but now the core principle of the modern conservative movement.

So what WOULD you consider a turnaround? You can't simply stamp your feet and scream that the sky is falling, forever.

The numbers are per capita. Well, guess who's spending that money?

See, the Casey Mulligan was only half right: the past year wasn't really a disaster...for the rich/super rich. Sure, you've got your Stephen Baldwins and Nicholas Cages; you've got your Annie Leibovitz, and even that lady who makes $300k who's living paycheck to paycheck, "barely" making ends meet. But guess what? Even after all the high flying Lehman employees got laid off, they still have a lot of money.

The collective net worth of the Forbes 400 may have declined by $300 billion, but they are still worth $1.27 trillion!! The income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90% has actually grown during the Great Recession. The point is that with increased income, the rich will continue to spend. Sure, Nicholas Cage won't be building any more castles on private islands, but you don't see Lindsey Lohan stop her spending habits even when she has no income.

As long as the rich keeps getting richer, per capita spending will always keep increasing. The data needs to be broken down into consumption by the rich vs. consumption by the rest of us. That should show how the economic crisis has really affected Main Street.

Everything is great. I pass this strip mall, the grocery chain is still there but the little Greek restaurant isn't.

Walmart is still there but the bicycle shop isn't. Our prosperity was funded by debt and finally crashed. Please lower my taxes so I can open a bicycle shop or a Greek restaurant. Lowering taxes won't do it. Krugman is right. Obama's failure to this point is not too much stimulus, it is not enough stimulus. The money is still there it is just concentrated more at the upper end. Trickle down is an illusion.

when I have feelings in my bones, anecdotal observations, and blind faith to reassure me!

Most of the columnists here were REALLY REALLY counting on this recession being the BIG ONE, the one that finally put an end to that inconvenient American experiment with free markets and free trade and economic liberty. It will take a while for them to get over their disappointment, regroup, and come back to the table, shouting "It looks like prosperity, but, trust us, without regulation and taxation, it is all just an illusion! You'll be sorry!"

Look to your right folks, and read the Greenspan blurb, "Stock Market Rally is Re-liquifying the economy." The pipeline from the US Treasury to Wall Street, eventually 'trickles' down to you, on Main Street. Don't you all feel wealthier now, that your 401K statements are out of intensive care? Maybe you can take out a Refi loan and go to dinner? And of course when consumer demand returns, goods and services will add capacity. Can you hear them popping corks in Bejing? American workers, be patient, when the dollar finds a level which makes your job competitive, you can live in abject poverty like the rest of them. Okay forget manufacturing, but perhaps a domestic at a Holiday Inn.

I can't believe these people parrot this same old crap, while the standard of living in this country is disappearing. To lard the supreme irony on top of it all, Conservative economists repeat the 'trickle down' crap, and the tenant of supply side economics, even while the demand model is what drives this economy. How do we improve demand, we give taxpayer bailouts to the corporate goons on the supply side, and we hope some of it gets back to us, statistically, at least, so they can raise prices.

...as to this cheerleading, I want to see what this conservative yutz - and the RNC propagandist Zorkna - says when we have a Hard Candy Christmas.

The retailers are preparing all the Black Friday ads they can, but the fish ain't gonna bite. You can't load up with crappy $29 DVD players from China when that $29 has to buy food for you and your family all week.

And here's a thought that goes beyond pure, cold, incomprehensible economics. How many businesses do you see putting up holiday decorations of any kind? You see those decorations inside malls and stores, where they want you to buy. But practically no businesses want to share those festive feelings with the public outside, with the world at large. To make it pointed, with the people they laid off and who are too poor to shop with them.

The spirit of Scrooge and Mr. Potter are alive and well in your town, not just in their political and financial attitudes, but in the souls of the business class. Is it any wonder that this will be the darkest Christmas we've experienced in several decades?

You might want to think a little bit about concentration of wealth. In particular:

1) What "natural" limits exist on the process (IE, when will it stop by itself without any intervention).

2) What kind of situation will exist in the end state?

Apparently, even with the government interventions in the form of bailouts for the wealthy, the recession does seem to have reversed the trend toward wealth concentration:

"The top 1%'s share appears to be falling fast. Mr. Saez and other economists expect income going to the top 1% of taxpayers -- currently, those with about $400,000 a year -- will drop to somewhere between 15% and 19% of all income by 2010. That still would leave income distribution more top-heavy in the U.S. than in many other countries.

One early indication: Median chief-executive pay at companies in the S&P 500 fell 15% in 2008 (to $7.3 million), according to University of Southern California pay expert Kevin Murphy.

"Based on past experience, it looks like inequality will go down and change the long-term trend of America becoming a less egalitarian society," says Ariell Reshef, a University of Virginia economist and another student of the equality issue.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125254156520197777.html

Without government wealth transfers via the tax code or direct "bailouts", there is no reason to think that the concentration process is irreversible. Historically, when governments remove barriers to wealth creation or retention, an expansion of the middle class is the result.