Here, from Business Insider, is the real state of the union: 1. New income generated since 2009 that has gone to the top 1 percent: 95 percent 2. Financial wealth controlled by the bottom 60 percent of all Americans: 2.3 percent 3. Record combined wealth of the top 400 richest Americans: $2,000,000,000,000 4. Real decline in median middle-class incomes since 1999: $5,000 5. Percentage of Hispanic and African-American children living in poverty, respectively: 33.8 percent; 36.7 percent 6. Amount that food stamps will be cut in 2014: $5 billion 7. Federal minimum wage: $7.25 8. What the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968: $21.72 9. Number of U.S. workers laboring at or below minimum wage: 3.6 million – the near equivalent of the population of Los Angeles. 10.Stealth taxpayer subsidy to the fast-food industry, paid out as safety-net benefits to McWorkers earning poverty wages: $7 billion 11. Global carbon dioxide levels measured in parts per million: 397 12. Maximum concentration of the greenhouse gas that scientists deem sustainable: 350 13. Years since the turn of this century that have ranked among the warmest 15 on record: All 13 14. Rank of 2013 on that list of the warmest years on record: Number Four 15. U.S. defense spending as of 2012: $682 billion 16. Dollar amount by which that surpassed our nearest plausible military rival, China: $516 billion 17. Federal deficit last year: $680 billion 18. Number of Americans disenfranchised from voting for felony convictions: 5.9 million 19. Share of those disenfranchised voters who are African-American: 37 percent 20. Number of Americans arrested annually for marijuana possession: 658,000 21. Total incarcerated U.S. population: 2.3 million 22. Total population on probation/parole: 4.8 million 23. States that could be entirely filled by all of the Americans under correctional supervision: Nevada and Kentucky 24. Official unemployment rate: 6.7 percent 25. Alternate rate including Americans whove given up looking for work, or have only been able to secure part-time employment: 13.1 percent 26. Number of jobs the United States is still down from 2008 employment peak: 1.69 million 27. Number of Americans who were cut off from long-term unemployment benefits at the turn of the year: 1.3 million
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 04:18:13 +0000
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