In New York, it's almost impossible to live off of minimum wage. It's like the rich keep getting richer and richer and the poor don't get a dime. The prices of living in New York keep skyrocketing. Popular housing areas in New York becoming gentrified with new people who actually can afford the living prices, making it so that they have to up the prices for families that have been living there for years! People are starting families and having more mouths to feed but it's as if they want the poor to stay poor. Because you can really only provide for yourself on $10 an hour pay, especially when they cut the hours down since minimum wage went up. You can't get in 40 hours a week anymore and don't get me started on what your paycheck actually looks like at the end of the month after they take out taxes.

Some Facts of Income Inequality

                                                                       Facts

1. Despite the fact that America 83% in the last quarter century and corporate profits have doubled, America workers produce twice the amount of goods but get less money. 
2. The amount of money that was given out in Wall Street bonuses last year, is twice the amount of all minimum wage workers earned in the country combined. 
3. The wealthiest 85 people on the planet have more money than the poorest 3.5 billion people combined. 
4. The poorest half of the Earth's population owns 1% of the Earth's wealth. The richest 1% of the Earth's population owns 46% of the Earth's wealth. 
5. More locally, the poorest half of the U.S owns 2.5% of the country's wealth. The top 1% owns 35% of it. 
6. The slice of national income pie going to the wealthiest 1% of Americans has doubled since 1979. 
7. The super rich .01% of America, such as Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, take home a whopping 6% of the national income, earning around $23 million dollars a year. Compare that to the average $30,000 a year earned by the bottom 90% of America. 

Income Inequality in America

Still, the gap in income inequality hasn't improved, right along with the racial gap. Wealth inequality is growing.

• Families near the bottom of the wealth distribution went from having no wealth on average to being about $2000 in debt. (those in the 10%.)
• Those in the middle roughly doubled their wealth-mostly between 1963 and 1983. 
• Families near the top (at the ninetieth percentile) saw their wealth quadruple. 
• And the wealth of those at the 99%, or in other words those wealthier than 99% of all families, saw their wealth sixfold. 

Racial indifference also ties to the inequality of income. Both measures are important because average wealth indicates how a group is prospering as whole, relative to other groups, while "median" wealth shows how the typical family is doing.

The rich 10% of the economy takes half of economic pie but leaves half of the pie for the bottom 90% to share. Figuratively speaking this is bottom 90% sharing half of economic money. Barely surviving while the rich is living well over comfortably.