America’s ‘Primal Scream’

Three factoids underscore that inequality:

¶The 400 wealthiest Americans have a greater combined net worth than the bottom 150 million Americans.

¶The top 1 percent of Americans possess more wealth than the entire bottom 90 percent.

¶In the Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of economic gains went to the richest 1 percent.

As my Times colleague Catherine Rampell noted a few days ago, in 1981, the average salary in the securities industry in New York City was twice the average in other private sector jobs. At last count, in 2010, it was 5.5 times as much. (In case you want to gnash your teeth, the average is now $361,330.)

Nicholas D. Kristof

One thought on “America’s ‘Primal Scream’”

  1. And yet there are still people that can not understand what OWS is all about.! For you mentally challenged, “Hippies are NOT driving this movement!!”

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