Is there any point to working?
For Americans, it's just the time we waste while waiting to consume. As more and more of our jobs are taken over by machines – why are we still hung up on working?
There is the small problem of distributing the wealth but, once our bosses let go of the idea of needing us to show up just to get paycheck – I think we can get our economy back on track.
What we need in America is for our vast consuming class to go pro – to demand to be paid to shop. Retailers already pay for ads to get our attention so why not cut out the middle men and just get paid to go shopping? Imagine how full the malls would be if people stopped working by choice, rather than by circumstance.
The last Superman movie, "Man of Steel" had $160M worth of promotions tied to it. The movie only grossed $291M and, at $10 a ticket, that means about 30M people saw the film. Rather than paying Warner Brothers to make another retelling of the Superman story, why don't the advertisers just GIVE $5 to everyone who sees the movie? More people would see the movie, so the studio would be happy – and that $160M would be spent in the economy, giving everyone a boost.
We certainly need to do SOMETHING because, as you can see from the chart above, China's spending patterns are falling off dramatically. Surprisingly, the money their Central Bank is pumping into the bank accounts of the top 1% isn't trickling down to the bottom 99% and even the top 1% are starting to cut corners because – SHOCKINGLY – when they don't hire and pay workers, the workers stop buying their goods and services.
Who could have seen this coming? We thought, when you double the income of the top 1%, that they would be so thankful that they would run out give out raises to their employees and spend all that bonus money to boost the economy. That's what Uncle Ronnie told us would happen!
As I pointed out on the last Non-Farm Payroll Report (May 2nd), what few jobs we've been creating are TERRIBLE jobs, mostly food service and retail – ie. minimum wage jobs with little chance for advancement. Rather than accept these crappy jobs, many Americans are downsizing their lifestyles and opting out of the labor force and THAT, kids, is why we have a declining "official" unemployment rate:
You can fake all the charts you want but the reality is there's simply less money in the hands of consumers than there used to be and the only thing driving our economy at the moment is low interest rates on homes and autos that are allowing people to stretch what little they have to the max.
IN PROGRESS
This entry was posted on Friday, June 6th, 2014 at 7:42 am and is filed under Immediately available to public, Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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