that there s not a lot of people in this country who have big stock portfolios. most people only 53% of americans had any stock holdings whatsoever. that s right. they re not seeing a lot of benefit right away from this. we also know that labor s share of national income, we split national income between people who have labor, that s workers, and people who have capital, that s the shareholders. labor share s been dropping pretty much since the government started keeping records back in 1940s. so you know, this is not necessarily good news right away, but hopefully it will translate into higher profits and more jobs down the road. doug, how does that work? how do regular folks get a piece of this action? they ve seen wall street, they ve seen investors do particularly well while we still struggle. we have seen a lot of job growth in the last more than 30 months, but ultimately, everything s not firing the same way markets are. yeah. i don t put a lot of stock, pun intended, i
a lot flatter. outfront tonight, daniel altman, economics professor at nyu and doug aiken, former director of the congressional budget office. gentlemen, thanks very much for being with us. daniel, let s start with you. that s the question i ve had all day from people. how is it in this economy that doesn t feel like it s really pushing, is really firing on all cylinders, that the dow has hit an all time high? well, the thing is that stock prices are based on expectations, because owning a share of stock gives you the right to a share of profits that come in the future for that company. so this is about expectations for the economy years down the road. now, it may take some time for that growth to arrive and the jobs to come with it. but we have other factors here, too, right? because we know, for example, that there s not a lot of people in this country who have big stock portfolios. most people only 53% of americans had any stock holdings whatsoever. that s right. they re n
economy better, the president slightly ahead of mitt romney. certainly most people are not blaming the president. i m looking at the numbers here for the direction the country is headed in. or is that too much of a leap? it s a little bit of a loop. that s what the presidential election will be determined by is the direction we re going. are we basically headed in the right direction? and the miscalculation by the republicans who are asking the question are you better off than you were four years ago is they think americans have no memory. and, actually, americans are smarter than they give them credit for. four years ago exactly, september of 2008, what was going on? people were losing half, two-thirds, of their stock portfolios. the economy was falling off the cliff. so are we better off than we were four years ago? absolutely. you know, it s an objective fact. the economy was cratering four
shrinking stock portfolios, and falling property values and look at this from a number of levels including the aarp. when you talk about the scale of the problem that tom brought up at first, the thing you have to understand, guys like me that have been obsessed with the national debt. since i came to washington in 1994. we ll talk debt, debt, debt. then on the other side you have others talking about the need to revive the economy, to grow the economy. how do you fix this? the problem is we have to two things going at the same time we have to fix. we ve had median wages declining since 1973. since 1973. this is a part of a 35-year slide. and it continues to collapse as factories become more productive. we don t lose jobs to china and india so much as we lose jobs to our own productivity. that s a realty of it happening at the same time we re strapped with massive debt. you re right, if we re going to turn this around and david let
net worth comes out every 3 years, by the way, greta. it s already 18 months old. yes, it is tie to the buying power of u.s. households, tied to their house and their stock portfolios, but both of those categories have picked up over the last 18 months and the survey only talks to 4500 households. it is a sliver of a fraction of 1% of allus households. and the other thing it is pointing out in the survey, if you are going to take it on face value, you can t solve income inequality through housing, that was a mistake in d.c., we have a service economy. we have a thriving service economy in health care, information technology and legal services, all of that. yes, we have the manufacture base. but we still are continuing out of d.c., we are careening in episodic ways to fix prior problems. greta: is part of the problem, if your net worth