Source

http://www.marxmail.org/facts/us_economy.htm

Shocking FACTS about U.S. income & wealth inequality

Tue, 13 Feb 2001

From: fightback9955@my-deja.com

After 8 years of a genuinely sociopathic "New Democrat" as President of the United States the appalling inequality of income and wealth that was exacerbated under the Republican President Reagan actually WORSENED.

At a time when the top 1% of U.S. citizens owns more wealth than the bottom 95% the new U.S. President wants to further cut the taxes of that wealthiest 1% while vast numbers of the bottom 95% live paycheck- to-paycheck and owe enormous credit card debts.

Whether Democrat or Republican, whether Gore or Bush, the result is the same: the U.S. is damn close to becoming a Third World nation. Perhaps if more poor people in Honduras, the Philippines, India or other Third World countries had credit cards they, too -- like so many heavily-indebted Americans -- would delude themselves that they were "well-off".

The fact is that tax rate for the wealthiest Americans was 88% in the two decades following World War II, a time when the U.S. economy was booming. Working-class and middle-class Americans saved more and charged less then, too.

What follows are some disturbing facts (from www.inequality.org) about just how far from a fair economy we've come, notwithstanding the joint Dem-GOP deceitful propaganda that claims most Americans are "better-off" nowadays:

* Since the mid-1970s, the most fortunate one percent of households have doubled their share of the national wealth. They now hold more wealth than the bottom 95 percent of the population. (Shifting Fortunes)

* In 1998, 18.7 percent of American children lived in poverty, a lower rate than 1993 (19.6 percent), but higher than the 1979 rate of 16.4 percent. (Columbia University, http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/nccp/)