On Sep 29, 7:00*am, Iconoclast wrote:
With too many "guest workers" and illegal aliens driving down wages,
the gap between rich and non-rich is mirroring Latin America and
India. Only CEO's and high up execs benefit from bringing *cheap
replacement workers to do the jobs Americans do at slave wages.

http://www.comcast.net/articles/fina...us.Income.Gap/

WASHINGTON — The recession has hit middle-income and poor families
hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest
Americans as rippling job layoffs ravaged household budgets.

The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans — those making more than
$138,000 each year — earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by
those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to
newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in
2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.

Household income declined across all groups, but at sharper percentage
levels for middle-income and poor Americans. Median income fell last
year from $52,163 to $50,303, wiping out a decade's worth of gains to
hit the lowest level since 1997.

Poverty jumped sharply to 13.2 percent, an 11-year high.

"No one should be surprised at the increased disparity," said Richard
Freeman, an economist at Harvard University. "Unemployment hurts
normal workers who do not have the golden parachutes the folks at the
top have."

Analysts attributed the widening gap to the wave of layoffs in the
economic downturn that have devastated household budgets. They said
while the richest Americans may be seeing reductions in executive pay,
those at the bottom of the income ladder are often unemployed and
struggling to get by.

Large cities such as Atlanta, Washington, New York, San Francisco,
Miami and Chicago had the most inequality, due largely to years of
middle-class flight to the suburbs. Declining industrial cities with
pockets of well-off neighborhoods, such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland and
Buffalo, N.Y., also had sharp disparities.

Up-and-coming cities with growing middle-class populations, such as
Mesa, Ariz., Riverside, Calif., Arlington, Texas, and Henderson, Nev.,
were among the areas showing the least income differences between rich
and poor.

It's unclear whether income inequality will continue to worsen in
major cities, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings
Institution. Many Americans are staying put for now in traditional
cities to look for jobs and because of frozen lines of credit.

"During the years of the housing bubble, there was middle-class
movement from unaffordable metros with high-income inequality," Frey
said. "Now that the bubble burst, more of the population may be headed
back to the high-inequality areas, stemming their middle-class
losses."

Among other findings:

_Income at the top 5 percent of households — those making $180,000 or
more — was 3.58 times the median income, the highest since 2006.

_Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia had higher poverty
rates than the national average, many of them in the South, such as
Mississippi (21.2 percent), Kentucky, Arkansas and Louisiana (each
with 17.3 percent). That's compared with 19 states and the District of
Columbia that ranked above U.S. poverty in 2007.

_Use of food stamps jumped 13 percent last year to nearly 9.8 million
U.S. households, led by Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky. The increase
was most evident in households with two or more workers, highlighting
the impact of the recession on both working families and unemployed
single people.

_Pharr, Texas, and Flint, Mich., each had more than a third of its
residents on food stamps, at 38.5 percent and 35.4 percent,
respectively.

_Between 2007 and 2008, income at the 50th percentile (median) and the
10th percentile fell by 3.6 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively,
compared with a 2.1 percent decline at the 90th percentile. Between
1999 and 2008, income at the 50th and 10th percentiles decreased 4.3
percent and 9 percent, respectively, while income at the 90th
percentile was statistically unchanged.

_Plano, Texas, a Dallas suburb, had the highest median income among
larger cities, earning $85,003. Cleveland ranked at the bottom, at
$26,731.

The findings come as the federal government considers new regulations
to rein in executive pay at companies in which it has invested.
President Barack Obama also typically cites the need for higher taxes
on the wealthy to pay for health care overhaul and other measures,
arguing that the wealthy have disproportionately benefited from tax
cuts during the Bush administration.

The 2008 figures come from the Current Population Survey and the
American Community Survey, which gathers information from 3 million
households. The government first began tracking household income in
1967.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Bass contributed to this report.

To allow the continued presence of illegal aliens is a crime against
American citizens.

tt

lextb