8 shocking facts the media doesn’t have the courage to tell you

[dinar_stud]

8 shocking facts the media doesn’t have the courage to tell you

The following are all relevant, fact-based issues, the “hard news” stories that the media has a responsibility to report. But the business-oriented press generally avoids them.

 

What happened to "All the news that's fit to print"?

 

1. U.S. Wealth Up $34 Trillion Since Recession. 93% of You Got Almost None of It.

That’s an average of $100,000 for every American. But the people who already own most of the stocks took almost all of it. For them, the average gain was well over a million dollars — tax-free as long as they don’t cash it in. Details available  here.

 

 

 

2. Eight Rich Americans Made More Than 3.6 Million Minimum Wage Workers

A recent  report stated that no full-time minimum wage worker in the U.S. can afford a one-bedroom or two-bedroom rental at fair market rent. There are  3.6 million such workers, and their total (combined) 2013 earnings is less than the 2013 stock market gains of just  eight Americans, all of whom  take more than their share from society: the four Waltons, the two Kochs, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett.

 

 

 

3. News Sources Speak for the 5%

It would be refreshing to read an honest editorial: “We dearly value the 5 to 7 percent of our readers who make a lot of money and believe that their growing riches are helping everyone else.”

 

 

Instead, the business media seems unable to differentiate between the top 5 percent and the rest of society. The  Wall Street Journal exclaimed, “Middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before,” and then went on to  sputter: “What Recession?…The economy has bounced back from recession, unemployment has declined..”

 

The Chicago Tribune may be even further out of touch with its less privileged readers, asking them: “What’s so terrible about the infusion of so much money into the presidential campaign?”

 

 

 

4. TV News Dumbed Down for American Viewers

 

 

A 2009 survey by the  European Journal of Communication compared the U.S. to Denmark, Finland, and the UK in the awareness and reporting of domestic vs. international news, and of ‘hard’ news (politics, public administration, the economy, science, technology) vs. ‘soft’ news (celebrities, human interest, sport and entertainment). The results:

 

 

 

• Americans [are] especially uninformed about international public affairs.
• American respondents also underperformed in relation to domestic-related hard news stories.
• American television reports much less international news than Finnish, Danish and British television;
• American television network newscasts also report much less hard news than Finnish and Danish television.

 

Surprisingly, the report states that “our sample of American newspapers was more oriented towards hard news than their counterparts in the European countries.” Too bad Americans are reading less newspapers.

 

 

 

5. News Execs among White Male Boomers Who Owe Trillions to Society

 

 

The hype about the “self-made man” is fantasy. In the early 1970s, we privileged white males were spirited out of college to waiting jobs in management and finance, technology was inventing new ways for us to make money, tax rates were about to tumble, and visions of bonuses and capital gains danced in our heads.

 

 

While we were in school the Defense Department had been preparing the Internet for Microsoft and Apple, the National Science Foundation was funding the  Digital Library Initiative research that would be adopted as the Google model, and the  National Institute of Health was doing the early laboratory testing for companies like Merck and Pfizer. Government research labs and public universities trained thousands of chemists, physicists, chip designers, programmers, engineers, production line workers, market analysts, testers, troubleshooters, etc., etc.

 

 

All we created on our own was a disdainful attitude, like that of  Steve Jobs: “We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

 

 

6. Funding Plummets for Schools and Pensions as Corporations Stop Paying Taxes

 

 

Threeseparatestudies have shown that corporations pay less than half of their required state taxes, which are the main source of K-12 educational funding and a significant part of pension funding. Most recently, the report ”The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base” found that the percentage of corporate profits paid as state income taxes has dropped from 7 percent in 1980 to about 3 percent today.

 

 

 

7. Companies Based in the U.S. Paying Most of their Taxes Overseas

Citigroup had 42% of its 2011-13 revenue in North America (almost all U.S.) and made $32 billion in profits, but received a U.S. current income tax benefit all three years.

 

 

Pfizer had 40% of its 2011-13 revenues and nearly half of its physical assets in the U.S., but declared almost $10 billion in U.S. losses to go along with nearly $50 billion in foreign profits.

 

 

In 2013  Exxon had about  43% of management, 36% of sales, 40% of long-lived assets, and 70-90% of its productive oil and gas wells in the U.S., yet only paid about 2 percent of its total income in U.S. income taxes, and most of that was something called a “theoretical” tax

 

 

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8. Restaurant Servers Go Without Raise for 30 Years

 

 

 

An evaluation by  Michelle Chen showed that the minimum wage for tipped workers has been approximately $2 an hour since the 1980s. She also notes that about 40 percent of these workers are people of color, and about two-thirds are women.

[Shabibilicious]

Just a few of my observations and fun facts:  1)  Had I won the Billion dollar NCAA Challenge......Warren Buffet would have paid me 1 Billion smackers.  2)  Rich people owe me nothing.......I'm a big boy.  3)  Unless the patron is an extreme tight ass........restaurant servers are making a healthy wage based off service proficiency and current food prices.....minimum wage in this circumstance is irrelative.  4)  Newspapers are a dead medium.  As always, just my opinion.    

 

GO RV, and NO BV

[Artitech]

The severs are doing real well they are now getting 22% tip. Not from me, but they are now asking for it. The owners get away with not paying for there labor and continue to keep becoming richer. If I didnt have to pay my labor I could be on vaction and flying around on a helicopter like Tilman Fiteda owner joe crab shack, paxudaux, papa steak house, and more I dont know about. Pretty soon these wait staffs are going to want 50% tip on a bill. I dont know about other people but I take out bar bill off tab. Im not tipping to open a bottle of beer or pouring a glass of whiskey sorry that anit right. the price of eating continues to sky rocket, they still have no labor cost.