That's because shadow stats is a joke. If you adjust US GDP using their inflation figures, you'd find that the US economy has been on a continual decline for the past few decades.
Today families need dual incomes just to purchase a modest home and carry health insurance. How is this not a decline in standard of living from a few decades ago?
Where's our new airports? New rail transit systems? New infrastructure? Everything in this country is old and getting older.
What's your point.
> sweeping linear statements like "decline"
Who are you talking to? When did I make any statements of that nature?
I was pointing out the provided example was stupid. Smart phones are "cool" and all, but it'd be a tough sell to argue successfully that connectivity has increased societal cohesion, education, information dispersal, or any of the other virtues you might hope for.
Instead, iPhones and virtual doctor appointments are like bandaids on a societal-wide decline, where increased privatization combines with government inflation to create a caste system they disguise as capitalism. Inflation-adjusted salaries are lower than ever across the board, housing prices are skyrocketing both absolutely and as a function of salary-years, corporate control of information has reached unprecedented levels, and the "relative value story" of now vs 40 years ago makes it pretty clear it's tougher to have a good life now even if you can have fancy toys to interact with corporate-controlled data-mined ad-laced entertainment
The naivety is almost making me feel better, but I don't think you understand what capitalism has done to our world's power structures if you think we stand a chance to change anything
Now, my plan is to accept that even with a good salary securing a future at good QOL costs a lifetime, so I will try to enjoy myself and hopefully buy a home that doesn't get burnt down in the increasingly frequent and devastating forest fires of my native home.
Hooray for 2022!
That claim sounds reasonable given what I've observed happening in this country over the last few decades. Without question people seem to struggle much more to obtain the same level of lifestyle as many enjoyed decades ago.
You seem to claim that this is such an obvious falsehood that there's no more room for discussion, but I think there's much more room for discussion that you are implying.
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...
It's primarily the labor-heavy working-class white male (in the white male demographic) that has been brutalized by changes in the US and global economy. They have been left behind to drown in a pool of fentanyl.
> It's primarily the labor-heavy working-class white male (in the white male demographic) that has been brutalized by changes in the US and global economy. They have been left behind to drown in a pool of fentanyl.
That sounds like most people are actually more negatively affected by the economy compared to decades prior.
Let me say very clearly: It's far too many people. I don't care if it's less than a majority, and I don't care if it swings the overall statistics. It's still too many people that are being economically destroyed.
Outside of housing everything is dirt cheap nowadays.
> Based on my conversations with Williams, I think I now understand what he’s doing: he’s misinterpreting a cumulative 20-year change in the measured price level as a change in the measured annual inflation rate. And that caused him to overestimate that annual change by at least an order of magnitude.
It did? According to https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USMANNQGSP, it's been steadily going up. The only thing that's shrinking is its proportion of GDP. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/VAPGDPMA
> and almost no one can afford housing until they're middle aged
...except that shadowstat's inflation figures outstrips even housing prices[1]. Eyeballing their chart, we've been experiencing 9% growth between 2000 and 2020, translating to a 460% increase. By comparison the housing price index has only gone up 184%
that sounds quite reasonable to me, considering the vast decrease in material living standard in the US for the last several decades. there was an interview with someone who lived through the 70s that was saying a painter back then could afford to buy his own home, have a wife that didn't work and six kids! today, a single painter can barely afford to rent a single bedroom, let alone support a whole family and have a house.
I don't know when this practice died out, but it used to be routine for homeowners to take in boarders.
People could generally meet their basic needs because those were the only things they spent money on. Life was exceedingly bare-bones. Houses were small. Your life revolved around your job. You cooked all your own meals. You entertained yourself. The list goes on.
All of that said, house prices are alone just bad example. If you went somewhere with cheap land and no red tape, you could get a 70's house at 70's prices (adjusted for inflation) still.
One thing is that mom cooked all the meals. People rarely ate out. I know that was true in my family at the time. Eating out was a major, major treat. Entertainment was going out the door and joining up with the neighborhood kids. The house was tiny.
It all was perfectly normal.
Food has also gotten much cheaper relative to what it was in the 1970’s. Some would argue that it has also reduced in quality.
But if you add up all the plusses and minuses the two income family today has less disposable income then the single income family in the 1970’s when you exclude the cost of transportation, healthcare, childcare and housing.
It turns out one of the biggest drivers of home prices is school quality and income potential. So two cars for two jobs in a place you can find them and housing and childcare to ensure that children are safe.
Most of the houses have had additions built in by now, and extensive revisions and upgrades.
The starter homes of the US Boomer generation are out of reach of the Millennials even though they are the same houses but now 50 years old.
It is possible that you're just so rich their income wouldn't contribute to the family, but income is always useful - otherwise neither of you would be working.
There are plenty of homes in the US that can be afforded on a single salary of a blue collar laborer.
Are these in the highly desirable coastal cities? Of course not.
People used to move to LA post-WW2 because it had cheap and plentiful land. It no longer does.
[1] http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs-cpi.gif?hl=ad&t=16497710...
GDP since 2000 went from 10.5T to 24T (2.285x). Adjusted for 3% inflation, that's a 26% increase.
Your point remains.
4% inflation would mean a 4% increase over 20 years.
5% inflation would mean a 14% DECREASE over 20 years.
6% inflation would mean a 29% DECREASE over 20 years.
7% inflation would mean a 41% DECREASE over 20 years.
8% inflation would mean a 51% DECREASE over 20 years.
The problem is - the way people experience inflation is dramatically impacted by whether they had a 30-year fixed mortgage.
If your house PRICE went up 400% since 2000 and your housing cost went DOWN 20% since 2000 - inflation would obviously seem low.
If your rent went up 400% since 2000, it obviously feels different.
67% of people are homeowners - and the Fed's measure of inflation seems largely targeted to this group of people. The true rate of inflation is almost certainly higher - but probably nowhere close to ShadowStats.
1. using country level GDP gets you a 63% drop, hardly any better
2. The argument I was making was with respect to living standards (ie. there's no way that our income/living standards dropped 67% in 20 years). In that context it makes sense to use GDP per capita rather than GDP for the entire country. If US population grew 50% over some time period, and GDP only grew 25%, that's actually bad because that means the average person is actually worse off than before.
Theoretically, everything can be expressed in dollars - and GDP often is - but I think you're oversimplifying things.
It's not, but the GDP figures I was looking up was in USD, so it should be factored in.
>but I think you're oversimplifying things.
Perhaps, but can you think of a plausible model for why our GDP would have dropped 67% in real terms, but somehow our living standards haven't dipped to that of a developing south american/african country? The only explanations I can come up with are:
1. the real GDP drop doesn't exist, or at least is vastly overstated
2. every other country (or at least the worldwide average) GDP dropped by approximately the same amount, so comparatively speaking we're still in the same place relative to other countries
That could explain a large portion of the gap...
Doesn't look like it's in decline here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDPC1
Or here: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-constant-pric...
For others: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts