From Yahoo! Finance (via HT: BB)

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace. So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and “free trade” that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. 

Here are the statistics to prove it:

?    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. 

?    61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.

?    66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.

?    36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.

?    A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.

?    24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.

?    Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

?    Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

?    For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.

?    In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.

?    As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.

?    The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.

?    Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.

?    In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.

?    The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

?    In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.