#top-earning

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Top-Earning Celebrity Chefs Quiz

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A Century of Film: Top 300 Grossing Actors Quiz

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New Post has been published on The Rakyat Post

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/lifestyle/2014/04/07/captain-america-fights-way-to-top-of-north-american-box-office/

Captain America fights way to top of North American box office

CAPTAIN America: The Winter Soldier conquered the North American box office in its debut weekend, becoming the top-earning movie so far this year, industry estimates showed on Sunday.

The superhero saga from Disney’s Marvel Studios, starring Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson, pulled in a hefty US$96.2 (RM314) million, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said.

The 3-D, US$170 million sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger out-earned this year’s previous box office winner The Lego Movie, which in February grossed US$69 million in its first weekend.

Biblical epic Noah, meanwhile, was the box office runner up in its second weekend, with $17 million in ticket sales.

The action drama reunites Russell Crowe with Jennifer Connelly, his co-star from 2001′s A Beautiful Mind.

In third place, with US$13 million, was teen adventure Divergent, the dystopian tale of a young woman in a futuristic society, based on the popular young adult novel of the same name.

Religiously themed “God’s Not Dead,” which tells the story of a college freshman who debates his atheist philosophy professor, climbed one spot to fourth place with US$7.7 million.

In fifth was Wes Anderson’s quirky The Grand Budapest Hotel, which earned US$6.30 million.

It was closely trailed by Muppets Most Wanted, Kermit and company’s latest outing, which raked in  RM20 million.

The musical comedy caper was ahead of Mr Peabody and Sherman, based on characters from the 1960s television cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle, which earned US$5.3 million.

Car-chase action movie Need for Speed, which stayed in eighth place for a second consecutive week, taking in US$1.84 million.

Non-Stop, the Liam Neeson action movie set on a long-haul flight, added another RM6 million to its earnings to land in ninth.

Rounding out the top 10 with US$1.8 (RM5.9) million was action flick Sabotage, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington.

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Rich get richer, poor get poorer

Since median inflation-adjusted family income peaked in 2000 at $64,232, it has fallen roughly 6 percent. You won't find another 12-year period with an income decline since the aftermath of the Depression.

This unhappy phenomenon has two major sources. First, economic growth in this country has been relatively slow in recent years, which means the total bounty that the American economy produces, to be shared by all of its citizens, has not been growing very rapidly. Even before the financial crisis began in 2008, economic growth in the decade that started in 2001 was on pace to be slower than growth in any decade since World War II.

Then of course came a deep recession that caused the economy to shrink.

In addition to the slow growth in overall size of the pie, the share that has been going to anyone but the richest Americans has been declining. The top-earning 1 percent of households now bring home about 20 percent of total income, up from less than 10 percent 40 years ago. The top-earning 1/10,000th of households -- each earning at least $7.8 million a year, many of them working in finance -- bring home almost 5 percent of income, up from 1 percent 40 years ago.

In the simplest terms, the relatively meager gains the American economy has produced in recent years have largely flowed to a small segment of the most affluent households, leaving middle-class and poor households with slow-growing living standards.

NYT