Month: September 2011

Trickle Down Fail: Number of Millionaires in the United States Rises As Poverty Rate Hits Highest Level Since the Reagan Era

Jon Ponder

Earlier this summer, an annual report on wealth accumulation worldwide found that, despite the financial collapse of 2008, the ensuing Great Recession and the grindingly slow recovery we’re experiencing now, the number of millionaires in the United States has actually grown:

All of this prompts a question: Is the growing prosperity disparity in the United States the intended result of Republican economic theory — was shifting the nation’s wealth upwards out of the middle class their objective from the start?

According to the annual World Wealth Report from Merill Lynch and Capgemini, the U.S. had 3.1 million millionaires in 2010, up from 2.86 million in 2009. The latest figure tops the pre-crisis peak of three million.

Merrill and Capgemini define millionaires as individuals with $1 million or more in investible assets, not including primary home, collectibles, consumables and consumer durables.

The wealth held by these millionaires also hit a record. North American millionaires had a combined wealth of $11.6 trillion, up from $10.7 trillion in 2009.

The number of Americans with $30 million is still slightly below the pre-crisis peak. In 2010 there were 40,000 North Americans with $30 million or more, up from 36,000 in 2009.

[…]

Poverty Rate Rises to Quarter Century High

Jon Ponder
chart-poverty-rates-1959-2010
Census chart updated by Pensito Review to show presidential eras

Last week, the Census Bureau released a report on poverty that found that the number of Americans living in poverty has risen to 15.1 percent, the highest it has been since 1983:

About 46.2 million people, or nearly one in six, were in poverty in 2010, compared with 43.6 million, or 14.3 percent, in 2009.

The statistics, contained in the report, titled “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage: 2010,” cover 2010, when U.S. unemployment averaged 9.6 percent, up from 9.3 percent the previous year.

Highlights:

[…]

EPI: 5% of Households Hold 82% U.S. Wealth

Jon Ponder

chart-wealth-gain-since-reagan

Income disparity increased dramatically over the period from 1983 to 2009, according to a report from the Economic Policy Institute. Hillary Reinsberg at Mogulite parses the data:

1. Of the country’s total wealth gain, 40 percent was money made by the wealthiest 1 percent of people. Yes, 1 percent of people made 40 percent of the money.

2. The top 5 percent gained 80 percent.

3. So, the top 1 percent, on their own, made as much as the 4 percent just below them.

4. But still, the remaining 95 percent of the country made just 20 percent of the wealth gains.

5. The old saying, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” did unfortunately hold true. The wealth held by the bottom 60 percent dropped 7.5 percent.

Poll: Mainstream Republicans Share Only Tenuous Ties with Tea Party

Trish

tea baggerNot all Republicans are comfortable in tin foil tricorn hats, according to a recent CNN poll. In fact about half don’t consider themselves active tea party supporters.

…roughly half (49 percent) of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support the tea party movement or are active members, with roughly half (51 percent) saying that they have no feelings one way or another about the tea party or that they oppose the movement.

More education is correlated with more tea partyism, which is odd until you remember that education is also associated with greater income. And no matter how successful the movement’s founders, Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, have been at portraying it as a grassroots effort, the tea party is all about protecting the assets of old, rich, cranky white guys.

Like Ron Paul, tea partiers are incoherent on social issues

…tea party Republicans are more likely to be male, older, and college educated, with non-tea party Republicans more likely to be younger, less educated, female, and less likely to say they are born-again or evangelical. Both groups are predominantly white.

[…]

Physician: Because of Bachmann’s Lie, ‘More People Will Die from Cervical Cancer’

Jon Ponder

Reuters:

Physicians are bracing for more parents to refuse the HPV vaccine, which protects against the most common cause of cervical cancer, for their daughters.

They say the comments by the Republican candidate will only stoke growing and unfounded fears about a whole class of common immunizations needed to fight disease.

“There are people out there who, because of this kind of misinformation, aren’t going to get their daughter immunized,” said Dr. Kenneth Alexander, a pediatric infectious disease expert at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

“As a result, there will be more people who die from cervical cancer,” Alexander said in a telephone interview.

Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, an infectious disease expert at Children’s Mercy Hospital & Clinics in Kansas City, Missouri, said doctors are already struggling to convince parents to immunize girls against HPV, a sexually transmitted virus.

“There will be repercussions of this comment that will directly impact every provider who takes care of adolescents and young women,” Jackson said in a telephone interview.