The 'income gap' is going to continue to widen no matter what is done due to the number of baby boomers retiring.
Not necessarily, and in any case that is not the reason why income gaps have widened over the past thirty years. The biggest single reasons are the loss of union representation among the work force, the flattening of the tax system, the deregulation of the financial industry, and the increase in health-care costs, and all of these come down to a common cause of corruption of the government by campaign financing.
If these were corrected, any unbalancing -- and I'm not at all sure there would be any -- from Boomer retirement would be more than offset.
This economy has been running on 'consumer credit' for the last 50 years. Try again.
No it hasn't. The mere existence of a nonzero amount of consumer credit does not equate to the economy "running" on it. Again, you need to stop thinking in binary and start thinking in scales.
In the decades following World War II, up through the mid-70s at least, wages were high on the average, and most purchases were made out of immediate income. Yes, people sometimes borrowed. If they bought a car, a house, or a major appliance, they generally took out a loan to do so. They might also have a credit card or two for convenience. But in the 1980s and more so in the 1990s and 2000s, the use of consumer credit increased to unsustainable levels.
One can of course blame people for irresponsible borrowing, and also blame banks for irresponsible lending, and both of these are true, but the fact remains that if that hadn't happen the economy would have crashed in 2000 or 2001, not in 2008. Or possibly even earlier and there would have been no dot-com boom.
There is an enormous quantitative difference, so great that it amounts to a qualitative one, between the consumer borrowing of the '90s and '00s compared to that of the 1960s, which would be 50 years ago.
And you would never admit that Union's are Corrupt? Of course not.
Campaign Financing is corrupt? The tip of the Iceberg.
You think Industry faces less regulation today? Bullshit.
Your premise is false. You go down hill from there.