According to a study by the Paris School of Economics, the richest one tenth of 1% of Americans takes home nine percent of the U.S. national income. The bottom 90%, which is most of the rest of us, earns just 50% of the national income. So, if you do the math that means that the 9.9% just below the top are taking in the other 41% of the income. This is a higher level of Income disparity than it was in the 1920s in Great Britian! For those of you who think the problem with the economy is all the socialism in our society you might want to look at those numbers again. And maybe think about what happens when you play Monopoly (a purely capitalistic game). Sooner or later one person controls everything and you have two choices, either put the game away or reset and start over. In real life we dont have the option of putting the game away and option 2 usually occurs with some type of major revolution. Taken in this context you can see why these statistics really are more than a bit disturbing. Remember, Publicly traded companies do not hire simply because they made higher profits for their stock holders. They hire to keep up with production or increase market share. For economic growth, you need personal incomes rising at all levels. When the average Joe feels better about his income, he goes out and spends. This creates economic prosperity, as companies have to produce more because they are selling more. Thus, these companies are hiring more people, investing in new projects, and stimulating the U.S. economy—three things that are not happening right now. This is a very dangerous situation because the higher the disparity becomes the harder it is to correct the problem and right the ship. Quantatative Easing has helped the stock market rebound but it has done nothing to help the bottom 90% of society and has contributed to and exasperated the income disparity problem. Consider that the number of U.S. Households that used food stamps went from 20.6 million in 2010 to 22.7 million in December of 2013, (Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, March 7, 2014.) And that’s after the U.S. government cut back on food stamps funding! The U.S. is becoming more like Europe, where there are the very wealthy and the very poor. The middle class is dissappearing. The question to ask yourself is why? Is it because we are all becoming lazy, self entitled bums wanting someone else to support us or could it be that those lessons that we learned playing games like Monopoly apply in real life as well. I dont know about you but I am in that 90% bracket, and I would rather be a contribuitng member of society and be paid accordingly over being a burden on society. And I think that most of the people I know probably feel the same way.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:23:01 +0000
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