For Those Who Like Charts: Why Protesters Are Mad at Wall Street

[Obama 2012 1,714]

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

There's way too much time and effort involved for me to post them (someone else feel free) but this is a good write-up...

[웃 910]

Only had to copy and drag and then paste...But VJ only allows 10 images so I had to delete most (and I see I only added 9)....

Let's start with the obvious: Unemployment. Three years after the financial crisis, the unemployment rate is still at the highest level since the Great Depression (except for a brief blip in the early 1980s)

Image: St. Louis Fed

Corporate profits just hit another all-time high.

Image: St. Louis Fed

CEO pay has skyrocketed 300% since 1990. Corporate profits have doubled. Average "production worker" pay has increased 4%. The minimum wage has dropped. (All numbers adjusted for inflation).

Image: G. William Domhoff, UC Santa Cruz

e: St. Louis Fed

Of course, life is great if you're in the top 1% of American wage earners. You're hauling in a bigger percentage of the country's total pre-tax income than you have at any time since the late 1920s. Your share of the national income, in fact, is almost 2X the long-term average!

Image: David Ruccio

And the top 0.1% in America are doing way better than the top 0.1% in other first-world countries.

Image: David Ruccio

In fact, income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in "income equality." China's ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.

Image: G. William Domhoff, UC Santa Cruz

So what does all this mean in terms of net worth? Well, for starters, it means that the top 1% of Americans own 42% of the financial wealth in this country. The top 5%, meanwhile, own nearly 70%.

Image: G. William Domhoff, UC Santa Cruz

That's about 60% of the net worth of the country held by the top 5% (left chart).

Image: G. William Domhoff, UC Santa Cruz

And remember that huge debt problem we have—with hundreds of millions of Americans indebted up to their eyeballs? Well, the top 1% doesn't have that problem. They only own 5% of the country's debt.

Edited October 13, 2011 by Lord Infamous

[slim 1,525]

Why does anyone think they're entitled to other peoples' money?