Quote:
Originally Posted by Kobi
Americans Occupiers in Zuccotti Park made famous phrases like "the 1 percent" to protest wealth disparity within the U.S. -- but the rest of the world can throw that term right back at us. As CNN points out today, World Bank economist Branko Milanovic writes in his book The Haves and the Have-Nots that 29 million of the 60 million people who constitute the top 1 percent of income earners globally (or 48 percent of them) are American, based on 2005 data. It's a finding that grabbed our attention, since Occupy Wall Street has tried to make "the 1 percent" Enemy No. 1 in the U.S. Here's how he rounds out the rest of the top percentile in his book:
Next follow about 4 million Germans; about 3 million French, Italians, and Britons each; 2 million Canadians, Koreans, Japanese, and Brazilians each; around 1 million of Swiss, Spaniards, Australians, Dutch, Taiwanese, Chileans, and Singaporeans. There is nobody from Africa, China, India, or from East Europe or Russia (in statistically significant numbers, of course).
That's more or less the rest of the developed world. The sad truth of how destitute billions of people are is reflected in the fact that an individual only needs to earn $34,000 annually to make it in that top percentile. For comparison, the 1 percenters within the U.S. population make $506,000 or more every year, as The Wall Street Journal reported in October. Though the Occupiers certainly care about poverty across the world, statistics like this don't do a whole lot to deflate that whole "they're just dumb kids with MacBooks" argument against them.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/busin...ericans/46978/ |
While I agree (the facts say that I must) that we (as a nation) have a higher percentage of those in the 1%, I also have to applaud the efforts of the occupiers. I think it is important, before making them appear to be a bunch of whiners when the rest of the world isn't where our country is financially (nor have they ever been), the occupiers are operating on a national level, not global. Their focus is, and has been, strictly on the U.S. and I don't really think it is fair to compare what was set up, and continues as a movement within the U.S. borders, dealing with a U.S. problem, to a larger global scale of wealth and income; to me, that is comparing an apple and an orange when the original issue focused solely on the apple and was designed as such.
The shape of our economy in the U.S. has been pretty ugly to a lot of folks, including many who never saw the collapse of all they had worked for coming. Also true, some folks made some pretty bad decisions within the housing market; it isn't reasonable to assume that if I'm making 50 or 60 grand a year that I can afford to buy a house that costs a million dollars. I'm not saying people weren't duped, but this is some pretty basic math, so some of the problem was due directly to some of our own personal decisions; just one brick in the pile of many that got us where we are today.
The gap between the haves and have nots in this country has been growing by leaps and bounds; the middle class, which is the backbone of this country, is being squeezed to death. I'm not proposing a Robin Hood mentality, but the survival of the middle class is a significant piece of the puzzle in our economy and something has to be done to breathe life back into that segment. This is my opinion. I say kudos to the occupiers.
Glynn