Income Inequality News Articles
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
Jeremy Corbyns stunning transformation from perennial leftist rebel to leader of Britains Labour Party upended British politics Saturday. The Corbyn victory represented an extraordinary rebuke to Labours more centrist powers-that-be, especially to former prime minister Tony Blair, who had campaigned vigorously against Corbyn. But interventions from Blair and other party heavyweights apparently did little to halt Corbyns momentum and may have even backfired. In a fiery victory speech, Corbyn vowed to combat societys grotesque inequality and make Britain a more humane country. Corbyn has often bucked the Labour leadership on critical issues including the vote to authorize the Iraq war and his message resonated among Labour voters who believe their party has been reduced to a pale imitation of the Tories, especially as it lurched to the center under Blair. He has previously called for Britain to leave NATO, favors unilateral nuclear disarmament and champions the nationalization of vast sectors of the economy. He has also said that he will apologize on behalf of Labour for the Iraq invasion and that Blair could face war-crimes charges. In Britain ... voters on both ends of the spectrum are looking for alternatives to the traditional power-brokers. This isnt just a leftist phenomenon. Its a populist phenomenon, [Queen Mary University professor Tim] Bale said. Its the idea that voters are fed up with politics as usual and an elite thats compromised.
Note: Former prime minister Tony Blair was reported to have personally made millions from warmongering, and was convicted in a symbolic Malaysian trial of crimes against peace in Iraq. Will Corbyn actually attempt to bring formal charges against Blair in the U.K.?
Increasing housing prices and the stock market's posting all-time highs haven't helped the plight most Americans. The average U.S. household has recovered only 45 percent of the wealth they lost during the recession, according to a report released yesterday from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. This finding is a very different picture than one painted in a report earlier this year by the Fed that calculated Americans as a whole had regained 91 percent of their losses. The earlier number is based on aggregate household-net-worth data [which] isn't adjusted for inflation, population growth or the nature of the wealth. Much of recovery in net worth is because of the stock market, which means most of the improvement has been a boon only to wealthy families. "Clearly, the 91 percent recovery of wealth losses portrayed by the aggregate nominal measure paints a different picture than the 45 percent recovery of wealth losses indicated by the average inflation-adjusted household measure," the report said. "Considering the uneven recovery of wealth across households, a conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified," the researchers said. Almost two-thirds of the increase in aggregate household wealth is due to rising stock prices. This has disproportionately benefited the richest households: About 80 percent of stocks are held by the wealthiest 10 percent of the population.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on wealth inequality, click here.
Income inequality used to be about rich versus poor, but now it's increasingly a matter of the ultra rich and everyone else. New figures show that from 2003 to 2004, the latest year for which there is data, the richest Americans pulled far ahead of everyone else. In the space of that one year, real average income for the top 1 percent of households...grew by nearly 17 percent. For the remaining 99 percent, the average gain was less than 3 percent, and that probably makes things look better than they really are, since other data...indicate that the average is bolstered by large gains among the top 20 percent of households. The top 1 percent of households enjoyed 36 percent of all income gains in 2004, on top of an already stunning 30 percent in 2003. A recent study done for the Business Roundtable(pdf)...shows that median executive pay at 350 large public companies was $6.8 million in 2005. According to the Wall Street Journal, that's 179 times the pay of the average American worker. The study's calculation of executive pay is widely criticized as an understatement. In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth. The top 10 percent of households had 46 percent of the nation's income. The top 1 percent of households had 19.5 percent. [For] the bottom 60 percent, average income grew by [a total of] less than 20 percent from 1979 to 2004, with virtually all of those gains occurring from the mid- to late 1990's. Before and since, real incomes for that group have basically flatlined.
Note: For a related New York Times article on how the current administration is planning to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, click here.
Even as racial barriers have tumbled and the nation has grown wealthier and better educated, the economic disparities separating blacks and whites remain as wide as they were when marchers assembled on the Mall in 1963. When it comes to household income and wealth, the gaps between blacks and whites have widened. On other measures, the gaps are roughly the same as they were four decades ago. The poverty rate for blacks, for instance, continues to be about three times that of whites. The march took place at a time when the benefits of American economic growth were widely shared. Between 1947 and 1979, the wages of workers at all salary levels grew by roughly the same percentage. But between 1979 and 2007, incomes shifted drastically, with the top 5 percent of earners seeing annual salary increases more than three times the size of those in the middle, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization. Overall, 63 percent of total income growth went to the top 10 percent of households between 1979 and 2007.
Note: For more on income and wealth inequality, see the deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources available here.
When it comes to producing billionaires, America is doing great. Until 2005, multimillionaires could still make the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. In 2006, the Forbes 400 went billionaires only. This year, you'd need a Forbes 482 to fit all the billionaires. A billion dollars is a lot of dough. Queen Elizabeth II, British monarch for five decades, would have to add $400 million to her $600 million fortune to reach $1 billion. And she'd need another $300 million to reach the Forbes 400 minimum of $1.3 billion. The average Forbes 400 member has $3.8 billion. When the Forbes 400 began in 1982, it was dominated by oil and manufacturing fortunes. Today, says Forbes, "Wall Street is king." Nearly half the 45 new members, says Forbes, "made their fortunes in hedge funds and private equity. Money manager John Paulson joins the list after pocketing more than $1 billion short-selling subprime credit this summer." The 25th anniversary of the Forbes 400 isn't party time for America. We have a record 482 billionaires and record foreclosures. We have a record 482 billionaires and a record 47 million people without any health insurance. Since 2000, we have added 184 billionaires and 5 million more people living below the poverty line. The official poverty threshold for one person was a ridiculously low $10,294 in 2006. That won't get you two pounds of caviar ($9,800) and 25 cigars ($730) on the Forbes Cost of Living Extremely Well Index. The $20,614 family-of-four poverty threshold is lower than the cost of three months of home flower arrangements ($24,525). Wealth is being redistributed from poorer to richer. Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent. Inequality has roared back to 1920s levels. It was bad for our nation then. It's bad for our nation now.
