Re: Income GapWidens as Immigrants Drive Down Wages and Destroy Middle Class

[martin]

On Sep 29, 7:00 am, Iconoclast <goldst...@nym.hush.com> wrote:
> With too many "guest workers" and illegal aliens driving down wages,
> the gap between rich and non-rich is mirroring Latin America and
> India. Only CEO's and high up execs benefit from bringing  cheap
> replacement workers to do the jobs Americans do at slave wages.
>
> http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090929/US.Census.Income.Gap/
>
> WASHINGTON — The recession has hit middle-income and poor families
> hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest
> Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets.
>
> The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans — those making more than
> $138,000 each year — earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by
> those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to
> newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in
> 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.
>
> Household income declined across all groups, but at sharper percentage
> levels for middle-income and poor Americans. Median income fell last
> year from $52,163 to $50,303, wiping out a decade's worth of gains to
> hit the lowest level since 1997.
>
> Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.
>
> "No one should be surprised at the increased disparity," said Richard
> Freeman, an economist at Harvard University. "Unemployment hurts
> normal workers who do not have the golden parachutes the folks at the
> top have."
>
> Analysts attributed the widening gap to the wave of layoffs in the
> economic downturn that have devastated household budgets. They said
> while the richest Americans may be seeing reductions in executive pay,
> those at the bottom of the income ladder are often unemployed and
> struggling to get by.
>
> Large cities such as Atlanta, Washington, New York, San Francisco,
> Miami and Chicago had the most inequality, due largely to years of
> middle-class flight to the suburbs. Declining industrial cities with
> pockets of well-off neighborhoods, such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and
> Buffalo, N.Y., also had sharp disparities.
>
> Up-and-coming cities with growing middle-class populations, such as
> Mesa, Ariz., Riverside, Calif., Arlington, Texas, and Henderson, Nev.,
> were among the areas showing the least income differences between rich
> and poor.
>
> It's unclear whether income inequality will continue to worsen in
> major cities, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings
> Institution. Many Americans are staying put for now in traditional
> cities to look for jobs and because of frozen lines of credit.
>
> "During the years of the housing bubble, there was middle-class
> movement from unaffordable metros with high-income inequality," Frey
> said. "Now that the bubble burst, more of the population may be headed
> back to the high-inequality areas, stemming their middle-class
> losses."
>
> Among other findings:
>
> _Income at the top 5 percent of households — those making $180,000 or
> more — was 3.58 times the median income, the highest since 2006.
>
> _Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia had higher poverty
> rates than the national average, many of them in the South, such as
> Mississippi (21.2 percent), Kentucky, Arkansas and Louisiana (each
> with 17.3 percent). That's compared with 19 states and the District of
> Columbia that ranked above U.S. poverty in 2007.
>
> _Use of food stamps jumped 13 percent last year to nearly 9.8 million
> U.S. households, led by Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky. The increase
> was most evident in households with two or more workers, highlighting
> the impact of the recession on both working families and unemployed
> single people.
>
> _Pharr, Texas, and Flint, Mich., each had more than a third of its
> residents on food stamps, at 38.5 percent and 35.4 percent,
> respectively.
>
> _Between 2007 and 2008, income at the 50th percentile (median) and the
> 10th percentile fell by 3.6 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively,
> compared with a 2.1 percent decline at the 90th percentile. Between
> 1999 and 2008, income at the 50th and 10th percentiles decreased 4.3
> percent and 9 percent, respectively, while income at the 90th
> percentile was statistically unchanged.
>
> _Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburb, had the highest median income among
> larger cities, earning $85,003. Cleveland ranked at the bottom, at
> $26,731.
>
> The findings come as the federal government considers new regulations
> to rein in executive pay at companies in which it has invested.
> President Barack Obama also typically cites the need for higher taxes
> on the wealthy to pay for health care overhaul and other measures,
> arguing that the wealthy have disproportionately benefited from tax
> cuts during the Bush administration.
>
> The 2008 figures come from the Current Population Survey and the
> American Community Survey, which gathers information from 3 million
> households. The government first began tracking household income in
> 1967.
>
> ___
>
> Associated Press writer Frank Bass contributed to this report.

To allow illegal aliens to remain in America in any quantity is a
crime against
it's citizens.

tt

http://www.numbersusa.com/ Numbers USA