U.S. adds just 266,000 jobs in April, far below expectations
axios.com
axios.com
The Citations Needed podcast did an interesting episode on this kind of framing.[0] Although they skew heavily toward the left so take it with a grain of salt.
I'm curious to see if the heightened unemployment benefits act as a new de facto minimum wage law, but I have a feeling everything will be cut to try and force people back into the labor force before anything super interesting happens.
[0] https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-135-the-labor-sho...
At the expense of full employment.
The labor market is not adequately explained with only Econ 101 concepts. Employers pay below the true market rate that they are capable of paying because of their market power to set prices.
No, I'm not going to provide sources on this. They are everywhere.
Sure there are some places paying less because they have jobs and a choice of workers. Artificially raising the pay will yield the same number of jobs. This isn't true across the entirety of the US labor market.
There is also a labor market outside the US that puts a ceiling to US wages.
I remember last year that there were a lot of people waiting a long time to get on unemployment due to the pandemic. Months went by before those checks came in.
Now, if you have the resources to work a job, you'll have to go off unemployment. But if that job fires you, you're stuck back in the possibly months long process to get unemployment. Sure, you could try to get another job, but that also has a time lag and other risks, and diapers don't buy themselves.
It's not about the cash as much as it is about the cash-flow. You can plan around a small amount. But variable amounts are much harder to plan for, even if the net cash may be higher in the end.
There are winners and losers from this dynamic so I'm sure different sides will have a narrative. But the labor shortage isn't a spin on reality, it's an observation that it is difficult to hire in current conditions.
Labor is subject to search costs that create a wedge between supply and demand. It may take me a year to fill a position.
In addition to search costs, there are also onboarding costs. It may cost me 300K to train a dev and then after a year they leave.
So I may not be able to fill a spot even if I am willing to pay a price that someone is willing to accept, as the costs of finding that person and the risk of not being able to keep them may be far too high.
And that is true even if there is a large pool of people willing to work for me at the price I am willing to pay.
So the labor market is a lot more complex than the market for oil, and there are these extra costs that may balloon from time to time and cause the market to freeze up and not clear for many positions. For this reason, both employers and workers need some stability in wages and expectations sufficient to make long term plans and commitments, and when volatility destroys that stability, you get into scenarios where workers and employers can no longer find each other.
It is the flipside of a recession, where people say "there aren't enough jobs". Both the worker saying "there aren't enough jobs" in a downturn and the employer saying "there aren't enough workers" are right because the economist drawing simple supply and demand curves is omitting the complications that exist in labor markets which do not exist in commodities markets.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAELAH
It seems likely that unemployment benefits are contributing to this labor shortage.
edit: why the downvotes?
The downvotes are because the haves want the have nots to shut up and get back to work for them. It’s the equivalent of taking legitimate points raised by workers and responding with stop being a smart ass.
Also, many day cares are still “temporarily” closed, operating at reduced capacity, not taking new children, or have been permanently shuttered due to the pandemic.
This report from Pittsburgh is a good example: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2021/05/04/how-l...
Usually they are also in higher COL areas as well so I'd assume they pay more in Tax/Rent etc.
That being said, it's long been time for In-n-Out to stop using American cheese and switch to Cheddar, but that's a whole industry problem...
Most Americans don't have that option, sadly.
> it's long been time for In-n-Out to stop using American cheese and switch to Cheddar
Please no—American cheese melts better. Or you need to have heavily processed cheddar to melt as nicely, and then there's not much of a difference.
Rents might be high in Southern California, but the bulk of their rapid expansion was in the 70s and 80s when land was still reasonably cheap and they may actually own many of their own buildings.
Relying on low skill jobs to provide higher compensation without changing the underlying value prop of the employee seems to undermine fundamental economic principles.
Cooks at higher end restaurants, however, are skilled jobs. It takes years of knowledge and practice to master some culinary techniques, hence they are harder to replace, their work product can be sold for greater profit, and the individual will be able to obtain higher pay.
