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The Impact of Income Inequality
Home  /  The Impact of Income Inequality
The wealthiest 1% of NYS residents receive 35% of all income and have seen significant income gains over the last two decade. Over the same time period the wages of most New Yorkers have remained virtually stagnant. New York has the greatest income inequality of any state in the nation.

Nationally the 1 percent of earners took 93 percent the income gains in the first full year of the recovery. Since the 1980s, rich households in the United States have earned a larger and larger share of overall income. The 1 percent earns about one-sixth of all income and the top 10 percent about half. The share of income earned by the middle 3 quintiles (from 21 to 80th percentile) dropped from 50% in 1979 to 43% in 2007.

Between 1979 and 2007 the top 1% of households doubled their share of pretax income while the share of the bottom 80% fell. (CBO) Nationally, the top one percent holds 24% of the total wealth in the country – a larger share of overall wealth than the bottom 90 percent (EPI). This is the most intense concentration of wealth at the top of the ladder since 1929.

As income inequality grew, the government propped up spending by promoting easy credit (i.e., housing mortgages) for less wealthy Americans to maintain their lifestyle. Much of the profit from that easy credit fed the wealth of the richest, further widening income inequality. When the recession struck (housing market collapsed), the financial sector’s huge size and complexity helped turn what might have been a brush fire into a meltdown.

The average net worth of White families is, respectively, more than six times higher and 5.7 times higher than the average Black and Latino families. The racial wealth divide is the result of a history of slavery, oppression, and the exclusion of people of color from wealth-building opportunities.

As of 2011, the poverty rate in NYS was 16% – over three million people – and the child poverty rate exceeded a shocking 22%. One in four African-Americans and Hispanics survive on incomes below the poverty level. More than 1.3 million people have incomes less than half of the federal poverty level, a condition known as “deep poverty.”

Unemployment hovers around 8% statewide and nearly 9% in NYC. The average period of unemployment is nine months, and one in four unemployed New Yorkers has not had work in more than a year. To the extent that there has been job growth, it has been concentrated in low-wage industries.

Income inequality promotes economic recession. When poor and working people have less income, they buy less and fail to stimulate the economy. The last time the US experienced the same level of income inequality as today was 1927 – shortly before the Great Depression.

When low wages leave workers unable to afford the necessities of life, taxpayers pick up the tab, subsidizing costs for food (SNAP), energy (HEAP) and health care (Medicaid). A study in Wisconsin by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce found that a typical Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers over $1.7 million per year, or about $5,815 per employee. Wal-Mart had more workers enrolled in Medicaid in the last quarter of 2012, 3,216, than any other employer in the country. When accounting for all their dependents, that number jumps up to 9,207 enrollees.

Wal-Mart employs about 1.4 million workers in the U.S. Its average full-time wage is $12.78 per hour – just under $26,000 per year. Wal-Mart makes over $13,000 in pre-tax profits per employee (after paying them), which comes to more than 50 percent of the earnings of a full time worker.

McDonald’s makes over $18,000 in pre-tax profits per employee (after paying them), almost 100 percent of the earnings of a full-time food service worker. The company’s own employee budget recommends a second job to make ends meet.

Quoted from bumblethru

Everyone might just as well quit their jobs and let good ole gov almighty and the rich bastards support them!!!

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I. Measuring Poverty: Who is Poor in America?
“We must open our eyes and minds to the poverty in our midst .”
1964 Economic Report of the President.
Michael Harrington’s influential 1962 book The Other America depicted the poor as inhabiting
an “invisible land,” a world described in the 1964 Economic Report of the President as “scarcely
recognizable, and rarely recognized, by the majority of their fellow Americans.” One early
achievement of Johnson’s War on Poverty was to cast light on the problem of poverty by
developing an official poverty measure that has been released by the government in each year
since August 1969.1 While reasonable at the time, this measure has turned out to be ill-suited
to capturing the progress subsequently made in the War. As a result, modern poverty measures
tell a different story of who is poor, and especially how this has changed over time.
Measuring Poverty
Measuring poverty is not a simple task; even defining it is controversial. Just starting with a
commonsense definition of the poor—“those whose basic needs exceed their means to satisfy
them”—requires difficult conceptual choices regarding what constitutes basic needs and what
resources should be counted in figuring a family’s means. There are no generally accepted
standards of minimum needs for most necessary consumption items such as housing, clothing,
transportation, etc. Moreover, our ideas about minimum needs may change over time. For
example, in 1963 even some middle-income households did not have hot and cold running
water indoors. Today, over 99 percent of households of all income levels have complete indoor
plumbing.
The Official Poverty Measure
Mollie Orshansky, an economist in the Social Security Administration, developed the official
poverty thresholds between 1963 and 1964 (Fisher 1992). At the time, the Department of
Agriculture had a set of food plans derived using data from the 1955 Household Food
Consumption Survey, the lowest cost of which was deemed adequate for “temporary or
emergency use when funds are low.” Because families in this survey spent about one-third of
their incomes, on average, on food, Orshansky set the poverty threshold at three times the
dollar cost of this “economy food plan,” with adjustments for family size, composition, and
whether the family lived on a farm.

