{"id":384498,"date":"2018-11-10T08:51:50","date_gmt":"2018-11-10T07:51:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-are-so-few-americans\/"},"modified":"2018-11-10T08:51:50","modified_gmt":"2018-11-10T07:51:50","slug":"why-are-so-few-americans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/why-are-so-few-americans\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Are So Few Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Our entire economy is characterized by cartel rentier skims, central-bank goosed asset bubbles and stagnating earned income for the bottom 90%.<\/i><\/p>\n

Despite the rah-rah about the \u201cownership society\u201d and the best economy ever, the sobering reality is very few Americans are able to get ahead,<\/b>\u00a0i.e. build real financial security via meaningful, secure assets which can be passed on to their children.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve often discussed here, only the top 10% of American households are getting ahead in both income and wealth<\/b>, and most of the gains of these 12 million households are concentrated in the top 1% (1.2 million households). (see wealth chart below).<\/p>\n

Why are so few Americans able to get ahead? there are three core reasons:<\/b><\/p>\n

1. Earnings (wages and salaries) have not kept up with the rising cost of living.<\/p>\n

2. The gains have flowed to capital, which is mostly owned by the top 10%, rather than to labor ((wages and salaries).
\n\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nGet a Job, Build a Rea…<\/a><\/span><\/span>
\nCharles Hugh Smith<\/span>
\nCheck Amazon for Pricing.<\/span><\/span>
\n<\/a><\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Our financialized economy incentivizes cartels and other rentier skims, i.e. structures that raise costs but don\u2019t provide any additional value for the additional costs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s instructive to compare today\u2019s household with households a few generations ago.<\/b>\u00a0As recently as the early 1970s, 45 years ago, it was still possible for a single fulltime-earner to support the household and buy a home, which in 1973 cost around $30,000 (median house price, as per the St. Louis FRED database).<\/p>\n

As recently as 20 years ago, in 1998, the median house price in the U.S. was about $150,000<\/b>\u2014 still within reach of many two-earner households, even those with average jobs.<\/p>\n

As the chart below shows, real median household income has only recently exceeded the 1998…<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our entire economy is characterized by cartel rentier skims, central-bank goosed asset bubbles and stagnating earned income for the bottom 90%. Despite the rah-rah about the \u201cownership society\u201d and the best economy ever, the sobering reality is very few Americans are able to get ahead,\u00a0i.e. build real financial security via meaningful, secure assets which can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-384498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}