(cc photo: 401(K) 2013)
*Some restrictions apply.
The front-page headline of USA Today (3/7/14) declares:
We’re $9,800,000,000,000 Richer
Woo hoo!
The story by Doug Carroll begins:
A booming stock market and recovering home values boosted Americans’ household wealth by nearly $10 trillion last year, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday.
You knew there was a but coming, and sure enough it does. Cue the sad trombone:
But the gains since the crisis have not been equally distributed. Most of the recovered wealth has come from higher stock prices, and many Americans are not in the market. The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans own 80 percent of stocks.
So we’re seeing an increase in the value of stocks that most people do not own. It’s a short article, but USA Today knows it should try to end on an upbeat note:
Even so, the economy benefits because people spend more when they feel richer. And consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of US economic activity.
Of course, it’s difficult to “feel richer” when you’re not. I suppose the best question might be this: Who exactly does the “we” in the headline refer to? If what the Fed report reveals is that the rich are the ones getting richer, that answers that question. A newspaper that considered its audience to be the vast majority of the population struggling to get by would write a very different story about the concentration of wealth.
Something tells me that looking at your last bank statement – or the pile of bills on your kitchen table – will have more of an impact on how “rich” you feel than an off key rendition of “Happy Days Are Here Again”.
You’re missing a few zeros in the heading.
Whoo-hoo is right!!!
When do I get my check?
The federal reserve prints countet fait currency and make s sure it gets mostly to sell out politians, media whores, war criminals, and anyone else will ing to sell their soul’s.
There will be a price paid by all those who worship greed instead of good.
And that’s why we need to cut taxes for the rich again.
Good lord.Folks under Obama the wealth HAS been diversified….UPWARD.How?Well at this time we loan the banks 85 billion a month at zero interest.They invest that in the stock market and get back 3%.That subsidizes the market.And who plays the market?The top few percent.So in fact we subsidize their wealth as well.And thats why Obama has ballooned things so that 87% of the wealth is now owned by the top few percentile points.but in the end it is phony money.Digitized wealth.Because we borrow and print the money to give to the banks.
And thats why Obama has ballooned things so that 87% of the wealth is now owned by the top few percentile points.
And as always, in your little tiny world, The U.S. began in 2008 when Obama come into office, and no there was no other before him. Not Bush the nothing who took the 400 million in surplus, handed it over to Halliburton and Crew and turned it into a 4 Billion Deficit, with no oversight. Not Bush the First who ‘cut taxes’ on the wealthy but made sure the middle class Paid for it all. Not Reagan who not only increased the size of Government, cut Taxes on the Wealthy while increasing the taxes on the middle class, but also de-regulated so many industries and allowed “Self-regulating” corporation to decide if they had paid enough in taxes, to the point where the Small Business Start ups in America went from a 70% failure rate to 95% failure rate, while the long term Business’s went from around a 50% failure rate to an 80% plus failure rate.
Not to mention the NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT, and other “Free Trade Agreements” allowed the Corporation of America to send all the jobs overseas, and still claim to be ‘Manufacturing in America” and thus avoided any Taxes for imports. All the while the Corporate Lords and Masters cut pay and Benefits in the “Race to the Bottom” so that Pay and Benefits over all stayed flat or decline, while the Coporate lords and masters walk off with Trillions in Profits.
But only in you in your tiny little world, did that only happen under Obama. So some how he invented a time machine, went back 40 years and did all that. Please tell us what Universe you came from. You have to be Inter-galactic Traveler.