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There's Startling Clarity in This View From Afar
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It’s the view from afar without subjective spin that provides the bigger – and more sobering – picture of America, the richest country in the world. A short, informative article in Germany’s Der Spiegel looks at the widening gap between America’s rich and poor. Consider:
 • One in eight American adults and one in four children now survive on government food stamps. Fifty million of us couldn’t afford to buy enough food to stay healthy at some point last year. (Put in perspective, America’s population is 310 million.)
• In 1978, the average per capita income for men was $45,879. The same figure for 2007, adjusted for inflation, was $45,113.
• Statistically, less affluent Americans stand a 4% chance of becoming part of the upper middle class – a number that is lower than every other industrialized nation except Mexico and Turkey.
• In 1979, one third of the profits the U.S. produced went to the richest 1% of American society. Today, it’s almost 60%.
• 61% of Americans have no financial reserves and are living from paycheck to paycheck.
“Where did all the money go? All the enormous market gains and corporate earnings, the profits from the boom in the financial markets and the 110-percent increase in the gross national product in the last 30 years? It went to those who had always had more than enough already.”
The American middle class is taking the biggest financial hit in this recession, unlike other recessions in our history when the poor were hardest hit. Read more in “Growing Inequality Threatens Middle Class and Democracy” over at afl-cio now blog. – Originally posted Aug. 24, 2010
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