Injustice Index: A Look at the Big Gaps in America’s Wealth

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/01/14/injustice-index-a-look-at-the-big-gaps-in-america%e2%80%99s-wealth/

Injustice Index: A Look at the Big Gaps in America’s Wealth

by Mike Hall, Jan 14, 2007

Most of us are well aware of the huge economic disparity between those at the top of the economic ladder and families at the middle and lower rungs.

We see it in the headlines about record oil company profits and incredible CEO pay and on the nightly news about workers’ wages stagnating and families health care cost soaring.

As part of a great year-in-review piece, the Drum Major Institute (a nonpartisan progressive think tank) developed a 2006 Injustice Index that offers some fascinating, yet frightening facts and stats about the economic injustice that is becoming all too commonplace as the Bush administration’s economic policies coddle corporations and the already wealthy but cudgel working families.

Here’s a few facts from DMI’s 2006 Injustice Index (click on the links for more info about a particular stat):

Wages that an average CEO earns before lunchtime: more than what a full-time minimum wage worker makes in a year.

Ratio of the average U.S. CEO’s annual pay to a minimum wage worker’s: 821 to 1.

Year when this ratio reached its highest so far: 2006.

Percentage of Americans who feel chronically overworked: 30 percent.

Years of unused vacation time U.S. workers collectively give back to their employers each year: 1.6 million.

Percentage of women earning less than $40,000 per year who receive no paid vacation time at all: 37 percent.

Average amount that companies spend to recruit a new CEO from outside the company: $2,000,000.

Probability that the newly hired CEO will either quit or be fired within the first 18 months: 1 in 2.

Estimated number of people lined up outside the new M&M store set to open in Times Square responding to ads for “on-the-spot” hiring for 200 jobs, 65 of which were full time: between 5,000 and 6,000.

Starting salary that drew them there: $10.75 per hour.

Number of households using credit to cover basic living expenses: 7 in 10.

Amount in tax breaks and subsidies that last year’s energy bill paid out to the gas and oil industry during a period of record profits and higher prices at the pump: $6 billion.

Campaign donations that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who voted for the energy bill, received from the oil and gas industry: $500,000, making her the top recipient of oil contributions in the 2006 election cycle.

Percentage of the decline in welfare caseloads that is due to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs failing to serve families that are poor enough to qualify, rather than due to a reduction in the number of families poor enough to qualify for aid, in the 10 years since “welfare reform”: 57 pent.

Total dollars Wal-Mart received in government subsidies, sometimes called “corporate welfare” by activists, in 2005: $3.75 billion.

Date on which USA Today reported that Dr. Anthony Griffin of the Beverly Hills Cosmetic Surgery Institute, who appears on the ABC program Extreme Makeover, predicted that CEOs will lead a surge in male cosmetic surgery because, he says, “for instance, executives on trial for corporate scandals would improve their chances for acquittal with a makeover just before trial”: Nov. 4, 2006.

Percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) that went to wages and salaries in the first half of 2006: 51.8 percent.

Time when the percentage of GDP belonging to wages and salaries was lower than in 2006, out of the 77 previous years for which these data are available: never.

Click here for the entire 2006 Injustice Index and here for DMI’s year in review.

[teriyaki jones]

1. Read it and weep, folks!

K&R

[Jcrowley]

2. K&R

http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2004/EE2004_pr.html

[neoblues]

3. And the rich get richer...

http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/29/news/economy/wealth_gap/index.htm

When will mankind find a way for everyone to have a share...

[alittlelark]

4. K and R for DUers who say "they have no choice"

nm

[FogerRox]

5. The revolution will not be televised, IT WILL BE LIVE

Fee Paris Hilton is seeking to host a New Year’s Eve party in NYC, Miami, or L.A.: $100,000 plus a private jet



Amount that Ms. Hilton is set to inherit from the Hilton Hotel fortune: $350 million



Number of times that Congress has reduced the estate tax since it last raised the federal minimum wage: 9



Longest period in which the federal minimum wage has not been increased: 1997–2006



Number of workers who would directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage: 5.6 million



Number of very large estates that would directly benefit from a reduction in the estate tax: 8,200

[OneBlueSky]

6. there's another gap, and it's between the U.S. and the rest of the world . . .

when a nation with 5% of the world's population consumes 25% of its resources, we abandon our brotherhood with the rest of humanity to maintain the horrendously wasteful and unsupportable "American lifestyle" while millions (mostly kids) starve . . .

[Jeffersons Ghost]

7. unequal justice is not justice at all

[lovuian]

8. This is what causes Depressions

Soup kitchens and Homeless are going to increase