Clay Burell's Library tagged wealth_gap →  View Popular

According to 2006 IRS data reported in the New York Times, “the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980."

But his most chilling observation concerned where he thought we were: “We are at a critical fork in the road. We can either create the millions of jobs needed for the 30 million who are right now effectively unemployed, or we can bail out Wall Street, again. We can either re-grow the incomes of the 300,000 richest Americans, who for many years have earned half the nation’s income, or we can build an economy that serves the employment and income needs of the 150 million hard working Americans who earn the other half. For more than three decades we’ve focused on the 300,000, through ‘trickle down’ and other discredited economic practices. That’s been easy, although horribly unfair. The hard but fair thing to do is to manage our economy so that it responsibly serves the 150 million.”