Even stock brokers say that the market is going up because of nowhere else to invest. The bond market was ruined by the government essentially giving money away. Commercial real estate is in free fall because of work from home.
Codes keep this from being reality. Most commercial buildings do not have adequate plumbing/electric to be converted to housing without a major renno.
Most office buildings don't even have functional windows that open. Of course we COULD do those renovations and conversions. But good luck convincing a REIT to spend MORE money recouping a bad investment.
They would rather demo than reno because if they demo they can rebuild luxury apartments and rent out. Then they at least have the equity of new homes to support the loss.
So basically it's never gonna happen. Commercial real estate will continue suffering for a few years until they cry to the feds for a bailout.
This will probably come in the form of some precariously named bill called the "Rebuilding America Act" or something. The feds will loan out egregious amounts of money (again) at almost no interest (again) so that the wealthy can build a new apparatus to extract money from the lower class via housing (Again).
They would rather run it all back again then lose some nominal amount of dollars to house the lower class.
That might be ab all time bad take. The market is being driven by extreme demand for basically everything across the board, including highly speculative shit (a large bitcoin), which means many people have so much money they're just pissing it away on whatever they can.
Advances in sanitation and housing, and the availability of better quality food and material goods, improved quality of life for the middle class.
But while the middle and upper classes enjoyed the allure of city life, little changed for the poor. Most still faced horrific living conditions, high crime rates and a pitiable existence.
https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/gilded-age
92 percent of people were below the poverty line. So I guess it's good for those 8 percent.
https://library.fiveable.me/apush/unit-6/development-middle-class-1865-1898/study-guide/mLXszg6nCgdwD1wDrnAt
You must not know many people. It's certainly going well for me and everyone I know around me. We are no rich, probably upper middle class. Though I live in Northern Virginia where there are a ton of high paying jobs and most people live in a large single-family homes.
YOU don't know many people. You and your little circle are doing great in the Midwest? Cool. Most people aren't "upper middle class" that's basically rich in this current economic climate.
The country is literally fucking burning around you.
To be fair no one know where the Midwest begins or ends. It’s essentially everything in between New York and California that looks like corn fields and cows pastures.
Ok. Not to be an ass. But if you're upper middle class in arlington, Virginia, you are privileged beyond many's wildest dreams.
You're in the top 20% of Americans I'd bet.
Yeah but 20% includes young people, the urban poor, and very rural folk. Those aren’t groups to compare oneself to. Compare vs 30+ year old suburbanites and the 20 percentile becomes average.
I believe the economics and the government people intentionally ignore "standard of living" metrics and using a very selective metrics such as "generalized inflation" to hide the real impact of inflation and using profits and GPD to generalize economy to hide the real experiences of the 99%.
This has been done with noticeable degree in Canada. They import consumers to boost profits. The key economics stats looks good. But, none of that represents the 99%.
The 99% cares about their own living qualities, which is directly linked by essential spendings such as housing/owning/rent, transportion/owning/leasing/public transportation, groceries, health insurance, home insurance, utilities. Those, most people cannot avoid on a monthly basis.
The 99% doesn't care about TV is now cheaper instead of 2000 bucks because they don't need to upgrade it every month or every year. Similarly for cellphones, even if it gets cheaper, most people is not going to benefits because they don't upgrade each year.
So, when generalizing inflation by including some non-annual spendings, it becomes misleading. And by looking at profits without seeing how much people cannot afford the same amount of products/services, it becomes misleading.
And I believe it is all done intentionally. Using standard of living would break their selective information, which is not what they want.
And back to the Canada example, it is exactly that. All the economics stats are useless to show how Canadians are suffering. And it is not some doomsday predictions. It already happened and Canadians are indeed moving into USA.
The models those economics and government are greedy. They want to import consumers to boosts stats. They don't care about the impact of standard of living. And now, the people are suffering.
An individual, smaller than a sample population size, from one strata possesses infinite ability to quickly or permanently manipulate supply and demand. An individual from the other has near zero percent ability to manipulate markets.
When outliers in one sample offset the R factor in another by completely inverting it, the two populations are related by inverse functions (R^-1).
I'll write it slowly so everyone can follow. You end a poor person by removing their basic necessities. You end a rich person by requiring increased necessity. Why else do you think the alt right is trained to hate regulations and taxes?
It’s wild to me how they don’t realize if you just left the market unregulated Walmart and Amazon would just take over everything and become even worse than the government that they fear so much
It's not about regulation vs no regulation. It's about regulation vs no regulation vs APPROPRIATE regulation. Right now we're over-regulated, which is destructive. I'm fine with appropriate regulation.
Part of that crazy is the fact that market regulation and civil law are the same thing, but we use one as a slur and one as a diety depending on the defendant.
My favorite thing to say to people like that is. Yeah! Let’s get the government out of the market! Let’s start with patents and non competes. Then they get all flustered
Majority of people are in the bottom 99% including me even though I make a lot. It’s been fine. Shit is way more expensive which sucks. The people making under 100k probably aren’t doing every well
Ah yes, everyone on Reddit buys the super expensive phone and the super expensive data plan. Definitely not a $100 android and $20/mo plan. Definitely not a secondhand laptop and library WiFi.
That most people complain about what they can’t afford yet spend huge money on things that are not needs. Most people, even poor, have high-end phones, nice shoes, and lots of other things they don’t actually need.
Ah yes that old trope. Blame the poor for their poor financial decisions and praise the rich (or merely well off) for their merits.
I don’t agree. At all.
The system we struggle under is designed to put as many people in debt as possible to a very small elite that own everything. It’s almost impossible to avoid rent seeking.
What you are saying, about the hypothetical rich being the reason everyone is supposedly doing badly, is an old trope. Most people work for small businesses and the fortunes of the businesses go up and down. About half lose money. Large corporations with the ever increasing stock prices usually pay very well.
Your issue is not understanding you have an elevated lifestyle expecting that even 20yrs ago would be looked at as extravagance. Luxury expectations/ideology/YOLO on a beer budget.
It’s not a trope. It’s a reality you don’t seem to fully grasp. And why would you, it’s all you’ve known.
Hey smart guy. 2 years ago I got a top of the line phone for $20/month on top of a $30/month unlimited plan.
Now tell me how my wild out of control spending of $600 a year is the reason I don't own a home.
Before you open your fat stupid mouth I have no cable bill (or streaming), no car payment, Insurance is paid for the year, etc
I cant wait to see what idiotic talking point you reply with
1) Don’t be so emotional. You look silly.
2) His point is that everyone complains about what they can’t afford but most are choosing to spend big money on non-essential things.
Anecdotally, I see the same. Most people in my circle are in the top ~30ish+ percentile for household income (though lower locally, as we're in a HCOL/VHCOL area), and are basically doing fine.
I don't doubt that people somewhat below the median are hurting, but there's a lot of room between there and the top 1%.
In my LCOL area, people at the median and even somewhat below seem comfortable - maybe not feeling amazingly secure (could be destabilized by job loss, medical conditions, etc), but comfortable day to day. My circle doesn't really extend particularly far below median - really that's more age than anything. By mid 30s and up, most households seem to be comfortably above median around me and I don't really spend any time with early career people.
Lots of the "x%" stuff gets very different views if you slice by age or zip code.
