FACTS

 

Emily,

 

I would love to some of these facts. Can you tell me where they came from? I would like to cite them properly if I use them.

• The Wall Street Journal says nearly 70% of all consumers live from paycheck to paycheck.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30-to-1. Since 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300- and 500-to-one.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the U.S. now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• Total U.S. government debt is now up to 90 percent of gross domestic product.
• Total credit market debt in the United States, including government, corporate and personal debt, has reached 360 percent of GDP.
• In the area around Sacramento, California there is one closed business for every six that are still open.
• In 2009, U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in private lending since 1942.
• Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of 2010

QUOTES

• "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson
• "My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right." - John Quincy Adams
• "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill clad, ill-nourished." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

• Be polite
• You do not have to answer police questions
• “I do not consent to searches”
• “Am I being detained?  Am I free to leave?”