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 […]
The financial feeding of the massively indebted American: Consumer credit owed hits record, permanently high gas prices, and feeding empty promises with food stamp outlays up 600% from 2000.
Americans are now fully engaged, once again, in their consumption ways financed by debt. To continue pretending that the middle class is not shrinking, massive amounts of debt are being pumped into the system once again. Total consumer debt has reached another peak but the reason this has peaked is very troubling. Over the last […]
Detroit files for bankruptcy while S&P 500 hits record high: The bifurcation of the American economy and the long decline of the American manufacturing base.
The US is full of economic dichotomies. The DOW hit a peak when food stamp usage peaked. Incomes for the wealthiest are reaching record levels while the median household income has fallen back to levels last seen in the mid-1990s. And today, the once manufacturing powerhouse of Detroit is filing for bankruptcy at the exact […]