Lets look at 1996

If you want to follow along, you can find the link to the IRS data in the previous articles.

Click to zoom in

Looks like the majority of us made less then 50,000 per year and things werent too bad back then from what I remember

Click to zoom in

Hey, what do you know?

Even the money was fairly well spread through the classes

So, how do we compare?

Lets look at the percentages first

• 1996
  • 78% – Working Poor
  • 17% – Middle Class
  • 5% – Rich
• 2006
  • 52% – Working Poor
  • 31% – Middle Class
  • 17% – Rich
• 2007
  • 65% – Working Poor
  • 22% – Middle Class
  • 13% – Rich

Now lets look at the dollars

• 1996
  • 1,810,050,573,000 – Working Poor
  • 1,370,196,416,000 – Middle Class
  • 1,410,280,305,000 – Rich
• 2006
  • 1,298,999,000,000 – Working Poor
  • 2,044,851,000,000 – Middle Class
  • 4,101,203,000,000 – Rich
• 2007
  • 1,614,563,380,900 – Working Poor
  • 2,210,446,241,000 – Middle Class
  • 4,640,225,550,000 – Rich

The results are still out, but notice how in 1996 the dollars were fairly evenly matched?

Yet in 2007, the middle class had about 600 billion more then the working poor and the rich had about 3 trillion more then the working poor?

Yet, the working poor account for 65 percent of all americans?

Now we’re getting to the meat of the problem that all of our economic experts refuse to admit, possibly because they will lose their source of income, and who can blame them for that?

However, poor ole Virgil has no such problems as they have already taken everything and there is no more for them to take, so you can bet your last dollar that I’m going to bring it to your attention so that you can bring it to your representatives attention.

Lets look at the average expenses for the Working Poor, and as you have noticed, I have left a lot out like medical, dental, insurance, etc..

750	rent or mortgage
364	car 1
364	car 2
175	mandatory car insurance
200	gas, car 1 figured at 50 per week
200	gas, car 2 figured at 50 per week
250	electricity
150	butane, water, sewer, misc.
100	telephone
100	cable, dsl or cable modem
600	groceries, figured at 150 per week
3253	per month
12	per year
39036	before taxes per year

If you add in 10,000 a year in taxes, we are already over that 50,000 limit and if something breaks down, these people will be devastated, unless they have more then one bringing in the money per household and then they might survive, unless of course one of them is laid off and forced to take a job paying substantially less then what they were making.

and as we have discussed before, this accounts for 65 percent of ALL AMERICANS.

Where exactly do you expect companies like the auto manufacturers to get customers from when they barely make enough to survive?

Posted on November 1st, 2009 by vbierschwale
Filed under: Wages from 1948 to 2008