I'm not sure about the 99%, but I think we've established in the last few years that the economy can keep humming along quite nicely in the short term with only 10% of the population increasing their spending significantly in real terms. I doubt it would work with 0.1%. 1% might be enough.

Historically, yeah. In a "k-shape" economy, one where the upper end of the economic scale does most of the buying and selling and the lower end is struggling, that's not true. Gross inequality has serious knock-ons in longer term outcomes around stuff like public safety, average quality of life, probably innovation too but not all consumers factor equally into to the great big rollup of behavior and incentive the Fed tracks.

> Don't corporate profits depend on the 99% (the poors) spending? If the consumers fail, and stop spending, how long before the corporations feel mildly inconvenienced?

50% of consumer spending is by the top 10%, and that trend is getting more extreme as wealth concentrates further. Is there a breaking point? Sure. But capital is willing to see how far it can push this before it breaks.

Well, actually they have a new model. I call it the "Apple" model. Low volume sales on high value items where you can charge more.

Even NVidia has moved to this model: make your money from selling high-end GPUs for Data Centers and forget the low-profit margin (GeForce) GPUs for gamers/consumers.

The whole economy is moving to that model for many things.

Not this quarter, and this quarter matters for bonuses! What happens with the next quarter is a "then-problem".

Same for politicians, 4/5 years matter, if the world collapses after, it's the next governments problem.

And in financial terms, those are really long periods, at least compared to HFT.