Over the last 20 years or so, in certain countries, the rich have been getting substantially richer. As Figure 1 shows, the share of the top 1% of the population of income has grown substantially in countries such as the US, UK and Canada. The countries, which apparently tolerate income inequality, are what we call plutonomy countries – economies powered by a relatively small number of rich people. ...
We should worry less about what the average consumer – say the 50 percentile – is going to do, when that consumer is (we think) less relevant to the aggregate data than how the wealthy feel and what they are doing. This is simply a case of mathematics, not morality. ...
But how do we make money out of this? Well for starters, by worrying less about “the consumer” and spending more time segmenting the data. Secondly, we can worry less about the apparent profligacy of the so-called US consumer, or their cousins in the other plutonomy countries like the UK or Canada. Finally, we can identify stocks than benefit from the concept of the rich getting richer.
Fascinating stuff.
(via Michael Perelman)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please pick a handle or moniker for your comment. It's much easier to address someone by a name or pseudonym than simply "hey you". I have the option of requiring a "hard" identity, but I don't want to turn that on... yet.
With few exceptions, I will not respond or reply to anonymous comments, and I may delete them. I keep a copy of all comments; if you want the text of your comment to repost with something vaguely resembling an identity, email me.
No spam, pr0n, commercial advertising, insanity, lies, repetition or off-topic comments. Creationists, Global Warming deniers, anti-vaxers, Randians, and Libertarians are automatically presumed to be idiots; Christians and Muslims might get the benefit of the doubt, if I'm in a good mood.
See the Debate Flowchart for some basic rules.
Sourced factual corrections are always published and acknowledged.
I will respond or not respond to comments as the mood takes me. See my latest comment policy for details. I am not a pseudonomous-American: my real name is Larry.
Comments may be moderated from time to time. When I do moderate comments, anonymous comments are far more likely to be rejected.
I've already answered some typical comments.
I have jqMath enabled for the blog. If you have a dollar sign (\$) in your comment, put a \\ in front of it: \\\$, unless you want to include a formula in your comment.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.