In 2011 – the #1 highest paid person in the world was a hedge fund manager named Ray Dalio – founder of Bridgewater Associates based in Westport, CT; he made $3 billion last year. Most people do not understand how the huge gaps in income inequality leads to a broken economic and thus political system. It’s very to imagine a well functioning democracy where people prosper in a system that allows for 50 million people to require food stamps to feed themselves but a person can make $3 billion and pay a lower tax rate than the average middle class family; there is no example in history of that kind of wealth gap and an economically prosperous country.
Alternet puts that sort of prodigious wealth in perspective:
#1 - It would take the typical U.S. family 29.2 YEARS to earn as much as Mr. Dalio earned in one HOUR.
#2 - That’s as much as 60,673 typical U.S. families earn.
#3 - That’s enough to hire 85,911 entry level teachers.
#4 - That’s enough to hire 17,143 pediatricians.
#5 - That’s enough to wipe out the student loan debts for 120,000 graduates.
#6 - That’s enough to wipe out the negative equity of 46,153 average homeowners.
#7 - That’s enough to cover the per person average health care costs of 397,984 Americans.
#8 - That’s more than the Gross Domestic Product of the 5 poorest African nations combined.
#9 - That’s enough to feed 62 million hungry school children for a year.
Source:http://www.classwarfareexists.com/...