By Drew DeSilver 75 comments. Issues of inequality seem poised to play a large role in the public discourse this year. President Obama is expected to use his Jan. And some Republicans, such as Sen. According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development , the U. After accounting for taxes and transfers, the U. Americans in the upper fifth of the income distribution earn Among advanced countries, only Australians expressed a lower level of concern, but in Australia the top fifth earned just 2.

Drew DeSilver is a senior writer at Pew Research Center.

How To Live Your Freedom Lifestyle - Make Money While Trave

So like most people in America, I am a good hard working person who has a proven ability to adapt to frequent changes in the workplace, at home and in the country. I was denied financial assistance to go to college after high school so I never did go to college.

For a long time this was not an issue, I was able to make tactical decisions and move around from job to job, until I found one who respected my talents enough to pay me well enough to live a meager but hopeful existence.

Like so many other people, when the recession of hit. Everything I had managed to acquire in life was wiped out. I lost my job and spent 3 years moving between one desperate short term job after another. I was in for a rude awakening when I came back into the same field I had previously worked in and found a steady job. I worked at this job for two years, they used the yearly review thing and a strategic delay on hiring me from the temp agency, to cheat me out of my first years raise.

Another year passed and I soon found out how shallow their promise to reward hard work and dedication was. Despite having volunteered for every weekend of overtime, developed entire new systems using metrics to revolutionize our departments tracking and accountability.

I received a 10 Cent raise, as a reward for an exceeds expectation review. My female supervisor told me she was ashamed to even show me how much my raise was.

Apparently our shareholders demand that their personal profits continue to grow forever, despite that being an impossible bill in any Capitalist economy. Eventually the CEO gets to a point of new sales stagnation that leaves him very few options, other than taking it out directly on the employees.

Of course they attack the least valuable employees first. The company I worked for those two years, embodied the absolute worse of what American business had become. They had ruthless outsourcing models that were being put into effect over time, low wages and absolutely no hope for any sort of advancement ever, no matter how talented you were. I thank God I got laid off from that job, 4 months later I applied for a job I had no business applying for from an experience standpoint. Not only did I get the job and absolutely thrive and grow over the next 3 years.

As time went on and I thrived there, we were bought by a similar management company as my previous employer. I watched a ton of the most vulnerable people get victimized yet again and it really hurt my heart. Even I got to feel the effects of the new management, my first raise had been over a dollar an hour and they did not even owe me a raise, they offered it to me unprovoked when they hired me on from the contract service I started through.

Next raise I saw, came after the new management company had just restructured the whole Performance Review program. I watched everyone get fucked over a one month period, even our most valuable employees like our FAA Certified Repair Station Technicians with FAA Repairmen Cards.

I also knew it would only be a matter of time before the disparity in my wage as opposed to everyone else in my department would attract a crosshair from the new management. I left that company when it enjoyed a nearly unprecedented level of profit and filled a small niche that had little to no competition. Now I am unemployed and taking my time trying to find an acceptable job making a living wage. The rent prices anywhere in a 50 mile vicinity of Seattle are absolutely ridiculous, very few people I know are living on their own.

family freedom make money money money single tier

If you have balls of steel, maybe your willing to take on 65k in student loan debt, if you do that though you better get an engineering degree and you better complete it in one fell swoop. If not those profiteering bankers will fuck you hard and real dominant like. Since the student loan banks called in their billions worth of favors, they now know they have the distinct privilege of being one of the only private industries in the US that can fuck you hard like the IRS can when you owe them money.

If you happen to default on your loan, 15k in additional charges will rack up quickly and that is just what the big banks use to lubricate you, the real business comes next. These private financiers do not just send you to normal collections like any other private entity has to settle for. You will watch your paychecks being garnished, without the ballance ever going down.

I really hope your one of those blowhards who golfs with the CEO while getting drunk as shit. If not your in for one hell of a time making enough to pay back your student loans. I could go on for days, this country is a polished piece of garbage. We have the highest rates of childhood starvation of any civilized nation.

We let these heartless savages from the GOP guilt us into letting them cut our social programs. Then they turn around and use the fucking proceeds to fund payouts and bribes to big industries, these Welfare payouts that are seeded somewhere in almost every bill, are referred to as Earmarks as not to betray their true nature to the public. They use their big cable conglomerates as influence and they hyper promote topics that divide us and nothing else. This is an age old tactic used by those in various Ruling Classes to keep their opposition too weak to oppose them, its called divide and conquer.

If we are too busy fighting about retarded shit that does not mean a thing, things like womens reproductive rights. That means we are not focused on or fighting with the people that really pose a threat to this nations existence. Greed is a fucking disease, it dominates those who are afflicted with it and they become mindless, heartless drones who long ago lost the ability to relate with humanity or the human condition.

They are nothing but legal mobsters, treasonous animals guilty of crimes against humanity and depravity against morality. Take the money out of politics completely.

Vote for people you know and trust personally and ignore the candidates the machine offers. No kidding, I met refugees in Paris who lived better under canal bridges than people I met living outside.

Pensions: the point action plan to take advantage of the new rules | Money | The Guardian

With as much as people like to Ruminate about our nations security both literal and morale. They sure remain oblivious to the largest threat to American prosperity and longevity, we have ever experienced. A threat which those of us who are studied in world history know very well, has destroyed one great empire after another. My 7 year old nephew needs an adult to remind him about excess and moderation. If my brother and I do our jobs right every day will get a little bit better, some day he will be himself an adult and will provide this guidance to others and so on.

This is the legacy of Reaganomics and the revenge of the banking nerds.

If you make that amount in many Midwest communities you are living well. Because I live on the east coast, I need to make at least twice the money to live as well as someone in the middle of the country. Income taxes are not adjusted for locality either. How local difference matters when they are comparing the national average in different times?

Corporations should be hiring more to get more into the flow so that the economy CAN come back to vitality. What is the combined income of Black America. Why is this data not readily available. Thank you in advance for answering my questions. I have been trying to get our federal representation all of whom are in the high class to pass a bill creating and funding national employee Owned co ops. These would produce a product and be located in areas of great unemployment and under employment.

They would take the place of all government subsidies but housing and medical help.

Can Money Buy Freedom?

People would be given a job that would pay the bills of their households. Using this system people would be given a job, not a hand out. When enough of these co ops are made,each producing selling and servicing a product, the United States will have a economy within an economy that is using idle and semi idle people to make and sell something.

If a co op does not sell enough to offset its production costs, the government would make up the difference. Prisons could be made to make all the inmates could that the co ops could use in their business.

Inmates at the prisons would work five days a week for 40 hours each week, just like the normal world would expect.

This would cut the production costs of the co op. I tried to get Mayor DeBlasio have people tend skyscraper gardens doing this. I guess he quickly dismissed the idea and let the state and federal government continue to hand out welfare money while people lay idle. After a while the labor supply in our country would create a demand for labor as businesses would want to sell to all those people working in co ops.

Wages would rise to attract labor. And the gap would begin to shrink as the wealthy would have to pay for labor higher wages from their profits. Supply and demand can be created by government action. But they refuse to consider this.

There is so much more to say. But think how these co ops would help the country. Does that mean we ARE headed for another horrible recession? What makes the difference between statistics and now? I know that in order to even the playing feild between buyers and sellers, the government must step in. This info has been informative. There are a few really good documentaries about the financial collapse and how we got there.

In the past, I have been as most Americans. I was truely ignorant as to the laws or lack of laws that the very wealthy have to abide when it regards income. I was also shocked at first to see how the US citizens and gov allowed the collapse to take place. It did not happen over a few years. It has been happening for the past 30 years. The only current info I can gather today is that the supposed recovery act is acting for the wealthiest. Why are there laws or checks and balances?

I think it is to keep honesty and do the right thing. Is the income gap caused by corporations making more shrewd business decisions, or is it caused by the bribery of politicians so that laws create an unequal advantage for certain entities? Companies trying to save money and be more efficient is good for the economy.

Companies influencing laws to their advantage and reducing free competition is bad for the economy. While an increase in the income gap is not necessarily a bad thing if everyone is better off than they were previously need to look at living standards, not just income , if the income gap is caused by bribery then we need to BLAME the politicians.

Ironically, looking to politicians to fix the problem would be the worst course of action. The minute the SCOTUS decided that they would rule based on political lines, and all parties would lie to get a job, with benefits, no character and NO service to our country they lost.

Some of these stats run counter to others presented on this very website: For more on inequality especially the impact on the middle class , see these key data points.

A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.

Redistribution policies will certainly reduce income inequality. But why is inequality of income a problem in the first place? For many a politician or writer , inequality is the fuel to generate mass popular appeal in their own pursuit of power. If the campaign to end inequality ignites your passion, you are the fuel. Reducing income inequality is not the same as improving the quality of living for the masses. A redistributive system slows innovation on quality of life improvments.

My dear country, it is not equality you yearn for. Your desire is freedom. With income inequality becoming the defining issue in this country today, a look at the the stark division seen in vintage Depression era advertising seems oddly familiar.

As banks were failing, home evictions seem oblivious to the crumbling economy around them rising, and breadlines at soup kitchens lengthening, winter meant only one thing to those with deep pockets- a winter vacation as ads for winter cruises, ski vacations ran along side ads for budget saving meals. While rampant unemployment and poverty became more and more common the wealthy lived in a world that remained insular arrogant and out of touch.

Take a look wp. Since Ronald Reagan, Every president, worked like termites to destroy our jobs and the future of the American working class, no jobs, lower wages and the making of the U.

The one person most singly responsible for the housing bubble in the U. The investment banks preferred sub-prime loans, as they earned high revenue due to high risk; poorer ratings yield higher interest rates. This massive credit flow drove demand in the housing sector, helping expand the bubble. Mortgage regulations were relaxed and there were huge profits in the financial sector; some stock prices tied to real estate and financial firms skyrocketed.

The leverage ratio during the bubble also was very high, as banks borrowed heavily to give loans. Wages flat-lined and labor unions were all but declared extinct. What differed in the hump years of was that nominal tax rates on the rich were much, much higher. Corporations could not pay execs exorbitant salaries in the form of stock options without consequence as they can now and legacy income was much smaller estate taxes. We need to spend more money on education, more money on infrastructure, more money on social programs and less on corporate welfare tax incentives.

Put back the trade restrictions on foreign goods and replenish American jobs. The US debt GDP ratio is getting worse day by day….. True it is a big problem. We cannot bring back those days. There was practically no technology those-days whereas these-days every thing is technology.

I think not, and I believe that there are many like me. The tenth is one that, to date at least, I have managed to keep. All those things you mentioned require someone to pay for them. Currently, they are not paid for. I do not wish to take an entitlement program. I want to have the right to at least survive if not to live.

Inflation is an increasing problem as the wealthy have the right to take my wealth legally. I do not have that right to take theirs. They press management for more profit and anymore that means taking from staff professionals and mid managers who are working longer hours, are getting fewer perks and earning the same or even less than they earned ten years ago. It seems everything is examined for cost reduction, right down to the TP in the mens. When does it stop?

When the masses can no longer afford to shop at Wall Mart. How much to sustain their businesses and their opulent lifestyle? How many more summer homes, yachts, fancy cars and bling do they really need? They just seem to want more and more tax cuts, tax loop holes, tax incentives, reduction in regulations, and tax codes that enable them to hide wealth off shore or cook their books, so they get a rebate and pay no corporate or personal income tax. Where are they going to fly in and out of in the United States airports in their private jets if the runways, control towers, and air traffic control systems are in need of repair and upgrades?

On what roads, tunnels, bridges and super highways are they going to drive or ride around in their fancy cars and stretch limos? What type of water do they want to drink, if it is all contaminated with fracking and radioactive wastes? What air are they going to breath? All they seem to care about are themselves. The environment, the middleclass, the poor, the public commons, and public good be damned. They are greedy and shortsighted.

I listened to the commentary today on NPR on growing income inequality. I find it fascinating that no one will dare address how our lax immigration policies fuel this fire. I saw this up close and personal while working for the YMCA in a neighborhood in Austin Texas for 4 years with the highest levels of poverty, diversity, crime, obesity, low test scores…the list goes on.

Even with the City throwing millions at this neighborhood to lift people up and control crime, the area still is spiraling out of control.

Other countries have tighter restrictions on immigration and the United States has become a laughingstock to the rest of the world. At what point are we FULL. HOW the top fraction came suddenly to be almost the only paid or self-paid help in the country, and. I just want to be able to pay my bills and buy food. I want a safe place to sleep. These are basic things in life and they are getting harder and harder to achieve.

