Trump is GOP Nominee

I'll concede the last point if that's the argument.

I thought the complaint was the top quintile growth outpacing others.

 

Here's what he said

 

That's s stupid response. Relative income has no relation to buying power.

 

The top quintile should outpace others in a situation where low to middle skilled labor is less competitive because of emerging and educated middle class in other countries. In particular give the fact that the rich have a much higher percentage of their wealth in real estate and investments. I w heard our polices benefit the rich, but no one can give specific examples outside of the politicians "being in the pocket" of the rich.

 

I took very little of those gains to be speaking to the disparity in growth.

And I was wrong. That chart shows the top quintile annual growth rate is about 140% (between two to three times) more than the bottom four.

 

That's not what he said. Your neighbor being richer than you doesn't make you poorer anyway.

 

Seems to me you would want healthy growth across most of these quintiles. Growing your economy only to see most of it end up in bank accounts of the wealthiest - or spent on foreign items such as homes or property as the wealthiest are more likely to do - doesn't seem like efficient growth. It depends on reinvestment but if that were high then I think you would see the bottom quintiles growing but just lagging the highest.

 

Actually it can if your neighbors affect your local cost of living.

But beyond that point - see my post above.

I don't see why we can't look at his data and admit that wealth is not being built well across our economy (even as a percentage of existing wealth) and that we'd do well to encourage more mid-line growth.

 

Ideally you want equal growth, but that's just not going to happen until the middle class gets more internationally competitive. May never happen. What's the solution?

 

I admit it was not relevant, just threw it in there.

 

Very few areas are all rich people.

How do we encourage that?

 

It was on the graph A-Smith posted.

 

Lets start with what makes the middle class less competitive? Is it education, skills, work ethic?

I don't think it exactly fits here but I will take a second to complain about activist investors and the lack of a long-term investment these days. Inefficient decisions are being driven to maximize short term benefit but leaving a weakened base. This isn't a basic argument against the investment class. But rather a style of investing that doesn't really seem to create a better economy.

 

You have to encourage investment in busineeses for actual growth - not just a quick investment buck. We need that growth to be local and for that to happen it has to be differentiated markets. That takes training and education.

But all of this also depends on having a healthy base to build upon. Making sure that our most capable get every chance to succeed. Too many capable people never realize their worth.

 

This is complete horsecrap. You went from relative wealth to this and this says nothing to people moving up those silly rungs. All it says is that menial labor is still worth today what it was worth in 1967. Why on earth would it ever change? In fact, I'd argue that it should be going down because the labor pool is now international and logistics pricing is forcing the American low end laborer to fight with foreign labor.

Your chart doesn't say what you want it to. You wanted those 40% to have gained nothing, but that only applies to those who remained in that 40%. I'm telling you that if they stayed there, it's because they cannot move up. Why should policy somehow address those issues?

 

but that's not the larger investing market. Flippers and hedgers represent a tiny investment class. Most are longer term holders, particularly the mutual funds, which represent a huge proportion of the institutional investors.

 

Their wages aren't competive compared to people in other countries with similar skill sets. In other words, they are too rich.

What's your evidence that this style of investing is on the rise or a huge problem? The vast majority of people buy companies for the long term. And blowing up a company doesn't make an investment return. The multiples are too high. This isn't 1987

 

it's not going to be built at the lower end labor class. working your way out of that class is the solution to making the different rungs on that chart. Everyone isn't capable and they'll stagnate as that chart suggests. How is stagnation bad for those incapable of more? Policy isn't going to address that.

 

I'm all for training and education, but if you really want to encourage us growth you lower payroll and corporate taxes, but no one wants to hear that.

More lower class people are middle class and more middle class people are rich. I've already posted the chart that proves we have a lower percentage of poor than any time in American history. It's working, just not like people think it should.

 

and that's the bottom line, the cost of our middle class is exorbitant relative to the rest of the world. As that rest of the world gets access to our labor market, businesses get more for their money in hiring cheaper labor. The only real way to address it is to tax foreign labor or some other protectionist government policy. It will cost us all money and kick the can further down the road, but won't address that we're overpriced.