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Comment by SantalBlush | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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