Plutocrat Stats
- The world now sports 49 nations where 15-year-olds have a better shot of living to 60 than they do in the United States, the world's most unequal major nation.
- Sitting on a U.S. corporate board of directors now pays an average $258,000. The average time directors say they put in on directing: five hours per week.
- Maryland’s Chevy Chase Village, an enclave for the awesomely affluent just outside Washington, D.C., has 11 police officers and only 1,953 residents.
- In 2014 the Gates Foundation gained more money ($7.4 billion) than it gave out ($5 billion).
- Wealthy people give more to charity, research from Jon Bakija of Williams College shows, when tax rates run higher. The rich gave twice as much of their money to charity in the 1970s, a period with a 70 percent tax rate on income in the top U.S. tax bracket, as they did in 2007, with just a 35 percent top rate in effect.
- Presidents at 32 private U.S. universities are making over $1 million annually, the Chronicle of Higher Educationreports. Meanwhile, adjuncts averaging under $25,000 make up 75 percent of all higher ed faculty.
- The dark age of plutocratic campaign spending: Since January 2010, the Center for Responsive Politics computes, U.S. politicos have grabbed over $500 million from rich donors who do not have to reveal their identities.
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This has been reposted from Sam Pizzigati's monthly newsletter Too Much.
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