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Racial wealth gap continuing to grow the wealth gap grows in general, it is racialized and grows along ethnic lines. the pew research center reported that the gap between white wealth and black wealth went up between 2010 and 2014. went up by like 5 percentage points. so from it used to be eight times white people have the wealth of black folks and now it s 14 times. so those kinds of trends are what is causing fast food strikes, what s causing retail workers to organize around the country, what is causing local communities of workers to demand $15 an hour. and those are the places where we really need to pay attention and make structural change. i want to come back to that. i want to ask mike about what you said in terms of equality. lots of studies over the past couple of weeks. they released a study and found ....
Extra $2,000 a year. that s a real chunk of money for a lot of americans. yeah the way to think of it is just multiply 2,000 times the difference. it s $1.25. they re making about $2,000 more a year right? right, right. when you get $2,000 more and you re, let s say, only making $8 an hour that s significant. as you re saying a big bump. so in the places the states where it s only 10 cent to 20 cent space, is that enough? it s not going to set them back. their purchasing power will be preserved. but i think in a lot of those states, we ll see a lot more group efforts. we saw a lot of fast food strikes and retail workers protesting saying we want $15 an hour. we want $10.10 an hour which president obama has been ....
Apparently the families of oscar grant and emmitt till are also going to be at the peace rally today tieing back the kind of long history of people who turned personal tragedy into political activist. that s what s important to remember. it s not just about the act itself, it s much larger. we re ear no longer talking about the individual deaths of these young men, but it s about race, racism, about the stand your ground laws. with the fast food strikes, it s not just about their individual jobs. it s about wage. it s about capitalism, reforming those issues as well. it feels to me, like, in that sense it becomes difficult than having to think about what a win is. if a win is or if justice is michael dunn goes to jail and george zimmerman goes to jail. if george zimmerman does not, in farkts get convicted and go to ....
Repeating again. 85 richest americans, just 85, own about half of the world s wealth. half. that s amazing. this really makes that gap between the haves and have nots that much clearer. some go so far as to say it could threaten the world s political and economic systems because they say it leads to bigger social tensions. kind of already seeing a little of that in the u.s. you look at the fast-food strikes. people are clearly upset. there s a recent gallup poll that shows only about 30% of americans out there are actually satisfied with the way income is distributed, meaning almost three quarters are dissatisfied. you know one of the big issues here, the biggest issue is that too many people don t have jobs. and a big part of the problem is many of the jobs that are out there are low wage jobs. so most of the income gains are going to the richest americans. this income gap is something the president has talked a lot about recently in his speeches. but on the flip side, if you ask bi ....
And also led to the situation where workers have essentially no power. right? you have this totally unequal power relationship between the worker and between the employer. i see your organization and others as doing a great job to tie to fill the gap. i wanted to ask you, given the nature of the unequal power dynamic, are workers frequently nervous about joining with your group, about speaking out about conditions they aren t satisfied with or that may be discriminatory or illegal at the work place? are they fearful of getting involved? absolutely. workers are the that s true throughout the history of the united states. there were times when workers have been afraid to come forward. other times when workers succeed. i would say this is a moment of great opportunity where we are seeing a lot more workers, low wage workers come forward to demand change. we have seen it with the fast food strikes, with our walmart. we have seen it in our own campaigns. workers across the country are ....