The same applies construction and most Amy other industry. Some jobs are low skilled, not requiring prior experience or skill, but many are skilled and can demand higher wages. This system incentivizes the individual to learn new skills, gain knowledge, try new things, and thereby gain a access to opportunities that pay higher wages.
Walmart, Sports Authority, D&B Supply, and Albertsons on Fairview and Eagle. Lowes on Eagle. All were $18-$20 some with bonuses.
Maverik on Fariview and 5 mile, Maverik on Fairfield and Cloverdale.
Both Walmart's on Overland.
Gemstate metals was looking for machinists.
That's the problem here. It's not the fault of the businesses.
$20 hour inconsistent gig work isn't the same as a $20 salaried job.
There was even a union electrical apprenticeship, which had severe competition, only hired a few people a year, and required all manner of tests all required within 1 day of the event which was impossible to have. (Color blindness test, high school transcripts, etc) the guy really didn't care to be there.
>"The thing they are fighting against is people are getting a lot of money in stimulus so there is no desire for them to work."
A healthy economy is one where people have the flexibility to be choosey and places that offer shit-jobs have to change or go out of business.
Please define "a lot of money".
>> so there is no desire for them to work
Those lazies, why won't they work for peanuts?
>> Where I live there are tons of people looking to hire at $20/hr and they are getting zero applicants.
Source please, if you will.
I find it offensive and sad that you implied I called someone lazy, I didn't. I stated that competing with free money is challenging and is what is making it hard to find employees. Why work for $20/hr when you are getting unemployment benefits that nears $14?
EDIT: Apologies, that was a lazy comment. What I meant to say was "I found your comment to be laughable at best and ill-willed at worst."
If you are still into having a discussion with me, even though I offended you, can we make it revolve around the concept of "socialism" and the reasons behind many US citizens being afraid that going down the path of looking out for each other will lead to the US becoming The Soviet Union?
$20/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks is $40k/year.
This is life changing amounts different.
Considering a living wage is considered $14/hour for Idaho[0] for a single, unmarried, no kids adult, I think the bigger problem is probably not unemployment, but with businesses not realizing that their wages are not competitive for labor against almost anything else.
You can't pay the median or worse and expect hiring to be quickly, especially in Boise - a growing urban area that is probably well outside the state's average.
But like you said, it's a worthless anecdote.
So does taking a shit job and that being in your employment history.
From the employee perspective it is a lot easier to monitor the job market and actively seek out employment while not employed.
It’s true unemployment is not enough for most people to pay their bills, but that is also true of a lot of full time employment...employers can blame unemployment for being unable to fill positions but if your full time position can’t compete with unemployment benefits the answer isn’t to take away a minimal safety net so employers can force shit wages and no benefits on workers...at best the employer gets the employee they wanted below a living wage and it’s left society as a whole with a significant number of unemployed works with absolutely nothing and not even enough shit jobs with shit wages to employ them all.
There is a reason your comment was downvoted, hint it’s not because people agree with you, and acknowledging a premises is correct while the conclusion is wrong is not the same as agreeing with you (but you knew that).
Your quantitative claim contradicts that characterization.
> - at an extra $600, about 40% of workers would make more on unemployment than at their job
Since what I reported was the rough policy target was that the average worker would be making the same with the boost, only 40% and not approximately 50% making more with the boost isn’t me overselling, if anything, it is the opposite.
A couple of states are tapering off Covid relief funds so we'll see how that affects worker availability.
Provided you can, i.e. your kids' school isn't still shut down or something so you have to stay home to watch them.
Seems like things are working exactly as they should in a modern society. Business needs to pay a living wage to attract workers.
All they're saying is they're used to being able to dictate terms and they have less power to do that right now. It's almost as if there was some sort of global crisis that forced everyone to re-evaluate their priorities, and they realized that working for slave wages in dangerous work conditions for companies who demonstrably don't care about them, wasn't a great idea if you could avoid it.
