When half of our population trying to make it on 12 percent of the nation's payroll can no longer meet the interest payments, ... happy doomsday ...

October 30, 2007 (web only) | Give Us This Day Our Daily Debt | Nicholas von Hoffman

It was almost 100 years ago that Henry Ford startled the world by giving his workers a raise without being asked. He explained that if they didn't have money they could not buy Ford automobiles.

From then on, his self-evident bit of common sense was accepted decade after decade. But in recent years it got lost and forgotten. The big boys have stopped giving us little folks enough to buy the big boys' stuff.

Get this from the Wall Street Journal: "The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks. The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000."
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Should we reach the point where the half of our population trying to make it on 12 percent of the nation's payroll can no longer meet the interest payments, we shall have a crisis where all the choices are worse than awful. And a happy doomsday to you, too.