USA’s working poor are getting poorer

The Economic Populist has published an interesting overview of wages statistic in USA. It turns out that nearly a third of people working are extremely poor. These are not jobless but people who actually have jobs. Still, one third of working people receive wages before taxes below $15,000 a year and nearly 15% of workers – below $5,000 a year. Most Americans, 52.4%, make less than $30,000 a year yet those very Americans only have 15.3% of the total country income from wages.

The chasm between the rich and poor is growing yearly. An astronomical 23.1 million wage earners made less than $5,000 per year in 2013. Those making less than $5000 a year are only getting 0.7% of the total compensation pie as a group. The top wage bracket – over $50 million – has 110 people in it or 0.000064% of wage earners. This top wage bracket received 0,18% of the total net compensation. And this inequality of wages keeps increasing.

 

The Economic Populist concludes that “The bottom line here is the rich are getting richer and most of America continues to get squeezed even though in 2013 wages improved.  As a trend we can see since 1990 just a never ending attack on regular wage earners in this country. The bounce back in 2013 isn’t enough to make up for 30 years of a spiral down.”… -->

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Bulgaria’s population shrinks by 100+ people daily

The population of Bulgaria keeps shrinking. The process started after 1988 when the country had its max of 9 million people. Last year, the population is down to 7.2 million. The trend of birth over death rate has reversed around the same time – in 1990, and Bulgaria keeps running the so-called “natural loss” rate of around 40,000 people yearly for the last 20 years (source). The scientists call “natural loss” the difference between the number of people that die every year and the number of children that get born the same year. That is, the population of Bulgaria shrinks by more than 110 people daily. Bulgaria seems to hold the record being the only country in the world that sustained a negative population trend over a period of 25 years.

“According to the demographic transition theory, we have reached the fourth stage of low birth rate and high mortality. Experts expected that reproduction would recover, however something surprising has happened”, prof. Kaloyanov explained. The “surprising” thing just might have been Bulgaria leaving the Socialist Bloc and heading towards capitalism in 1989…

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