Thought provoking statistics!
If the federal minimum wage had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968 it would currently be $21.72. (photo: AP)
27 Shocking Numbers That Reveal the True State of the Union
By Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone
29 January 14
cary statistics on unemployment, inequality, climate change and more
In tonight's State of the Union speech, we're likely to hear a lot about the nation's continuing recovery from the Great Recession, and about President Obama's determination to run an executive
end-run around obstructionist Republicans in order to kick the economy into a higher gear.
But as the nation pauses for this annual moment of reflection on our fiscal and social health, too many leading indicators get short shrift. Here are 27 statistics – on unemployment, inequality, the drug war, defense spending, climate change and more – that underscore the troubled reality of America in 2014:
- New income generated since 2009 that has gone to the top 1 percent: 95 percent
- Financial wealth controlled by the bottom 60 percent of all Americans: 2.3 percent
- Record combined wealth of the top 400 richest Americans: $2,000,000,000,000
- Real decline in median middle-class incomes since 1999: $5,000
- Percentage of Hispanic and African-American children living in poverty, respectively: 33.8 percent; 36.7 percent
- Amount that food stamps will be cut in 2014: $5 billion
- Federal minimum wage: $7.25
- What the minimum wage would be if it had kept pace with gains in worker productivity since 1968: $21.72
- Number of U.S. workers laboring at or below minimum wage: 3.6 million – the near equivalent of the population of Los Angeles.
- Stealth taxpayer subsidy to the fast-food industry, paid out as safety-net benefits to McWorkers earning poverty wages: $7 billion
- Global carbon dioxide levels measured in parts per million: 397
- Maximum concentration of the greenhouse gas that scientists deem sustainable: 350
- Years since the turn of this century that have ranked among the warmest 15 on record: All 13
- Rank of 2013 on that list of the warmest years on record: Number Four
- U.S. defense spending as of 2012: $682 billion
- Dollar amount by which that surpassed our nearest plausible military rival, China: $516 billion
- Federal deficit last year: $680 billion
- Number of Americans disenfranchised from voting for felony convictions: 5.9 million
- Share of those disenfranchised voters who are African-American: 37 percent
- Number of Americans arrested annually for marijuana possession: 658,000
- Total incarcerated U.S. population: 2.3 million
- Total population on probation/parole: 4.8 million
- States that could be entirely filled by all of the Americans under correctional supervision: Nevada and Kentucky
- Official unemployment rate: 6.7 percent
- Alternate rate including Americans who've given up looking for work, or have only been able to secure part-time employment: 13.1 percent
- Number of jobs the United States is still down from 2008 employment peak: 1.69 million
- Number of Americans who were cut off from long-term unemployment benefits at the turn of the year: 1.3 million
The rest from RSN:
Andy Borowitz | Obama's Call to End Tragedies
Angers Pro-Tragedy Wing in Congress 
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker Borowitz writes:
"After Mr. Obama made his controversial stopping-tragedies remark, prominent
pro-tragedy members of Congress looked on in stony silence, refusing to
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83-Year-Old American Nun to Be Sentenced for
Sabotage Travis Loller, Associated
Press Loller reports: "Sister Megan
Rice is one of three Catholic peace activists convicted of sabotage last year
after they broke into the nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn."
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Dead
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English Oleshko writes: "The hope for
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Merkel Warns
US Over Surveillance Philip Oltermann, Guardian UK
Oltermann reports: "Angela Merkel has used the
first, agenda-setting speech of her third term in office to criticize America's
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Let Banks
Fail Bloomberg News Excerpt: "Iceland let its banks fail in 2008 because
they proved too big to save. Now, the island is finding crisis-management
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Crush and
Burn: The Global Crackdown on Ivory Svati Kirsten Narula, The
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