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crash9 · #14 05-26-2004, 02:15 PM

This kind of thing is so interesting to me, and so much of the way data is presented is slanted to affect a desired result. A lot of what I sense can not be shown in any reportable numbers. I’m beginning to chart the difference between average and median economic numbers, but I still can’t show what I think is happening. Maybe it’s just my street kid, simplistic view of things, but it appears that the economy is being carried more and more on the backs of fewer and fewer people with larger and larger incomes. When it comes to the truly upper income people you’ll find they don’t really need, or feel the need to buy much of anything. They have what they have by knowing how not to spend, or to spend in a way that they are actually buying assets that tend to appreciate. So if I’m right, the time comes when consumers that the economy depends on sit back and wait for a depreciation in assets, before they come into the market. How many things are advertised or promoted to the masses anymore. Except for Wal-Mart; companies break even or have very low margins in the low end, where traditionally the money was to be made. They’re making the money off of promoting goods that are only affordable to higher income people and more and more they need to finance their purchases. When upper income people over extend themselves it seems a bigger problem than if the lower end, which’s always stressed, goes bust. As long as we have a controllable level of inflation and a steady supply of new participants it seems to work well, but I’m wondering what happens when this huge demographic retires. Since we’ve had, from the end of WWII, the bonding capacity for the entire world inflation here has always been controllable, but China and the developing world are beginning to pick up the slack at the lower end of consumption, which may bump us from the catbird seat. I have no idea where we’re headed, but I sure do like to watch. Find a way to remove real debt, what you couldn’t pay off any time you wanted too, from you life, or you might get caught in a little squeeze.