The Community, Faith and Labor Coalition , an affiliate of Interfaith Worker Justice, is a Marion county advocate group formed in 2000 to become a voice advocating for economic and social justice in Indiana.
Our goal is to create a common committment to identify, pursue, and bring about real suggestions and actions for making possible jobs tha t offer a living wage with benefits that provide individual and family self-sufficiency and hope.
Please join us in our call by subscribing to our email distribution list:
Information and Ways to Get Involved:
- Elwood Black Sr. Scholarship Fund
- Learn about the Teamsters Efforts for FedEx Workers
- Look at Kids Count Data on Indiana Children Living in Poverty
- Join this year's Labor Day Parade in Indianapolis
- Learn about The Mapleton Fall Creek Association's grassroots effort to improve their neighborhood
- Read about AFSCME's Efforts Against Privitization
- Join Working America
- Campaigns and Education Efforts
More Evidence Shows Economic Rules are Rigged The next time someone tells you they think our economy is fair, here's new proof that it's not. |  |
In fact, just between 2005 and 2006, average income adjusted for inflation of the top 1 percent grew by $73,000 (or 7 percent), while the average income of the bottom 90 percent grew by just $20 (or 0.1 percent). (In 2006, the top 1 percent were those with incomes above $375,000, and the bottom 90 percent were those with incomes below $105,000.)
So, what does it tell us that incomes are growing faster for those at the top? Clearly the rules that govern income growth in our economy are rigged in favor of the already rich.
But it doesn't have to be this way. The same data show that in the three decades after World War II, things were reversed: incomes for the top 1 percent grew only 25 percent, while for the bottom 90 percent they grew 92 percent.
Among the rules that changed between then and now are union-busting, trade liberalization, deregulation, and tilted tax policies. Time to change them back?
A recent Gallup poll reports that a record percentage of Americans see themselves as worse off financially in 2008 than they were in 2007.
A survey conducted in May and June 2008 by Working America reveals that what working women need most is a pay raise.
