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+21 +1
The workers catering to the Hamptons' super-rich: 'This is not paradise for me'
Among the women paying $1,000 for a massage and the men lounging in $100m homes in the billionaires’ playground of the Hamptons is a largely unseen, mostly Latino, workforce toiling all summer in order to survive the winter
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+22 +1
Rich Democrats Don’t Care About Income Inequality Any More Than Rich Republicans Do
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway famously disagreed about the American elite. “The very rich are different from you and me,” Fitzgerald wrote. “Yes,” Hemingway shot back, “they have more money.” With inequality in America continuing to rise, we revisited Fitzgerald and Hemingway’s (perhaps apocryphal) dispute, conducting a series of experiments designed to pinpoint the differences between the rich and those of more modest means.
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+34 +1
A Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income
Rising inequality of incomes in the US is being accompanied by a rising gap in life expectancy by income category. Ronald Lee and Peter R. Orzag chaired a recent committee on behalf of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that explains these patterns in "The Growing Gap in Life Expectancy by Income: Implications for Federal Programs and Policy Responses."
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+16 +1
Just 62 people now own the same wealth as half the world's population
Wealth inequality has grown to the stage where 62 of the world’s richest people own as much as the poorest half of humanity combined, according to a new report. The research, conducted by the charity Oxfam, found that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population – 3.6 billion people – has fallen by 41 per cent, or a trillion US dollars, since 2010. While this group has become poorer, the wealth of the richest 62 people on the planet has increased...
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+32 +1
Rent affordability: 11 million Americans spend half their income on rent
More Americans are struggling to make rent. The number of renters dedicating at least half of their income toward housing hit a record high of 11 million people in 2014, according to the annual State of the Nation's Housing Report from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. A total of 21.3 million are spending 30% or more of their paycheck to cover the rent -- also a record high. Personal finance experts generally suggest budgeting around 30% of monthly income to cover housing costs.
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+22 +1
In 1990, over 60% of people in East Asia were in extreme poverty. Now only 3.5% are.
Here's an amazing fact: The number of people in extreme poverty fell by 114 million from 2012 to 2013. That is a simply massive one-year decline, and it's not even the biggest drop in recent years. From 2010 to 2011, global poverty fell by 132 million people. From 2008 to 2013, the number fell by an average of 88 million people per year. If that rate of progress keeps up, global poverty will be eliminated in less than a decade.
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+24 +1
Any way you calculate it, income inequality is getting worse
A flurry of new reports have provided yet more data demonstrating that inequality is getting worse. All right, this does not qualify as a shock. But it really isn’t your imagination. The economic crisis, nearly a decade on now, has been global in scope — working people most everywhere continue to suffer while the one percent are doing just fine. One measure of this is wages.
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+22 +1
A $100,000 salary doesn't put you in the top 1% of income at any age
A lot of people are overjoyed to cross the $100,000 threshold in annual income. And they should be — a six-figure salary is nothing to sneeze at. But as income inequality in the US continues to worsen, a $100,000 salary creeps ever-closer to being an upper-middle-class income, not a sure sign of wealth. In fact, according to a Business Insider analysis of US Census data, the $100,000 distinction isn't enough to put anyone, at any age for which there is reliable data, in the top 1% of personal incomes.
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+28 +1
The wealth gap in the US is worse than in Kenya
Kenya has been called an unsafe place for tourists because of frequent violent crimes. Former president Barack Obama said in a speech that it's time for the country to "change habits" because "too often here in Kenya … corruption is tolerated." But there is at least one thing the country gets better than the United States: Income equality.
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+19 +1
Number of billionaires worldwide jumps 10%: study
The number of billionaires worldwide rose above 1,500 last year, a 10 percent jump from 2015, due largely to a surge in Asia, Swiss banking giant UBS and auditors PwC said Thursday. In an annual report, UBS and PwC said that last year marked the first time it recorded more billionaires in Asia (637) than in the United States (563), crediting the rise of China's entrepreneurs. Europe took third spot in the report's billionaire database with 342.
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+17 +1
Richest 1% own half the world's wealth, study finds
The globe’s richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, according to a new report highlighting the growing gap between the super-rich and everyone else. The world’s richest people have seen their share of the globe’s total wealth increase from 42.5% at the height of the 2008 financial crisis to 50.1% in 2017, or $140tn (£106tn), according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report published on Tuesday.
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+31 +1
Millennials Fall Far Behind as World's Richest 1% Hoard Half of Global Wealth
Anti-poverty advocates on Tuesday implored world leaders to combat the massive wealth gap described in the annual Global Wealth Report released by Credit Suisse, which showed that the world's richest one percent own just over half of the global wealth. "This report highlights the huge gulf between the haves and the have nots—the world's richest one percent own more than everyone else combined while the poorest half of the population share less than a penny of every...
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+15 +1
S Korea to pay off debts for 1.6m people
South Korea is to write-off the debts of as many as 1.6 million people in a move designed to ease the financial burden on low-income individuals. The scheme is open to certain Koreans who have struggled to repay debts of less than 10m won ($9,128; £6,826). Eligible people can apply to the government for debt relief from next February.
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+31 +1
Generation Screwed
Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression. I am 35 years old—the oldest millennial, the first millennial—and for a decade now, I’ve been waiting for adulthood to kick in. My rent consumes nearly half my income, I haven’t had a steady job since Pluto was a planet and my savings are dwindling faster than the ice caps the baby boomers melted.
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+22 +1
World's richest 0.1% have boosted their wealth by as much as poorest half
The richest 0.1% of the world’s population have increased their combined wealth by as much as the poorest 50% – or 3.8 billion people – since 1980, according to a report detailing the widening gap between the very rich and poor. The World Inequality Report, published on Thursday by French economist Thomas Piketty, warned that inequality had ballooned to “extreme levels” in some countries and said the problem would only get worse unless governments took coordinated action to increase taxes and prevent tax avoidance.
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+16 +1
Minimum wage rising in more than 3 dozen states and cities in 2018
The new year will bring somewhat fatter paychecks to many Americans, with more than three dozen states and cities counties raising their minimum wage. The federal minimum wage remains unchanged at $7.25 per hour, where it has stayed since 2009.
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+17 +1
Americans Haven’t Been This Poor and Indebted in Decades
One of the lesser oddities of the Trump era is that the president and his party have managed to achieve historic levels of unpopularity — even as the unemployment rate has fallen to a decade low, and the stock market has soared to all-time highs. Few presidents have enjoyed such favorable, first-year macroeconomic numbers — and none have suffered such unfavorable political ones.
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+18 +1
Women would lose $4.6 billion in earned tips if the administration’s ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized: Overall, workers would lose $5.8 billion
The Department of Labor has proposed a rule that would make it legal for employers to pocket their workers’ tips, as long as they pay those workers the minimum wage. We estimate that if the rule is finalized, every year workers will lose $5.8 billion in tips, as tips are shifted from workers to employers. Of the $5.8 billion, nearly 80 percent—$4.6 billion—would be taken from female tipped workers.
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+25 +1
82% of the World's Wealth Went to the Richest 1% in 2017
Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest one percent, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity’s report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor. It found that 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017, while 82 percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population.
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+26 +1
"Billionaire bonanza" driving huge global inequality
Four out of every five dollars of wealth generated in 2017 ended up in the pockets of the richest one percent, while the poorest half of humanity got nothing, a report published by Oxfam found on Monday. As global political and business leaders gather for this week's World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the charity's report highlights a global system that rewards the super-rich and neglects the poor. It found that 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth in 2017...
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