Note: For further reports on worsening income inequality, click here.
This years Nobel Peace Prize winner and some high-tech entrepreneurs are competing to provide credit to the worlds poor. In November, 2004, [eBay founder Pierre Omidyar,] Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the co-founders of Google, and other leaders of the high-tech community gathered at the San Francisco home of the venture capitalist John Doerr for a weekend session with Muhammad Yunus, who is considered the godfather of microcredit. Yunus...is a highly gifted interlocutor between the extremely poor in the developing world and the West. This December, he will go to Oslo to receive [the Nobel Peace Prize]. During the famine of 1974 in Bangladesh...Yunus, an economics professor at Chittagong University, found the theories he was teaching maddeningly irrelevant; so he went into a neighboring village and began talking to the poor. He lent twenty-seven dollars to a group of forty-two villagers. Before long he became convinced that he had a remedy for their condition: providing very small individual loans to the impoverished to start activities ranging from making bamboo stools to buying a dairy cow. In 1976, after local banks refused his entreaties to make the loans...he founded the Grameen Bank. In early May, representatives from eight microfinance institutions around the world were invited to a three-day event at the Gates Foundations headquarters, in Seattle. At one point, the group met with Melinda and Bill Gates, and with Warren Buffett, too.
Note: If you want to be inspired by the amazing microfinance movement, which is transforming the face of poverty in our world, read this highly engaging, informative article. To be a part of this exciting global transformation, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/051023microcredit
A worldwide economic boom has yielded a record number of dollar billionaires in the past year, according to Forbes. Their number rose by 15%. Microsoft's Bill Gates tops the list for the 12th year running, with a net worth of $50bn (29bn). The combined net worth of the 793 is $2.6 trillion and US billionaires account for just under half the amount. The figures were conservative estimates for different reasons. While New York has the highest number of resident billionaires with 40, Moscow is second with 25, and London comes third with 23. Steve Forbes, Forbes' chief executive and editor-in-chief, attributed the global rise in the number of billionaires to an economic boom.
Note: Yet a recent New York Times article shows that the income of 90% of citizens is basically stagnant or even decreasing. See http://www.WantToKnow.info/060306newsarticles#1
Sacramento's Solar Cookers International, will take the global stage Friday in Florence, Italy. The nongovernmental organization, which is dedicated to saving the world with solar power, will receive an award from the World Renewable Energy Congress. The secret of the group's success is the "CooKit," a 3-by-4-foot piece of cardboard lined with aluminum foil that harnesses the sun's rays to cook food and pasteurize water. About 90,000 "CooKits" are heating up in Africa, where they are being manufactured and sold for $8 or $9. The group has helped introduce 500,000 solar cookers to 25 nations where people spend half their $1-a-day wages to buy firewood to cook their meals, said Bob Metcalf, a microbiologist who co-founded the group in 1987. Solar cookers allow them to spend that money on food instead of firewood, said Metcalf, who teaches at California State University, Sacramento. Metcalf says he hopes the award will get him 30 minutes with Bill Gates or some other investor to spread the gospel of the CooKit, which could be used by "2.5 billion people today" who rely on wood, charcoal or animal dung to cook meals. Metcalf also invented the Water Pasteurization Indicator -- a reusable sealed test tube with wax that melts when food or water has been pasteurized at 149 degrees Fahrenheit. "It takes about 90 minutes in the sun," he said. For more information, go to www.solarcookers.org.
Note: For how to easily help several families a year pull out of poverty in third world countries, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/051023microcredit
Poor people are needlessly dying because drug companies and the governments of rich countries are blocking the developing world from obtaining affordable medicines. Five years to the day after the Doha declaration - a groundbreaking deal to give poor countries access to cheap drugs - was signed at the World Trade Organisation, Oxfam says things are worse. The charity accuses the US, which champions the interests of its giant pharmaceutical companies, of bullying developing countries into not using the measures in the Doha declaration and the EU of standing by and doing nothing. Doha technically allows poor countries to buy cheap copies of desperately needed drugs, but the US is accused of trying to prevent countries such as Thailand and India, which have manufacturing capacity, [from] making and selling cheap generic versions so as to preserve the monopolies of the drug giants. "Rich countries have broken the spirit of the Doha declaration," said Celine Charveriat, head of Oxfam's Make Trade Fair campaign. "The declaration said the right things but needed political action to work and that hasn't happened. In fact, we've actually gone backwards. Many people are dying or suffering needlessly." The US has pursued its own free trade agreements with developing countries, tying them into much tighter observance of patent rights than anticipated at Doha. "The USA has also pressured countries for greater patent protection through threats of trade sanctions," the report says.
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