Why don't the top 5% spend more and lift the economy?

Hmmm - so if the Trickle-down theory is not going to boost our economy when we need it, what is it for?

NAFTA? You mean globalization is bad? How come I only hear about it in good terms??

 

1. You mostly hear about NAFTA's "good side" from politicos... you know, facilitates the ability to buy cheap goods at Wal-Mart.

2. The bad side is the outsourcing of middle-class wage jobs.

America was an economic POWERHOUSE when we were making goods and selling them to the world... and our middle-class was growing.

Now our middle class is shrinking as we go into debt to consume cheap goods produced in low labor-cost countries.

So... is America the powerhouse it once was? Unfortunately, we're spending like we still are.

Even the Dalai Lama says, "You American fuckers* are crazy with your consumption".

* I embellished this a bit. He didn't exactly say "fuckers"... :>)

 

Trickle-down didn't trickle.

Respectfully, If you think globalisation is good, you don't understand it. Read the NAFTA treaty. I did. It's 6,192 pages with side agreements. And no, reading only the summaries, or someone else's opinion of the summaries, won't help.

 

Sounds like it's "supposed to", but really not much.

 

It worked just like it's supposed to, it trickled right down past the american middle class to the indians and chinese

 

Too bad that's not funny.

 

Indeed. Globalogne is such a joke on middle-class America. The sad part is that we buy into it to save a buck on an imported toy that costs just as much as domestic after having to replace it half a dozen times.

The rich don't care about the middle-class, they don't buy from WalMart anyway. They can buy whatever brand, from whatever nation, they want. Any false notions of euphoria about the wealthy looking out for the rest of us should be summarily dismissed.

 

The rich look out for themselves, just like everybody else. They just pay whatever is required to live in a relatively civilized society.

 

I agree, rational self interest is the primary driver here.

Trade is predicated on the law of comparative advantage and works great in many cases. However the average worker in the US no longer has a comparative advantage over a foreign worker and so trade now has all these bad side effects. Why economists can't seem to understand this simple fact is beyond me, and why they think we owe India a living is baffling as well.

Academics will tell you that our wages were 'artifically high'...

 

...with a small yet important difference, that they actually design the rules of the game in a "relatively civilized" society.