Retail Purchases In U.S. Unexpectedly Decrease 0.5%

[earthside]

8. There is plenty of money.

Unfortunately, it is in all the wrong places.

Bank/Wall Street bailouts.
Millionaires and billionaires whose tax rates are so low that they have no incentive to reinvest.
A trillion dollars a year down a rat hole for mostly unnecessary federal national defense/security.

Until working/middle class Americans start valuing their own labor and get over this fantasy they they can be as rich as Rmoney someday, nothing is going to change.

This is a depression (that what it is when we've lost 40 percent of our wealth in the last five years) and we are not getting out of it with the same old fixes from the past -- this slump is systemic and it will take a foundational reform/revolution to make working people prosperous once again.

So, of course, retail spending is going down and unemployment is stuck at a real 20 percent ... because we won't get serious about improving our lot. Most Americans still want a magic solution that will require no altering of their lifestyle; they just cut back a bit here and there but still buy the SUV or have five dogs or get a their tenth new tattoo or do whatever they can to satisfy the demands of a popular culture created in the marketing departments of mega-transnational corporations.