If you like. and now they "earn" a lot more, mostly because the middle class "earns" proportionately less. Presumably the middle class must be slacking off, working fewer hours, fewer weekends, taking less responsibility, facing less stress. Serves them right, then.

John, economics is about actions and choices and value judgments of humans. It is NOT about who has the most money at any one time. Part of your problem is you're trying to reverse engineer from the prima facie absurdity of macro-aggregate numbers.

OK, so 'X' percent of people accounts for 'Y' percent of gross product. Here's the analytics 101: So what?

Let's take a talented and gifted surgeon. First, the surgeon made a decision to go through what I'm sure is a very rough process. The surgeon goes through a near-decade of schooling, makes incredible personal sacrifices for his/her career, probably has huge med school tuition bills - the surgeon has a MORAL RIGHT to keep what he earns.

As for the "middle class" - I'll take myself as an example. We live comfortably. I certainly work very hard and face a certain level of stress - but it is nothing like that of a doctor. At 16 and again at 18 I was told I should go into medicine - I made a choice not to.

When people make choices, they do so based on a unique scale that assesses value for that individual (or may for the individual's family). This valuation process creates ECONOMIC VALUE.


Each person makes a choice based on their own expectations, their own information, their own value assessments. When you have millions of people doing the same thing, you have coordination (or coordination issues). The Austrian school asks the fundamental question - "just because you walk into a store to buy an apple, does that mean there's an apple there?" People act based on their information, and change occurs. There are either too many (or too few) apples (or doctors). This creates a pricing system and creates competition.

These choices occur over time - some achive their goals, some revise, and some don't make them at all. No one can predict outcomes.

All costs and benefits are subjective. Individuals who choose to think will decide what works best for them. Individuals will also make choices based on what goods and services they themselves CANNOT produce.

And now, time to clue you in on a little secret: THIS is why government planning and government manipulation of human action in the market does not work - because of the problem of information. Too much information used in the valuation process is constantly changing - and a central control (govt) can never possess enough information to make efficient decisions. When you stop to consider how prices are actually determined, it's actually quite easy to see how the pricing system would collapse if controlled by the government. (This is one of the many reasons why "ObamaCare" will be a complete failure - it is contrary to the way humans make decisions in the marketplace).

Ludwig von Mises, the father of Austrian economics, shattered the illusions of government-controlled economics - and his top student, F.A. Hayek, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1974. I'm not kidding when I tell you that if you really want to understand the nature of the questions you're raising, go read some of what's covered in the Austrian school.

So John, I'll repeat what I said at the beginning - economics is about actions and choices and value judgments of humans...not about who has the most money at any one time.