8 Things Mainstream Media Doesn't Have the Courage to Tell You: The Rich Are Ripping Off You and America Every Which Way

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Three Wise Mountain Monkeys
Illustration by Ronald David Jackson
Adapted from Moyan Brenn

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.

By Paul Buchheit

1. U.S. Wealth Up $34 Trillion Since Recession. 93% of You Got Almost None of It
2. Eight Rich Americans Made More Than 3.6 Million Minimum Wage Workers
3. News Sources Speak for the 5%
4. TV News Dumbed Down for American Viewers: A recent Survey Showed That...

-- 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.

5. News Execs among White Male Boomers Who Owe Trillions to Society'
6. Funding Plummets for Schools and Pensions as Corporations Stop Paying Taxes

Three separate studies 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
8. Restaurant Servers Go Without Raise for 30 Years 

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