1
A similar poverty measure was adopted internally by the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1965.8
These income thresholds that were first used as the poverty thresholds for the 1963 calendar
year have served as the basis for the official poverty thresholds ever since. These dollar
amounts have been adjusted for inflation to hold the real value of the income needed to be
above poverty the same over time. There have been minor tweaks to the methodology
involving which price index is used to adjust for inflation, and how adjustments are made for
family structure and farm status.

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Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty. This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise.

>>> Full Report: The War on Poverty After 50 Years

Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

One third of the U.S. population received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013.

The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These programs provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion. (These figures do not include Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment Insurance.)

>>> INFOGRAPHIC: 9 Facts About How the Poor in America Live

Over 100 million people, about one third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.

rectorchart

But today the Census will almost certainly proclaim that around 14 percent of Americans are still poor. The present poverty rate is almost exactly the same as it was in 1967 a few years after the War on Poverty started. Census data actually shows that poverty has gotten worse over the last 40 years.

How is this possible? How can the taxpayers spend $22 trillion on welfare while poverty gets worse?

The typical family that Census identifies as poor has air conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer in its home.

The answer is it isn’t possible.  Census counts a family as poor if its income falls below specified thresholds. But in counting family “income,” Census ignores nearly the entire $943 billion welfare state.

For most Americans, the word “poverty” means significant material deprivation, an inability to provide a family with adequate nutritious food, reasonable shelter and clothing. But only a small portion of the more than 40 million people labelled as poor by Census fit that description.

The media frequently associate the idea of poverty with being homeless. But less than two percent of the poor are homeless.  Only one in ten live in mobile homes. The typical house or apartment of the poor is in good repair and uncrowded; it is actually larger than the average dwelling of non-poor French, Germans or English.

According to government surveys, the typical family that Census identifies as poor has air conditioning, cable or satellite TV, and a computer in his home. Forty percent have a wide screen HDTV and another 40 percent have internet access. Three quarters of the poor own a car and roughly a third have two or more cars. (These numbers are not the result of the current bad economy pushing middle class families into poverty; instead, they reflect a steady improvement in living conditions among the poor for many decades.)

Infographic by Kelsey Harris/The Daily Signal
Infographic by Kelsey Harris/The Daily Signal
The intake of protein, vitamins and minerals by poor children is virtually identical with upper middle class kids. According to surveys by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the overwhelming majority of poor people report they were not hungry even for a single day during the prior year.

We can be grateful that the living standards of all Americans, including the poor, have risen in the past half century, but the War on Poverty has not succeeded according to Johnson’s original goal. Johnson’s aim was not to prop up living standards by making more and more people dependent on an ever larger welfare state. Instead, Johnson sought to increase self-sufficiency, the ability of a family to support itself out of poverty without dependence on welfare aid. Johnson asserted that the War on Poverty would actually shrink the welfare rolls and transform the poor from “taxeaters” into “taxpayers.”

Judged by that standard, the War on Poverty has been a colossal flop. The welfare state has undermined self-sufficiency by discouraging work and penalizing marriage. When the War on Poverty began seven percent of children were born outside marriage. Today, 42 percent of children are. By eroding marriage, the welfare state has made many Americans less capable of self-support than they were when the War on Poverty began.

Bono Quote, free enterprise

President Obama plans to spend $13 trillion dollars on means-tested welfare over the next decade. Most of this spending will flow through traditional welfare programs that discourage the keys to self-sufficiency: work and marriage.

Rather than doubling down on the mistakes of the past, we should restructure the welfare state around Johnson’s original goal: increasing Americans capacity for self-support. Welfare should no longer be a one way hand out; able-bodied recipients of cash, food and housing should be required to work or prepare for work as condition of receiving aid. Welfare’s penalties against marriage should be reduced. By returning to the original vision of aiding the poor to aid themselves, we can begin, in Johnson’s words, to “replace their despair with opportunity.”

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US Poverty Rate is Still 14.5%; But Yes, The War On Poverty Worked
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Census has just released the poverty rate numbers for 2013 and they’re roughly static at 14.5% of the population. This is also roughly the rate that existed as Johnson’s Great War on Poverty ramped up. But despite the fact that the rate, as we measure it, has stayed roughly the same, that’s because of the way that we measure it. The actual war on poverty, on people living in poverty, has been highly successful.

I know, I know, it seems very odd: the rate’s the same, we’ve spent tens of trillions of dollars on this (using the current value of money) and yet I say that it has worked. What’s going on here?

The detail is simply in the way that the US measures poverty. We’ve a number for the income of a  family of a certain size. If they get less than that then we define them as poor. All of which seems simple enough. That number goes up as inflation goes up but that’s it, we don’t, unlike other countries, change it for wages going up, for the country in general getting richer.

So, at first look, that poverty rate should be coming right down. We spend near $1 trillion a year on sending things and money to the poor and that really should push some large number of those poor families over our line. But it seems that it doesn’t: so, why?

Because, would you believe it, we don’t actually count most of the money that we give to the poor as being incomes to the poor. Weird but entirely true. We have roughly, in order of size, four large programs to alleviate poverty. Medicaid, the EITC, SNAP (food stamps) and Section 8 housing vouchers. There’s a vast raft of smaller programs following on as well. And almost all of them give things (health care, food stamps, rental apartments) to people instead of cash. The EITC is paid through the tax system. And the way we measure poverty is simply that goods and benefits in kind, plus aid through the tax system, are not counted as income when we measure the poverty line.

We could give everyone twice what they get now, five times what they get now, and the number living in poverty woudn’t change by one single person or family.


That might not be the most sensible way to be measuring it but it is the way that it is done. The US alleviates vast amounts of poverty. When we measure all those goods and things the child poverty rate is 1 or 2%. Which is pretty good for government work and very different indeed from the 19% or so that the current method of measurement gives us.

There is one more important point here too. Back when Johnson was gearing this thing up aid to poor people was in direct cash transfers. Those are measured as income to poor families before we measure the poverty line. So back then the poverty line was a measure of people who were poor after the government had helped them. Today we measure before almost all of the help that people get (there’s still a couple ofsmall programs that dole out cash). So today’s measurement is more like the number of people who would be in poverty if government weren’t going to help them.

And when you realise how much this definition of poverty has changed over the decades that the headline rate is still the same is a pretty good result really.

Poverty is a simple lack of money and things: so giving poor people money and things does make them less poor. By that measure the US war on poverty has done very well. It’s only the system we use to measure it that makes it look like a failure.

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Global Payments 2014: Capturing the Next Level of Value SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 by Stefan Dab, Gero Freudenstein, Nick Gardiner, Alenka Grealish, Federico Muxi, Pedro Rapallo, Carl Rutstein, Olivier Sampieri, Pieter van den Berg, and Kuba Zielinski


Market Electronification: Key Drivers of Expected Growth
IN THIS REPORT
In 2013, payments businesses generated $425 billion in transaction revenues, $336 billion in account-related revenues, and $248 billion in net interest income and penalty fees related to credit cards.

Banks handled $410 trillion in noncash transactions in 2013, more than five times the amount of global GDP.

The value of noncash transactions will reach an estimated $780 trillion by 2023, a compound annual growth rate of 7 percent. Payments revenues will reach an estimated $2.1 trillion, a CAGR of 8 percent.

Introduction
The payments and transaction-banking businesses continue to represent vital elements of the banking industry and the global financial-services landscape. The importance of these businesses both as critical sources of stable revenues and as the foundation of customer relationships and loyalty has grown steadily in recent years and shows no signs of slowing down. The growth in payments and transaction banking, moreover, is driving stiff competition among not only traditional players but new entrants as well. Consequently, financial institutions must differentiate themselves, refine their strategies, and raise their execution skills if they want to remain competitive.
Global Payments 2014

