independentsforkerry.org

The median wealth, or net worth, of U.S. households fell from ,894 in 2005 to ,000 in 2009, a drop of 28% when adjusted for inflation.

Pew Research Center: The precipitous decline in wealth was not evenly distributed across racial and ethnic groups. Minority households–Hispanics, blacks and Asians–experienced far steeper declines than white households.

In 2009, the median net worth of white households (3,149) was the highest of all groups.

In sharp contrast, Hispanic and black households had a median net worth of ,325 and ,677 respectively. Asian households, with a median net worth of ,066, had much more wealth in 2009 than Hispanics and blacks but much less than whites.

All groups experienced drops in wealth from 2005 to 2009 but there were sharp differences among them.

Hispanics’ median net worth fell 66%, from ,359 in 2005 to ,325 in 2009. Black households experienced a loss of 53%, from ,124 in 2005 to ,677 in 2009. The drop in the wealth of white households was modest in comparison, falling 16% from 4,992 in 2005 to 3,149 in 2009.

As a result, the median wealth of white households is now 20 times as high as the wealth of black households and 18 times as much as the wealth of Hispanic households. These ratios are about twice as high as the ratios that existed before the onset of the housing crisis, the stock market crash and the Great Recession (which began in late 2007 and ended in 2009)

Minority households experienced greater losses than whites because they are more dependent on home equity as a source of wealth. As noted above, housing values started to fall sooner than stock prices and, unlike the stock market, the housing market has not yet begun to recover.

Hispanics and Asians were further affected because they are disproportionately likely to reside in states that have been among the hardest hit by the housing crisis: California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona. Hispanics and blacks have also been more susceptible to home foreclosures, and their home ownership rates have dropped more than any other group.

Read the full Pew Research report

So, Where Is America’s Wealth Going?

Eliminating taxes for billionaires and multi-national corporate oligarchies combined with deregulation and non-enforcement of regulation as tools to stimulate the economy doesn’t work. Not only does it NOT work, but it has the opposite desired economic effect?

Reference the chart from the Institute for Policy Studies, that demonstrates the distribution of wealth in America.

Over the last three decades, inequality has grown by almost all measures. Historically, while those at the top of the income distribution have enjoyed far higher average incomes than everybody else, the gap between the top and the bottom has grown enormously in recent years, driven both by slowdowns in income growth at the bottom and middle, and rapid acceleration of income growth at the top. (Interactive chart at When income grows, who gains?)

Winner Takes All

The super rich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades’ gains.

Out of Balance

A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable.

Who’s Winning?

For a healthy few, it’s getting better all the time.

How much income have you given up for the top 1 percent?

Above Charts from Mother Jones

Democratic Blog – News

Gov. Perry is running on his record. Gov. Perry’s record:

An billion to billion permanent structural deficit in our state budget created by the property tax swap that Gov. Perry and the Republican controlled legislature passed in ’06. Texas’ state debt has doubled under Perry.

Rick Perry’s property tax increase is hurting our local schools

Almost 1 million Texans are unemployed, a state record. Texas’ unemployment rate (8.4%) now has been at or above 8 percent for 13 straight months, the longest period since a 23-month run from February 1986 to December 1987, according to data from the Texas Workforce Commission.

The Texas poverty rate rose 11% last year. Now 4.3 million Texans live in poverty.

Dallas Morning News – 5,550 Texans continue to lose their health coverage each week. Texas leads the nation in percentage of residents without health insurance with only 49.5 percent of Texas residents covered by employer-sponsored insurance.

Health care premiums have increased 91.6% since Perry became Governor

A recent report showed that Gov. Perry’s Texas Enterprise Fund is “not creating jobs as promised.” The Texas Enterprise Fund spent 8 million of public funding and only 33% of the projects created the pledged jobs. And Texas companies like Dell, are spending more to create jobs in China at the expense of jobs in Texas or even the United States.

Houston Chronicle – Perry and his family headed to China – But funding raises concerns about the trade mission.

Texas Tribune – Texas college and university tuition skyrocketed by 63 percent while Perry has been Governor. Since 2003, when the Republican dominated State Legislature deregulated tuition by allowing individual boards of regents to set prices for each school, tuition and fees at four-year state schools has skyrocketed by an average of 63 percent, from ,934 per semester to ,150 according to the last state figures, from 2008.

Utility rates continue to rise, and some utility companies and Perry thinks that is just fine.

The student dropout rate in Texas is 30 percent and as high as 50 percent in some large urban districts.

Texas currently has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States and “the highest rate of repeat teen births.

The rate of student pregnancies has increased as much as 57 percent and rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising in some urban school districts.

Democratic Blog of Collin County – News