Saturday, June 29, 2013

USA! USA! We're # 27! USA!


Does anybody else see the irony?  We went to war in 1991 to liberate Kuwait and today their middle class is richer than ours.  Maybe Kuwait should come and save us?  

Les Leopold tells us why the U.S. middle class is so poor:

The International Labor organization produced a remarkable study, (Global Wage Report 2012-13) that sorts out the causes of why wages have remained stagnant while elite incomes have soared. The report compares key causal explanations like declining bargaining power of unions, porous social safety nets, globalization, new technologies and financialization.

Guess which one had the biggest impact on the growing split between the one percent and the 99 percent?

Financialization!

I've shown you this chart before:



All the growth in U.S. wealth over the past 30 years has been financial wealth and the growth of Too Big Too Fail Banks.  Obviously this is no way to grow our middle class or ensure economic growth for Americans who are not bankers and who do not derive most of their wealth from financial securities.  


No comments: