The business of business is business.

Same as it ever was.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Very true. A company's mission is not to produce product or provide jobs, it is to make money for the owners.

Okay, I read this several times and still can't make sense of it. How does a Company not actually produce anything but still make money for themselves?

Oh,Wait! My bad. I heard there is company in D.C. consisting of 535 owners that do nothing and still manage to get richer every day.

While that is somewhat true the driving forces of inflation is the increase in the money supply due to debt decreasing the value of the money already in existence. Nation debt is created by the government and the elections of those in office is financed by those at the top NOT those at the bottom.

While I am not a redistribute the wealth fan the INCREASED flow of wealth to the top has got to stop.

Currently the top 1% have 31% of wealth and the bottom 50% just 3%, those between 90-99% own another 36% and those between 50-90 have 31%

30 years ago the top 1% had 23% those between 50-90% had 36% and the bottom 50% had 4%

In the 1960s the top 1% had about 15% of all wealth and the rest was also far more equally distributed.

Who do you think finances those 10 million per candidate campaigns for congressional seats, those with the 3% or those with the 31%?

Yes house hold income is up, but actual purchasing power after inflation AND THE INCREASED TAXES due to higher tax rates on INFLATED wages, is not


You can not have a healthy country when half the country is getting poorer and poorer while the top 1% get richer. History proves that "Let them eat cake" never works out well. Telling the public to eat more cereal isn't any better.

The problem with your observation is that the top 1% also create wealth. That 1% contributes about 25% of taxes collected and are responsible for creating most of the jobs in our free enterprise economy. The reason that more and more people are, or at least seem, to be getting poorer is that more of them have left the workforce and become dependent on the government for their well being. This is being done by design to keep a certain segment of politics in control. Government programs have become the new slavery. The other thing is that 100 years ago, when most of the wealth was actually held by that 1%, your theory might have had more traction but now most of that 1% wealth, or at least the wealth generated by that segment is in the hands of a wider group of the population. Think 401k's and the fact that most of the wealth in the US is publicly held. The whole 1% argument comes right out of The Communist Manifesto but in historical context, really hasn't held up very well in practice. These day it generally gets thrown around to whip the working class into a frenzy to get them to go along with a certain political agenda. A lot of my union friends like to throw that 1% argument around but what it usually comes down to is that they didn't have the foresight or discipline to take advantage of the investment opportunities that came from that 1%.

People are also being far stupider with their money than they were in years past, especially those who are income challenged. If you can't afford to fix your car, maybe the latest iPhone should wait.

Yep, too much FOMO for their income is a common disease. Too many think it's a smart idea to buy a $55k truck on a 84 month loan when they make $45k. Good luck telling them to buy used, or get a better family vehicle like a crossover SUV or minivan. If you're lucky you'll only get the stink eye.

I have zero sympathy for somebody being interviewed about the cost of feeding their kids when school is out when in the background is a 75" TV and three rottweilers jumping around the room.

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Release the Kraken

While that explains some of them it does not explain the majority of the 160 million in the lower 50% or truck sales would be through the roof. IF the the top 1% are providing the jobs they certainly have not provide enough that are not minimum wage. You need to be making about 40K to get out of the bottom 50% that's about $20 an hour.

Some one explain to me how you pay rent, own a car.pay insurance on it and feed yourself on $20 an hour after taxes,medical insurance. deductions.

In the poorest state in the nation, Mississippi it takes $46,000 to make a "living wage"

The top 1% off WAGE earners take home 21% of all wages. I doubt many of us here made it. You need to knock down $820,000 in WAGES not investments to make it. Thats around $400 an hour on a 40 hour week. I just finished a job working for $75 an hour and for each 84 hour weeks I made $7,650 pre tax. IF I could do it 52 weeks a year I wouldn't make 1/2 off what the top 1% of wage earners make

Everyone gets $500 an hour, that solves everything.

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Sure you did

That's because all the good jobs in the manufacturing sector have been sent overseas. Why? Companies want higher profit margins and people want cheaper goods.

I sell large appliances (sad but someone has to do it). Everyday, listen to people whine about how their new appliances don't last and how expensive everything is. I've taken to pulling out ads from the 80s and showing them that appliances aren't that expensive today and that's why they don't last. A side-by-side refrigerator with water and ice dispenser was about $1,300 ($3,800 in 2024 dollars) in the mid 80s. Today, one is about $1,500. What had to give to keep the price that low?

Oddly these same people who complain about the price of appliances are willing to spend $1,000 on a new phone or a Luis Vuitton purse.

If Ford could make more money by selling its factories than by making and selling cars, it would shutter its factories tomorrow. The mission of Ford is not to make cars, it is to make money. Cars are just a way to make money.

