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- #21
This should be pretty obvious, but no one talks about it. It goes like this:
Why does our money not go as far as it used to? Rising energy prices.
Holy fuck batman! What does the price of oil have to do with anything?
It costs more to ship the goods, which raises the prices of those goods, which makes people pay more, but does not necessarily make more money for the outlets since they don't raise their profit margins very much over time. Therefore the wages they pay don't keep up with the prices they have to charge and still be able to stay in business, which makes the wages not go as far as they used to.
Are corporations greedy? Hell yeah! And CEO's make way too much money, but blaming the rich for the disparity in wages and how far a dollar goes is way off base. Sounds great and too many people believe it, but it just isn't true. The imbalance is there, but not for the reasons everyone is positing them to be caused by.
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I have a better one for you. Who makes up the vast majority of the middle class? Does "baby boomers" ring a bell? They stopped buying, not because they don't have the money but because they don't need anything anymore. They are now downsizing from their homes to their cars to just about everything. For most of them, their kids are on their own and their job is done. They stopped being the driving force behind our economy, and there isn't a damn thing we can do to change that part of the equation.
Nope. According to google search on "Distribution of us population by age 2010" the age groups 15-29 are just as large, or larger than the 45-54 age group which is the largest boomer population age group. Young people buy the new gadgets and technology, games, etc, and typically don't save much money. So putting them to work with good wages will fire up the economy also.
NationMaster - American Population pyramids