Investment & Finance Thread (Labor Day week edition)

This morning looking in today's Real Clear MarketsGet I got a real kick out of this link that appeared :  Kick Off Labor Day Weekend With Some Depressing Charts - Quartz. 

 

What the Quartz guys were wetting their pants over was how employee pay % total Gross Domestic Income was falling.  Here's a plot of the numbers they stole from the American Tax Payer supported BEA.gov:

 

(Note: Freepers can't post Quartz articles because of an alleged copyright complaint)

 

 

 

 

Apparently what's really got them upset is that the evil capitalist is exploiting the American Worker and the share for evil corporate profits was climbing --here're the numbers the plagiarized from the BEA to 'prove' their point'.

OK, like everyone's probably guessed, they left out a lot. 

 

One thing is the fact that--

 

---total employee compensation per worker is at an all time high, even after adjusting for inflation.  

FWIW, the % plot at the top only showed wages and salaries, not total comp like this one does.  Over the years employees have been getting and ever increasing % of their pay as benefits --obamacare etc..

One other thing we ought to keep in mind while we ponder relative percents of the pie, namely the slice that the federal government's gobbling up. 

Looking at those numbers it seems that the good news is that it's been going down since the turn of Y2K, though lately we're seeing a rebound.  Let's hope the Nov. elections help there.

 

Almost forgot; the evil corporate profit %'s shown above that were used in the Quartz op-ed was based on profits before taxes.  The real world after tax profit numbers are much smaller...

 

This is the thread where folks swap ideas on savings and investment --here's a list of popular investing links that freepers have posted here and tomorrow morning we'll go on with our--

Open invitation continues always for idea-input for the thread, this being a joint effort works well.   Keywords: financial, WallStreet, stockmarket, economy.