedge has a post by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog with some startling facts and figures (all sourced) all about the gap between rich and poor, wealth imbalance etc in the US. Of course in the UK and elsewhere I am guessing similar things can be said but in the USA, as always, things seem so much more exacerbated.
Here is a couple that made me sit up:
- Nearly 40 percent of all American workers make less than $20,000 a year (before tax!). [US SSA]
- One out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less. [Economist's View]
Now looking at the graph (left: click to enlarge) you'll see the UK, Canada, Ireland and Germany all with one out of every five workers in the low-wage bracket but you'll know - at least in the UK - our lower wage bracket (worked in relation to median wage) is higher: the US figure is 25% of all workers on the equivalent of our minimum wage (currently £6.31/hour).
Update: also yesterday: "Senate Democrats, hoping to move beyond the disastrous rollout of the new health care law, plan to pivot to legislation that would increase the federal minimum wage by nearly $3, to over $10 an hour."
2 comments:
The gap between the rich and the poor in the States is all the more shocking because of the way economy rules of scale work. American average wages should only be depressed if the top wages were equally depressed.
I read the other day that China is currently enjoying (if that's the right word) its biggest increase ever in wages - how much of that will filter through to the lowest incomes is anybody's guess.
Not much...the 'middle class' is growing fast and flooding towards the cities but rural China is still centuries behind.
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