Originally posted by MitchMan
Dow not necessarily a good measure as to how US businesses are doing on things that contribute to the GDP. Much of the record profits comes from
multinational companies that get over 45% of their revenues overseas, low costs capital due to low interest rates, lower costs of labor due to high
unemployment and weak to non-existant collective bargaining, existing corp tax breaks, availability of more and more tax exempt state and local bonds
as a holding place for the exess cash held on hand by business, continually growing worker productivity, and taxing cap gains and dividends and other
passive income at half the tax rates of the wage earner all lead to higher profits and profit retention.
Big profits do not necessarily mean a booming economy at home, nor does it indicate that Main Street is doing all that well.
To me, a meagerly growing GDP (or even a robustly growing GDP) taken together with high corporate profits does not mean a "good" economy if it doesn't
coincide with working class compensation and wealth growing at the same or at least similar pace as the creation of wealth and increase in incomes for
the economy as a whole. To me a good economy is one where the gains by the economy are reflected more in the growth of compensation and growth of
wealth for the working class in much better proportions than they have been, especially lately.
An economy where working class incomes are stagnant and working class wealth has stagnated or deteriorated and where the vast majority of the
increases in incomes and wealth are primarily at the top few percentiles, to me, is not a healthy economy, and that's what we have.
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It's not until March 25-31.