>We've got
>3.5%-4% real GDP [gross domestic product] growth, and 15%-20% profit growth,
>almost 2% job growth, 9% to 10% retail sales growth.
Not really. GDP growth in this expansion has averaged 3.3%, the slowest of the 10 post-WW2 expansions, and just 2/3 of the 1945-1990 expansion average (and 72% if you include the 1990s expansion). Employment growth has averaged just 0.6% a year, compared with an average of 3.3%. Even the latest year-to-year reading, 1.6%, is just half the average. Retail excluding autos is 9.6% (he got one right), but including autos is 6.5%.
>annual real labor compensation saw
>6% growth in the last year
A measure that includes health care premiums and upper-bracket salaries. The average hourly wage is up 2.6% year-to-year, or down 1.1% in real terms.
>There's been record high household net worth,
>with or without a house.
I can't believe how many times I see this bogus assertion. Wealth is so upwardly skewed that the "average" household produced by dividing the aggregate numbers by the population actually corresponds to someone around the 95th percentile of the wealth distribution. Different people own assets and owe debts. In fact, debtors generally owe their money to the people at the top.
Doug