I have worked twenty years in the machine trades. The real cost of living is the problem. Fruit and vegetables sold by weight and not the piece. Have you noticed that the stores saturate the product with misters?

How to Make Money Blogging in What Successful Blogs Teach Us

This is the real reason why paychecks do not go so far.. Morse has a point. Some very lucky investments and a lot of OT maybe. Maybe he lived with parents and saved all of his earnings.

Gap is to a large extent: Black America is consistently at the bottom, but single mothers do not produce Rhode scholars, or business oriented citizens. Family support, education and unity vital to success of Mormons or Jewish Americans.

NO poll ever includes wealth, family, education, Religion. Obama and government lumps them all together by income to bash or support laws based ONLY on income. How about a survey incorporating factors leading to the income differences. I think you should all know that making K a year and owning a 2Mil dollar home does not make me happy. Having family and friends who I love, and who love me that makes me happy.

And making money compromised that. I was much happier when I made 14K a year. I had more time to spend with people. I wasted all these years putting in long hours and making more money for what? I should have focused on family and friends and just having enough money for the basics. Well, I know a Wal-Mart greeter who has grown savings to a half million dollars in 23 years by saving his money on slightly more than the minimum wage. Of course the profligate will want to tax his income for their benefit.

I started out poor. Making 14K a year as a young man. But I worked hard over the years, and now I make K a year and own a 2Mil dollar home. No one wealthy in my family.

Capitalism is sort of like Darwinism in my mind…survival of the fittest. But working hard is not directly correlated to earning a lot of money.

Working smart and hard is the trick. That has to start early in life to get the smart half or just be lucky and be born that way. The trouble is that self-made individuals like yourself think that anybody can do the same.

You should be thankful for the advantages and the society that enabled your wealth. Why did the middle class grow and income inequality shrink when all those government programs were equalizing the previous oppressive inequality? Many people made it into the middle class simply because of the GI Bill alone, and that was just one of many similar programs. Some current policies that steal from the poor and middle class to further line the pockets of the super-rich exacerbate the problem.

The 2nd point from the OCED is most telling. BEFORE government re-distributive programs, income inequality is bad but not among the worst, but AFTER taxes and such, we jump from 10th worst to 2nd worst. In other words, the gubmit is practicing income redistribution, taking from the middle class and giving it to the already wealthy!!

The current economic system is rigged against those who do not have the money to buy government. It is rigged against the working class, the small business owner, the cubicle dweller, and the family farm. It is sad that so many of us that are among these groups willingly support those who are sucking us dry because they are told that the pain they feel is not coming from above, but rather from those with the least power.

Before such programs, inequality was extremely bad. That is the whole point of this article. Did you actually look at the data? Do you really think the Gilded Age was a utopia? The Dickension horrors of the early industrial revolution gave rise to unions, and as the power of unions wanes, the divide widens. Of course, the exploiting of workers by the upper classes also gave rise to several revolutions around the world.

If we allow market forces total freedom in dictating wages and working conditions, we will be facing the same responses again. Unions did well till they found out they could use the dues to buy political favor and the politicians saw they could use the unions. A good example are the government Unions in Wisconsin and how their insurance cost was inflated because of the Union run insurance the Union selected. The Car business is a good example of good gone bad also.

Oh, and the minimum wage should be tied to inflation. If you are on Soc Sec it is adjusted every year for inflation, so is the pay of Congressmen. Most people earning the min wage are young, inexperienced, lack skills, and need an entry level job to get the means to gain these attributes so as to go up the ladder.

Inequality of wages can be closed through better education, promoting strong families, good values, self reliance, and an attitude that is positive rather than that of victim. One of the top executives at Walmart started in a minimum wage job. There are many highly successful people who started with hopes, dreams, determination, a willingness to work long hours,study, and sacrifice present desires for the goals they set. They would spend all of it. It needs to go to people who will put it into the economy, buying stuff that others make, thus creating jobs.

More and more of the wealth at the top is held in financial instruments — investments tied not to manufacturing but to other financial instruments. Think collateralized debt obligations, so-called CDO-squared, etc. Then there are the investments tied to employment in other countries: And then there are the IT people who develop a great new app and sell it for billions of dollars.

family freedom make money money money single tier

These firms employ very few people but are heavily capitalized. Yes, there will always be people who are much richer than others. But the current system is creating a two-tiered of the super-rich and everyone else. In this sense it is like the economy immediately preceding the Progressive Era, and perhaps a new kind of Progressivism can create greater opportunity.

Increasing subsidies to Food Stamps, S. Always has, always will. The spread is going to get wider unless we get rid of liberal policies toward poverty. That is so right Jon. You and I pay 6. But the really wealthy pay almost nothing.

Why should we pay an additional 6. If everyone paid Soc Sec taxes on ALL of their income. We would not have to worry about Soc Sec forever. That would be much fairer all around. I was just about to bring up Mitt Romney myself. As a self-employed person, I have it even worse. I have no one to match my FICA so I have to pay it all.

Mitt and his ilk can make all the money they want from hedge fund investments. But it is only fair that it be taxed as income. Just this one change in tax policy alone could produce billions in revenue. But the poor, poor billionaires feel like they are being picked on for being job creators. Tell me again how they create jobs? And tell me how taxing them fairly would make them less willing to invest and earn billions? Those who think that the employer pays half of the Social Security tax are sadly mistaken.

You, the employee, pay it ALL. The employer would be just as happy to pay the employer portion to you and you could then write the check to the Government.

Incidentally, capping the wages and salaries for Social Security taxes makes sense in that the eventual Social Security benefits are not proportional to the amounts paid in. Removing the cap would make Social Security even more of a redistributive welfare program.

Point is, an EQUAL payment to Social Security is fair.. Tithing is a nice idea, and indeed it would put much more money into the Social Security pot. Then the question arises, do we allow payments, once eligible, to exceed some measure of personal contributions. But then how much greater? Should we let deadbeats retire on SS payments as if they were hard working miners, or auto workers, or stock brokers?

How unfair is that, especially if an insurance actuary can predict with good accuracy for large groups, who will live to collect and who will not. More black men die before collecting than white men — check out that hidden fact. The worst thing about Social Security is this: Fix CONGRESS, and somehow convince all of your daughters to bear at least two children and raise them to work for a living, and most SS problems will go away.

Again, inflation is the only thing breaking society security, and in necessities, the rich control these prices. A shrinking population would have no effect on social security unless wages actually went down. The people pay into it. If population goes up, a surplus is created. When population goes down, that surplus is then used; however, if pricing problems then persist, the surplus is used to combat the inflationary pressures. The problem with social security is that certain administrations robbed it.

There are treasuries however, but then again, that requires the government to actually not have a deficit which is also caused by decisions causing the government to spend more usually through inflation or wars or on great society welfare programs such as unfunded military spending.

If society does not wish to encourage population growth, then it makes sense to not deal with growing the population. I think it only fair that the poor should have the right to boycott a society that makes no sense.

Jon, let me unconfuse you. What retirees receive is only somewhat related to what they paid in. Those who pay in the most i. Low income earners receive the best return. Except that the person who paid the most will get a bigger SS check than the person who paid the least.

Indeed it is a hybrid defined benefit plan and welfare program. The Dems like the latter, and the GOPs indulge the former as long as the latter is not too pronounced. You would need to cap the pay out or the rich would get more of the pay out based on their higher contribution.

Wealth in significant chunks makes job growth because with the trend today for mega government and mega business it is almost impossible for someone with a small wealth to get a business started. Last, this trend socially would be comparable to the number of households with a single female head.

Moral issues also play in to this. This proves the point that statistics can be graphically manipulated to fit any notion. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world.

It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World About Follow Us.

Publications Topics Data Methods Interactives Fact Tank Experts. Fact Tank - Our Lives in Numbers. And this is not a Democracy. My family and I are not represented by our senators or house. We no longer believe in the farce that is supposed to be democaratic. You tax without representation.

Power corrupts and absulute power corrupts absulutely. You love Reagan, then correct all of his mistakes, He was a movie star and had alzimeres. See you in wall street and the banks in court. HOW the top fraction came suddenly to be almost the only paid or self-paid help in the country, and 2. About Fact Tank Real-time analysis and news about data from Pew Research writers and social scientists.

Related Global Jun 19, Religion May 30, Global May 26, Global May 24, Religion May 22,

Rating 4,9 stars - 491 reviews
inserted by FC2 system