Daily Archives: September 15, 2011

Chart of the Day: Rich, Richer / Poor, Poorer

If Greece defaults, if the euro collapses, if the world spins into a second deep recession in just three years, these kinds of charts ought to be kept in mind.

We have posted others here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

The poor and the middle class have been screwed to an almost unimaginable degree. Virtually every penny of profit across thirty years of increased productivity has gone to the top 10%, most especially the top 1%. These include the people who oversaw the crash of the financial market three years ago, destroying tens of millions of jobs and wiping out tens of trillions dollars of wealth. They then required a few trillion more in taxpayer-funded bailouts to keep the world’s financial system viable. Having secured that, they were very quickly once again giving themselves billions of dollars in bonuses and making record profits.

But where are the new jobs? There are none because they evidently aren’t needed anymore, not in North America, and not at a decent working wage. The jobs at much lower wages have gone to places like India and China.