---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 19:20:11 +0000
From: Robert Campbell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: (Fwd) Re: Income Disparities Are Close to Record Highs
A local columnist here in Chicago reported the Census
Bureau statistics along with other statistics and
some commentary.
Some of that is:
1. "As a result, the United States which wrote the idea
of equality into its Declaration of Independence, is
now by far the most unequal society in the industrialized
world. Nowhere is the gap between rich and poor growing
faster. Nowhere else is the cause not only rising wealth
at the top but falling income at the bottom. And nowhere
is the middle class shrinking as fast as in the country
that once proclaimed itself a middle-class nation."
2. 40% of all Americans own stocks - but 90% of all stocks
are owned by 10% of the population.
3. In the U.S. the richest 20% is 13 times richer than the
poorest 20%. In France it is 6. In Japan it is 4.
4. "The U.S. standard of living remains the world's
highest- some 20% higher on average than that in
Finland, the Netherlands or Italy. But the poorest
Americans live at levels 20% below those of the poorest
Finn, Dutch or Italian."
5. The Organization for Economic Development found that
economic mobility was about the same among the other
developed nations - sinking the argument that in the
U.S. there is a greater chance for a poor person to
end up rich compared to the other developed nations.
Robert Campbell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
