HALF of Americans make under $30,000/year which is almost 25% under the average COL. In the United States. They make only 3/4ths of what they need to SURVIVE.
Two in every three people you come across make under $50,000.
The cost of raising a family is $90,000; The average household income is $70,000.
The average person has $40,000 in high interest credit card and non-default student loan debt alone, which is almost 2x the amount of their retirement savings.
One in every eight people you see are on a government assistance program, otherwise they would literally die from poverty.
People aged 45-75 have 90% of the wealth in the country, they make up less than half the population.
The top 10% of income earners, have had income growth 6x the rate of the rest of the US over the last 40 years. 50% of Americans have had income levels decrease by 5% over that same span. There has also been an increase in expenses and inflation that aren't factored in.
The purchasing power of the USD is half of what it was 100 years ago.
These statistics are getting worse by the year.
The top 0.1% in America own around 21% of all wealth in the US. in 1929, right before the great depression, that figure was 25%.
This hurts everyone, rich people included.
The United States is an economy driven by consumption. People have less purchasing power to buy capital and consumer goods, than they have in the past, almost at a similar level to the pre- great depression era. This decreases overall profits for large corporations, due to less total revenue, because people don't have anything to spend. The wealth of the 0.1% people will decrease, as most of their “wealth” is speculatively tied up in the “value” of the capital goods they own, like their corporations. People won't have money to invest. There won't be anything to buy, because people literally won't produce anything.
How does the US combat this? They decide to print more money. This decreases the overall spending power for the average American, making the situation worse. There is less money to be invested in the capital and consumer goods produced, leading to lower profits. This is a great band-aid in the short term but will make things worse in the long term.
If the great depression happened today 35,000,000 more people would be out of jobs. There are are around 160,000,000 people employed in the united states.