Disparity: Fueled by Recession, U.S. Wealth Gap Is Widest in Decades, Study Finds - by Patricia Cohen

A report released on Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that the wealth gap between the country’s top 20 percent of earners and the rest of America had stretched to its widest point in at least three decades.

Last year, the median net worth of upper-income families reached $639,400, nearly seven times as much of those in the middle, and nearly 70 times the level of those at the bottom of the income ladder.

There has been growing attention to the issue of income inequality, particularly the plight of those earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or close to it.

But while income and wealth are related (the more you make, the more you can save and invest), the wealth gap zeros in on a different aspect of financial well-being: how much money and other assets you have accumulated over time, including the value of your home and car plus any investments in stocks, bonds and the like.

Think of it as “a measure of the family ‘nest egg,’ ” as Pew calls it — a hoard that can sustain a household during an emergency, like the loss of a job, and in the long run can see someone through retirement.

Read Fueled by Recession, U.S. Wealth Gap Is Widest in Decades, Study Finds - NYTimes.com

USA: - Democracy in trouble ? The Best US Government Wall Street and the Billionaires Can Buy - by Miles Mogulescu

The past few days have provided vivid evidence that the U.S. government has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and other wealthy special interests and no longer a government of, by, and for the people.

It's only five weeks since the 2014 mid-term elections which cost $3.67 billion. Fewer, but larger, donors provided those funds than in past elections. The candidate who spent the most money won their race House race 94.2 percent of the time.

Yet despite the colossal sums spent on campaign ads, how many candidates ran on a platform promising to let banks make risky, taxpayer-guaranteed bets on the kind of complex financial derivatives that tanked the economy in 2008 and led to the government bailing out the big banks while millions of ordinary Americans lost their jobs and their homes? How many ran on a platform promising to gut what's left of the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reforms and allow millionaires and billionaires to donate 10 times the current limit to political parties, up to $1,296,000 a couple in a 2-year election cycle?

The answer, of course, is that almost no political candidates ran promising to enact such disastrous policies. And hardly any voters went to the polls hoping that their elected representatives would do these things.

Read more4: The Best Government Wall Street and the Billionaires Can Buy | Miles Mogulescu

Where the Billionaires Are - while middle class, wages haven’t budged in 25 years -by Zach Wener-Fligner

Of the world’s population of more than 7 billion, around 200,000 people—or 0.003 percent—have a net worth of more than $30 million.

These super-wealthy individuals (UHNWs, as the research firm Wealth-X deems them, for "ultra-high net worth") control a handy $29.7 trillion, according to an analysis of Wealth-X data charted by CNN.
UHNWs make the 1 percent look like paupers. And there are far more of them in some places than others. The United States, for example, has more than three times as many ultra-wealthy folks as any other country. Here’s the complete list of countries with more than 1,000 people with a net worth of at least $30 million.

In the U.S. the richest 1 percent of the 1 percent are increasing their wealth faster than anyone else. The main reason is capital gains: From 1992 to 2007, the average salary of the country’s top 400 earners (as measured by U.S. tax returns) doubled, while their capital gains increased a stupefying 1,300 percent.

Meanwhile, among the middle class, wages haven’t budged in 25 years.

 Read more: Where the Billionaires Are - The Atlantic

Britain: The Return Of Class Politics In The UK - by Mark Blyth:

The British prime minister’s speech at the lord mayor’s banquet last year was notable in part because its main message, that “we need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently,” was delivered from a throne bedecked in gold to applause from members of the financial elite. But it’s the other less commented upon aspects of last year’s speech that signal why the government felt confident enough to reveal its true colours. David Cameron’s claims simply don’t add up to a coherent explanation as to why “more with less” – perma-austerity – is a policy worth pursuing.

First of all, he insisted that “the biggest single threat to the cost of living in this country is if our budget deficit and debts get out of control again”. Yet while the deficit rose to 11.2% of GDP in 2010, the markets that fund British debt never once thought the situation “out of control”. 

Quite the contrary occurred as the interest payments due on UK bonds have gone steadily down since 2006, and have only risen now, when the UK is supposedly in recovery. A much more likely culprit for the drop in living standards is the fall in British real wages of over 5% since 2010 coupled with relatively high price inflation, but that doesn’t fit with the story of “out of control” spending needing to be reined in for the common good.

Read more: Mark Blyth: The Return Of Class Politics In The UK