It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned—and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted: There are strong chemical hooks in these drugs, so if we stopped on day twenty-one, our bodies would need the chemical. We would have a ferocious craving. We would be addicted. That’s what addiction means.
This theory was first established, in part, through rat experiments—ones that were injected into the American psyche in the 1980s, in a famous […]
Sunday, February 15th, 2015
Ezra Klein, Editor-in-Chief - VOX
Stephan: In talking with people recently I realized most of us don't really seem to have a clear picture as to what qualifies one for the top 1%. Here are some facts. You can click through to Pew Research, the link is below, to get a more detailed assessment, however, I wanted the simplest presentation of the threshold.
This confusion reminded me that when asked what was the difference between a typical corporate CEO's income and that of an average worker in that corporation most thought the CEO got about 35 times more than the worker. In fact the correct answer is 350 times more. This leads me to think that the reason we don't see more social unrest about wealth inequity, and why middle class people continue to vote for corrupt politicians who actively work against the ordinary person's interest, is that most people don't really appreciate the dimensions of this issue.
Credit: downwithtyranny.blogspot.com
Ever wondered how much money (and stock, assets, etc.) you needed to make the cutoff for the wealthiest 1 percent? Or even for the wealthiest 20 percent?
A report from the Pew Research Center, working off of data from the Census Bureau, lays it out. In 2011, America’s wealthiest 1 percent had at least $2,385,306 to their names. That’s $63,236 more than you needed to hit the top percentile in 2009.
By contrast, you qualified as above average if you had more than $71,298 — about 1/30th of what the top 1 percent hold.
Pew Research Center
Note that this is all 2011 data: the cutoffs are likely a bit higher now.
Income inequality, by the way, is a very different story. In 2011, you needed to bring home $388,905 in adjusted gross income to qualify for the top 1 percent and $34,823 to make the top 50 percent. But as this video explains, wealth inequality is a lot more important than income inequality, […]
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