Times Are Tough For Half of All Americans
by James Glaser
October 15, 2007

Last week Reuters reported that the richest 1% of Americans earned a new record of 21.2% of all U.S. income in 2005. You might think that makes those 1% the "haves," and everyone else the "have-nots."

That top 1% isn't what worries me. In fact there always were a small number of the 'filthy" rich in America. What worries me is that the top 50% of Americans, earn 87.17 % of all the income. That means that the bottom 50% earn only earn 12.83 % of all the income in America, and that bottom 50 % are the real "have-nots."

To me, that means half of all Americans have the short end of the stick. Right now, we keep that bottom half working as many hours as they can just to make enough to exist. Some day however, their might not be enough low paying jobs to keep those at the bottom from having any thought time.

You give those at the bottom enough time to think about what is happening to their lives, and all hell will break lose. Most people know that they will never be one of those in the top one percent bracket, but the truth is they probably won't be in that top 50% either. The number of people on the bottom half of the income ladder totals over 100 million people. You get over 100 million people feeling like they will never have their part in the American dream, and you are going to see trouble start big time.

These new income figures tell us America is really made up of "haves, and have-nots." There is going to be trouble when those at the bottom figure out that they are going to stay down there.

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