Arianna Huffington explains:
- 26 million Americans unemployed or underemployed (as of July 2010)
- 270,000 homes were repossessed by banks in the second quarter of 2010, up 38% from the year before
- 1.51 million people filed for personal bankruptcy during the 12 months ending June 30, 2010
- Forty years ago, top executives at S&P companies made an average of 30 times what their workers did; today they make 300 times what their workers make
- The percentage of all income taken home by the wealthiest 10 percent in 2007: 49.7 — the highest share recorded since 1917
- The percentage of financial wealth that, by 2007, was owned by the top 20 percent of Americans: 93
- The unemployment rate, by the end of 2009, for the bottom 10 percent of income earners: 31 (versus just 3 percent for those in the top 10 percent, earning $150,000 per year or more)
- The percentage by which the poverty rate grew in the suburbs of the largest metro areas in the United States between 2000 and 2008: 25 — making the suburbs home to the country’s biggest and most rapidly expanding segment of the poor
- The percentage of Americans born to parents in the bottom fifth of income who will climb to the top fifth as adults: 7
- Canada, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and even the often reviled France have greater upward mobility than we do
- The financial industry’s share of domestic corporate profits just before the financial crisis hit: 41 percent (versus 21-30 percent in the 1990s and no more than 16 percent from 1973 to1985)
- Percentage of workers who have borrowed against their 401(k) plans, according to Fidelity Investments: 22
- The percentage of Americans who have less than $10K saved for retirement: 43
