Page 4 - Consumer Class News Today

Its actually good. after lunch, more shopping. all the art in north korea is state sanctioned, which means a lot of landscapes and plenty of siberian tyingers, considered an unofficial national symbol. pyongyang has a growing consumer class and for them living standards are improving under kim jong-un. the north korean economy grew by almost 4% in 2016, according to south korean central bank estimates. which means people have more ways to enjoy their rare time off, like this group of factory wor...

That are going to continue? >> reporter: from the north korean perspective and what theyve reiterated to me all of this past year including last week, no, jim. they are not afraid of sanctions. when i even asked in pyongyang if china were to cut off that country economically, completely cut them off, they acknowledged it would be painfula growing consumer class in the north korean capital. see chinese goods and gasoline, oil comes from china. and theyve acknowledged it would be very difficult. ...

Significant because i can tell you, ive taken many, many flights and you see televisions and large cargo boxes and even plants and a lot of different electronics that are brought into the country on those planes. you see people in north korea wearing nike sneakers and asics track suits. those are brought in. thats fashion that is brought in from china. a lot of it bright in on those trains and also on those trucks and trains. so if china does crack down on trade the way theyre saying they might ...

Economy and spending more and consuming more. and its very difficult to get your population to invest more in your future when youve just lost 25% of the value of the stock exchanges. people who have, moreover, very little belief in the long-term strength and well-being of your economy. so the challenge for them is how do you navigate this basket of reforms which you know long term are probably necessary for the country but short term you have a messaging problem. that is, how do you convince th...

China which soon will be the largest consumer class the world has known. they need to spend and invest more at a time when all of the indicators would suggest its not a smart thing to do. >> i have to ask you, you must be watching this republican primary with interest and amusement. you have been through this before. what was your reaction to the debate? what did you think about well? >> amusement to be sure. there is a bit of entertainment value here. i have to say that for all of the negative ...

Prices of commodities and oil have gone down presumably because chinas demand has slowed down. >> they are hit by very low commodity prices right now by exceedingly high inventories. by a population of 4 billion people who need to spend more and consume more. its very difficult to get your population to invest more in the future when you lost 25% of the value of the shanghai stock exchanges and people who have more over very little belief in the long-term strength and well being of your economy....

>> concede quickly theres an investor class and consumer class. consumers are citizens and they invest middle class and working class do a lot of investment. the rich folks to a hell of a lot of consuming. its not how we grade the economic system. >> i want to thank sherrod brown for joining us. i want to have you back. its going to be an interesting legislation. edward connor, former partner at bain capital. molly, great to have you. ed, thank you for being a good sport. i want to have you back...

in fact, generally speaking they get back 4.8%. im going to put a few kernels into their pot because they are not paying taxes. lets look at another group. this bag represents people who earn between $30 and $100,000 a year. thats about 40% of households in the united states. this group represents a contribution of 18%. 18% of the total personal tax revenues come from here. im going to put about two handfuls of popcorn in the bowl to represent the taxes they pay. this bag represents pe...

the folks at the brookings tax policy center helped us put this together. these different groups of popcorn represent your income level. the bigger the bag, the bigger the income level of the group were talking about. i want to use the popcorn to demonstrate how much of the total pie, how much of the total tax revenue is generated by each group. lets start over here with the little one. these are people who earn less than $30,000 a year. that, by the way, is about 44.8% of all househol...

Short while but unless you build the consumer class up and build the middle class back up housing is going to stay flat. >> a huge bubble. there was a front page story in "the washington post" on sunday about how it just hasnt been a fixable problem. obviously the president has a jobs proposal that has stalled in congress but he turned his attention yesterday to the housing market. the state of nevada has the countrys worst home foreclosure rate and its highest unemployment rate at 13.4%. in a t...