great post and here comes one great repost for those who still dont get it:
"Look at all the data you want: in the end you will find that while corporate earnings rose as much as 40% per year, wage increases for working Americans came to a pittance (see chart below, click to enlarge). Businesses "did not share" and this is a monumental mistake that corporate America is going to regret for decades to come.
This is not a morality issue, either. It's not about ethically "bad" corporations vs. "good" workers - though I bet that's how it will ultimately play out when the political pendulum swings to populism. Instead, it's all about competence: if top managers don't have the common sense to pay workers enough to comfortably afford their own goods and services a la Henry Ford, then they are immensely incompetent businessmen, plain and simple. If they face dumping from abroad, then they should be screaming bloody murder to Washington, instead of sending campaign contributions.
Furthermore, making up lost earned income in the form of increased asset wealth is a fool's errand: financial asset ownership is highly concentrated to the top 5-10% of the population and real estate, though more evenly distributed, is not liquid enough to substitute for income. In fact, borrowing against housing "wealth" while incomes stagnated was the proximate cause for the current mess.
Washington needs to wake up. This is not their daddy's ho-hum recession but a virulent grand-daddy come to visit from the late-19th century. The trifecta of high debt-low income, zero saving and asset deflation cannot be overcome with low interest rates and pocket change. The credit crunch shows us that borrowing is part of the problem, not the solution, and panicky tax rebate proposals are proof that it is income that is lacking, not lower taxes.
from:
http://suddendebt.blogspot.com/2008/...-to-water.html
Simply companies are profitable then ever, largely due globalization, but when they dont share it, who is going to buy their products?