False prosperity through debt – 4 out of 10 Americans have less than $500. The dangers of building a consumption based nation.
If most Americans had to choose between saving and spending, they would decide to join the spending team. Americans are so drawn to spending that they will even purchase items they cannot afford. Another recent survey found that 40 percent of Americans have less than $500 saved. This aligns with a survey we found last […]
Inflation by any other name – Rising rents have pushed up the CPI to highest monthly change in three years. Shifting the Fed bailouts onto the working class and poor.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) attempts to measure the change in price for a basket of American goods and services. I say attempts because measures like the “owner’s equivalent of rent†are simply an estimation as to what a home owner’s place would rent for. In the early 2000s with home prices surging, it missed […]
The math on US income – if you call something the middle make sure you are using math. The surprising details on median household income and per capita wages.
People have a hard time wrapping their minds around household and personal income.   It is an easy enough concept to understand but some throw around terminology that confuses the facts. For example $250,000 is not middle class income if we define it from a strictly mathematical model. The median household income in the US is […]
Economic duplicity with low wage capitalism – Nearly half of those that lost their job between 2009 and 2011 are working in a lower wage position. The hard financial reset button.
All jobs are not created equal. It is unfortunate that last month the drop in the unemployment rate was largely driven by hundreds of thousands of Americans simply dropping out of the labor force. Not exactly a way to build the middle class but to many it gives the false impression that things are getting […]