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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

> He has promised Chinese a better life. Growing paychecks aside, the Chinese are not living it.

I mean... growing paychecks instead of stagnation would do a whole lot to arrest the instability that Western liberal democracies are experiencing.

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Paychecks are rising in the US, certainly. Just not very equally.

But paychecks have no been outrunning inflation or follow productivity increase at least here in western Europe.

My paychecks if lucky grows like 2~3% but my house value rises with like 10~18% so do my taxes I need to pay for owning a house.

Securities, property, crypto and other related assets are the real rising stars.

The rise of paychecks against that backdrop is very small. In the context of everything else that's increasing in price, it feels like a wash.

Yup, thank the Federal Reserve. Elites profit the most from generous quantitative easing, aka "printer go brrr". Meanwhile you'll be paying double for a house.

Yes, all taxation is theft, but inflation is a tax that is especially bad since it is regressive (affects the poor most), extra-judicial (no one voted to authorize it), and hidden (or at least disguised).

In that case the poor should rejoice. The Fed has managed to keep inflation at 2% until the pandemic. It was 4% in the 80s and 3% in the 90s.

The fed has MEASURED it to be 2 percent using questionable methods. E.g. the biggest expense of yohr life is not counted

The Fed's mandate includes keeping unemployment low, and its main tool for that (lowering interest rates) has the side effect of inflating asset prices. But what else can they do? The alternative (fiscal policy) is congress's responsibility and outside their control. If congress decided to take action they would adjust accordingly, in the mean time they are doing what they are officially tasked with with the tools that they have, even if that may not be ideal.

Paying double for a house? You do know that you have to pay interest? Just because the resale price of the house is bigger doesn't mean financing has become more expensive.

Funny how the only dimension you can understand is the interest you have to pay. You know you still have to pay the house off right?

Increase can only be considered against inflation. They aren't really.

Wages are only going up if you are at the very top. The bottom half is not going up.

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2020/09/1...

This is a rough claim to make today. There a "fight" for 15, now most places are paying 15 for labor and Amazon warehouses are pushing 25. In the last year its pretty clear ages have gone up for the bottom half and by a large margin.

You can look at the actual numbers, or you can blindly conjecture something must be "pretty clear".

> In the last year its pretty clear ages have gone up for the bottom half and by a large margin.

Primarily because the very lowest paid have entirely left the labour market. Lop off the lowest 10% and the average rises.

As against in China?

It is the same situation in China, or should I hazard by saying the entire world?

Growing paychecks doesn't mean anything if the cost of things you want and need is growing faster.

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