Speaking as a capitalist and a believer in the traditional American dream, I find these trends troubling and counter to what the country used to offer. There is nothing wrong with making plenty of money, but we used to be a country that offered opportunity, balance and fairness but those ideas seem so distant and old fashioned today.

What exactly do you mean by "want to share"?

The way that the system is set up, if they want to buy anything at all, they HAVE to "share". The only way you can not share is to stuff money into your mattress -- and there you aren't earning any interest on it. But if you put it into your bank account where it's earning interest, the bank is using it as a means of extending capital to others, which allows them to buy a home and expand their business.

The Trickle Down theory is that, by giving tax breaks and other incentives to business, they will re-invest that money into their businesses, hiring more people and paying higher wages. The higher wages will then allow more people to purchase the goods, completing the circle.

That's not happening - as evident that while corporate profits and CEO pay keeps growing, salaries have been stagnant.

The question is, "Where?"

If you think salaries are stagnant, you haven't been to Ireland, India, China, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, or anywhere else where American companies have gone on factory-building, worker-hiring, and salary-increasing binges.

And what this has done is created entire new markets for US goods, information, and intellectual creations.

What we Americans need to realize is that we are an aberration of epic proportions in the world economy; because we, by and large, have had stable government for well over 200 years, have been relatively unsullied by war, and were able to maintain wartime-level production capacity after the war had completed because everyone else needed our goods, we have a way-out-of-whack standard of living and wages compared to everyone else.

Trickle-down is working, and working quite nicely; it's just that not all of it is taking place in the United States.

So, your answer is that salaries aren't as bad as communist China. That seems reasonable.

(shrug) You have a choice, Henry.

Choice one is to seal yourself behind borders that raise the cost of goods produced overseas to the point at which it makes up for the higher cost of American labor.

Choice two is to accept a short-term stall in income growth for the possibility of opening even larger markets for the goods and services you provide.