Where do you stand on Income?

Question

90 percent of Americans who filed tax returns in 2004 report incomes of under $100,000. 70 percent have incomes of less than $50,000.
Half of all Americans or 50 percent have incomes under $30,000.
That would be adjusted gross income.
Minimum wage at $5.15 per hour makes you $10,712 per year.
582,213 americans have adjusted gross income of between $500,000 and $10 million That's only 0.5 percent of Americans.

Brad Pitt makes $1000 in 4 mins. 48 seconds. Howard Stern makes $1000 in 24 seconds. Dr. Phil make $1000 in 2 mins. 42 seconds. A police officer works 43 hours to make $1000. A High School teacher works 43 hours for $1000. A farmer works 57 hours to make $1000.

Sarge927, 28 States have a higher Minimum wage than the $5.15 Federal. Check your facts, none of what you said is true and can not be backed by facts. I checked. Turn off Rush and read some.

Answer 1

I believe I once read that we are in the top 5% of income in the US. but we do not have accumulated wealth. It is from a good education and hard work.

Answer 2

So what is your question? where we fall in those breakouts? I'm in the upper 10% and yes people should not be penalized or demonized for working hard and making good money. US is supposed to be the land of opportunity-- yet all to often people want to "punish" those who take advantage of that opportunity.

Min. wage is not a big issue. A small number of people actually make min wage and the majority of those are young part time workers. And besides, many states have voted to raise the min. wage on their own.

According to a CNN/Money report that came out recently-- there is a shortage of skilled workers. the economy could have grown more but there aren't enough skilled people. Unemployment amongst those with college degrees/skilled workers is like 1.5%. What more incentive do people need to get a skill/education, work hard and make some decent money.

From the BLS gov. site-- 2002 figures

Last year, about 570,000 American workers reported earning exactly $5.15 per hour, the prevailing Federal minimum wage, and another 1.6 million reported with wages below the minimum. Together, these 2.2 million workers made up 3.0 percent of all hourly-paid workers.

Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of workers earning $5.15 or less were under age 25, and slightly more than one-fourth were age 16-19. Among teenagers, 10 percent earned $5.15 or less.

About 4 percent of women paid hourly rates reported wages at or below the prevailing Federal minimum, compared with about 2 percent of men.

Part-time workers (persons who usually work less than 35 hours per week) were much more likely than their full-time counterparts to be paid $5.15 or less (about 8 percent versus about 2 percent). About 1 in 10 workers putting in fewer than 15 hours per week earned the minimum or less.

Answer 3

I am within 70 percent of the population... however I would rather be in the .5 percent.. ha ha.. .but I guess that is always the objective of capitalism.

However, It's my hope that we will encourage policies that protect those workers and the society of those on minimum wadge. Unfortunately low minimum wadge propels a vicious of discouraged growth and economic freedom. Though we would not like to admit it... by keeping people in poverty we are directly encouraging ignorance, crime, and higher death rates. This in it's very essence is against our constitutional rights as human beings.

Answer 4

PROBLEM: What the Democrats don't understand is if they raise the minimum wage they really won't be hurting the big bad corporations that they vilify as bastions of greed and evil -- they'll be hurting small businesses who will have to close their doors because they won't be able to afford to pay their workers anymore. The CEOs they're trying to put the screws to will just take it in stride (and take it out of the profits passed on to stockholders and investors) while the heart and soul of the American economy goes belly-up and the unemployment rate skyrockets as a result.

While I agree that top executives at the big corporations have hugely inflated salaries, there is a good reason to have a low minimum wage -- we need to get the message out to every American that it's vitally important to work hard, get an education, and/or develop marketable skills. There are way too many people in this country who expect EVERYTHING to be handed to them for no other reason than the fact that they are Americans. What ever happened to earning what you get? Do you honestly believe that a person who works on an assembly line for one of the automakers, doing a job that a trained monkey can do, deserves anything more than minimum wage? Would you believe that these people who have no education, no experience, and no marketable skills get a starting wage that is over THREE TIMES the minimum wage?!?!! And you wonder why you can't get an American car that's built worth a $h!t?

BOTTOM LINE: Most Democrats really have no clue about how our economy really works, and that's why it's dangerous to have them telling businesses what to do, not to mention the danger of letting them decide how our tax dollars should be spent (READ: utterly wasted on people who contribute nothing to our society).

P.S.: I'm in the 30 percentile of Americans who have an income of over $50,000 a year, but it took over a decade of developing marketable skills and over two decades of hard work to get here. Forgive me if I sound callous, but I have a hard time handing over my hard-earned tax dollars to people who can't be bothered to do anything other than trot down to the welfare office once a month and say "Gimme my check." Sorry; ya don't work, ya don't eat. Simple as that.

Answer 5

So? I'd rather have a society with huge disparities between the rich and the poor than be in a communist society. Frankly, I don't think there should be limits to how much money someone can make. If they are really that awesome, then yeah, pay them 10 million a year. It's too bad for the people earning minimum wage, but oh well. Society needs ditch diggers and gas station clerks.

Answer 6

I think this information is awful and not at all what Capitalism is about. Capitalism is about people with great ideas starting businesses and paying people fairly for their work. Capitalism also includes what Ronald Reagan called trickle down economics. That is to say that the rich only need so much wealth and then they pass down some of that wealth either as donations or by creating new jobs.

The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor has grown to unreasonable levels because of the greed at the top. The Baby Boomer generation, also known as the Me Generation, is the greediest generation ever. They recreated corporations as places for only the rich and took away as many benefits and jobs from the rest of us as possible in order to create false bottom lines. Since all of their penny pinching on jobs and benefits did not bring in that much money, they made up numbers and broke laws to make their corporate profits look better.

They then gave themselves huge salaries, bonuses and benefits in order to congratulate themselves on thievery well done.

We need to recreate companies in a way that benefits all employees and the environment so that we will all have a bright future!!

Take care,
Troy

Answer 7

Now that the dems are officially in, one of the 1st things on their agenda is to raise minimum wage.....I'm sure other adjustments will follow. Yay for Nancy!

Answer 8

I am one of the 90 percent!@~

Answer 9

I'm broke. I fall in the 70% range.

Answer 10

I am in the 90 percentile range. If that is what you are asking.