Wealth Gap in America

World Comparison..

The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world, followed by China.

The United States is predicted to be the wealthiest country until at least 2015.

Yet the gap is more than that of other developed countries.

According to “oregonlive.com”, If you make $10,000 a year, you are 84% wealthier than the rest of the world and if you make $50,000 a year or more than you are wealthier that 99% of the world.

“Even the poorest among us are richer than most of the world. And our nation's income gap is a whole lot better than the gap is in some countries.” said Elizabeth Hovde

Wealthy Impoverished

The 400 richest people in America have more wealth than the bottom (most poor) 150 million put together.

The top 1% of Americans own 40% of America’s 54 trillion dollars in wealth.

Having stocks and business shares causes people to become rich

In 2010, 1 out of every 7 American households were food insecure and about 47 million people are living on food stamps.

About 1.2 million students attending public school at this time are homeless

Wealth Vs. Poverty

Distribution of Wealth in the US

Protest in New York

In Brooklyn, New York a Wendy’s Restaurant is being bombarded with individuals on strike demanding that the

minimum wage be raised to twice of that. They were claiming that by living on that amount of money, you would have to choose between housing and food. “The goal of this strike is for workers to be able to put food on their table and

buy their children presents for Christmas,” said Westin. Employees of minimum wage professions from all over came to express their opinion. “We’re out here for better wages,

better working conditions, and union protection,” said Michael, an 18-year-old employee of a Burger King. Michael

says that growing up he was encouraged to “go the right way and get a job,” but now that he has a job he’s having

trouble getting by. “There’s people my age that try to let this stabilize them. We got bills, we got rent. We’re living from

check to check, hoping the next one will be better and it’s not. We can’t live on this.”

Minimum Wage in America

• Federal minimum wage amount is $7.25 at this time

• Approximately 59% (75.3 million) of workers, ages 16 and over, are paid at hourly rates and 1.6 million of those workers earned exactly the federal amount of minimum wage

• The minimum wage in the United States varies (some greater than and some less than $7.25).

Income Statistics

40% of all American workers make less than $20,000 a year, before taxes and 65% make less than $40,000 a year, before taxes (average income is approximately $50,000).

According to recently released numbers, there are 49.7 million Americans living in poverty.

At this time, 1 our of every 4 workers living in the United States has a profession that pays $10 an hour or less.

The Effects

People are becoming irritated and violent because of the wealth gap, making protests and going on strike to express their opinions.

In some sense, the richer and getting wealthier and the poor are becoming more impoverished.

Families are unable to put food on the table because of effects from the wealth gap.

The youth of our nation is growing up in a society where you’re either considered poor, middle (both of which would be considered very rich in other countries), or rich.