Equality Matters: Facts On Inequality

Here are some facts that caught my eye when I was putting together certain posts for this blog. Important to realise that we can easily change this and many more sickening statistics. Click on the links at the bottom of the post if you'd like to see some more facts. I assure you this only scratches the surface ...

The 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more Wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined

The world’s 1 percent, almost entirely billionaires, own $42.7 trillion dollars, more than the bottom 3 billion residents of earth

In 2010, 25 of the 100 largest U.S. companies paid their CEO more than they paid in U.S. taxes. This is largely because corporations in the global 1 percent use off shore tax havens to dodge their U.S. taxes. Starbucks anyone??

Over 4 billion dollars was spent on the mid term US election 2014. That is ten times more money than the American Government have pledged to give to support Ebola which they are pushing as a global crisis. You could also spend that much money to put 24,000 students through their entire education in the USA.

There are 2.2 billion children roughly in the world and 1.1 billion actually live in Poverty which is every second child.

In 2013 the UN estimated that World hunger would cost 30 billion US dollars to eradicate. The American defence budget was over $737 billion.

World Military Spending totalled over $1.75 trillion in 2013.

Trident is so dangerous that if one nuclear war head blew up, it would be around 8 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Japan, which killed an estimated 200,000 people.

Trident costs around 5 or 6% of the annual defence budget to run. The equivalent of about £2-£2.4 billion.

The main reason why so many disabled people are in low-income households in the UK is their high levels of not working. 60% of disabled working-age adults are not in paid work compared to only 15% of their non-disabled counterparts. A third of these people - 1 million people - say that they want to work but that they have not been able to find a job. Right enough the Tory minister in the department of work, Lord Freud, did say “Disabled people should work for less”. They must feel valued and what message to their would be employers is that? Outrageous.

Almost half of all Bangladeshis and Pakistanis living in Britain earn less than £7 per hour. Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have both the lowest work rates and, once in work, the highest likelihood of low pay. Their stealing our jobs though right???

In 2010 it was reported that there are 18.4 million vacant homes in the U.S whilst there are an estimated 1,750,000 homeless people in the US. Do the maths.

People seeking asylum worldwide in 2009: 923,400. Asylum applications in the UK in 2009: 24,485 nowhere near what you are led to believe.

Total asylum applications to the UK in 2010: 17,79. Total granted refugee status in 2010: 3,480. Out of almost 40 million displaced people throughout the world who are of concern to UNHCR, a tiny percentage come to the UK. (This was only recent study I could find).

Around 3½ million adults aged 22 to retirement were paid less than £7 per hour in 2010 in Britain. Two-thirds of these were women and more than half were part-time workers. Some would say slave labour and then there are the Zero hour contracts.

Out of the 53 participating countries in the recent Glasgow Commonwealth Games (2014), 42 of those countries still do not legally support same sex marriages. Craziness.

The UK is the billionaire capital of the world. There are more billionaires living here per capita than any other country. This is the same country that in 2013, had a million people relying on food banks to eat.

The wealthiest 10% of people in Britain own 850 times more than the poorest 10%, and inequality is increasing.

Since 1979 in Britain, the poorest 10% have been getting a smaller and smaller share of income (3%), while the richest 10% have received more and more each year (31%).