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Out of 6.2 billion people in the world today, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day. 70% of these people are women and girls. Read more One half of the world population lives on less than $2 per day. 160 million live on less than 50 cents. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Read more The World Health Organization estimates that 1/3 of the world population is well-fed, 1/3 is under-fed, and 1/3 is starving. Read more Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read or write. A quarter of the world's population lives without electricity. Read more Approximately half the world's population lives in cities and towns. Read more By 2005, one out of three of urban dwellers was living in slum conditions, approximately 1 billion or 1/6 of the world's population. Read more There are about 14 million refugees (estimates range from 11 to 17 million) and 26 million internally displaced people (2007) in more than 50 countries. Read more The UN Development program estimates that only $13 billion is what is needed to provide for the health and nutritional needs of the world's poorest people. There are now over 1000 billionaires in the world. Read more The net worth of the richest thousand or so is about twice that of the poorest 2.5 billion people on the earth. The poorest 10% accounted for .5% and the wealthiest 10% for 59% of all consumption. Read more 12 million people die each year from the lack of water, including 3 million children from water-born disease. Read more 1.1 billion lack access to clean water; 2.6 billion live without decent sanitation; 4 billion without waste water disposal-that's approximately 1/6, 1/3 and 2/3 of the world's population respectively. Read more The poorest 10% accounted for .5% and the wealthiest 10% for 59% of all consumption. Read more In 2007 global GDP was $47 trillion. The top 250 companies in the world had combined sales of $14.87 trillion, that\'s 1/3 of global GDP and exceeds the GDP of the USA and EU. Read more The combined sales of the top 5 companies of $1.5 trillion is larger than the GDP of all but 7 countries. Read more One Measure of the Bubble: The gross amount of financial transactions amounts to two thousand trillion dollars, while the world GDP is only 44 thousand trillion. Read more 70% of these people are women and girls. Read more Out of 6.2 billion people in the world today, 1.2 billion live on less that $1 per day. Read more

Economy Watch

by Nate Silver

from FiveThirtyEight blog
[New York Times], 2/3/12

by Sam Calvin

from Following Sylvis blog, 1/31/12

IN AN industrial zone near Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in south-west China, a sign colourfully proclaims the sprawl of factories to be a “delightful, harmonious and happy district”. Angry steelworkers must have winced as they marched past the slogan in their thousands in early January, demanding higher wages. Their three-day strike was unusually large for an enterprise owned by the central government. But, as China’s economy begins to grow more sedately, more such unrest is looming.

from The Economist, 1/28/12

by John Feffer

from Huffington Post, 1/31/12

by Stavros D. Mavroudeas

from Spectrezine, 1/30/12

As US capitalism suffers from a crisis now in its fifth year with no end in sight, the Republican presidential candidates and Obama endlessly repeat cheerleading for the system as if it were, as usual, beyond question or criticism. Obama’s State of the Union Speech at least found campaign fodder in referring to income inequality. He tried to make political use of what the Occupy movement inserted onto the mass public consciousness so powerfully last autumn.

Obama even suggested a 30% minimum tax on those earning $1 million or more annually.

by Richard D. Wolff

from truthout, 1/30/12

Doug Henwood interviewed by Sasha Lilley

from MRzine, 1/21/12

In November, when lawmakers were discussing the defense budget, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a dire warning: In a letter to Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, he wrote that a threatened deep reduction — about $1 trillion over the next decade — would create “an unacceptable risk in future combat operations.” It would, he said, leave America with the smallest Army since the eve of World War II, the smallest number of

by R. Jeffrey Smith

from iWatch news (Center for Public Integrity), 1/26/12

by Christoph Hermann

from The Bullet (Socialist Project, Canada), 1/25/12

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