I could offer $250k salaries to each line cook in the restaurant, but then I would have to charge something like $750 per entree. Such a business would fail to attract customers at that price and have to close.
My example was hyperbolic to better draw attention to the principle.
The principle applies, as you admit, that the cost increase would need to be passed onto the customer, who in a competitive business environment will likely chose the lower cost option over two products of similar quality.
If the employer did offer a wage increase, it would need to fit in the overall business ecosystem. For small restaurants maybe they can only afford a $2 raise while breaking even. For the local car wash, maybe $1.25 is the limit. By increasing the wage to an arbitrary number ($15/hr), this ignores the market principles that each business operates under.
Another thought experiment: why only $15? Why not $25? Or $50? Wouldn’t that be better? To set a limit already admits the principle holds and therefore any solution without nuance is unlikely to result in a good outcome.
Don't these arguments apply any time the minimum wage is debated? I heard these same arguments in 2007, and the economy didn't implode (well, not because of the minimum wage). Why did we set it to $7.25 over $6.55? Why did we set it to $6.55 over $5.85? The minimum wage is already set, so the "market principles" have already been violated, yet the industry remains and is profitable.
> I think you underestimate how small margins are at most restaurants.... The principle applies, as you admit, that the cost increase would need to be passed onto the customer, who in a competitive business environment will likely chose the lower cost option over two products of similar quality.
No, I don't underestimate it. But I think if workers can't be paid enough to comfortably afford rent and healthcare then there should be no profit whatsoever. If someone is making a profit while someone else can't afford housing, then something is wrong.
I say set the minimum wage at a point that allows people some dignity, and let the market sort the rest out. Restaurants will set a price and customers will choose whether or not to pay it. Those restaurants that have a compelling menu at an acceptable price will prosper, others will fail and be replaced. Eventually an equilibrium will be reached as higher prices are normalized.
As a customer of restaurants, I can tell you I almost never care about price -- it's all about food and experience. I'm going to a restaurant later today and I'm going to pay 25% over the price of the meal so I can assure the waiter gets the cut they deserve. If that restaurant raises their prices 30-40% to pay their workers more, I will still eat there because I want the food and I don't want to cook.
That just means your business model is unsustainable.
Or add "... who are able to generate more value than they expect to be paid".
Businesses exist to make a profit, and will gladly hire people who make them money. A typical waiter just doesn't generate enough value to justify paying them a wage that will compete with what they're currently being paid to sit around and freeload.
One has retail hospitality jobs open. Total take home pay is $80k annually. People won't even show up for interviews. He's never seen anything like it.
Another is a manufacturing company. Starting pay is $20/hour for someone who can show up and use a tape measure. They're trying to add another shift of production to meet demand but can't get labor.
There's a popular narrative of "poor business owner! Try not paying minimum wage!" but this is mostly coming from people who don't have first-hand experience in hiring, don't know business owners trying to hire less-skilled workers, and believe these reports are coming from people attempting to offer just the minimum wage.
Financial incentives are not working. I'm not convinced it's only UI - it could be childcare as well, or reticence about COVID, or a mix of all above plus more. But it's clear it's not fictional, and it's clear it's not just a matter of not paying minimum wage.
Also $17.50 is an incomplete picture. How many hours per week? Any benefits? I would bet a years salary that it is <40 and no benefits. Would you take that job?
/s
That sounds more like inflation than productivity actually going up.
https://www.google.com/search?q=bozeman+montana+wendy%27s+hi...
Also, I don't understand why $13 is "obviously pathetic". I make a little over $15 an hour and I get by just fine.
This isn't a competitive environment.
$80k/yr for that? Risking my health (or even death) from COVID, guaranteeing damage to my mental health from the abuse? Yeah, pass.
I know less about the manufacturing sector, but from what I do know, it's going to have similar problems: you have to be there in person, and because it's widely considered to be "lower-class" work, there's a higher likelihood than average of abusive behavior toward workers.
