$5Au was NOT advocating tariffs. Agree about lowering capital gains rates and protecting IP better. It's a national security issue as well as an economic one. $5Au might add that lowering our corporate tax rate, as BHO promised but never pushed hard for, would be a tremendous boon to job growth. One need only look at the economic miracle in Canada for an example.

Thank you, Technocracy.

Let me re-write one of my above sentences, however:
"...when it is accurately become a fiction, that it is printed on whim."
I do not mean to say that it is a 'fiction that money is printed on whim'. I did mean to say that money is a fiction, BECAUSE it is printed on whim.

Woops. My bad.

Jan

Profchuck is right.

There are many materials available now at almost no cost. Earl Nightingale's "Lead the Field" is available for almost nothing. It is said that he lead more men to higher accomplishment than any other author in his day.

For the audio library, there is a 2fer. recording 1 is "The Richest Man in Babylon" #2 is "The Magic Story" That disk is available on Amazon

If you look at the economic progress made by millions from the 40s to millennium, maybe we should review!

I think, if you are looking for a success path like the kids you grew up with; a path where all went to college all got a degree, all were accepted into the work force, and all began climbing the economic ladder...that has been broken for a very long time.

I listened to our President in the beginning of his 1st term talk about creating jobs. He had thousands of "shovel ready" jobs, remember? At the same time I had decided I wanted to acquire a string of nicer rental homes. Something to provide income, local control, and the kind of assets talked about in the above article.

What I found was while the President struggled trying to understand why jobs were not being created simply because the President wished it to be...people were calling me in the dead of winter to confirm we were going to need flooring, electrical, plumbing, plaster and paint for next spring. Inadvertently, I was creating the Jobs the President could not. The difference was I wanted to do something. The President telling his chronie capitalist friends "we need some jobs here", doesn't give anyone an incentive.

If your father or grandfather worked for a manufacturer, his job became a career. It didn't matter if he ran a punch press or if he closed the deal on the Abrahm's tank, they were all part of the team. That kind of corporate structure started going away with free trade. We bitch about the foreigners building everything, but we love the price of the 50" flat screen at Costco.

So where does that lead? this is simply my opinion. A young person today needs to develop a skill that is theirs alone and start a business based on that skillset. It can be anything from Barbershop to Banking, but if it's your business and you've made it unique, people will want your involvement.

There is always a churning in American business. The new must come forth as the old withers. Bell Telephone was once so big it had to be taken apart by our anti-trust laws. Now, almost no one uses a land line. At the time, any snapshot would not have revealed this shift.

If I didn't have a burning idea of my own, I'd find someone who did. Those who hitched their wagon to Microsoft or Apple or Google or Ebay have done well, even if they haven't shared the fame.

In the first great depression many new companies were started, Channel and US Steel to name a couple. Others were made new by people of vision. Max Factor made several fortunes by offering "hope" to his clients as they searched for a more youthful appearance.

Economic turmoil has happened before, it just seems different now. We've seen pictures of the soup lines and people standing at the hiring office with a sign stating "no help wanted!" We don't see that today because the soup line is on your food stamp debit card, you just buy your stuff and go home. The resume process is mostly electronic, which begs the question "How do you make your resume stand out?" What we are aware of is the endless droning of the unemployment statistic, the participation rate, and so on. Harry Truman had a terrific answer to a reporter's question. When asked what he thought about the high rate of unemployment? Truman responded "It depends on whether you're working or not!" On the face of it, that is a great sound bite. But drill in and you find if you are working, you have a huge advantage. You have the ability to buy almost anything at the "on sale" price because business is not good in general.

I'm not going to blow smoke up your shorts, it tough and it sucks. If you're on the short end of this stick you have to find a way to change your position. Work and a unique "position" in the workplace/marketplace are your best options.

In the Carter years I had a barbershop. I was fortunate to have a location that was convenient to businessmen. Everyday was like going to school for me because I like people and I was curious about their success stories. When Chrysler Stock went to less than $3 a share, a lot of my clients were buying it. I didn't have enough cash to buy a pack of smokes. A few years later Chrysler stock was over $80 a share. What a difference a few thousand dollars would have made, but I just didn't have the cash. Fast Forward to recent years, what do you think I did when Ford stock went down to $1.91? My point is things like this happen over and over in the course of history and we have a choice. We can either pull over and sing a rousing chorus of "poor poor me" or we can use our mind to start to plan a way to change our position on the short end of life's stick.

The "upper class" have privileges that most folks don't ~ specialist lawyers in getting their wealth "exempted" via trust funds, foundations & philanthrophy. For more information, read "The Rockefeller File" by Gary Allen. Chapter 4 " Profit x Philanthropy = power". Rarely do they pay the total amount of taxes they COULD pay.

Call them what they are, socialist-democrats.

The fact that capital gains is 0% and income tax is so high creates a strange barrier that makes it really easy once you're in the upper class (and can lock in 0%) and makes it harder to get there as you increase your income out of middle class.

The restrictions on capital gains also mean that making income through the stock market will increase your wealth much faster than working independently, which is quite a strange thing to push people towards.

