Market Fest: Will be destroyed? A large majority of the middle class is already destroyed. A massive number of professionals in banking, finance, mortgage lending, construction, etc. have lost their jobs, probably for a long, long time if not forever. We'll have two classes: The majority that live off the government in one way or another, and the tax slaves. The so-called "rich" will leave for tax and safety havens. Would be entrepreneurs will go elsewhere where better opportunities lie. Seriously, would you open a business in the USA in this business environment? Say I had a plan for some new product. I locate in California. Work long hours, grow the business and eventually go public. I can look forward to forking over 60% of my sweat equity for starters. (39.5 % top marginal tax rate, almost 10% to the State of California, and almost 18% to Social Security and Medicare taxes). Then there are the US Corporate Taxes, the highest in the developed world. Then I'll have some bogus union at my door flouting their "card-check" union authorization. Why would I bother. I could move to Singapore and have the product made in Cambodia or Vietnam and pay reasonable corporate taxes and have access to adequate capital. Asia is the future. We're finished. Game over. We were going to have problems anyway, with the baby boomer tsunami coming and no economic preparation for it. But this financial melt down and now the coming European style socialism puts the final nail in the coffin. Obama is going to save 5 million jobs? Probably, but they're all government jobs, paid for by borrwoing money from Asia and future generations of American tax slaves. They produce nothing. Net/net they provide no help to the economy. It's just moving what money remains from one pocket to another. We had the greatest country in the world for 52 out of my 53 years on this planet. We had a good run. But we squandered it. And I don't put the onus on the Wall Street bogeyman. The root of all evil, economically speaking, started in Washington and is being perpetuated in Washington. Our governing class needs to lose THEIR retirement funds and THEIR healthcare and eventually THEIR heads, as a warning to future generations of politicians who seek to put their interests far above those that they purport to represent. Welcome to America, which is in the process of becoming France or Sweden, on our way to becoming the next Argentina. Just pray we don't become Zimbabwe. But with the way our government is printing money, who knows? All bets are off at this point.
AI