Unemployment benefits are not causing the disruptive effects, they're (to some extent) protecting workers from the disruptive effects, which is exactly what they're supposed to do. They are not a handout, they pay for themselves historically; we should let them work.
https://www.eater.com/22417344/restaurant-labor-shortage-cov...
Restaurant workers in particular are facing higher risk for less pay (fewer customers == fewer tips), and working conditions in restaurants were already terrible.
From the article : “We are so sick and tired of [restaurant owners] assuming we want a handout. We want to work, but we also want to be treated like human beings. We haven’t been for way too long.”
We're also having trouble with schools and daycares that've become used to closing at 3-4 pm and are unlikely to return to staying open until 5-5:30 pm.
It'll be interesting to see the long-term effects of this accidental experiment over the last year of UBI/shorter work hours. We're lucky enough to afford a nanny to fill the gaps along with family, but I have no idea how other people do it. Part of me hopes it's just the additional family duties and increased unemployment benefits keeping people temporarily out of the workforce for now and not a permanent trend of preferred underemployment. It's been tough seeing so many local businesses go under over the last year.
Then there's also the decision of whether to pass those costs downstream to your customers.
There hasn't been any UBI the past year. UBI means you can work without losing your benefits. What we have now discourages work because it's effectively an 80-100% tax rate on earnings.
Looking at the graph though, I'm curious: why did forecasters expect a huge vertical jump in April instead of a continuation of the trend from the month before, especially with all the small businesses that went under last year.
And yes, the last time we made public policies based on imperfect anthropology (Nazi Germany, Apartheid SA or Rhodesia) it was a disaster.
Dogecoin, a meme and joke, went from a quarter of a cent last year to 66 cents today.
And the second most popular job in today payrolls were Casino workers, at an staggering 72k people.
Something must be seriously wrong when people think it is wise to dump money on memes and casinos!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_numbe...
My point is, take these numbers with a grain of salt.
Initially, from what I read about Dogecoin, I thought Dogecoin was an inflationary junk coin since it produces 5billion tokens per year. However, in considering the total supply, this is a lesser inflationary rate (not CPI--just creation) than the USD since this works out to around 4% anually.
I do still think Doge is a poor currency, but I don't see it being much worse (I cringe writing this knowing I'll be blown up) than fiat dollars other than major acceptance.
Either way I completely agree. Something is wrong.
It's not entirely illogical either if you assume the marginal utility of money is discontinuous and there is a jumps around at certain thresholds such as being able to afford a reasonable home.
It is entirely possible that cheap financing results in higher down payments which in the end actually fuels a savings craze that drags inflation down.
I also suspect that over the long term a lot of products are going down in price and housing costs like rents are dragging the CPI up.
They probably shouldn't...
1) Humans are on average bad with numbers. This could have unforseen negative impacts.
2) Your average person can't define causal inference, let alone make a well-informed one.
3) Few of the presenters (news people) have a grasp on 1 & 2. If they do, also communicating that becomes a challenge that requires solving 1 & 2.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/jobs-report-growth-unem...
As a numerate person I would personally appreciate it if all statistical claim had a link to a Jupyter Notebook and the associated data. (Though perhaps Observable would be the best choice here since it is run on the web).
Yes, maybe their restaurant (and other biz) margins are small but they're business people, get creative. Biz is not entitled to cheap labor.
Adjust prices, raise wages, have managers do work.
This is the first time in decades I've heard of labor having an actual choice.
People should be able to be picky about what job they want to work. Do you want to work a service job during COVID? Pay is crap, people are crap to employees, and you get the chance of getting a deadly virus. Sign me up!
I have the feeling there's quite a few “predictions” during this pandemic that are off. Where people or the economy have acted contrary to popular beliefs or rational modelling.
233 536 770(P) 266(P)
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=ne...
For vaccines coming online and people _starting_ to get back to normal, it doesn't seem like a stretch to expect a number higher than this.
A friend who was a waiter is not going back to work because her salary depends (75% of it) on tips, however many households switched to food delivery services.
