Most people I know are doing well. Credit card and personal finance companies are doing well too. Americans are in debt up to their eyeballs. Personal savings are at an all time low. Americans do have a lot of equity built up in their homes and that's good. Hopefully the housing market won't take a dive anytime soon. All in all, its definitely hasn't been an easy transformation from a mostly industrialized nation to a computer, information, entertainment based society. Pop culture rules. Google, Yahoo and MS are the big stuff today. GMC, Ford and Chrysler are history.
"All in all, its definitely hasn't been an easy transformation from a mostly industrialized nation to a computer, information, entertainment based society. Pop culture rules. Google, Yahoo and MS are the big stuff today. GMC, Ford and Chrysler are history."
True. But notice the economy has successfully transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service and tech sector economy. Despite these seismic economic shifts, the economy has continued to thrive interrupted only by 2 short and shallow recessions in the last 2 decades. High debt and low savings rates haven't seemed to mitigate that much. Like you say, some of the saving grace are people benefitting from home equity.
Reagan Man, this economy is great for people who live off of returns on investment and equity. Lousy for people who live off of paychecks.
"Personal saving is only one part of national saving. The personal saving rate does not include corporate saving in the form of retained earnings; but corporate saving adds to the wealth of corporate shareholders and supplies funds for investment."
So in other words we are seeing a massive transfer of wealth from people who live off of paychecks to people who benefit from cheap labor.