Is "the rich getting richer" a problem?

[kaneada]

Andrespetmonkey said:
Well I guess rich people don't just sit on their money, and their spending will naturally create jobs, which is beneficial for society as a whole.

Or I have no idea what I'm talking about when it comes to economics and should get the hell out of this thread

The problem wtih this mentatilty is that jobs are created as a result of the middle and lower class having more money to spend. Job's don't exist if there are not markets for the goods and services that X company creates. If that feedback loop fails, which it has in America, then the rich aren't going to spend money to expand buisnesses and therefore no new private sector jobs become available.

A common misconception is that wealthy people spend more money on goods and services than the middle class do and data has shown that the average wealthy person still only buys the about the same amount of product as the average middle class person, so the wealthy are holding more money while only spending about the same amount of money. Given that the wealthy are are less than 10% of the American demographic (this includes the super wealthy 1% on down to people making around 250k a year)

Here's a TED conference on economic growth, some of which I have paraphrased here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIhOXCgSunc  that should suffice for an introdcution to that argument that the middle class are the job creators.

So the short answer is, the rich getting richer is not a problem as long as they are getting rich off investments made in the middle class.

And don't worry, in this paralyzing mess that is todays economies, none of us really understand what is going on. :)