Working class is a good litmus of how the economy is doing vs S&P because speculation can ultimately make it look like everything is fine until it isn't
One thing I'm looking at is:
https://realtimeinequality.org/
And that's showing that for the first time in over a decade, the bottom half is seeing real wage/wealth gains, even after recent inflation. Am I missing something? Because your sentiment is the more common one.
*substitute with whatever staple you wish. I used bacon here since it's historically a working class' person's meat.
NOW it's supply and demand, though.
Government price data for bacon goes back to 1980.
PS - there are other price series about bacon, including regional prices:
That website is arcane but the data is fantastic.
Wealth started growing since about 2019 too.
Look at Facebook - they're currently the 8th most valuable company on the planet, but very few people really need what they provide, and most of their customers really don't like Facebook (and IG, etc.) and the way they know the company is manipulating them. Contrast that with a companies like Exxon or Amazon, which like them or not, produce products or services people need and want to buy. Ad markets would continue without them, and I'm already seeing companies shift marketing dollars away form digital given both poor results and waiting to see what happens. (And I'm in Austin, where things are relatively booming...)
My point is simply that 80% of what we as techies do could be eliminated tomorrow, and the world would go on. The 20% remaining could (painfully) keep things going through a downturn, especially if the alternative is unemployment.
If you think your company won't cut you loose if that 80% cost reduction becomes necessary due to depression-level forces, think again - you may not be so indispensable as you think, no matter your position - I've seen a couple of top-level thought leaders/innovators cut from local companies recently, something that didn't happen even in 2008! The reason is usually, "we're pulling back from investing in innovation and new product development." I've got a bad feeling about this...
It's been a while since I've been in that income bracket, but I don't remember ever being strong-armed into taking on unnecessary debt. What are you referring to here?
But another example that comes to mind (as someone who lives in that income bracket about half by choice and half not) are car repairs (you HAVE to pony up or you lose your job, so the question becomes 'borrow 1k or lose 100% of your income').
Oh, and any time childcare is fucked up for any reason. Kid can't go to daycare/school because they're sick for a week? Parents don't get PTO, so their only option is to eat a week's worth of wages, and since income in is close to or level with expenses out, that means making it up with debt.
The 'strong arming' comes in because society is set up to make those your only options. (versus having public transit to rely on, walkable cities, or cheap car rentals, for example).
High schoolers are still being told "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!", yet a high schooler certainly can't pay the $15K+ per year to get a degree, so they take out student loans.
And then, the same people who hounded them to get a degree then hound them when they beg for student loan forgiveness, telling them they shouldn't have taken out a loan they wouldn't be able to afford to pay back.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I started college in 1999. The day my freshmen year started, jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that were already 60 years old.
This argument is revisionist bunk, in other words. Everybody knows there are some degrees that are more valuable than others, that some degrees lead to higher pay and that some don't. Everybody knows this. They know it today and they knew it in 1999 and they knew it in 1979 and I categorically reject this weird, revisionist insistence that nobody could possibly have known it or that 18-year-olds are hapless dopes without any agency or even the most basic understanding of how the world works.
No one is saying teenagers lack agency, but there is definitely a problem when an outsized number are making decisions that are detrimental to their long-term future
I'm kind of happy to go either way on this, but I think we're probably going to have to pick one. If an 18-year-old can't sign a contract, then surely they shouldn't be allowed the vote.
This will do absolutely nothing to prevent school shootings, and will have such a negligible effect on gun violence in general that I feel the Democrats are creating animosity across the aisle for no gain at all.
I won't pretend to know the solution to gun violence, but this certainly ain't it.
>Everybody knows there are some degrees that are more valuable than others
This has only been made more extreme, but you've been checked out for at least 20 years apparently.
But if you take loans in 2015 dollars and repay them in 2022 dollars, you are better off in terms of repayment by having a lot of inflation during that period. It doesn't matter what purpose you took the loan for.