If you have two SUVs in the driveway, notes USA Today, you have to count on spending $1,500 more per year to keep your tanks full. In June, gasoline consumption in America rose to 9.5 million barrels per day. So far, Americans are not cutting back their use of fuel. The American military - the single biggest user of petroleum products in the world - is using more than ever, too. Oil is still priced at nearly $75 a barrel, despite what was billed as a major pullback for commodities.

The expense seems to be forcing cuts in other areas. USA Today also reports that "casual dining" restaurants are suffering. Applebees, Outback Steakhouse, and Red Lobster, to give some examples, are where Middle America eats. They are not real restaurants - in the sense that there is no real chef, no wine list, and nothing that could be mistaken for fine cuisine. But, at least, you get to sit down, and pay up. And, judged by the numbers, either Middle America is sitting down less, or paying up somewhere else. Red Lobster says its sales went down 5% in June. Industry experts say they've never seen anything like it.

USA Today mentions the price of gas, increased competition from the fast-food places, and the rise in credit card minimum payments as reasons for the falloff in casual dining. Our guess is that real estate figures in it, too. People who dine at Red Lobster often have houses with mortgages, and in the country's hottest markets, four out of five of the mortgages written on new houses in the last two years had adjustable rates. Those rates are now being adjusted - upwards. And then there are also those "soaring property taxes" to pay, say the papers.

Meanwhile, the whole zeitgeist of the housing market has changed. "For sale signs multiply across U.S.," says the Wall Street Journal. Out here on our farm, we've seen how cows multiply. We've seen how chickens and rabbits multiply. We've never actually caught two "for -sale" signs in the act, but it must be going on. The number of houses waiting to be taken to a good home is at a record level.

*** Last week, an item in our own MoneyWeek caught our eye. The fund management group, New Star, did a study to see how well professional fund managers actually performed. "After looking at the number of fund managers who outperformed the median over the last three and five successive years, it found that only one in eight had done so over three year. The number was even smaller over the last five year, when only one in 34 did so."

Why pay the fees, New Star wondered? Investors would have been a lot better off in an index tracking ETF, for example.

And along comes a manuscript from dear Daily Reckoning reader Barry J. Dyke, who has written a new book on the subject. He provides us with a helpful quotation:

"While the shareholder wealth consumed by the managers of corporate America has been far from trivial, the shareholder wealth consumed by the managers of mutual fund America has been enormous. More then one-fifth of the robust annual gross returns generated for investors in the financial markets - stock, bond, and money market alike - during the pas two decades has been siphoned off by fund managers. The awesome magic of compounding returns has been overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs. Without a major reduction in the share of market returns arrogated to themselves by our mutual fund intermediaries, more than three-quarters of the future cumulative financial wealth produced by stocks over an investment lifetime will be consumed by fund managers, leaving less than 25% for the investors. Yet is the investors themselves who put up 100% of the capital and assume 100% of the risk."

We are in an age of decadent capitalism. The capitalists are now at the mercy of the proletariat. Corporate managers take hundreds of millions in salaries and options, while the shareholders earn a pittance. Shares have gone nowhere for the last eight years, while paying out dividends less than the inflation rate. Apparatchiks in government, and foundation wonks, too, do well instead of good. Their salaries and benefits rise, while middle- and lower-class Americans lose ground. And here are the money managers managing to make a fortune for themselves, while the real owners of the money they manage make nothing. It is an economy for the managers, by the managers...and of the managers.

Ned Johnson and his daughter Abigail, of Fidelity, have accumulated a fortune estimated at $18-$20 billion. Mario Gabelli took home about $55 million in 2004. In the five years, '99 to '04, his total compensation was around $325 million. "During that time," writes Dyke, "the compensation Mario took home almost surpassed the entire amount that was made for his companies.

"The average mutual fund manager makes $436,000 for managing other people's money. The top 10% of fund managers make around $1.7 million per year."

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing.  For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.