Capturing the Next Level of Value
Retail Payments
Wholesale Transaction Banking
The Interactive Edition
In this twelfth edition of The Boston Consulting Group’s Global Payments report, we offer a comprehensive overview of the industry. We then take a regional approach to retail (consumer) payments—exploring the most important trends in Europe, North America, and rapidly developing economies (RDEs, also commonly referred to as emerging markets)—before closing with a global examination of the wholesale transaction-banking business. In preparing this report, we have for the third consecutive year collaborated with SWIFT, the global provider of secure financial-messaging services.
This year also marks the debut of BCG’s Global Payments Model Interactive, which explores how regions and segments of the payments market will shift from 2013 through 2023. The interactive provides extensive detail on the volume and value of noncash transactions worldwide.
We define payments revenues as the direct and indirect revenues generated by noncash payment services (excluding interbank transfers). They are the sum of the following:
Account revenues: spread income on current account balances (also known as checking or demand-deposit accounts) and account maintenance fees
Transaction revenues: transaction-specific revenues on cards (interchange fees, merchant acquiring fees, and currency conversion fees for cross-border card transactions); fees per transaction on a percentage or fixed basis for noncard payment types; fees for overdrafts and nonsufficient funds; and monthly or annual card membership fees
Credit card spread (net interest income) and penalty fees
Retail payments are transactions initiated by consumers, and wholesale payments are transactions initiated by businesses or governments.
This year’s report incorporates two new revenue components: net interest income and penalty fees on credit cards as well as merchant acquiring fees. These additional revenue sources represented nearly $300 billion in revenues in 2013, or 30 percent of total payments revenues. All told, payments revenues were approximately one-quarter of total global-banking revenues.
Our aim in Global Payments 2014: Capturing the Next Level of Value is to provide institutions that are active in the payments and transaction-banking businesses with a solid understanding of major changes shaping the industry, as well as with our perspectives on the underlying drivers. We also offer recommendations on which specific actions should be taken by various types of players in order to achieve or maintain market-leading positions. In today’s ultracompetitive “new new normal” environment, no institution can afford to stand pat.
Overview: Strong Growth Is Poised to Continue
We expect the next ten years to continue to bring substantial growth in the payments and transaction-banking businesses. But these years will also bring disruptions, as economic models shift owing to digital technologies, regulation, intensifying competition, and new market entrants challenging incumbents. The many faces (and interfaces) of payments will change as successful innovators gain market share.
The $2 Trillion Prize in 2023
In 2013, payments businesses generated $425 billion in transaction revenues, $336 billion in account-related revenues, and $248 billion in net interest income and penalty fees related to credit cards. The total represented roughly one-quarter of all banking revenues globally. Banks handled $410 trillion in noncash transactions in 2013, more than five times the amount of global GDP.
Looking ahead, overall growth will maintain its positive trajectory. The value of noncash transactions will reach an estimated $780 trillion by 2023, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7 percent. Payments revenues will reach an estimated $2.1 trillion, a CAGR of 8 percent. (See Exhibit 1.) Retail payments businesses will dominate, led by account revenues and followed closely by credit cards. Wholesale transaction banking will see significant increases in revenues from account spreads.
exhibit
Revenue growth in retail payments will vary by region. (See Exhibit 2.) RDEs are projected to achieve double-digit annual growth and to account for an estimated 77 percent of total retail revenue growth from 2013 through 2023. These markets are benefiting from rapid GDP and income expansion, relatively young and dynamic populations, and active government involvement in building payments infrastructures and enabling financial inclusion. The migration of cash to cards and to e-payments will open numerous opportunities for payments players.
exhibit
By contrast, developed regions are projected to achieve a much lower annual growth rate of 4 percent. These regions continue to be challenged by narrow margins, the maturation of payments products, and modest economic growth. Compounding the systemic trends, various regulatory measures have been or will be implemented that significantly reduce revenues. For example, a regulatory tidal wave has already hit the United States, one that was fully reflected in 2013 revenues. In Europe, two waves are in force: first, the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) has resulted in gradually declining prices for certain payments products; and second, limits on interchange are expected to take a significant toll, resulting in €8 billion in lost revenues annually beginning in 2015. Payments stakeholders in developed European markets must therefore weather the regulatory storm and forge new business models to fill the revenue gap.
On the wholesale side, transaction-related revenues have tended to track economic and trade growth, whereas account revenues have faced a tug of war—pulled up by rising bank balances and pulled down by shrinking spreads. Account revenues are expected to recover, however, contributing roughly 56 percent of total wholesale revenue growth from 2013 through 2023.
Winning the Digital Game
Never in the history of the payments industry has there been a time of such disruption and opportunity across regions. Digital technologies will upset the competitive order and the role that payments play both in the operations of businesses and in the daily lives of consumers. Payments players, depending upon their strategic decisions over the next ten years, will have much to lose or gain. First, they must see payments as a platform, not simply as a product. Second, they must identify the initiatives that warrant investment. Third, they must pursue multiple paths in order to gain both broader experience and new customer insight.
Seeing Payments as a Platform. The digitization of banking and overall retail commerce is driving innovation in payments services. Mobile banking is enabling financial institutions to interact with their customers as often as they like and to deliver new services in real time. These capabilities are providing an unprecedented opportunity to improve customer satisfaction and deepen relationships. At the same time, technology companies are entering the payments space and generating new sources of value by integrating payments into broader platforms for merchants and consumers. These companies are engaging with their customers on a daily basis and pushing their payments capabilities. Incumbent players must figure out how to integrate their own payments services into platforms that contain additional benefits. Examples include Simple, PNC Bank’s Virtual Wallet, and BankAmeriDeals. If incumbents fail to act, they risk being relegated to the back end of the process (as has been the case with PayPal).
Identifying Initiatives That Warrant Investment. Financial institutions must evaluate numerous potential initiatives, including those related to digitization, to find the ones that merit their attention and investment. This endeavor is best approached using a framework that poses three key questions. (See Exhibit 3.)
exhibit
What is the impact on the institution’s economics? Players must determine whether a particular initiative will have a positive impact, improve the economics of certain customer segments, increase (or decrease) interactions, and create a new revenue stream. The effects on risk and fraud exposure, along with the cost of risk management, must also be considered.
Does it provide real value to consumers and merchants? Of course, the key criterion here is whether the initiative truly eases a pain point or provides a better value proposition, taking into full consideration how customer needs and expectations are evolving outside of payments.
Does it scale? It is also critical to examine whether an initiative offers economies of scale or a potential network effect. Part of the scale requirement is ensuring that the product or service either fits with current consumer behavior or has a sufficiently compelling value proposition to alter that behavior.
Pursuing Multiple Paths. Once a bank identifies the right initiatives, it has to make tough choices regarding which ones to pursue and whether to build or buy—or to seek partnership arrangements. Because digital payments solutions are still in a relatively nascent stage, banks need to build their knowledge through smart experimentation. We encourage them to participate in multiple initiatives and pursue both solo efforts and partnerships. Indeed, a few banks are adopting a technology-company approach. One leading institution, for example, is upgrading its mobile-banking platform every 100 days.
Moreover, while much of the investment in digital solutions has been in the consumer-related business, there is also significant opportunity in the business-to-business (B2B) realm. There remains a vast number of manual and paper-based processes that could be automated and digitized. As in the consumer realm, technology companies have already recognized this opportunity and are disrupting the competitive landscape.
Ultimately, with more than $1 trillion in payments-related revenue growth as well as increasingly rapid development of digital technologies anticipated over the next ten years, banks have an enormous opportunity to increase revenues. But this prize will not be easily won. Banks must develop a long-term growth strategy that extends beyond payments, one that includes a new approach to product development and innovation. In the following sections, we will address these topics on a regional level for the retail segment, and on a global level for the wholesale segment.

