Surviving Capitalism (Not) : “The average income of the bottom 90 percent fell 13.5 percent.”

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, August 13, 2012

“The average income of the bottom 90 percent fell 13.5 percent.”

Click here to access source of brief article by David Ruccio from Real-World Economics Review.

The graph says it all. This is why pundits in mainstream media keep saying that we are in a slow recovery, but it is a recovery for those of the One Percent who are doing fine, although not as well as they would like.

...while “since 2000, no income group has done particularly well,” the average income of the top .01 percent did increase 6.5 percent while the average income of the bottom 90 percent fell 13.5 percent.