The earnings gap between rich and poor Americans is now at its widest for more than four decades and surpasses the level of inequality in nations such as Uganda and Kazakhstan.
Despite the United States continuing to recover from the 2009 Great Recession signs of that recovery have not been seen by the vast majority of hardworking Americans. In 2010 the top 1% of American families captured as much as 93% of the nation’s growing income. The American dream that each generation surpasses the last has been severely dented by figures that show that average family incomes shrank for the first time since World War Two.
“Income inequality of the scale we have today is destroying our democracy,” retired American Airlines CEO Bob Crandall said in an interview. Crandall, 76, says he became so frustrated at what he sees as selfishness among his peers that he started writing a blog on his Lenovo laptop. “Anyone else willing?” he titled his first entry in August 2011, which argued that people should pay higher taxes.
The income gap has become a major point of contention for the upcoming Presidential elections with President Barrack Obama’s administration blaming the widening of the gap on the deep recession and the dramatic fluctuation inequity prices. His rival Mitt Romney has said that Obama is ‘dividing America based on 99% versus the 1%. He has called for tax cuts and a reduction tax rates.
According to Romney spokeswoman; “The best way to bring more prosperity to more Americans is through economic growth and job creation. “
The US economy has created up to 4.6 million private-sector jobs since February 2010 but 40% of those are part-time low paid jobs. From 1979 to 2007, about $1.1 trillion in annual income shifted to the top 1 percent of Americans, more than the entire earnings of the bottom 40 percent, according to Alan Krueger, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and an economics professor at Princeton University. If income were distributed as it was in 1979, there might be $440 billion in additional spending each year, a 5 percent boost to consumption, he said in January.
The Pound to Euro exchange rate is currently trading at 1.2508
The Pound to US Dollar exchange rate is currently trading at 1.6160
The Pound to Australian Dollar exchange rate is currently trading at 1.5666
The Euro to US Dollar exchange rate is currently trading at 1.2918
The Euro to Pound exchange rate is currently trading at 0.7993
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