I always knew the Conference Board published a consumer confidence index monthly, but I just realized that they also publish sub-indices by income bucket.
Surprise! Surprise! Confidence for the highest income bucket (>$50k) is soaring and it tracks the inflation-adjusted performance of the stock market pretty well (which direction is the causation? not sure). Confidence for the lowest two buckets for people making less than $25k/yr (at least 30% of the population) is still below pre-recession lows.
The difference in confidence for these two groups (green line) is at all time highs. Its sad? funny? ironic? that the TARP bailout of the banksters marked the low in the inequality of confidence and termination of benefits for the long term unemployed this year pushed the measure to all time highs. This seems like bizzaro-world policy. Maybe it will mean-revert a little later this year as the loss of benefits forces those lazy slob unemployed people to get off the couch and go to work at one of the millions of high-paying jobs this economy offers.
At what point does our political class stop ignoring this? I am not even suggesting welfare handouts, just an honest discussion of proposals for addressing this. Job training, infrastructure investment, something. Sadly, with Citizen's United and the 2009-2011 redistricting we are probably past the point of no return on this. Road to Serfdom, indeed.
