Quote Originally Posted by ggiese View Post
barry - I've been researching EVERYWHERE and I just cannot find anything to substantiate your statement. Would you mind quoting sources please???
Funny, I found plenty of information very easily. Oh, I know what your problem is...first you have to look somewhere other than FOX.


Nationwide, billionaires are richer and more numerous for the second year in a row, according to Forbes magazine 2005 survey. The Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans starts at $750 million and 78 percent of them were billionaires in 2004. In the past year, 69 more Americans became billionaires, which gives the country almost half the world's billionaires. In 2004, the combined net worth of the nation's wealthiest was $1 trillion, an increase of $45 billion in one year; they increased their wealth by $300 billion providing truth to the term "the rich get richer."

At the same time, the common working person's dreams of wealth become harder to achieve. Wages for most Americans didn't improve from 1979 to 1998 and the median male wage in 2000 was below the 1979 level despite productivity increases of 44.5 percent. Despite gains made in income during the 1990s, wages are now on a downward spiral. In May, The Financial Times reported that wages are falling faster than at any time in the last 14 years. Meanwhile hidden unemployment soars as U.S. economists declare a "jobless recovery."

Contrary to American beliefs about equality of opportunity, a child’s economic position is heavily influenced by that of his or her parents.
• Forty-two percent of children born to parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain in the bottom, while 39 percent born to parents in the top fifth remain at the top.
• Children of middle-income parents have a near-equal likelihood of ending up in any other quintile, presenting equal promise and peril for those born to middle-class parents.
• The "rags to riches" story is much more common in Hollywood than on Main Street. Only 6 percent of children born to parents with family income at the very bottom move to the very top.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2007...ns_isaacs.aspx