The Top 1%

[Benny B]

The richest 1% of US Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40% of its wealth. Inequality in the US is more extreme than it's been in almost a century — and the gap between the super rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' 14.3 trillion dollar debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above 9%, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programs that are the backbone of the US's social safety net, and whether to raise taxes — or to cut them further.

The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the United States has never seemed so divided — both politically and economically.

How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top 1% impacting the other 99% of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest.

[sync pulse]

We are in an echo of the "Gilded Age" that first took place between the 19^Th and 20^Th century....This period of history was marked by concentration of wealth in the upper strata (damn those holes are sure small in the percolator basket)...this period didn't really resolutely end until Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

[Hereford]

Why is this bad?  If you want to be in the top 1%, do your work and get there. If you can't, you probably don't deserve to be in the top 1%

Funny how mad success and hard work make poor people and libs.

[_bruce_]

Why is this bad?  If you want to be in the top 1%, do your work and get there. If you can't, you probably don't deserve to be in the top 1%

Funny how mad success and hard work make poor people and libs.

 

[Benny B]

[Soul Crusher]

Eat shit and die you communist racist ghetto thug piece of trash.   

[Hereford]

Eat shit and die you communist racist ghetto thug piece of trash.