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COMPANY PROFILE
Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), a Fortune 1000 company, is a leading provider of payment processing services, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. We process billions of payment card, check, and eCommerce transactions annually for over one million merchant locations worldwide.

Whether we are processing for our direct customers or for our Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs), financial institutions, or referral partners’ customers…whether they are large multi-national corporations or small to mid-market merchants…we serve a diversified base of retailers, restaurants, automotive and professional services, utilities, education, health care, lodging and gaming establishments, and government agencies in the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Growth Strategy
Global Payments is focused on expanding market share by investing in its direct sales organizations, strengthening its ISO sales channel, offering leading-edge products and “best-in-class” customer service, and gaining further operating leverage. In addition, the company is also focused on domestic and international expansion through its acquisition strategy.

Company History
Global Payments’ experience spans over more than four decades, when its former parent company, National Data Corporation, pioneered electronic payment processing. Global Payments spun in February 2001 and is listed on the NYSE as GPN.

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Welcome To EMVCo

EMVCo exists to facilitate worldwide interoperability and acceptance of secure payment transactions. It accomplishes this by managing and evolving the EMV® Specifications and related testing processes. This includes, but is not limited to, card and terminal evaluation, security evaluation, and management of interoperability issues. Today there are EMV Specifications based on contact chip, contactless chip, common payment application (CPA), card personalisation, and tokenisation.

This work is overseen by EMVCo’s six member organisations—American Express, Discover, JCB, MasterCard, UnionPay, and Visa—and supported by dozens of banks, merchants, processors, vendors and other industry stakeholders who participate as EMVCo Associates.