super rich

Graphing American Wage Statistics Is Not a Pretty Picture

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The rich get richer and income inequality in America continues to grow in 2013.  The wage situation improved from 2012, but it's still pretty bad.  The median wage was $28,031.02 in 2013 a paltry 1.9% increase from 2012.  While the ratio of median wage to average wage improved, the 110 super rich are now earning 2595 times more than average workers.

Friday Movie Night - Income Inequality

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The story which should be front page news but is not is income inequality.  U.C. Berkeley professor, Emmaneul Saez studies income inequality and has recently updated his research with 2012 figures and the results are astounding.  The top 1% breaking records for grabbing America's income gains should be what's blaring across the headlines.

The No Jobs Economy is the New Economy

One of my most popular columns was about escaping from the Matrix existence in which Americans live.  It is a world of disinformation and misinformation in which facts are fiction, and abstract theories are substituted for empirical reality.

Official government statistics are make-believe.  The government makes inflation and unemployment disappear by how it defines inflation and unemployment, and it makes the economy grow by how it defines Gross Domestic Product.  The definitional basis determines the statistical result.

Student Financial Aid Goes To The Rich And The Poor Get Debt Instead

Did you know rich students get financial help from colleges while the poor ones get laden with debt instead?  Such is the conclusion of a new report, Demerit Aid, from the New America Foundation.  While Pell grants tallied $35 billion in 2012, universities are reducing their own financial aid based on income and instead, shifting those funds to the wealthy students.

The Only Ones Who Recovered from the Recession are the Top 1%

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There is another round of bad news for most Americans.   A study shows the top 1% of America's rich captured 121% of the income gains for the two years after the 2007-2009 recession was declared over.  U.C. Berkeley Economist Emmanuel Saez released his study Striking it Richer:  The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States early this month to much press.   It truly is astounding.   Gone is America's strong middle class where work was rewarded.

Saturday Reads Around the Internets - It Pays to Do Your Homework

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shocknews Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

 

Whole Foods - Made in China

Spending $8 bucks a pound for organic grapes? Think again. This video report shows Grocery chain Whole Foods so called organic foods are actually imported from China. Check out what happens with organic inspection and certification when food is imported.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up Folks - 1% Super Rich Form a Non-Profit To Advocate For Themselves

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fat catThe uber-rich have given us a Christmas gift. Yes, they have formed an organization, the Job Creators Alliance, to run public relations against us imbeciles who point out they are greedy bastards and to shape the national agenda. They even ask for donations on their website so they can pour money into lobbying, and media spin. All of this effort is to advocate for...the super-rich.

Thank you Bloomberg News who alerted us to the wonders of the CEOs, board members and super rich, bestowing their gifts upon us to explain why they should have all the money.

Bloomberg:

If successful businesspeople don’t go public to share their stories and talk about their troubles, “they deserve what they’re going to get,” said Marcus, 82, a founding member of Job Creators Alliance, a Dallas-based nonprofit that develops talking points and op-ed pieces aimed at “shaping the national agenda,” according to the group’s website. He said he isn’t worried that speaking out might make him a target of protesters.

“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”

No Wonder the Koch Brothers Want No Interference from the Government

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bloombergkochBloomberg has one whooper story. It seems the Koch Brothers made sales to Iran:

A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.

In case you've been dead, the Koch Brothers are the uber-rich guys out to destroy your social security, health care and, oh yeah, government as we know it.

No wonder they hate regulations and government. Doesn't help when you're doing something probably illegal, like making sales to a government under sanctions for being a terrorist state.

Beyond getting into the international bribes business, a crime the Koch Brothers are assuredly not alone in (see this Frontline documentary on how common international business bribes are), we have them losing one of the biggest civil wrongful death suits:

In 1999, a Texas jury imposed a $296 million verdict on a Koch pipeline unit -- the largest compensatory damages judgment in a wrongful death case against a corporation in U.S. history. The jury found that the company’s negligence had led to a butane pipeline rupture that fueled an explosion that killed two teenagers.

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