99% and 1% clash ... what does this mean to you?

What does this Occupy Wall Street nonsense mean anyway? Why should I care?
I live in Idaho, have a job, a family and granted... am not in the "1%", however I am doing OK.

I am trying to find out the why, who and what's important about this movement ; if anything. I am posting the bullet points I have discovered. Just to keep it all clear and to see how it evolves.

Straight from the organization itself -                                                         
OccupyWallSt.org is the unofficial de facto online resource for the growing occupation movement happening on Wall Street and around the world. We're an affinity group committed to doing technical support work for resistance movements. We're not a subcommittee of the NYCGA nor affiliated with Adbusters, anonymous or any other organization.
Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #ows is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.

What does it take to be the 1 % and or the 99% ?

This is 2012... just to keep our dates straight....


Occupy Wall Street protesters have been railing against the Top 1%, trying to raise anger and awareness of the growing economic gap between the rich and everybody else in America.
But just who are these fortunate folks at the top of the income ladder?

Well, there were just under 1.4 million households that qualified for entry. They earned nearly 17% of the nation's income and paid roughly 37% of its income tax.

Collectively, their adjusted gross income was $1.3 trillion. And while $343,927 was the minimum AGI to be included, on average, Top 1-percenters was $960,000 +

 American households right at the 99th percentile (that is, the cut-off for the top 1 percent) will earn about $506,553 in cash income this year, according to a Tax Policy Center analysis. The income curve is very steep at the high end, meaning that people just a few tenths of a percentile point above that make much, much more. A family at the 99.5th percentile, for example, makes $815,868; its neighbor at the 99.9th percentile makes more than double that, at $2,075,574 a year.

The average net worth for the 99th percentile in net worth was $19,167,600 as of 2007, based on this research. The average net worth of the next 9 percent of Americans was $2,371,500.

That means, of course, that the bottom 99 percent of Americans includes an awful lot of millionaires.

By the numbers ....

Percentage change in average CEO pay since 1990:  +300%
Percentage change in "production worker" pay since 1990: +4%

Last year when the purchasing power of U.S. federal minimum wage reached as low as it is today:  1955
Ratio of average worker's income to top CEO salaries in 1970:  1 to 38
Today:  1 to 1,723
Amount of nation's wealth controlled by the top 1% elite in Ancient Rome:  16%
Amount of nation's wealth controlled by the top 1% elite in U.S. today:  40%

Percentage of our nation's wealth owned by the top 1% of earners:  33.8%
Percentage of U.S. wealth owned by the bottom 50% of Americans:  2.5%.
Percentage of investment assets (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etc.) owned by top 1%:  over 50%
Percentage of investment assets owned by the bottom half:  0.5%
Percentage of the nation's personal debt owed by the top 1% in the US:  5%
Percentage of the nation's personal debt owed by the bottom 90% of Americans:  73%
Tax rate for highest income earners in 1944: 94%
Today: 35%

Last decade in U.S. history when the top 1% earned as high or higher a share of the national income as they do today (24%):  1920s

 We all know what happened in the 1930's. Don't we?
One big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way.

The most obvious example involves tax policy. Lowering tax rates on capital gains, which is how the rich receive a large portion of their income, has given the wealthiest Americans close to a free ride. Monopolies and near monopolies have always been a source of economic power—from John D. Rockefeller at the beginning of the last century to Bill Gates at the end. Lax enforcement of anti-trust laws, especially during Republican administrations, has been a godsend to the top 1 percent. Much of today’s inequality is due to manipulation of the financial system, enabled by changes in the rules that have been bought and paid for by the financial industry itself—one of its best investments ever. The government lent money to financial institutions at close to 0 percent interest and provided generous bailouts on favorable terms when all else failed. Regulators turned a blind eye to a lack of transparency and to conflicts of interest. Who was in charge is not as important as who the puppet master for that administration was.

Percentage of U.S. Congress who are millionaires:  47%
Percentage of U.S. Senators who are millionaires:  66%

Ratio of Americans living below the poverty line:  1 in 7
Rank of U.S. among rich nations in the percentage of children living in poverty:  2nd (21.9%)

In 2010 alone, percentage change in average income among the 24 million poorest families in U.S.: -10 %

Rank of U.S. among developed nations of the world in income inequality: 1st

So what do these figures mean?