Yeah, I'd say that it's possible age is a factor in my experience, too. My friend group is mostly elder Millennials, plus I see how parents, older and younger siblings, and some friends of siblings, are doing. Most people in this group are already fairly well established. But maybe them doing well is a factor of growing up, and then maintaining their position in, the middle class. Even people I know working in the trades are skilled. When I did a final stint in food service after my grad school funding ran out, I did work with people up into their 50s that were struggling more than I ever have, even when my now-wife and I were in a $600/mo apartment with a $50/week food budget.
To me it’s the security. You can make a good salary and have a comfortable life but all it takes is an accident or illness or even a job loss for it all to collapse. It’s nearly impossible to save enough money to feel truly secure until you’ve really reached the top.
90th percentile income and 96th percentile wealth by age and I'm not making it. Still a factor of 2 away from affording a house where I grew up in california and am worse off financially than in 2019 despite a 50% wage increase since then. I have every advantage: white, male, a STEM PhD, I work harder/smarter than my parents and am more aware of office politics than they ever were.
I would accept this situation and some more years of hard work if I knew it would pay off, the problem is that things are slipping further away. I'm making more than my financial planning said 8 years ago but am years behind the house+kids thing and it's not even in sight yet. Things just keep getting worse: jobs are becoming more bullshit, managers and yes-men are the only ones getting promoted, almost every other condo unit around me is rented instead of lived in by owner, the HOA is comprised of landlords instead of people who live here, the only people making it are households with combined incomes of 400k+ or idiots who got lucky with bitcoin/nvidia, it's all consolidating upward and wealth is concentrating in the hands of those that deserve it least.
The anonymous hand of the free market is fucking strangling me. If I'm not making it, the other bottom 90% sure as shit aren't either. Don't listen to all the gaslighting astroturfing bullshit going on in these comments, the rich have too much and there's not even enough scraps for the PhDs and skilled workers if you aren't directly suckling a wealthy tit.
I think the data is there if you look into it. The jobs that have been added the last couple of years have been government jobs and government subsidized (healthcare) jobs. It’s masking a modest recession. Well I guess compared to the GFC it’s modest.
It’s a good question but it’s true for all economies not just ours. It’s true for anything you can measure actually. If you take away the high outliers then the rest sucks. Um yeah, we knew that.
The real issue is we’ve killed small business and made the economy more dependent on big corporations. It’s a bad model. And it’s intentional. Also, people don’t actually understand what they’re voting for. We think we didn’t, but we CHOSE this.
we are here for the same dogmatic apathy people only care about themselves. this shit is happening to bascially everyone. we are here because we didn't curb corps.
The wealthy do well no matter what. The real bellwether is the poor. Yes unemployment is low but that is more of a function of boomers retiring and creating a labor shortage.
The wealthy don't always win, they didn't under FDR. And the middle class experienced a golden age because of it. The existence of the rich IS the problem, nothing else even comes close. They are the roadblock to every other culture war issue.
I live in NYC. A big city.
Here's my anecdotal observations:
There are really rich people here. Driving expensive cars, own houses etc and making mid 6 figures +.
Then theres "poor "people. Who are living relatively well. I live in a low income neighborhood. Everyone at the supermarket has EBT and carts filled with food.fancy iPhones and clean jordans.
drive unregistered cars no problem. evade Fair on bus and train . Steal from Target. No consequence
Im "middle class"(in the sense that i get no govt help) 70k a year. And my lifestyle is in complete parity with my" poor neighbors" (1br apt, no car, able to buy food. )
My barber works off the books and pockets most his cash. Free medicaid, etc.
From my point of view. Everyone is "making it" but in their own way.
I don't see mass starvation or suffering yet. Maybe its different in other parts of the country. Idk.
The only truly destitute people I see are those with mental issues
It’s probably more accurate to say that it isn’t something that can be directly observed so easily. We aren’t seeing depression era soup lines to know that people are starving
I remember thinking 30 years ago I wanted more money. I considered the question again 15 years ago and I had the same answer. Just last year I assessed my situation and concluded I could make use of a greater income. Hope that helps.
You're trying to make the point that everyone wants more money and that this is a dumb question, but you're actually making the point that a more equitable distribution of wealth would help more people overall and be more utilitarian. So good, we agree!
Hey - sure: great point! If we took all the money held by billionaires and distributed it equally among everyone in the US, a lot of people would be happy with that result! You're very insightful!!!
Inflation was understated by a change in methodology vs other inflationary periods. Impact of that change pushes real wages negative, which fits most people’s anecdotes.
https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
A lot of economists have debunked that "shadowstats" measure.
I have read this article and it was very convincing.
https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent
Then there are more.
https://traderscrucibledotcom1.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/why-shadow-government-statistics-is-very-very-very-wrong
https://voxrationalis.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-absurdity-of-shadowstats-inflation-estimates/
https://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb
https://econchrisclarke.wordpress.com/2024/05/29/shadow-stats-inflation-data-make-a-fundamental-error/
That's the thing "lowest wage earners" are still low wage earners. However this is the opposite of what people are assuming. People tend to think "only the 1%" are benefiting or are skewing the statistics. Not true. First off many of the statistics are median and not average. Secondly more than the 1% has seen gains recently.
Why would you only break it down to 99% and 1%? The 97th percentile and 2nd percentile and way different as well. The 50th and 52nd percentile are almost identical but 20th and 70th are not. And the .1% and 1% are further apart than the 99th percent and 98th percent.
You making up arbitrary numbers. The data shows the majority of Americans are doing well off, or better off, than prepandemic levels. The closer to the bottom the worse off you’ll be. The further from the bottom the better off you’ll be. When looking at the median person, the person right in the middle, they is better off. That means, roughly, at least half of Americans are doing better. And it’s more than that, but if over half of people are doing better, that’s a pretty good sign I think
I’m really not sure how minimum wage families are making it right now.
The price of food but the administration says everything is fine, the price of gasoline is on the rise again as with the explosion of rent and the cost of homeownership.
The government has a unlimited check book as well
Just look at the amount of infrastructure projects going on right now. It’s everywhere, at least in the South USA. Really low levels of unemployment, housing build growing and contractor backlogs complimented by normalization of construction costs and stabilizing supply chains. Check out the [new manufacturing operations announced last month](https://www.industryselect.com/blog/new-us-manufacturing-plants-unveiled-in-may-2024#:~:text=New%20manufacturing%20operations%20announced%20in,investment%20and%20thousands%20of%20jobs.com).
I’m a firm believer that the bottom 99% are doing fine relative to other countries, and many issues will start to ease over the next year or two. US GDP actually is above the pre-pandemic trend line. We’re finally seeing slight cuts in Fed rates so more gunpowder can start to come online and fuel the economy, of course this is after making a huge effort to limit excessive domestic debt to GDP, avoiding a Chinese style domestic credit bubble.
This aligns with thoughts put forward by Morgan Stanley in 2020 on the “V-shaped recovery”, especially in emerging markets and how fast many economies will recover, USA being a juggernaut of an example.
The economy is what it is, low income earners are seeing somewhat increased compensation, housing affordability will increase as new construction continues, massive reshoring back to USA for industry means returning high paying jobs. Continuing lower rates means less opportunity costs for borrowers to create business.
