If the gap is getting bigger what does that say about opportunity or lack of and how useless is that info?
It doesn't say anything specific about opportunity. It just says the gap is big. It doesn't say that poor people are being made poorer. Or rich people being made richer for that matter. But high:low income data collection standards aren't universally agreed. Plus I will bet there is no way income data was collected in exactly the same way every year for 50 years.
If the gap is getting bigger and more money is being concentrated into fewer hands. I’d wager that the opportunities are getting slimmer and harder to come by. Taking the golden age of America as an example from like the 50-70s you can see the difference. The opportunity for one person to become rich is always there , but as a country it’s getting tight. Back then one man could take care of his family on a blue collar salary. A CEO made x more than their employees now they make x - 400 times more . Keep in mind we may differ in our meaning of OPPORTUNITY.
What does it matter what the CEO makes? The only people who have a stake in his / her salary are the owners of the company. They can vote CEO pay lower if they want to but why should they when it doesn't affect staff recruitment / retention and it doesn't make for more profits. Its the owners who take the financial hit - without high CEO pay, they would get a higher dividend. So what are you saying - you feel sorry for the shareholders?
No I’m saying the gap is getting bigger and that was one example. Sometimes made possible by punishing savers to inflate a stock price. Not that they worked harder, smarter or anything. Peace have a beautiful day my man.
I read that, by American standards, 40% of Swedes live in poverty. The source was a Swedish think tank.
The avg American doesn’t own stock. You just pointed at yet another great example how the gap is made wider. By artificially propping the market up to save the wealthy’s wealth and keeping rates artificially low to punish the savers who save the majority of the little money they have in a savings account. Cmon man your going to take this convo round in circles. Take care
The majority save little or nothing, so it just doesn't matter to them if rates are high or low because that won't make them either rich or poor. 2% of zero is the same as 20% of zero so whats the point. But a strong stock market reflects investment opportunity for US and foreign money that could be otherwise kept pretty idle or invested in other regions. That all means more employment, which means demands for labour which means higher pay and better employment packages - and that's for the majority of employees who are not CEO's by any means.
Perhaps the point is to close the gap. Which would be beneficial to all of us. The same argument can be made what’s the point of high employment when you have to work 4 jobs . 4 jobs of shitty pay is the same as zero jobs that are high paying lol.