US HHS table explains the poverty line :

2011 HHS Poverty Guidelines

Persons in Family	48 Contiguous States and D.C.	Alaska	Hawaii
1	$10,890	$13,600	$12,540
2	14,710	18,380	16,930
3	18,530	23,160	21,320
4	22,350	27,940	25,710
5	26,170	32,720	30,100
6	29,990	37,500	34,490
7	33,810	42,280	38,880
8	37,630	47,060	43,270
For each additional person, add	3,820	4,780	4,390

SOURCE:  Federal Register, Vol. 76, No. 13, January 20, 2011, pp. 3637-3638 

In recent years there have been more fundamental challenges to the poverty measure. Concerned that the poverty rate is far too low, community-based organizations around the country have advocated for "living wages." These groups have argued that instead of using "poverty" as the standard to measure people's economic well-being, we should develop a measure of "living wages." Policy and research institutes around the country have developed living wage budgets that take into account the full range of costs required for families of different sizes to maintain a decent standard of living.
The bottom line is that the current system of measurement is out-dated and seriously underestimates the count of the number of poor people in this country. If the government were to acknowledge the true extent of poverty, it would need to dedicate a greater share of its resources to pay the costs of programs to help the poor. It is unfortunately cheaper to use an outdated system of measurement so that fewer people will be in poverty by government standards.
While not accepted in many states, the antiquated system developed in the 60's is in need of updating to better reflect current economics.

The official number of poor in the United States in 2008 is about 39.1 million people, greater in number but not percentage than the officially poor in Indonesia, which has a far lower Human Development Index and the next largest population after the United States.^[17][18] The poverty level in the United States, with 12.65% (39.1 million people in poverty, of a total of 309 million) is comparable to the one in France, where 14% of the population live with less than 880 euros per month.^[19][20]

Number of poor are hard to compare across countries. Absolute income may be used but does not reflect the actual number of poor, which depend on relative income and cost of living in each country. Among developed countries, each country then has its own definition and threshold of what it means to be poor, but this is not adjusted for cost of living and social benefits. For instance, despite the fact that France and US have about the same threshold in terms of dollars amount for poverty, cost of living and health benefits may differ (with universal health insurance coverage for poor people in France). In general, it might be better to use the Human Poverty Index (HPI), Human Development Index (HDI) or other global measure to compare quality of living in different countries.

The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty:
22% of all people under age 18
13.7% of all people 19-64, and
9% of all people ages 65 and older^[29]
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses a different measure for poverty and declared in 2008 that child poverty in the US is 20% and poverty among the elderly is 23%.^[31] The non-profit advocacy group Feeding America has released a study (May 2009) based on 2005-2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department, which claims that 3.5 million children under the age of 5 are at risk of hunger in the United States. The study claims that in 11 states, Louisiana, which has the highest rate, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are allegedly at risk of going hungry.The study was paid by ConAgra Foods, a large food company.^[32]

 SO, why is there a great divide between the 99% and 1 % ?

Look at the people who are elected to represent us.. the 99%.... Remember, we vote.. but the electoral college ( fellow politicians) elect!

	Name	Party	District	Net Worth	As of
1	Rep. Michael McCaul	R	Texas	$294.21 million[1]	2011
2	Rep. Darrell Issa	R	California	$220.40 million[2]	2011
3	Sen. John Kerry	D	Massachusetts	$193.07 million[3]	2011
4	Sen. Jay Rockefeller	D	West Virginia	$81.63 million[4]	2011
5	Sen. Mark Warner	D	Virginia	$76.30 million[5]	2011
6	Rep. Jared Polis	D	Colorado	$65.91 million[6]	2011
7	Sen. Frank Lautenberg	D	New Jersey	$55.07 million[7]	2011
8	Sen. Richard Blumenthal	D	Connecticut	$52.93 million[8]	2011
9	Sen. Dianne Feinstein	D	California	$45.39 million[9]	2011

It seems from this small list, the people elected do NOT share the same economy that we live in.

We also need to distinguish wealth from income. Income is what people earn from work, but also from dividends, interest, and any rents or royalties that are paid to them on properties they own. In theory, those who own a great deal of wealth may or may not have high incomes, depending on the returns they receive from their wealth, but in reality those at the very top of the wealth distribution usually have the most income.

(But it's important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from "working": in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries. See Norris, 2010, for more details.)

I have to work a year for the money these people who make / receive

10 million

get in....

WAY less than a minute! Are we really THAT different as people? NO!