I love charts. They’re a blast to scan over, and while I know that data can be twisted any which way to prove whatever point anyone wants to prove, I still like to pretend that they are bastions of true facts and science. With that in mind?

What OWS is about + data behind the movement!
http://i.imgur.com/PIlt4.jpg

I like these charts because they highlight something that is verifiable, and desperately important to understand – real earning has been stagnant for most. Second incomes became nearly mandatory to cope with life; I do sometimes wonder if there is a degree of chicken/egg there, but then, I’m not about to get back in the kitchen to make anyone a pie.

Does Inequality Matter?
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/12/ows_and_inequality_how_expenditure_cascades_are_squeezing_the_american_middle_class_.single.html

There’s a lot of good commentary on this piece, some of which relates to/ties into those lovely charts. He goes on to say that part of the problem is that the frame of reference has shifted; the super-rich’s ability to afford x, y, and z bully the near-rich into thinking they have to have x and y, and those below them x as well. While I find this sort of keeping up with the Joneseses madness and refuse to play such insane games, I appreciate that most people think that if they DO manage to hock everything to have x and y, then perhaps someday they’ll be rich enough to afford z as well.

Which, finally, brings me to:

One of the 1% Explains Why Consumers Are The Real Job Creators
http://www.politicususa.com/en/consumers-job-creators

I like this, and yet, I don’t. I agree the power to spend our money should be in our hands and our hands alone. I agree that it is how we spend our money that creates jobs, that is, if advertising doesn’t bludgeon in new markets that we didn’t know we needed (and that they’re happy to tell us why we do). But as I’ve said before – it alarms me that it is somehow our job to spend the economy to health. This will never work as long as the super-rich are permitted/encouraged to take all our money and put it in a vault where it’s not doing anything good for the economy.

All in all, while aspiration can be a good thing, it is stretched completely out of shape in the modern West. Until our money is coming back into the economy instead of sitting in vaults, we shall continue to have these recession-esque problems. Until corporations step back and settle for being happy with a profit, rather than an insistence that the profit margin go up annually in some crazy dead-end race, the former isn’t likely to happen.

But that’s just my take on it – you’re just as welcome to your own. And otherwise, have a terrific Tuesday (har har).

<3