A decision from the Grand Jury in Ferguson/St. Louis, Missouri will be submitted to the public at large tonight, Monday, 11/24/14. While you and the nation wait for this decision and what ever way the decision goes, there is something I would like for you to reflect on. Wealth inequality can be described as the unequal distribution of assets within a given population. The United States exhibits wider disparities of wealth between rich and poor than any other major developed nation. Poverty is primary contributor to conflicts between law enforcement and youth in economically depressed jurisdictions. Eradicate poverty and you will erase much of the contention. Over recent decades, with incomes for most Americans stagnant, typical American families saved less, and wealth inequality increased. We now know that much of the economic growth of recent years was fueled by unsustainable levels of household spending and debt. The U.S. Personal Savings Rate declined from 10.9 percent in 1982 to 1.4 percent in 2005, before rising back to 7.2 percent in 2013. The sharp rise in saving since the fiscal year 2007 reflects cutbacks in household spending after the Great Recession hit. Wealth inequality becomes particularly stark when we look at demographic-racial breakdowns. According to the latest edition of the Economic Policy Institute’s The State of Working America, the typical White household has a net worth of about 20 times larger than the typical African American household and 75 times more than the typical Hispanic household. Even among the Asian and White populations, the ratio of the average top 1 percent wealth to median wealth was 172.7 at the start of the 21st Century. By the fiscal year 2010, it ballooned to 288.4, an absurd 67 percent increase of an already great disparity in wealth. voxeu.org/…/exploding-wealth-inequality-united-s… cbsnews/…/how-the-wealth-gap-is-damaging-th…/ youtube/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM You may recall a few Facebook posts back, I made mention of Reagan increasing access to credit for American families, particularly minorities. This should never be confused with wealth accumulation. When economists talk about income, they talk about the money a household or a person earns in a given year. That’s the salary you earned, the rent from a tenant above your garage and the bit of money you made by selling some stocks. Your wealth is the value of your assets – your retirement accounts, your home, the unsold stocks – minus your debts, like your credit-card bill and your mortgage. Numerous studies have shown income inequality growing since the late 1970s. Real earnings have fallen for many families, with globalization, the decline of unions and technological innovations eroding workers’ wages. But earnings have soared at the top, with corporate executives and families with significant income from investments making out especially well.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 23:48:26 +0000
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