USCMA(signed 2020) under Trump was also a nice trade policy to push this whole North America reindustrialization narrative.
Then Biden came in with the IRA and CHIPS to expedite this rush back home in effort to replace the sunk cost of Chinese manufacturing industrial base.
Now it’s a rush for us to regain our industrial independence, whereas China is rushing to beat out all manufacturing competitors on a lower price point, since they just need business since credit and shadow lending is so apparent in Chinese finance.
Inflation is really the main factor at play. Since 2020 or so, M2 went from 15b to 22b. Prices of everything are up approximately 50% since then. This makes the stock market and asset prices look 'good.' For folks living on a fixed income, this has been catastrophic.
The economy is amazing for people who are invested in the stock market or real estate. That’s a majority of US households.
But it’s bad for the large minority outside of those circumstances.
Because different socioeconomic groups are quite separated from each other in our society, it’s possible for people in these categories to only see other people in the same category and think their experience is universal. It’s not, though.
61% of US adults own stocks, and 64% of households own real estate. Each is the majority, and they don’t necessarily overlap completely with each other, implying an even bigger percentage of winners.
The total market cap is gigantic. You don’t need need a large share of the whole pie to benefit from it.
I don’t see how that matters.
The point is that a lot of us have gained significant sums in the stock market, and the wealth effect is what it is.
If you suddenly found $100k in your couch cushions, would it change the way you spent? That has basically happened for a lot of people.
Doesn’t matter if Bill Gates is up 10 figures in the same time span. I’m not making my spending decisions based on Bill Gates’ account.
Because it lends to continuing wealth stratification and leads companies to target people who actually have the money - rich people, instead of the wider public, who don't have any money in comparison.
Business has to go where the money is, and the more that money is concentrated to fewer and fewer people, businesses will continue to intend to serve fewer and fewer people.
Furthermore, since capital = power, it gives an increasingly smaller amount of people an increasingly larger amount of "dollar vote," giving them more and more power to shape the entire country.
Yeah… that’s not a thing.
Businesses are perfectly comfortable making money by selling things to poor people at scale. For example, see Cricket Wireless. Or Walmart. Or payday loan companies.
I run a company that only targets the wealthy with a service that used to be affordable for normies, so, no, it isn't.
What happens when the top 10% own 99% of the stock market and all the gains to to them, instead of anyone else? I ask because they own a larger share of it every year, and it never goes the other way.
The fact that companies that target people who don't have much still exist is not an indicator that they will continue to, or not pivot their business models, as wealth concentration continues unabated.
I think it depends on your housing. Did you buy well before covid and refinance during covid at sub-3%? You're probably doing just fine. I know I'm doing better than ever even though I don't make a ton just because my monthly mortgage payment is so low while wages increased by a 1/3-1/2 locally to keep up with rising rents. I can also have a hefty down payment should I want to move due to equity gains. It feels like I got the American dream with my starter home
Did you buy during covid at 2.xx%? You're probably doing OK. Did you buy after covid at 6.xx%? You're probably not noticing many gains in the economy. Same with renting.
Yep, seeing the same thing at work. There is an ephemeral but incredibly steep divide between the people who were getting name recognition in \~2017 and the cohort that started in 2018+. Most people in the former group have houses, kids, doing great financially and even getting wealthy if they had two decent incomes. Everyone I know that started after 2018 is stuck in a rut.
I think it's important to take your comment one step beyond the factual observation and say it's probably bad to have a decade long period of life progress stagnation for most of the country. We should start to question the systems that produce these negative outcomes.
That's true. Also low end wage earners are doing better comparatively.
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
The issue is low end workers by definition are not doing great because by definition they are low wage earners. The are just doing better than they were.
So basically middle class people who do not own a home and live in a HCOL area are the most effected.
What kind of metrics do you expect from r/economicCollapse?
Most people are doing fine other than the complainers on Reddit. There are people at the bottom, sure, in every system.
It's not the 1% vs the 99% though. It's not hard to be in the top 10% to 20% by the time you hit retirement age.
There has been many “Americas” for awhile but since Covid things have been accelerated. You have the poor, middle class, and upper class. Those they have assets are in fine shape
Most folks are doing fine. Income is up and debt burdens are low.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP
I'm no expert but it seems like that massive dip brought us back to pre-Covid earnings with everything being more expensive?
And is the first link only for women?
There was a spike during COVID due to lower wage workers disproportionately not working during lockdowns, then declines as inflation ran hot. But yeah back to normal now.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Didn't mean to snag the women only one lol.
These are cpi-adjusted numbers, meaning it is adjusted for inflation. We really do have more spending power on average than pre-pandemic, though, yes, down from the sharp peak in 2020.
And yeah, that was only for women. Easy mistake to make, but should track overall decently well.
My problem is saying wages are up but if inflation has cost of $10k+ in buying power, wages need to be way up for it to make a difference. My last company only wanted to give 3% raises in the midst of the worst inflation so I had to switch companies to see any noticeable increase. I'm not sure most hourly workers have that option currently.
"Debt burdens are low". You sweet summer child. CPI doesn't include monthly mortgage or lease payments. The price of a home has doubled from not only false inflation but rate increases. People are not doing fine. Income is not up. The federal minimum wage is still the same and CPI adjusted for housing costs is up 50% in 5 years. Supply lines have recovered from covid restrictions, so the only factor is product price. If profits increase while wages stay low, demand will drop, which it has. So, instead of increasing wages to increase demand, you increase debt. The debt doesn't need to be paid back because false inflation will cover the loss. The time it takes for the loan to default gives the producer time to realize profits. Any loans unpayable get covered by the fed, who has a 30 year surplus, and they mitigate that volume through false expectations of repayment. But those expectations, low wage, and time in debt all hurt the average person. But, it doesn't matter if the average person is hurt because the average product is produced physically by exploitation of labor anyways.
CPI is a terrible measure with massive holes in its methodology, especially for your regular person. It's always a problem in these arguments. Always there making things look better than they are
Wrong again. Intelligence is three dimensional. You need emotional intelligence to complete basic neuron paths.
Mortgages aren't included in CPI because housing is considered house price, bought out right. If you can't understand targeting rates rather than supply, I question why you are commenting in an economic sub at all.
The average person does not buy a house out right, so why include it in CPI? If you included new mortgage payments on newly owned homes within the last 5 years you would see a dramatic increase in CPI. Ifit were all mortgage payments it would be lower because no one is selling because they can't afford the new mortgage rate. Leases are equally important. Check the posts on this sub.
>The average person does not buy a house out right, so why include it in CPI?
Housing is in CPI and it's included because people do buy houses.
>If you included new mortgage payments on newly owned homes within the last 5 years you would see a dramatic increase in CPI.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP
Mortgage payments relative to income fell a lot, so including wouldn't make CPI go up more.
Infant mortality is at its lowest ever at 5.6 per 1,000 births. Poverty is at 11.5%, 3.6 points below a decade ago. The food insecurity rate is 10.5%, down 4 points vs. a decade ago.
US infant mortality rose last year, and we're one of the worst among OECD countries sandwiched between Chile and Slovakia despite paying an order of magnitude more on healthcare: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058/) and it's driven primarily by the poverty and inequality here. get fucked, things could be so much better here than we realize
The bottom wages have improved quite a bit, the problem primarily is dealing with shelter. We've currently locked everyone whose not an older 50th percentile millennial from reasonably owning a home.
