The Bubble People

I was gonna blog about a great book I just finished, (maybe tomorrow), but instead, I was sipping some coffee looking over the Sunday NYT Business section this morning and came across some numbers that kind of knocked me off my chair.  I of course, can't really vouch for them, and I know the mischief that can be had by narrow-casting on certain numbers in certain years, but, just for the heck of it, I'm gonna assume that they are correct.

Supposedly between 1947 and 1973 (from Truman to Nixon) real hourly pay for non-government workers rose by about 40 percent.   Now get this...since then, from 1974 to 2008 real wages for workers have fallen by 5 percent!

Is is possible we've all been living in a fake bubble for all these post Nixon years?  A bubble of denial?  I mean our government lives on deficit spending, how many households live on deficit spending too?  How much is our wealth tied up in the bubble in real estate, the bubble in the stock market, the bubble in bubbles?  

How many of us are floating on Plastic and our crazy mixed up dreams of affluence?!

I've been out and about recently and I've marveled at how fat we've all become.  We are a flabby, bloated, massively huge people.  America must be one of the fattest nations ever to walk the planet.  Is it all empty calories? Have we all just become the BUBBLE PEOPLE?!  

We make less, consume more - defy gravity - now that's amazing!