Jobs, jobs, jobs.
Mostly they are crappy jobs and last month (38,000), we didn't even create enough jobs for the kids who graduated high school in my county and I hear there are other counties in America who also graduated kids who need jobs. So, when you hear about 150,000 jobs a month being created – you'd better hope a lot of people died because we're creating new workers a LOT faster than that!
As you can see from this Pew Research Chart, you do NOT want your kids to grow up Middle Class, where their share of US Income has dropped 30% (62 to 43) over the past 44 years and even the Lower Class (ouch on that term!) had to give up 10% of their income share (10 to 9) in order to allow the Upper Class to grow their share of the pie from 29 to 49 (up 69%).
Fortunately, we have the DUMBEST middle and low class citizens on the planet Earth and, even though there are 90 of them for each 10 of their upper classmates – they don't just bend over and take it but they go to rallies to put a stop to the people who feel that the vast wealth of this country should be distributed more evenly.
Even the slaves allowed the masters to house, feed and clothe them and provide basic medical care but NO – keep your dirty Government handouts to yourself and don't let the Government get between the patient and the doctor, who won't treat the patient because they don't have health care. Perhaps that's why we also rank 11th out of 11 nations in overall quality of health care.
Not for the rich, of course. Our healthcare system is the finest in the World, for those who can afford it. Our Top 10% citizens live to be 89.9 on average while our poorest 10% average 79.2 and it's a pretty direct relationship up the ladder so, as it turns out, getting richer is better for you than jogging!
Meanwhile, you can't argue with these numbers (you can ignore them, but they are facts) – the Top 10% of this country are now taking 1/2 of the income leaving the bottom 90% to split up the other half – that's 5 shares for them and 1/2 share for you if you are foolish enough not to be one of them (and let's not kid ourselves, it's US if you are reading a stock market newsletter).
Conservatives like to argue that the pie is growing and there's more for everyone but that is absolutely BS because inflation-adjusted wages are DOWN across the board since the 70s for all but the Top 10% and, even within that group, the Top 5% is up and the other 5% barely up and, even within that group, the Top 1% leave the next 4% in the dust. Over the last 44 years, since Nixon took over, this country's policies have slanted towards doing everything possible to give every possible advantage to the richest Americans.
This cartoon is a good illustration – the Top 10% get 5 pieces of pie and then other 90% split 5 pieces of pie. That means the Top 10% can SAVE 4 pieces of pie and still have a whole piece for dinner while everyone else gets half a piece or less. That means, at the next meal, the Top 10% get 5 more pieces of pie and they save another 4 so 8 in the pie bank while everyone else is still hungry after eating their half piece of pie.
"Well, now," says the rich man, "If you would like a whole piece of pie, I have 8 in the pie vault and I will LEND it to you at 5% interest." 5% interest doesn't seem like much but, if you stretch it out over 30 years, like a home, you end up paying back 2 pies and the rich get even richer – and he still makes 10x more pies per day than you do AND now you're giving him 5% of your pies as interest!"
Once he accumulates 20 pies, he's making a whole pie a day interest and there's 90 of you who only get half pies and eventually most of you break down and now the rich guy is getting his usual 5 pies a day plus 4 pies a day in interest and you're all getting 5% less pie than before. That then increases your need for pie (birthday's, anniversaries, new babies) and eventually you borrow another pie and now 10% of your pie goes to the rich guy and he is getting 13 pies a day. Another generation and you are giving up 20% of your pie for treats long-ago digested and he's getting 17 pies a day.
And that's where we are folks. That's how the Top 10% gained 70% in income while the Middle 40% lost 30% over the past 44 years. Since we're so indoctrinated into all that American Dream BS that the Corporate Media (owned by the Top 1%, of course) rams down our throats, we can't even consider addressing the problem by telling the Top 10% they need to reverse the trend by paying more taxes until, let's say, the Middle 40% (upper middle, really) get 15% of their 30% loss back and the bottom 50% get their 1% back.
That would mean the Top 10% would have to give back 35% of their 70% gains but, as noted before, it's really the Top 1%, who have gained 200% since 1970, who could give up half of their gains and fix everything.
Instead we're actually considering electing a Top 0.01% candidate who wants to LOWER taxes for the super-rich and for wealthy Corporate Citizens as well. Where do you think that money will end up coming from?
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!
Anyway, back to the markets. We added 287,000 jobs in June and that's very impressive but 44,000 of them were Verizon workers returning from a strike. Unemployment, in fact, went UP 0.2% to 4.9% and hourly earnings FELL from 0.2% to 0.1% (monthly gain) so what's the point of hiring 287,000 people if we're going to pay 160M working people 1.2% less – that's like eliminating 2M jobs except, much like slaves, they simply decide to pay you less for the same amount of work.
So the Dow popped to our shorting line at 18,000 (/YM) and the S&P hit 2,110 (/ES) and the Nasdaq is 4,480 (/TF) and the Russell is 1,160 (/TF) with Nikkei (/NKD) back at 15,400. We did great with our S&P shorts yesterday (you're welcome) and today I like /ES and /TF best for shorts but only if the others are below their lines too!
Have a great weekend,
– Phil
