Henry Blodgett @ Business Insider:
In case you need more confirmation that the US economy is out of balance, here are three charts for you.
1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high.
Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have
before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering
from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't).
2) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. One reason corporations are so profitable is that they don't employ as many Americans as they used to.
3) Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low.
This is both cause and effect. One reason companies are so profitable
is that they're paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are other companies' revenue.
In short, our current system and philosophy is creating a country of a few million overlords and 300+ million serfs.
That's not what has made America a great country. It's also not what most people think America is supposed to be about.
So we might want to rethink that.
Meanwhile, if you want to know more about what's wrong with the economy, flip through these charts:
