Biggest welfare queen on the planet?

[Armistead]

Originally Posted by Stealhead

I disagree entirely of course economics have changed over the years that fact is largely irrelevant.Because economies are constantly changing.

Surely you jest when you say that the wealth on the fat cat level was ever shared equally.There has always been an elite class of uber rich and a much larger class of poor the middle class is the one that is the most short lived it was only a sizable class for a few generations from around the end of WWII up.

The real killer was the increased focus on pleasing the share holder by maximizing profit no matter the effect on employees.Pensions only became common place during WWII they where used as an insensitive to satisfy workers because the government enacted wage freezes during the war in other words they made up for pay increases which where not permitted thanks to the wage freezes.As far back as the mid 1960's companies began reducing or stopped offering pensions.That in and of itself did not kill the American manufacturing sector it was the focus on ever increasing profits.

I basically agree with you, but I never said wealth was equally shared, I said it was more spread out. If you look at studies, just back to the 70's about 50% of Americans held 80% of real wealth, today about 20% hold all real wealth, in about 20 years, about 10% will hold 80% of all real wealth in America. We will become a two class society unless we adopt a complete new economic model that recreates a middle class.

The county that I live in was once a large manufacturing county, great wages, benefits, pensions. In the last 20 years we went from having 62 large mills to now we have two and a few smaller ones. Now it's a poor town of sorts, 40% of kids get free school lunch. Not to mention we have numerous sq miles of large plants just rotting away, several converted to low income apartments.

Economics do change, but they're not changing to the benefit of Americans because we had no plan for a global economy. American wages continue to decrease, even as profits rise for corporations, but that can only last so long. Any idiot can see our economy is gonna implode again, nothing has been fixed.