Friday, August 29, 2014

Income Inequality Costs The Middle Class $18,000 A Year

Click here to access article by Bryce Covert from ThinkProgress. 

This article provides jargon-free analysis and charts to reveal the increasing class income differences from roughly 1980 till now between high income earners and the rest of us. 

It must be understood that there are essentially two types of people in a capitalist society from an economic point of view: those who "own" capital (factories, machinery, equipment, patents, intellectual property, etc--essentially anything that is regarded as having monetary value) and are referred to as "capitalists" and those whose work creates capital but without "ownership" or control over it--workers. Capitalists live off of their "ownership" of things: dividends, interest, capital gains, etc; while workers receive income from the work they perform for the owners (capitalists). The analysis in this article focuses only on income earners or workers.  

It should also be understood that workers are also divided: the closer that workers are to capitalists the more privileges they enjoy and are usually paid with salaries for their work whereas lower income people are paid wages based on the time (hours) they perform work. Thus, those with the highest incomes are people who work directly for capitalists as managers, top accountants, and highly skilled technical people.