Once people start going to restaurants again, in large enough numbers, employees who depend on tips will return. Base salary for servers is peanuts otherwise.
“ Work hard! Don’t worry if we print money and triple the cost of your house and new mortgage! You are in the top 15%! Look your class only pays 20% of the taxes, never mind all that money we printed! It’s not a tax!”
There’s a serious level of subversion about what’s going on economically in this country.
Spend it, which creates new jobs.
Invest it, so businesses can create new jobs.
Lend it, so borrowers can spend it on your behalf.
Do nothing and let people stay unemployed.
Considering the lack of demand for credit indicated by low interest rates, lending is almost the same as doing nothing.
The last option causes deflation which requires the Fed to step in and increase the money supply until inflation hits the target inflation rate of 2%. Right now it is around 2.6% which is pretty much as perfect as it gets. Not too low, not too high.
Highly simplified: People are stealing USD and the Fed has to compensate for the loss except the Fed is distributing the new money very inefficiently which causes collateral damage in the asset markets.
Anyway, remind yourself of how you couldn't afford that $80-150/mo gym/class. How you didn't go on a real vacation for years because it took 8mo+ to save up for one. How you probably drove a car that constantly broke down because you couldn't get a loan on something decent. How you had to save money from your $6/hr job to eat Burger King on your lunch break across the street. How a huge chunk of your income went into driving yourself to work (gas/maintenance). How you couldn't afford a place without 3-4 roommates. How you went for years without buying a set of 4 tires, instead buying 1 used tire to replace your bald tire before the police/rain gets you.
I'll take the 150k stresses over my previous $6-12/hr stresses where I felt like I was spinning tires and never, ever going to get out of that.
You would choose welfare over a $150K salary?
Nothing if it's voluntary.
> I grew up upper middle class with parents who paid for college.
I didn't.
> I could have just as easily been born to a family with 0 wealth and had to start working at a young age and do that until I died.
I was and would likely not end up dead with 0 wealth if I can manage to keep some of what I'm now generating.
And evidently your luck, as well.
> evidently your luck, as well.
I worked at a Burger King, a hardware store, an apartment complex (plumbing toilets and whatnot), and finally put my self through college. It was an exhausting climb the whole way and I _worked_. I was never let go, and I hardly (like a $1500 a pell grant once) received assistance because I _made too much_ in my day job when I finally did go to school.
I wasn't terribly lucky other than I `lucked` into a work ethic and I `lucked` into being born in a country that still had enough of a free market that I _could_ work my way up.
And thinking on it now I don't think I was that well served by my schooling. I feel if anything I was held back in an _almost_ deliberate effort to homogenize me.
I should add that I also support local farms and businesses now that I have the funds.
I'm guessing you’ve never lived on welfare. Having done that and had a.personal income that, while short of $150K, is a sizable fraction of it (and been everywhere in between), increasing real income has involved a monotonically increasing quality of life. I’m definitely into the range, even short of $150K, where the marginal difference from each additional $ of income is much smaller than at lower levels, but it is still not negative.
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...
Chill.
It's banks and REIT's and corporations and foreign investors buying up houses, not poor people.
The majority of money printed was loaned out to banks and other institutions, which promptly put that money back into the stock market and other investments.
Think about it this way. Would you rather have your investments crash and pay the same taxes, or take the tax increase and also have your investments go up? If you would prefer the second, you benefited from the government's actions.
In fact, I feel the lower class were the ones that the government took from, in the form of impending inflation.
My turn: do you expect more than half of all households in America to be paying no federal income tax at all?
Seems like instead of collecting $x amount of tax from them in order to give it back in benefits, we could just not have them pay tax (which is the case currently).
The real answer is - raise their wages, and then they will be paying more in federal taxes (just like the upper quartiles are).
USA lower tier professionals (Doctors, Lawyers, Programmers, have a anticompetitive racket - they should all get a 20-30% net haircut in salary, tech should be regulated, we should increase admission to med-school and allow nurse practitioners to serve as doctors, etc.). I say this as someone who benefits greatly from the current system, but also realizes how fucked up it is.