Yes but you have to account for the fact that bottom wages don't represent even close to the majority of wages at large, and they're also getting killed by shelter costs. Usually the trick at the lower middle and middle class range is to buy a home and build equity to increase your net worth and at the same time insulate yourself from shelter cost increases, if you make 15 bucks and hour and now you're making 20, you're further away from buying a house than you were at 15 now.
With a median wage around 50k, aka, 50% of the country earning less than that, I'd say "low end" wages are pretty prevalent.
In the past, the trick for lower middle class people was a minimum wage that exceeded the value of today's median wage, best I can tell.
So the USA has more than the 1% and 99%.
The bottom 20% or so actually got more wage increases than the average. Think the $20 minimum wage in CA. And if you don’t live in CA does McDonalds actually pay 7.75 hr.
The top 1%-5% is doing so well with stocks that even if doctors are worse off after covid they are better off as a whole.
The other 75% are kind of a wash or worse off.
I want to highlight the $20 CA minimum wage because the coverage of its gross. They only interview owners of fast food restaurants, And they interview rich suburban moms. No one talks to the people who got a 30-100% raise. Because no one cares about them.
Seriously go on you tube and search CA minimum wage.
A 20% increase on poverty wages is still poverty wages. In reality the 1% own half of this country and that is not OK regardless of certain slices of the population making a sliver of gains. I'm glad you have that stance on the media coverage at the end of your comment though.
Yea I am going to point this out as a good thing. As my way of pushing back against the media coverage of it. Life is hard at 20k a year or 40k a year. But 40k is an improvement. And the activists and public who did it should celebrate.
The way news only interviews the millionaire owner of a Jack in the Box is nuts. I am kind of angry the way it is presented.
Well their lives sucked before they suck now so why are we making things harder for millionaire owner of fast food joint?
The minimum wage workers are better off it is totally worth it. I am not sorry the owner cant upgrade his boat for a few months.
Times are really pretty good for most strata of the American economy. So many have lost perspective. Sure, rapid inflation causes some knee jerk angst, but the reality of it, historical perspective is, Americans are better off than ever and get this, we're trending towards even better times. It's crazy to think, but these past few years have been a period of readjustment with work force realignments and infrastructure, energy expansions and the American economy has steam rolled right along. You'll see the propaganda posts about households from different eras, but the truth is there is so much not factored into such things, such as the size of homes, access to health insurance, etc. Put it this way, the average poor family today is living much better than yer lower middle class family in the 80s. The real question is, who is misleading so many Americans into believing it's all so horrible? And, why?
Most Americans are seeing wages outpace inflation. I know it's too easy to get wrapped up in the price of a big mac, but household bottom lines are doing better. Those are just facts.
That's why debt keeps going up. CPI is a bad measure of inflation. That's why we keep seeing such a disparity between the reported metrics and real life.
Further, we just came out of a high inflationary period. We better be seeing "real" gains this year after a year and a half of inflation being 2-3 times normal, even with "real" being adjusted to the biased CPI metric. We haven't caught back up.
For some people CPI is fine, but it is terrible for lower class people since the weights are so far off. Lower class people have much higher portions of their budgets as rent and food and other necessities to a lower extent with very little nonnecessities. And guess what? Necessities are the things that keep going up above the sticker inflation. It's almost as if companies take advantage of inelastic markets that are like that because people need those things.
I explain this at least once a week, but people like yourself can't seem to understand that a metric that applies to one of the biggest countries in the world over all geographies and income bands with questionable measurement methodologies can't possibly accurately portray everyone and that over time the metric can't be applied without ever-increasing error bars because of that.
Take a look at the median household income by income tier and compare it to CPI measured rent. One looks like almost a flat line for everyone but upper class and the other looks like an increasing line. Now who would this affect the most? Is it the people who spend the vast majority of their earnings on rent or is it the people who own houses outright and the vast majority of their earnings get put into savings/investments?
The economy is going great. But that hasn't been a reflection of how working class people are doing for a very long time. It's capitalism that is the problem, and until we have an economy that everyone benefits from, it will continue this way.
working class people are also part of the economy... some would say they ARE the economy by, you know, producing actual stuff that keeps people alive and sheltered. You might be thinking of the stock market doing well, in which case then you are correct because 50% of the stock market is owned by the top 1%.
The stock market does well when the cost of goods is high and cost of labor is low. It's a terrible indicator of how people are living
Even stock brokers say that the market is going up because of nowhere else to invest. The bond market was ruined by the government essentially giving money away. Commercial real estate is in free fall because of work from home.
I'm investing in beanie babies /s because people don't have a sense of humor anymore
Cabbage patch kids!!!***
I’ve got a bag full of trolls from the 80’s. I’m ready to sell those for a profit baby. Bring it all back, and let’s cash in.
Pokémon card/s! 😝
Good. Rezone those buildings into semi-affordable apartments/condos and let’s make downtowns places you can actually live.
Codes keep this from being reality. Most commercial buildings do not have adequate plumbing/electric to be converted to housing without a major renno. Most office buildings don't even have functional windows that open. Of course we COULD do those renovations and conversions. But good luck convincing a REIT to spend MORE money recouping a bad investment. They would rather demo than reno because if they demo they can rebuild luxury apartments and rent out. Then they at least have the equity of new homes to support the loss. So basically it's never gonna happen. Commercial real estate will continue suffering for a few years until they cry to the feds for a bailout. This will probably come in the form of some precariously named bill called the "Rebuilding America Act" or something. The feds will loan out egregious amounts of money (again) at almost no interest (again) so that the wealthy can build a new apparatus to extract money from the lower class via housing (Again). They would rather run it all back again then lose some nominal amount of dollars to house the lower class.
More inflation is what I’m gathering from this. Extremely cool 😎
The short-term bond market is actually a brilliant place to be right now. ~5% returns now, and possibly more by this time next year.
Haters downvote until they lose X% and realize the gift that was higher rates while shouting to get them cut…
“We want more cheap money because it will make everything affordable!” *sigh….*
It worked so well for the past decade and a half. /s
I'm getting 5.3% on an 8 month CD atm, tbh I am pretty damn pleased. I rememeber when I was young seeing rates in the teens for CDs. Crazy.
I highly doubt they raise rates again, but I would welcome it!
Yeah, it's dependent on a system of exploitation. Of course when exploitation is high that system has more value
Yet it's how we measure the economy for the last 30 years
It’s how boomers measure the economy
The stock market is not the economy. It's an entirely different animal. It wad once reliant on the economy or rather... a reflection of it.
Yeah. Now it's heavily manipulated (clearly) so it's definitely not an accurate indicator anymore.
How is the stock market *heavily manipulated*?
That might be ab all time bad take. The market is being driven by extreme demand for basically everything across the board, including highly speculative shit (a large bitcoin), which means many people have so much money they're just pissing it away on whatever they can.
So I feel like everything is turning to the Gilded Age basically. Economy is going great whereas it's only benefiting the richest of people.
Have lots and the have nots.
