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Comment by mercy_dude | Hacker News Reader

Well of course it is soaring. While everyone is happy boasting about how good the job numbers are, average Joe is having a hard time to afford gas and groceries with his still same wage gig job

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Meanwhile, manufacturers are waiting with baited breath for a few people to trickle out of workforce development programs to fill jobs across a wide range of LIGHT manufacturing jobs using CNC, and additive 3D technologies. They will even hire you with no certificate, training, or proven work history with the expectation of training you. Unfortunately, most people given this opportunity have to be fired for a lack of productivity (bad work ethic).

The world is waiting to be grabbed by the balls...still. Dump your shitty gig and get a job.

Having seen the working conditions in many of these places and the work ethic they expect, they(the employer) are being unrealistic. They expect young, unseasoned, immature employees to have the diligence and attention to detail of a 35 year old 10 year veteran, and generally aren't too on top of actually obeying labor laws or paying competitively with gig economy.

The opportunity cost of "can't change my mind and do something better" is very high these days.

From TFA:

>What's happening: Spending on experiences, like travel and entertainment, has supplanted physical goods like clothing and home items as the purchases of choice for consumers.

>Zoom out: For spendthrift consumers, a saving grace has been rising wages that, while failing to keep pace with surging inflation, are still rising at the fastest pace in decades.

>They’re also bolstered by an unusually strong jobs market that has kept the unemployment rate below 4%, and given job seekers a lot of leverage.

While those who boast about job numbers are indeed oversimplifying, complaining that "average Joe is having a hard time to afford gas and groceries with his still same wage gig job" is just false. It's a meme that people spread on the internet because it aligns with their personal views, not because it's backed by the data.

There is great incentive to show good numbers even when all is going downhill.[0]

Even greater incentive when the authorities tasked with safeguarding financial securities and markets don't know whether they are looking at a recession or it just hit them on the face.

There's been a great deal of public deception over the past 2-3 years on matters gdp, growth and overall market performance. The chicken has to come home to roost eventually.

[0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-companies-are-becoming...

Outside of the tech world, this is absolutely true. My wife is an elementary school teacher and a few of her coworkers have to drive for Lyft or do something similar a couple of nights per week or on weekends just to be able to afford their apartments. These aren’t exactly luxury digs, either.

Elementary school teacher (and other government jobs) are some of the worst in inflationary periods, though. You have a monopsony employer; usually some emotional attachment to the job; a school calendar that provides convenient quitting/rehiring times only once a year; and a seniority-based pay system that oftentimes makes you start at the bottom if you switch school districts. This prevents many teachers from job-hopping the way other professions would, which locks them out of the biggest sources of raises.

When my mom started teaching in the late 60s, doctors/lawyers/engineers made only about 20-30% more than elementary school teachers. By the time she retired in the mid-00s, it was about 3x more, and my starting salary as a software engineer was basically equal to her retirement salary. 15 years into my career I was making 10x what she ever did.

That's not inflation as much as our society's shattered version of a meritocracy.

>> usually some emotional attachment to the job; a school calendar that provides convenient quitting/rehiring times only once a year

Don't forget that teachers generally have a pension plan. They also work for a district, which means changing employers requires relocating or drastically changing ones commute. It's also not viable to jump between "industries" due to that pension. They're fairly locked in and then taken advantage of.

It is false, your anecdote notwithstanding. Nominal wages are not staying "still same" for the average person in the US. The Atlanta Fed posts the median nominal wage growth nationwide, which is around 6.7% as of June 2022 [0]. If we looked at the average, this number would be even higher, because outliers skew the distribution upwards.

Now, if the statement were more like, "The average person is worse off in spite of wage growth because of inflation," I would wholly agree. But wages have not stayed the same.

https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker

Gas is up over 100%. Food is up 50% or more depending on the item. Rents and the cost of health insurance are soaring. Even if it was true that the median worker was making 6.7% more, that hardly comes close to making up the gap in what they are forced to spend for basic necessities.

You two are talking past each other. The parent post explicitly acknowledges inflation is a thing and is reducing overall spending power. His contention is that "still same wage gig job" is misleading, because it implies absolute earnings have stayed the same.

Gas is not up 100%. Overall food cost for the average consumer is not up 50%. These are easily looked up.

Fortunately we have a metric that measures what people actually spend on goods, called inflation, which is under 10%.

Not the technical meaning of inflation, just temporary price increases that will be shrugged off in short order. Not before the media and politicians ride it for all it's worth though.

Everything goes hyper-bole so quick these days and becomes "true." "Inflation" is a buzz word that is meant to encapsulate outrage at the price increases.

>just temporary price increases that will be shrugged off in short order

Fed and most economists state this is true inflation that will last. Adding trillions of money for free during the pandemic is extremely unlikely not to add long term inflation.

Here's [1] the IGM poll of leading economists on it from last Nov.

>"Inflation" is a buzz word

Inflation is an economic variable that has a solid definition, and it's very likely the current (non-disputable) inflation will have a long lasting component. For example, as a result of inflation, there is ample evidence wages have risen from pressure, and wages are known historically in economics as "sticky," meaning they are much harder to lower than to raise. This alone would give long lasting inflation (and has done so historically).

[1] https://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/inflation/

I don’t understand why someone has to blatantly lie about easily known things even when you do have a decent argument to make about how inflation is exceeding wage increases.

Rent is not “gas and groceries”.

The U.S. isn’t building enough housing. Especially in places people want to live. This is a multi decade problem and almost fully explains the migration to southern cities.

The marginal rise in gas, as the OP claimed, has nothing to do with why credit card rates are soaring. And the OP’s dismissing job numbers is also incorrect, because wages are increasing and that is playing a huge role in offsetting the pandemic/Ukraine war related inflation.

I guess I’m one of those weirdos who took that to mean “people can’t afford to live” and not so much a statistical analysis on the price of gas and groceries.

People love to poke technical holes in arguments like this when they don’t believe that many many people in the United States are having serious troubles making ends meet

I think it stems from laziness. It's odd though because the things these people put themselves through (Amazon package delivery, Door dash, Uber) is far from easy and makes them look and feel really productive. The good jobs are going to require mental ambition to get training or even find a job that isn't pushed in their face with VC money.

Bogged down all day and can't make ends meet? New plan, you have nothing to lose.

Data bias. Those that spend on experiences spend more. Physical labor jobs rarely increase or change wages.

Lol. Go check out the Hoovervilles at your nearest city and report back

I guess the caravans of hundreds to thousands of destitute boomers are just in it because they like the van life?

If wages are increasing at a rate less than inflation, real income is falling.

Yes, this is correct. But that isn't what the parent comment was saying. If real wages were staying the same, it wouldn't affect someone's ability to afford gas and groceries on average. They were talking about nominal wages.

They didn't specify whether they meant nominal or real wages, and their main point was that fuel and groceries were becoming less affordable.

It doesn't make any sense to talk about groceries becoming less affordable with real wages staying flat, because grocery price levels are factored into the definition of a real wage.

Yes it does. The ongoing inflation is sectoral.

You haven't contradicted my statement. Maybe if you elaborate, you will. But "inflation is sectoral" has no bearing on the fact that rising grocery prices are a part of real wage computation.

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