Rich Are Getting Richer & the Rest of Us Are Poorer

Goodbye Middle Class: The Percentage Of Wealth Owned By The Top 10% Just Got Even Bigger –Zero Hedge
“The middle class in America is being systematically eviscerated, and it is getting worse with each passing year…One new study has found that 10 percent of Americans now own 70 percent of all the wealth. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world, but pretty soon we are just going to have the ultra-wealthy and everyone else. Our system has been designed to funnel as much wealth as possible to the very top of the financial pyramid, and that means that most of the rest of us are deeply struggling. And when you are just barely getting by from month to month, all it takes is one bad break to knock you completely out of the middle class and into poverty. According to a study that was recently conducted by the Federal Reserve, the percentage of wealth controlled by the top 10 percent of U.S. households has shot up from 60 percent in 1989 to 70 percent today…The study finds that the share of wealth among the richest 1% increased to 32% from 23% over the same period….Meanwhile, wages have stagnated for ordinary Americans. According to the Social Security Administration, the median yearly wage in the United States is currently just $30,533..and you simply can’t support a middle class lifestyle for a typical American family on $2,500 a month….As the cost of living has risen faster than our incomes have, more Americans have been squeezed out of the middle class with each passing month….No matter which political party has been in power in Washington, the middle class has continued to shrink and more wealth and power has become concentrated in the hands of the elite. Now we stand on the precipice of the next major economic downturn, and many are deeply concerned about what that is going to mean for the future of our society.”