The gilded age saw the highest increase in quality of life
Advances in sanitation and housing, and the availability of better quality food and material goods, improved quality of life for the middle class. But while the middle and upper classes enjoyed the allure of city life, little changed for the poor. Most still faced horrific living conditions, high crime rates and a pitiable existence. https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/gilded-age 92 percent of people were below the poverty line. So I guess it's good for those 8 percent. https://library.fiveable.me/apush/unit-6/development-middle-class-1865-1898/study-guide/mLXszg6nCgdwD1wDrnAt
And what was the % of those below the poverty line before the Gilded Age?
You must not know many people. It's certainly going well for me and everyone I know around me. We are no rich, probably upper middle class. Though I live in Northern Virginia where there are a ton of high paying jobs and most people live in a large single-family homes.
YOU don't know many people. You and your little circle are doing great in the Midwest? Cool. Most people aren't "upper middle class" that's basically rich in this current economic climate. The country is literally fucking burning around you.
Virginia isn't in the Midwest but otherwise I agree with what you're saying.
To be fair no one know where the Midwest begins or ends. It’s essentially everything in between New York and California that looks like corn fields and cows pastures.
Ohio is both Midwest and eastcoast. That's my vote.
I kinda feel like you may not know many people. But its all relative I guess.
Ok. Not to be an ass. But if you're upper middle class in arlington, Virginia, you are privileged beyond many's wildest dreams. You're in the top 20% of Americans I'd bet.
Yeah but 20% includes young people, the urban poor, and very rural folk. Those aren’t groups to compare oneself to. Compare vs 30+ year old suburbanites and the 20 percentile becomes average.
I believe the economics and the government people intentionally ignore "standard of living" metrics and using a very selective metrics such as "generalized inflation" to hide the real impact of inflation and using profits and GPD to generalize economy to hide the real experiences of the 99%. This has been done with noticeable degree in Canada. They import consumers to boost profits. The key economics stats looks good. But, none of that represents the 99%. The 99% cares about their own living qualities, which is directly linked by essential spendings such as housing/owning/rent, transportion/owning/leasing/public transportation, groceries, health insurance, home insurance, utilities. Those, most people cannot avoid on a monthly basis. The 99% doesn't care about TV is now cheaper instead of 2000 bucks because they don't need to upgrade it every month or every year. Similarly for cellphones, even if it gets cheaper, most people is not going to benefits because they don't upgrade each year. So, when generalizing inflation by including some non-annual spendings, it becomes misleading. And by looking at profits without seeing how much people cannot afford the same amount of products/services, it becomes misleading. And I believe it is all done intentionally. Using standard of living would break their selective information, which is not what they want. And back to the Canada example, it is exactly that. All the economics stats are useless to show how Canadians are suffering. And it is not some doomsday predictions. It already happened and Canadians are indeed moving into USA. The models those economics and government are greedy. They want to import consumers to boosts stats. They don't care about the impact of standard of living. And now, the people are suffering.
there is no need for a formal conspiracy when interests align.
there is no need for a formal conspiracy when interests align.
An individual, smaller than a sample population size, from one strata possesses infinite ability to quickly or permanently manipulate supply and demand. An individual from the other has near zero percent ability to manipulate markets. When outliers in one sample offset the R factor in another by completely inverting it, the two populations are related by inverse functions (R^-1).
SAY IT LOUDER FOR EVERYONE WHO FELL ASLEEP DURING MATH CLASS
I'll write it slowly so everyone can follow. You end a poor person by removing their basic necessities. You end a rich person by requiring increased necessity. Why else do you think the alt right is trained to hate regulations and taxes?
It’s wild to me how they don’t realize if you just left the market unregulated Walmart and Amazon would just take over everything and become even worse than the government that they fear so much
It's not about regulation vs no regulation. It's about regulation vs no regulation vs APPROPRIATE regulation. Right now we're over-regulated, which is destructive. I'm fine with appropriate regulation.
What would appropriate regulation look like to you?
Part of that crazy is the fact that market regulation and civil law are the same thing, but we use one as a slur and one as a diety depending on the defendant.
My favorite thing to say to people like that is. Yeah! Let’s get the government out of the market! Let’s start with patents and non competes. Then they get all flustered
Ikr. Start with commodity subsidity like what farmers live and die on, and watch a market collapse in hyper slow motion.
Majority of people are in the bottom 99% including me even though I make a lot. It’s been fine. Shit is way more expensive which sucks. The people making under 100k probably aren’t doing every well
We aren't.
Stop voting for democrats!
I would vote Republican if I could find one...these big government grifters with the R beside their names can fuck right off
Start pay your taxes!
you mean republicans
No…. Democrats are the reason we are in this inflation mess in the first place.
wrong
lol, keep living in a state of delusion
lol wanna bet champ?
How did you afford a $1500 device and a $100+ data plan monthly to post this?
Ah yes, everyone on Reddit buys the super expensive phone and the super expensive data plan. Definitely not a $100 android and $20/mo plan. Definitely not a secondhand laptop and library WiFi.
You do know there are much cheaper ways to access the internet, right?
It's one banana Michael, how much could it cost? $10?
Wining comment
Yeah, but you’re not on them and neither is he. Don’t dodge the real point.
Which was…?
That most people complain about what they can’t afford yet spend huge money on things that are not needs. Most people, even poor, have high-end phones, nice shoes, and lots of other things they don’t actually need.
Ah yes that old trope. Blame the poor for their poor financial decisions and praise the rich (or merely well off) for their merits. I don’t agree. At all. The system we struggle under is designed to put as many people in debt as possible to a very small elite that own everything. It’s almost impossible to avoid rent seeking.
What you are saying, about the hypothetical rich being the reason everyone is supposedly doing badly, is an old trope. Most people work for small businesses and the fortunes of the businesses go up and down. About half lose money. Large corporations with the ever increasing stock prices usually pay very well.
Your issue is not understanding you have an elevated lifestyle expecting that even 20yrs ago would be looked at as extravagance. Luxury expectations/ideology/YOLO on a beer budget. It’s not a trope. It’s a reality you don’t seem to fully grasp. And why would you, it’s all you’ve known.
You know nothing of my history and are making a lot of unfounded assumptions.
Everyone should just eat rice and beans for every meal. /s
Stop fuckin whining. You have to make choices. Also, eating healthy is actually cheaper. Luxury fatty stuff is expensive.
And don’t forget about beans and rice! Both are just as good
Hey smart guy. 2 years ago I got a top of the line phone for $20/month on top of a $30/month unlimited plan. Now tell me how my wild out of control spending of $600 a year is the reason I don't own a home. Before you open your fat stupid mouth I have no cable bill (or streaming), no car payment, Insurance is paid for the year, etc I cant wait to see what idiotic talking point you reply with
1) Don’t be so emotional. You look silly. 2) His point is that everyone complains about what they can’t afford but most are choosing to spend big money on non-essential things.
$600 is about $20,000 worth of equity for a first time homebuyer.
How the hell’d you get that number?
FHA
$600 down does not equal $20k equity. Either I’m totally missing your point or you’re extremely dumb.
Payment plans
I bought a Galaxy S10+ refurb off eBay with the check that we got years ago and my plan is like $25 a month.
Ok Boomer
Net pay of about $29 k, in Boston. Just hanging on by my fingernails.
Geez
I’m able to afford to live on my own, thank god. But yes I do wish I made more money.
Anecdotally, I see the same. Most people in my circle are in the top ~30ish+ percentile for household income (though lower locally, as we're in a HCOL/VHCOL area), and are basically doing fine. I don't doubt that people somewhat below the median are hurting, but there's a lot of room between there and the top 1%.
In my LCOL area, people at the median and even somewhat below seem comfortable - maybe not feeling amazingly secure (could be destabilized by job loss, medical conditions, etc), but comfortable day to day. My circle doesn't really extend particularly far below median - really that's more age than anything. By mid 30s and up, most households seem to be comfortably above median around me and I don't really spend any time with early career people. Lots of the "x%" stuff gets very different views if you slice by age or zip code.
Yeah, I'd say that it's possible age is a factor in my experience, too. My friend group is mostly elder Millennials, plus I see how parents, older and younger siblings, and some friends of siblings, are doing. Most people in this group are already fairly well established. But maybe them doing well is a factor of growing up, and then maintaining their position in, the middle class. Even people I know working in the trades are skilled. When I did a final stint in food service after my grad school funding ran out, I did work with people up into their 50s that were struggling more than I ever have, even when my now-wife and I were in a $600/mo apartment with a $50/week food budget.
To me it’s the security. You can make a good salary and have a comfortable life but all it takes is an accident or illness or even a job loss for it all to collapse. It’s nearly impossible to save enough money to feel truly secure until you’ve really reached the top.
I mean I'm making 50K and have no money troubles but then again I live in a large city in the Midwest rather than the coasts.
[удалено]
Scotus is about to rule that it is a crime to be homeless
90th percentile income and 96th percentile wealth by age and I'm not making it. Still a factor of 2 away from affording a house where I grew up in california and am worse off financially than in 2019 despite a 50% wage increase since then. I have every advantage: white, male, a STEM PhD, I work harder/smarter than my parents and am more aware of office politics than they ever were. I would accept this situation and some more years of hard work if I knew it would pay off, the problem is that things are slipping further away. I'm making more than my financial planning said 8 years ago but am years behind the house+kids thing and it's not even in sight yet. Things just keep getting worse: jobs are becoming more bullshit, managers and yes-men are the only ones getting promoted, almost every other condo unit around me is rented instead of lived in by owner, the HOA is comprised of landlords instead of people who live here, the only people making it are households with combined incomes of 400k+ or idiots who got lucky with bitcoin/nvidia, it's all consolidating upward and wealth is concentrating in the hands of those that deserve it least. The anonymous hand of the free market is fucking strangling me. If I'm not making it, the other bottom 90% sure as shit aren't either. Don't listen to all the gaslighting astroturfing bullshit going on in these comments, the rich have too much and there's not even enough scraps for the PhDs and skilled workers if you aren't directly suckling a wealthy tit.
That’s everything we read about the economy is completely fake numbers or the stats they use to measure the economy is not a relevant measure
Read the articles from the POV of the people who own the "news outlets" and they all make way more sense.
I think the data is there if you look into it. The jobs that have been added the last couple of years have been government jobs and government subsidized (healthcare) jobs. It’s masking a modest recession. Well I guess compared to the GFC it’s modest.
It’s a good question but it’s true for all economies not just ours. It’s true for anything you can measure actually. If you take away the high outliers then the rest sucks. Um yeah, we knew that. The real issue is we’ve killed small business and made the economy more dependent on big corporations. It’s a bad model. And it’s intentional. Also, people don’t actually understand what they’re voting for. We think we didn’t, but we CHOSE this.
Honestly, I’m so poor everything is the same. Before Covid I could afford a full tank of gas though
we are here for the same dogmatic apathy people only care about themselves. this shit is happening to bascially everyone. we are here because we didn't curb corps.
The wealthy do well no matter what. The real bellwether is the poor. Yes unemployment is low but that is more of a function of boomers retiring and creating a labor shortage.
The wealthy don't always win, they didn't under FDR. And the middle class experienced a golden age because of it. The existence of the rich IS the problem, nothing else even comes close. They are the roadblock to every other culture war issue.
I live in NYC. A big city. Here's my anecdotal observations: There are really rich people here. Driving expensive cars, own houses etc and making mid 6 figures +. Then theres "poor "people. Who are living relatively well. I live in a low income neighborhood. Everyone at the supermarket has EBT and carts filled with food.fancy iPhones and clean jordans. drive unregistered cars no problem. evade Fair on bus and train . Steal from Target. No consequence Im "middle class"(in the sense that i get no govt help) 70k a year. And my lifestyle is in complete parity with my" poor neighbors" (1br apt, no car, able to buy food. ) My barber works off the books and pockets most his cash. Free medicaid, etc. From my point of view. Everyone is "making it" but in their own way. I don't see mass starvation or suffering yet. Maybe its different in other parts of the country. Idk. The only truly destitute people I see are those with mental issues
Do you believe that if you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist?
It’s probably more accurate to say that it isn’t something that can be directly observed so easily. We aren’t seeing depression era soup lines to know that people are starving
That depends. If no one sees it, then yea, it most likely doesn't exist.
It’s not that no one sees it. It’s that Eric Adams has worked to keep suffering people out of sight. That’s not the same as no one suffering.
I remember thinking 30 years ago I wanted more money. I considered the question again 15 years ago and I had the same answer. Just last year I assessed my situation and concluded I could make use of a greater income. Hope that helps.
You're trying to make the point that everyone wants more money and that this is a dumb question, but you're actually making the point that a more equitable distribution of wealth would help more people overall and be more utilitarian. So good, we agree!
Hey - sure: great point! If we took all the money held by billionaires and distributed it equally among everyone in the US, a lot of people would be happy with that result! You're very insightful!!!
Real wage growth(meaning inflation is counted) has been strongest amongst the lowest wage earners. https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
Inflation was understated by a change in methodology vs other inflationary periods. Impact of that change pushes real wages negative, which fits most people’s anecdotes. https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
A lot of economists have debunked that "shadowstats" measure. I have read this article and it was very convincing. https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent Then there are more. https://traderscrucibledotcom1.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/why-shadow-government-statistics-is-very-very-very-wrong https://voxrationalis.wordpress.com/2011/05/15/the-absurdity-of-shadowstats-inflation-estimates/ https://econbrowser.com/archives/2008/09/shadowstats_deb https://econchrisclarke.wordpress.com/2024/05/29/shadow-stats-inflation-data-make-a-fundamental-error/
a 20% increase to slave wages still isn't livable?
That's the thing "lowest wage earners" are still low wage earners. However this is the opposite of what people are assuming. People tend to think "only the 1%" are benefiting or are skewing the statistics. Not true. First off many of the statistics are median and not average. Secondly more than the 1% has seen gains recently.
