How the stock market is a sham for the working and middle class. 53 percent of Americans have no money in the stock market, including retirement accounts. 62 percent of all US wealth owned by top 5 percent.
The growing wealth divide in this country is devouring every piece of the middle class that is currently left. The stock market is largely a sham for most Americans. Why? Many hedge funds and other large Wall Street firms are in the business of making quick profits even if it means destabilizing the underlying economy. […]
Let us count the ways of inflation: While the CPI understates inflation Americans are living out the days of a contracting standard of living.
Americans are experiencing the impacts of inflationary pressures on their pocketbooks. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) used by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics does a poor job of measuring inflation because it uses derivative measures to reflect the price of things we can readily get. The most obvious example is the measure used to […]
Suppressing wages and increasing corporate profits: The tough math behind the current economic recovery.
It should come as no surprise that the stock market is a very poor barometer on the financial health of Americans. We think of the stock market as a temperature gauge on how well Americans are doing. If that is the case, the record breaking highs in the stock market should reflect a very happy […]
The American dream myth: Income mobility; 4 out of 5 Americans struggle with poverty, joblessness, or go on welfare at some point during their lives; and bottom 80 percent of Americans control 7 percent of total wealth.
There is an odd sort of Greek-like mythology that the American dream is only getting stronger when various pieces of economic data clearly show that this is not the case. The middle class has noticeably shrunk over the past few decades. Income inequality is at levels last seen during the wildly opulent Gilded Age. We […]