Finance people should be taxed out the wazoo - watching stocks tick up and down on the market is a waste of time and most of them defraud people anyway, estate and wealth tax should be a thing, if they try to denounce citizenship to get away, immediate tax of 50% of [unrealized] profits (we currently do 20%).
Even that wouldn't get us back to how things were in the 1960s, but it would at least be closer, and probably makes things better in the mean time.
Programmers get paid a lot because the market is extremely competitive. Doctors get paid a lot because healthcare in the US is essentially one massive cartel and incredibly inefficient as a result. In most countries, doctors and programmers make similar salaries.
I have never seen him produce a working program in any dot net language, or for that matter any procedural language except maybe visual basic for applications (excel macros maybe). I think he tried to learn php but gave it up. He also calls himself a software engineer. He makes some good money tho, he's in management.
I rarely see this with other engineering disciplines. Its always the computer programmers lol
Just 2 cents from the peanut gallery!
I don’t really care what you call me but I will call myself a software engineer because I have a depth of understanding in how to solve problems with software in a consistent way. I’ve always had an engineering mindset, I grew up in a family of engineers. It’s just the term I prefer.
Median income tax is about 10k on 65k of income so people in the bottom 50% pay between 0 and 10k on between 0 and 65k of income.
If you’re earning 200k or so you pay a similar amount of tax on the first 65k of your income.
But yes, you pay more tax on the extra 135k you’re making. But that’s okay, because you’re making an extra 135k. You can afford it.
$65K is an average household income, but there's no way that the average household is paying $10K in federal income tax, that's laugh-out-loud far of the mark.
Let's just say that's a couple married-filing-jointly.
In 2020, you'd take first of all a $24,800 basic deduction. Then you'd pay $4,429 in income tax on the $40,200 taxable income.
If you had two kids, you'd take two Child Tax Credits for $2,000 each and pay $429 in federal income tax.
An average household with two kids pays essentially no federal income tax in 2020.
Even in the absolute worst-case, a single filer pays no more than ~$7,400 on $65,000 of income.
In 2021, thanks to the increase in the Child Tax Credit ($3000 per child or more younger children), the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the average household will pay no federal income tax at all on income under $75,000 per year.
Also as grandparent mentioned, you pay exactly the same amount of taxes on your first $65K as the person making $65K does.
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/styles/o...
As for inflation, it's threatening to price people under your $150k/yr cut-off for "hardship" out of decent housing even in mediocre cities, ever, and may eventually hurt creditors some (which, I mean, that's a fine outcome according to most people, I'd think). Those with $150k+ salaries had damn well better have some assets to their name, including maybe a (mortgaged) house, and so will ride the inflationary wave alright. Those with little or nothing, on the other hand, may now never be able to afford anything. Young workers just starting out, who have high-ish income but only because they live in a place with insane housing prices, are getting screwed, too, sure, but established professionals will be fine, unless they've somehow managed not to acquire assets over the years.
Pity the normal couple with $60,000/yr household income. Believe it or not, they raise kids on that income. Go figure.
I wouldn't trade places with someone getting by on unemployment for their $12/hr job they were laid off from, certainly. I don't think they're "looting". We're clearly top-heavy on capital, given how the markets are behaving, so I think I've got a better idea of where the looting's happening.
Jeffrey Gundlach had a great recent presentation on these trend reversals that is worth considering:
They...aren’t. It’s true that that group, the 92nd-98th percentile by income in the US, are bearing a somewhat heavier burden than they probably ought to in order to support the illusion of tax progressivity while hyperrich capitalists skate by relatively untaxed, but that’s very much not “getting hosed”, especially compared to the at-least-equally hardworking people much lower on the economic scale
Those in the Top Quintile (~200k in 2010 and ~250k today, so right in the middle of your proposed hosed bracket) have seen the greatest increases in Mean Income in the last decade [^1 p.8]. Those in the Upper Income bracket (~190k in 2000 to 207k today) have seen a 20% increase in wealth in the last 30 years while lower brackets have declined [^2].