I hear buy American all the time. Tell you what show me the made in America stuff. No TVs, computers or phones, very very few clothes or even the cloth for clothes are made here, Same with shoes, it is highly doubtful that even the Golden sneakers that recently went on sale are not Made in America. Cars? Your Ford probably has a motor Made in Mexico or Canada with more parts from Japan, Korea and China. Your Chevy is no better, more like assembled in America. A Toyota is more American made than a Ford.

The biggest "Industries" in America. Notice how most of them produce nothing you can actually touch. Well you can touch pharmaceuticals.
1.Commercial Banking in the US $1.359.7 Billion
2.Hospitals in the US $1.331.8 Billion
3. Drug, Cosmetic & Toiletry Wholesaling in the US $1.331.6 Billion(lots of imports products)
4. Health & Medical Insurance in the US $1.328.4 Billion
5. Pharmaceuticals Wholesaling in the US $1.296.9 Billion (more import products)
6. New Car Dealers in the US $1.229.0 Billion (again imports)
7.Life Insurance & Annuities in the US $1.063.6 Billion
8. Public Schools in the US $982.5B
9. Gasoline & Petroleum Wholesaling in the US $948.1 Billion
10.Retirement & Pension Plans in the US $937.4 Billion

When you take into account most of the new cars were not actually made in America, and neither were the wholesaled drugs and cosmetics, the only thing on the top 10 list actual made in America is #9 gasoline and petroleum products and part of their input was imported crude oil you get the problem. NONE of the rest of the stuff listed has anything solid. Medicine is actually just maintenance of an existing product (us). Insurance is just you betting against yourself and nature. A bank loan just increases the amount of money in circulation and reduces the value of that already circulating and there is a good chance it is either financing the importation or sale of a import product.

Who do you think most of the top 1% work for or are invested in???

Who do you think is financing the vast majority of political campaigns??

Tariffs??? LMAO Those are now just a another tax on the American people. A tariff on an imported piece of steel, car part, tire, TV, computer or any other widget is simply added to the retail price and paid for by the American consumer. They have not forced a single company to make or increase production of anything. Nor have they added any actual jobs except maybe government tariff collectors, tariff lawyers or the like.

To Make America Great Again, we actually have to start making ACTUAL PRODUCTS with real and lasting value.

I used to know a guy who was really big on the "global economy" idea. He thought that out sourcing manufacturing was really good for business. That was until his son graduated with a degree in "manufacturing engineering." After that I started hearing moaning and wailing about how there was no manufacturing here.

PS if you think S&W has a quality control problem I want you to take a long had look at the production of our 8th largest industry. While they do produce some outstanding products they also produce some units that make the worst S&W that came out of the factory look like a registered magnum.

There's a lot more at play. Off shoring a lot of the domestic manufacturing jobs post NAFTA is perhaps the biggest problem but even that has more to it. Decline in the working demographic has a lot to do with it. In the US we have the biggest generation in our history ageing out of the work force. The generation following it is the smallest in our history. There just isn't enough people to do the work. The education system has a lot to do with it. We put a big value on a 3/4 of a million dollar education that produces individuals who have degrees in "Woman's Studies" while we can't get people to go to school to learn how to run an MRI machine. It's easy to look at it as a top down problem caused by "corporate greed". I grew up in a union house so everyone was griping about the 1% thing. Mostly it turned out that whole concept is a red herring propagated by union leaders who were about to price their membership out of the labor market and politicians trying to curry favor with the working man. (The politicians were also taking campaign money from the same 1%ers they were complaining about.) The "living wage" catch phrase gets a lot of mileage also. Where I live the minimum wage is $15 bucks but they can't find anyone to work so the person giving me my coffee in the morning is getting $20 an hour. That's great but what do you think that has done to the price of coffee? Back when people were more responsible for themselves and not buying into the whole socialistic concept of tax the rich, feed the poor, getting that "living wage" was about working hard, educating yourself and learning a skill that was worthy of a good wage. It wasn't about demanding that those 1%ers throw the workers a crumb or depending on the collective to pick up your slack. The evil corporate elite story has a nice popular Robin Hood appeal but in practice the health of the working man is directly related to the health of their employer.

Three different websites, three different results. Who/what?

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Sure you did

The 4th biggest "industry" has a lot to answer for. Late wife#1 was a medical biller, and frequently ran into fake issues with the insurance providers. One evening after she explained what she did and what goes on in the health insurance "industry", I pointed out that we, the patient, were paying for all these bodies as overhead. My wife agreed. She went on to say that single payer would shrink and speed up the system greatly and our premiums would go down. I pointed out that she would be out of a job, along with a whole slew of people. She agreed.

Somebody in the group who worked in health insurance asked, "But what would all those unemployed insurance workers do?"

In my usual "toss in a grenade" manner I suggested, "Something useful."

I got the stink eye from a number of people and was curtly told that I "didn't understand."

As is so often the case, I suspect it was because I understood their house of cards all too well.

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Release the Kraken