How inflation is purposely underreported as a justification to maintain low interest rates: Two specific examples with housing and college tuition.
Inflation is largely misunderstood by the public at large. People for the most part think that inflation is the natural economic order and that prices go up naturally. Official inflation figures play a much bigger role influencing cost-of-living adjustments for things like Social Security but also serve as cover to maintain low interest rates. The […]
The Middle Class in America has just become a minority: For the first time in over 50 years low-income and high-income Americans outnumber the middle class.
It was only a matter of time but we can now officially say that the middle class in America has reached minority status designation. Recent figures show that there are more low-income and high-income Americans versus those in the middle class. Most of the growth has been fueled by the trend in adding low wage […]
The 20 small cities struggling the most in the U.S. based on economics, education, quality of life, and affordability: All of the cities are in California.
It is hard to quantify what makes a city great or bad. Simply having a higher income is not enough to separate an area from another city if the cost of living is outrageous. There have been attempts to use cost of living adjustments but the attempt to rank cities has been paltry. Most of […]
The dollar store expansion: Number of dollar stores in the US expected to exceed 30,000 in 2016.
Wal-Mart, the mega retailer has over 5,000 stores in the United States. We tend to think of Wal-Mart as the low price leader crushing prices to their rock bottom level by cutting costs at every corner. However, there is an even lower cost option and many working class Americans are turning to these stores. Dollar […]