[Mase]

Just chanting "free trade did it"TM is an oversimplification.

Maybe you should read my post again. Your knee jerk is impeding your ability to comprehend. I was responding to this comment:

Cheap imported consumer goods have not offset all inflation

To that comment I replied:

It's allowed Americans to keep more of their money. Maybe that's why about 60% of all American workers today are invested in the stock market while only 25% of them were invested in 1980.

Are you saying that cheaper imports have not allowed American consumers to keep more of their money? If so, you'd have to explain how lower prices cost us more. Have at it.

Do you think that low inflation has a positive or negative effect on purchasing power? Higher inflation erodes purchasing power. Cheaper consumer goods tempers inflation and allows consumers greater purchasing power. These things allow us to keep more of our money for other purposes like investing in education for our kids and retirement. Pretty basic, really.

[grey_whiskers]

Let's go a bit slower so we don't talk past each other--your post 318 accused me of being impeded in my ability to comprehend, due to my knee jerk.

And then, ironically, you committed what appeared to be pretty much the same thing, later in post 318.

Your original comment was:

It's allowed Americans to keep more of their money. Maybe that's why about 60% of all American workers today are invested in the stock market while only 25% of them were invested in 1980.

My reply to you was suggesting that the difference in the percentage of US workers, households, what have you, who have significant investments in the stock market, between (say) 1980 and today, is not necessarily due to the wonders of free trade increasing disposable income.

There have been a number of societal, legal, technical, and business-related changes during that time, all of which helped to encourage stock investments too.

Societal -- baby boomers grow up and look for ways to save for retirement.

Legal -- 401(k) laws passed.

Technical -- rise of the internet

Business-related -- rise of internet brokerages, megagrowth of Cisco, Dell, Microsoft which (at first) provided greater returns than 'traditional' blue-chip stocks, thus encouraging mass participation in the stock market.

Oh, one other point -- why did you happen to choose 1980 as the starting point?

That was at the end of the Carter Presidency and before the 1st Reagan - Volcker inspired recession, induced to help shock stagflation into going away. Not too many middle-class folks had money to invest; and the reason for that was the Carter economy, and NOT that the domestically-produced goods had so high a cost-basis that they were overpriced.

Cheers!