The 0% capital gains only sets in if your "income" is in the bottom bracket, which is why you see so many executives taking $1 salaries and getting compensation in special stock options that are eligible for capital gains.

This, in my mind, is the most directly obvious way middle class people are being pressured into staying in middle class.

yes, I need a dose of humility almost every ... year!? -- j

It is the intent of the liberal-progressive movement to establish a new aristocracy ruled by their own "self appointed" intellectual elite. Destruction of the middle class is essential to this goal.

+1 for you Jan

I'd rather the 1% come out ahead than the socialist/communist/totalitarian government the country is slipping into. The great majority of the 1% do not "hoard" their money. They invest it into more goods and services and jobs the rest of us want or need. They are apexes of wealth that fill voids of opportunity. Government sucks up more and more wealth, which is increasingly being used to feed its bloated and more powerful bureaucracy. The middle class is being crushed by government at all levels, not the so-called 1%.

I mentioned the 1% as "apexes of wealth". They are dynamic over time, growing and shrinking. Very few 18th century free market fortunes survived the 19th century and very few 19th century free market fortunes survived the 20th century. I expect few 20th century free market fortunes will survive the 21st century. Free market apexes of wealth only survive as long as they are useful and are intelligently administered. Not so for government wealth. Government can suck dry a source of wealth with the stroke of a bureaucrats pen. Happens all the time.

To respond to this post, I looked up the stats on small businesses (Forbes): 65% of the jobs in the US are in small businesses (defined as <500 employees! that's not small!) but more small businesses close each year than open. Non-employer businesses are increasing each year by about 2%.

So it looks as if the statement that the middle class is collapsing has a degree of accuracy. It also looks as if more people are 'shrugging' (non-employer businesses).

There is reason that more business are 'renting' employees: you get a chance to see if the person is worthwhile before you offer them a job; your burden is not as great because you do not have to offer them health coverage (now an increasing issue); if they work from home, there is less investment in brick-and-mortar.

That being said, my company has recently passed its 20th anniversary, and our employees have been with us for 5, 10, and sometimes 20 years.

Now onto the other side of the equation. I vent about a couple of brilliant young (! not so much any more) programmers we have. They have terrible work habits (getting better, though), big ed loans to pay off...but they do things like flying to the East Coast for a reunion with their buds when they are having trouble making ends meet. Somehow money is still 'magic' to them. (On the other hand, a self-made wealthy woman I know clips coupons and invests every cent she earns and still has enough money left over to enjoy a great life with many hobbies and options.) So I also think the argument that 'lifestyle habits' and the definition of how many TV/PC are included in a 'minimal home environment' has sway in many instances.

I find it more difficult to blame intelligent younger people for considering money magic when it is accurately become a fiction that is printed on whim. I also think that people are estranged from reality and this has led to the rise of modern liberalism (which is puzzlingly unrealistic). There are many threads to what is happening, and I do not like the pattern that these threads are weaving. I just hope that Atropos will spare the shears a while longer and give us a chance to work it out.

Jan

precisely my thought pattern -- you're a genius!!! -- j

Not collapsing from the top down. Collapsing from the bottom up.

The middle class had a chance until the welfare state took it away.

2 drivers have produced this, it appears to me:::
quantitative easing and the like, from our friends
at the fed plus in congress, and welfare programs,
to maintain the progressives' voting base. -- j

and I felt it, as a professional engineer, seeing
less and less distinction during my "career" --
starting with a private office and regular pay
increases ... and, 33 years later, a roommate
and stagnation. . I retired, or shrugged, or quit. -- j

The Middle Class is not collapsing. It has collapsed. What we have now, is the remnants of what was once the Middle Class. What will happen? The same thing that happens when you take the spine out of a vertebrate.

Your are not addressing my second point at all. Mobility is nice, but if the median is declining that is not impressive. It is the opposite of a rising tide lifts all ships.

Dependency is what the Democratic Party fosters in its ambition for one-party rule. (Psst! Acting like Communists).
When Nancy Pelosi said she viewed the overrunning of our southern border as "an opportunity," I thought that to be very telling.

Please stop with the class warfare meme. It doesn't belong in any intelligent conversation. Sorry, this reply was meant to go below the above comment.....Posted by Boborobdos 1 hour, 9 minutes ago
The transfer is in part going to China, but most of it is going to the 1%.

Good point

hey 5$. tariffs are not the answer. start with a significant reduction in the capital gains tax, protect our IP better. We give away our IP for free by publication. We do not demand a Worldwide patent system. companies go to the most economically free and property right protecting. We currently rank 12th in the world, I think that's generous. We are not upholding our Constitution and founding principles-that means we are steadily losing our competitive edge in the world. Companies want to be where there is such an edge.

" You _can_ get ahead in this country. "
[Sarcasm] You're saying America is a place where you can get ahead through hard work w/o a handout? Why you must be a troll. [/Sarcasm]

I agree with everything you're saying, except that by definition, when someone moves out of a wealth percentile someone else moves into it. So when you say people are moving out the top decile, someone else is moving into it.