imbalance is really for the last 30 years most of the gains of the economy, gains of growth have gone to the top, particularly the top 1%. now, i m not a class warrior, but i am a class worrior. because if they all go to the top, the middle class doesn t have enough purchasing power to buy the goods and services that the economy is capable of producing. without going deeper and deeper into debt. and finally, that debt bubble bursts as it did, and now we are back to where we were before. unless something is done about the fact that the middle class is basically stranded, we re not going to ever be able to get out of this. you think the solution is to increase the marginal tax rate for the above earners to be taxed at 55% to 61% and that area to be taxed at 60%. people would say this is classic socialism, income redistribution. no, no this is spreading the wealth
02, to 07 we created an artifical debt bubble that pulled 15 years worth of home building into about five years, where did that get us? now, if you look at the way that, you know, we went with zero cost auto loans and et cetera, we pulled two years of car manufacturing and we re making 15 million cars a year and we can only absorb ten million. when you screw with the system, the system ultimately screws with you. stuart: jonas, brenda, tobin, i thought that was a pretty good saturday morning workout. thank you very much. all right, yeah. tobin, and jonas, i think you lost. that s another story, another time. we love him. stuart: i do, i do. forget the polls, they re coming back, everybody. forget the polls, tom delay says that republicans could lose the hopes of any majority if they don t do one thing. the former majority leader is here and he s had it with the president so now he s using his own cash to replace the president.
needs to downsize. well, i think that well, the pension system. i think that we have to do is look realistically and put public employees under something like most private corporations have gone to so i think that some of the promises that it s made under its pension system, ie, that you can have a defined benefit at the end of your work lifetime i think that would be one area. i think in terms of many of the higher education facilities, you know, higher education, there s a peter principle where every higher education wants to become the next level and become either a four-year college, university. sure. and privatize it, though? america s not been very good at saying no and we have ourselves into this thing and nor is europe and other places but i think right now the whole developed world is facing this debt bubble and having a trouble servicing let alone pay off and i inherited the world s largest
normal after a big debt bubble to have a slow economy during a period of deleveraging. the other problem is if you think back to what happened in 2008 when the financial markets went into free-fall on the back of the lehman brothers shock, that caused a really nasty hit to the global economy, because many businesses panicked and credit was squeezed. now the risk we re seeing right now is something similar, could potentially play out later this year. the good news is that actually, the direct exposure of most american financial institutions to the euro zone problem is not perhaps as high as it might have been. the interconnectivity is not as high as some people fear, perhaps, but the potential damage to confidence could really be yet another blow to an economy that s already pretty fragile. more worries and of course, we get the jobs report tomorrow. don t know whether that s going to be a good or bad one. that s still to be seen.