to give us some sense of context, as I admit an old geezer like me is prone to do, then we find that the traumatic experience of the Great Depression, followed by the wrench of the Second World War, produced a popular consensus in the United States that required the sharing of material gains.

It wan't that legislation required it, but because it was part of the general culture of the generation, that when the company made money wages would improve.

Everyone had been through a time of confronting the possiblity of not surviving, and they never wanted to go through that again.

You don't pass a law that the head of the company gets only ten times the wage of the line worker; it comes out of a social contract shared by worker and management. Part of that social contract involved tolerating the existence of union representation, as part of the strength of America. Working people had representatives at the table.

But around about 1968 that expectation, the expectation that an increase in corporate earnings was something to be spread broadly among the employees, died out. I am of the opinion that it literatally died out, that the people who held the view retired and died.

The new elite, raised in the 50s and 60s and never having known any threat to their well-being, felt immune to any conceivalbe danger. They were much less willing to share the profits, and much less able to work with union representation (to put it politely).

There was a slight hiccup in the four years of Carter, but the trend resumed with Reagan and the Greed Decade.

Now the needs of the poor are off the table, and the working class is mentioned only in the phrase, "we can't have any class warfare."

We are all presumed to be rich, and to want less taxes. That is our right as native-born Amurrikuns.

As far as I can tell, the coming crash wll have the beneficial effect of bringing some reality into our national identity. We are not able to run the world, and we have to live and work together, all of us, of whatever background. At least so I hope in my moments of optimism.

Good go of it here, Ian. And, let's please keep in mind that the ways we measure economic sucess have changed. These aren't our father's statistics. To cut to the chase, even that Master of the Universe, Bill Gross (of Pimco Fame) opined in a October, 2004 missive, that the Goverment deliberatley understates Inflation by about 1% a year. Think about that over the long term. That's a massive loss of purchasing power! And, I still want to know why our Goverment dispensed with the "M-3" (broadest measure) money supply figure? Just how much money are they pumping into the Big Casino every year? Am I to suppose that we Americans are just soooo productive that it doesn't matter? I thought that if you had more mullah - without a commensurate increase in the supply of goods-that inflation would raise its loathsome head? (Hey Ian & Bondad, your future thoughts here are much appreciated).