Do you have any data to backup your assertion that "being a hard working professional in this country is losing its allure, and is increasingly a suckers bet"? These jobs seem to have a much greater increase in wages [^3 Fig. F][^4 Fig. 1] (4x in the last 40 years) than those in all other lower income groups. I'm not sure how anyone could come to the conclusion that increasing wealth and top of the pile wage growth are "a suckers bet".
[1] CRS The U.S. Income Distribution: Trends and Issues - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44705.pdf
[2] Pew Research "Trends in income and wealth inequality" - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...
[3] Economic Policy Institute - "State of Working America Wages 2019" https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2019/
[4] CRS "Real Wage Trends, 1979 to 2019" - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf
Actually, not. Your numbers are household, not individual quintiles; the proposed “hosed" bracket bracket is about about 92nd-98th percentile by individual income.
The figures get even worse in this case. The 95th percentile of individual income has far greater wage and wealth growth over the last 40 years.
This is probably 90% of the reason for the crypto boom.
At that level of income and likely technological knowledge, nothing prevents you from moving somewhere else cheap, buy a house with your savings and use your professional knowledge to start a remote business.
Sure, a lot of factors to consider but I think you can find a better bang for your buck.
Go where you're treated best!
If I were American I would have renounced my citizenship long ago (mainly for the taxes on worldwide income when not resident in the USA).
Most of Europe is not much better though, it's actually pretty comparable to the USA (more expensive housing, lower salaries, cheaper healthcare).
As for mortgage cost, rates are the lowest they've ever been. I just refinanced to cut my payoff time in half keeping the payments almost exactly the same. The property values are shooting up, but I already own the property, so how does that hurt me? It's wealth, not an expense. 401k and IRA are doing fine. What do I care if the real value of the couple grand I keep in checking as bare dollars is going to be nothing in 50 years? That's a tiny portion of holdings and I'll be dead by then anyway.
I don't understand complaints like this. If anyone is getting hosed, it's people in the 40-60K salary range. Just enough to not qualify for any kind of public assistance, but not enough to not be living paycheck to paycheck and forced to rent forever at perpetually increasing prices so property owners like us can get rich.
As for other people are doing, I guess looting and rioting happened somewhere since it was on the news. But again, I live downtown smack dab in the middle of a major metro. I'm watching what these people are doing in full public view every day. Mostly, they're either living in tents next to the highway or they're out in the sun for 12 hours every single day hauling wood and stone to put up new condo developments all over the place for the benefit of homebuilders and people like me with enough money to buy downtown condos. As far as I know, the bulk of protesters in any activist movement are well-off suburbanites who can afford to take time off work or college students.
Its a “tax” (a reduction in real value held) on holders of dollar denominated assets, transferring value to holders of dollar-denominated liability.
> More so on the poor, who have fewer assets that inflate along with the money printing.
The poor tend to have most of their gross assets in tangible non-financial assets (like a car and other durable goods), which do tend to inflate with general inflation (they may depreciate independent of inflation.)
In terms of dollar denominated items, the poor tend to be net debtors, and inflation reduces the real value of that debt.
And also, of course, recipients of the new dollars.
There is a lot of confusion here to unpack, but the central idea, that taxes pay for the government is the key confusion. Taxes are a means of wealth redistribution and method to curb inflation. Taxes don't fund the federal government - it can print money just fine.
African Americans do not collect the majority of welfare in this country. Sops to multi billion dollar corporations like WalMart - why is that not welfare?
A trillion dollars of HNW tax evasion happens every year, simply because the IRS is underfunded and understaffed - why is that not the problem?
And isn't asset price inflation a direct outcome of inequality? Lower money velocity leads to asset bubbles - this is something we know of since the French Revolution now.
Sometimes even the beasts of burden rebel. Though it may seen they should be grateful for getting their guaranteed hay at the end of the day.