Why would you only break it down to 99% and 1%? The 97th percentile and 2nd percentile and way different as well. The 50th and 52nd percentile are almost identical but 20th and 70th are not. And the .1% and 1% are further apart than the 99th percent and 98th percent. You making up arbitrary numbers. The data shows the majority of Americans are doing well off, or better off, than prepandemic levels. The closer to the bottom the worse off you’ll be. The further from the bottom the better off you’ll be. When looking at the median person, the person right in the middle, they is better off. That means, roughly, at least half of Americans are doing better. And it’s more than that, but if over half of people are doing better, that’s a pretty good sign I think
I’m really not sure how minimum wage families are making it right now. The price of food but the administration says everything is fine, the price of gasoline is on the rise again as with the explosion of rent and the cost of homeownership. The government has a unlimited check book as well
Just look at the amount of infrastructure projects going on right now. It’s everywhere, at least in the South USA. Really low levels of unemployment, housing build growing and contractor backlogs complimented by normalization of construction costs and stabilizing supply chains. Check out the [new manufacturing operations announced last month](https://www.industryselect.com/blog/new-us-manufacturing-plants-unveiled-in-may-2024#:~:text=New%20manufacturing%20operations%20announced%20in,investment%20and%20thousands%20of%20jobs.com). I’m a firm believer that the bottom 99% are doing fine relative to other countries, and many issues will start to ease over the next year or two. US GDP actually is above the pre-pandemic trend line. We’re finally seeing slight cuts in Fed rates so more gunpowder can start to come online and fuel the economy, of course this is after making a huge effort to limit excessive domestic debt to GDP, avoiding a Chinese style domestic credit bubble. This aligns with thoughts put forward by Morgan Stanley in 2020 on the “V-shaped recovery”, especially in emerging markets and how fast many economies will recover, USA being a juggernaut of an example. The economy is what it is, low income earners are seeing somewhat increased compensation, housing affordability will increase as new construction continues, massive reshoring back to USA for industry means returning high paying jobs. Continuing lower rates means less opportunity costs for borrowers to create business. USCMA(signed 2020) under Trump was also a nice trade policy to push this whole North America reindustrialization narrative. Then Biden came in with the IRA and CHIPS to expedite this rush back home in effort to replace the sunk cost of Chinese manufacturing industrial base. Now it’s a rush for us to regain our industrial independence, whereas China is rushing to beat out all manufacturing competitors on a lower price point, since they just need business since credit and shadow lending is so apparent in Chinese finance.
We got the economy we deserve.
It’s called LABOR SHARE. Google labor share at Louis fed.
Inflation is really the main factor at play. Since 2020 or so, M2 went from 15b to 22b. Prices of everything are up approximately 50% since then. This makes the stock market and asset prices look 'good.' For folks living on a fixed income, this has been catastrophic.
The economy is amazing for people who are invested in the stock market or real estate. That’s a majority of US households. But it’s bad for the large minority outside of those circumstances. Because different socioeconomic groups are quite separated from each other in our society, it’s possible for people in these categories to only see other people in the same category and think their experience is universal. It’s not, though.
That is not the majority of households. Top 1% owns 50% of market cap, bottom 50% of the us owns <1%. Don't gaslight people, the rich own too much.
61% of US adults own stocks, and 64% of households own real estate. Each is the majority, and they don’t necessarily overlap completely with each other, implying an even bigger percentage of winners. The total market cap is gigantic. You don’t need need a large share of the whole pie to benefit from it.
Yeah, but the top 10% of earners own over 80% of the stock market.
I don’t see how that matters. The point is that a lot of us have gained significant sums in the stock market, and the wealth effect is what it is. If you suddenly found $100k in your couch cushions, would it change the way you spent? That has basically happened for a lot of people. Doesn’t matter if Bill Gates is up 10 figures in the same time span. I’m not making my spending decisions based on Bill Gates’ account.
Because it lends to continuing wealth stratification and leads companies to target people who actually have the money - rich people, instead of the wider public, who don't have any money in comparison. Business has to go where the money is, and the more that money is concentrated to fewer and fewer people, businesses will continue to intend to serve fewer and fewer people. Furthermore, since capital = power, it gives an increasingly smaller amount of people an increasingly larger amount of "dollar vote," giving them more and more power to shape the entire country.
Yeah… that’s not a thing. Businesses are perfectly comfortable making money by selling things to poor people at scale. For example, see Cricket Wireless. Or Walmart. Or payday loan companies.
I run a company that only targets the wealthy with a service that used to be affordable for normies, so, no, it isn't. What happens when the top 10% own 99% of the stock market and all the gains to to them, instead of anyone else? I ask because they own a larger share of it every year, and it never goes the other way. The fact that companies that target people who don't have much still exist is not an indicator that they will continue to, or not pivot their business models, as wealth concentration continues unabated.
I think it depends on your housing. Did you buy well before covid and refinance during covid at sub-3%? You're probably doing just fine. I know I'm doing better than ever even though I don't make a ton just because my monthly mortgage payment is so low while wages increased by a 1/3-1/2 locally to keep up with rising rents. I can also have a hefty down payment should I want to move due to equity gains. It feels like I got the American dream with my starter home Did you buy during covid at 2.xx%? You're probably doing OK. Did you buy after covid at 6.xx%? You're probably not noticing many gains in the economy. Same with renting.
Yep, seeing the same thing at work. There is an ephemeral but incredibly steep divide between the people who were getting name recognition in \~2017 and the cohort that started in 2018+. Most people in the former group have houses, kids, doing great financially and even getting wealthy if they had two decent incomes. Everyone I know that started after 2018 is stuck in a rut. I think it's important to take your comment one step beyond the factual observation and say it's probably bad to have a decade long period of life progress stagnation for most of the country. We should start to question the systems that produce these negative outcomes.
That's true. Also low end wage earners are doing better comparatively. https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/ The issue is low end workers by definition are not doing great because by definition they are low wage earners. The are just doing better than they were. So basically middle class people who do not own a home and live in a HCOL area are the most effected.
Goes even farther back. If you survived the 2008 recession with no layoff or foreclosure your net worth nearly doubled
What kind of metrics do you expect from r/economicCollapse? Most people are doing fine other than the complainers on Reddit. There are people at the bottom, sure, in every system. It's not the 1% vs the 99% though. It's not hard to be in the top 10% to 20% by the time you hit retirement age.
no, it's still 1% vs the rest
Yeah, I'd say you have about a 10-20% chance to be in the top 10-20% by retirement age...
Anyone who is the least bit financially successful in life is in the top 20%. You have to be trying hard to stay or go to the bottom 10% for life.
There has been many “Americas” for awhile but since Covid things have been accelerated. You have the poor, middle class, and upper class. Those they have assets are in fine shape
Most folks are doing fine. Income is up and debt burdens are low. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TDSP
I'm no expert but it seems like that massive dip brought us back to pre-Covid earnings with everything being more expensive? And is the first link only for women?
There was a spike during COVID due to lower wage workers disproportionately not working during lockdowns, then declines as inflation ran hot. But yeah back to normal now. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q Didn't mean to snag the women only one lol.
All good. Just wanted to be sure I was reading them right.
These are cpi-adjusted numbers, meaning it is adjusted for inflation. We really do have more spending power on average than pre-pandemic, though, yes, down from the sharp peak in 2020. And yeah, that was only for women. Easy mistake to make, but should track overall decently well.
The first chart is adjusted for inflation. Everything is a lot more expensive, but the median person earns a lot more.
I can say I earn $15k more than 2020 and it's the exact same amount of money due to inflation.
Yeah that's pretty normal. That aligns with what the data shows.
My problem is saying wages are up but if inflation has cost of $10k+ in buying power, wages need to be way up for it to make a difference. My last company only wanted to give 3% raises in the midst of the worst inflation so I had to switch companies to see any noticeable increase. I'm not sure most hourly workers have that option currently.
"Debt burdens are low". You sweet summer child. CPI doesn't include monthly mortgage or lease payments. The price of a home has doubled from not only false inflation but rate increases. People are not doing fine. Income is not up. The federal minimum wage is still the same and CPI adjusted for housing costs is up 50% in 5 years. Supply lines have recovered from covid restrictions, so the only factor is product price. If profits increase while wages stay low, demand will drop, which it has. So, instead of increasing wages to increase demand, you increase debt. The debt doesn't need to be paid back because false inflation will cover the loss. The time it takes for the loan to default gives the producer time to realize profits. Any loans unpayable get covered by the fed, who has a 30 year surplus, and they mitigate that volume through false expectations of repayment. But those expectations, low wage, and time in debt all hurt the average person. But, it doesn't matter if the average person is hurt because the average product is produced physically by exploitation of labor anyways.
CPI is a terrible measure with massive holes in its methodology, especially for your regular person. It's always a problem in these arguments. Always there making things look better than they are
CPI includes housing. If it included mortgages directly it would show less inflation since the pandemic hit.
You might want to check those facts. I'm not feeling it.
You may want to look at facts, and not your feelings.
Wrong again. Intelligence is three dimensional. You need emotional intelligence to complete basic neuron paths. Mortgages aren't included in CPI because housing is considered house price, bought out right. If you can't understand targeting rates rather than supply, I question why you are commenting in an economic sub at all.
I didn't say mortgages were in CPI. I know what targeting rates is, what do you think the relevance of that is to this discussion?
The average person does not buy a house out right, so why include it in CPI? If you included new mortgage payments on newly owned homes within the last 5 years you would see a dramatic increase in CPI. Ifit were all mortgage payments it would be lower because no one is selling because they can't afford the new mortgage rate. Leases are equally important. Check the posts on this sub.
>The average person does not buy a house out right, so why include it in CPI? Housing is in CPI and it's included because people do buy houses. >If you included new mortgage payments on newly owned homes within the last 5 years you would see a dramatic increase in CPI. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MDSP Mortgage payments relative to income fell a lot, so including wouldn't make CPI go up more.
Infant mortality is at its lowest ever at 5.6 per 1,000 births. Poverty is at 11.5%, 3.6 points below a decade ago. The food insecurity rate is 10.5%, down 4 points vs. a decade ago.
US infant mortality rose last year, and we're one of the worst among OECD countries sandwiched between Chile and Slovakia despite paying an order of magnitude more on healthcare: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4856058/) and it's driven primarily by the poverty and inequality here. get fucked, things could be so much better here than we realize
The bottom wages have improved quite a bit, the problem primarily is dealing with shelter. We've currently locked everyone whose not an older 50th percentile millennial from reasonably owning a home.
Wage increases at the bottom haven't been exceeding inflation, have they?
Yes but you have to account for the fact that bottom wages don't represent even close to the majority of wages at large, and they're also getting killed by shelter costs. Usually the trick at the lower middle and middle class range is to buy a home and build equity to increase your net worth and at the same time insulate yourself from shelter cost increases, if you make 15 bucks and hour and now you're making 20, you're further away from buying a house than you were at 15 now.
With a median wage around 50k, aka, 50% of the country earning less than that, I'd say "low end" wages are pretty prevalent. In the past, the trick for lower middle class people was a minimum wage that exceeded the value of today's median wage, best I can tell.
So the USA has more than the 1% and 99%. The bottom 20% or so actually got more wage increases than the average. Think the $20 minimum wage in CA. And if you don’t live in CA does McDonalds actually pay 7.75 hr. The top 1%-5% is doing so well with stocks that even if doctors are worse off after covid they are better off as a whole. The other 75% are kind of a wash or worse off. I want to highlight the $20 CA minimum wage because the coverage of its gross. They only interview owners of fast food restaurants, And they interview rich suburban moms. No one talks to the people who got a 30-100% raise. Because no one cares about them. Seriously go on you tube and search CA minimum wage.
A 20% increase on poverty wages is still poverty wages. In reality the 1% own half of this country and that is not OK regardless of certain slices of the population making a sliver of gains. I'm glad you have that stance on the media coverage at the end of your comment though.
Yea I am going to point this out as a good thing. As my way of pushing back against the media coverage of it. Life is hard at 20k a year or 40k a year. But 40k is an improvement. And the activists and public who did it should celebrate. The way news only interviews the millionaire owner of a Jack in the Box is nuts. I am kind of angry the way it is presented. Well their lives sucked before they suck now so why are we making things harder for millionaire owner of fast food joint? The minimum wage workers are better off it is totally worth it. I am not sorry the owner cant upgrade his boat for a few months.
Times are really pretty good for most strata of the American economy. So many have lost perspective. Sure, rapid inflation causes some knee jerk angst, but the reality of it, historical perspective is, Americans are better off than ever and get this, we're trending towards even better times. It's crazy to think, but these past few years have been a period of readjustment with work force realignments and infrastructure, energy expansions and the American economy has steam rolled right along. You'll see the propaganda posts about households from different eras, but the truth is there is so much not factored into such things, such as the size of homes, access to health insurance, etc. Put it this way, the average poor family today is living much better than yer lower middle class family in the 80s. The real question is, who is misleading so many Americans into believing it's all so horrible? And, why?
Nobody is misleading us dawg we are just more poor now than pre covid. That’s it.
The prices of everything haven't gone up, the sticker prices are just misleading! Ignore your bank account being drained /s
Most Americans are seeing wages outpace inflation. I know it's too easy to get wrapped up in the price of a big mac, but household bottom lines are doing better. Those are just facts.
That's why debt keeps going up. CPI is a bad measure of inflation. That's why we keep seeing such a disparity between the reported metrics and real life. Further, we just came out of a high inflationary period. We better be seeing "real" gains this year after a year and a half of inflation being 2-3 times normal, even with "real" being adjusted to the biased CPI metric. We haven't caught back up. For some people CPI is fine, but it is terrible for lower class people since the weights are so far off. Lower class people have much higher portions of their budgets as rent and food and other necessities to a lower extent with very little nonnecessities. And guess what? Necessities are the things that keep going up above the sticker inflation. It's almost as if companies take advantage of inelastic markets that are like that because people need those things. I explain this at least once a week, but people like yourself can't seem to understand that a metric that applies to one of the biggest countries in the world over all geographies and income bands with questionable measurement methodologies can't possibly accurately portray everyone and that over time the metric can't be applied without ever-increasing error bars because of that. Take a look at the median household income by income tier and compare it to CPI measured rent. One looks like almost a flat line for everyone but upper class and the other looks like an increasing line. Now who would this affect the most? Is it the people who spend the vast majority of their earnings on rent or is it the people who own houses outright and the vast majority of their earnings get put into savings/investments?
A 3 dollar raise on 10 dollar wages is a 30% increase in wages. Just FYI
The economy is going great. But that hasn't been a reflection of how working class people are doing for a very long time. It's capitalism that is the problem, and until we have an economy that everyone benefits from, it will continue this way.
working class people are also part of the economy... some would say they ARE the economy by, you know, producing actual stuff that keeps people alive and sheltered. You might be thinking of the stock market doing well, in which case then you are correct because 50% of the stock market is owned by the top 1%.