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> The perception of the economy being bad is really pervasive

Because the economy is bad, and this is a "drank the Silicon kool-aid" article.

In the most recent tax filing season data available, there were tax returns of:

                                        Top 1%       Top 5%      Top 10%       Top 25%       Top 50%   Bottom 50%  All Taxpayers
  Number of Returns                  1,535,899    7,679,495   15,358,991    38,397,477    76,794,954   76,794,954    153,589,908
  Average Income Taxes Paid           $653,730     $187,468     $108,251       $50,963       $27,891         $667        $14,279 
  Adjusted Gross Income (Millions)  $3,872,395   $6,182,180   $7,745,525   $10,613,602   $13,191,209   $1,531,038    $14,722,247
If we then break those into the actual groups, and numbers per group, then we find their Average Per Capita Income

                                             1            5           10           25           50          100
  Number of Returns                  1,535,899    6,143,596    7,679,496   23,038,486   38,397,477   76,794,954
  Income Taxes Paid (Millions)      $1,004,063     $435,594     $222,966     $294,234     $185,068      $51,225 
  Adjusted Gross Income (Millions)  $3,872,395   $2,309,785   $1,563,345   $2,868,077   $2,577,607   $1,531,038 
  Average Tax Rate                       25.9%        18.9%        14.3%        10.3%         7.2%         3.3%
  Average Per Capita Income      $2,521,256.28  $375,966.29  $203,573.91  $124,490.69   $67,129.59   $19,936.70
This entire "booming" part, is the 1-5%. Out the rest of America, there are 38,397,477 making $67,129 on average and 76,794,954 making $19,936 on average. The filing thresholds are "single, under 65 = $12,950" and "head of household, under 65 = $19,400". Most of the bottom 50% of America "barely" would even qualify to file based on the Average Per Capita Income stated on their tax forms. 76,794,954 tax filers "barely" qualify to even file taxes they make so little money. Half.

How about, lets look at it a different way. Anybody notice what happened to McDonalds over the last decade and a half? Corporate McDonalds used to have 465,000 employees, now, McDonalds has 150,000. 300,000 employee reduction. 1/3 remain. [1] Btw, they're also -5,000,000,000 under water in equity [2] while they keep making happy meal financial reports. 2/3 reduction in workforce, barely even covered by the news.

The situation looks very similar with almost every peer company. Notably, some of the main jobs where people in the bottom 50% work. Jack in the Box (-$851,798,000, 45,700 -> 1,090 employees), Papa Johns (-$430,933,000, 23,100 -> 13,200), Yum Brands (-7,674,000,000, 90,000 -> 25,000), Dominos (-3,976,640,000, 14,500 -> 11,200). They all went submarine on equity and started shedding employees, yet all anybody will write about is the "booming" tech sector.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/mcd:us:employees

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/mcd:us:equity-capital-and-reser...



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