The ultra wealthy hired the best to win a game of financial manipulation that the rest of us didn’t even know was being played.
The median salary would be six figure if the share of productivity gains was distributed like it was in 1970.
The median salary would be six figure if the share of productivity gains was distributed like it was in 1970.
If you doubled everyone's salary, the gain would almost certainly be absorbed by real estate or some other necessity.
Regulations on maximum working hours, access to fair housing, education, healthcare etc might work better.
Providers of necessities can demand large portions of people’s income due to lack of supply. It’s a basic monopoly. We see that in real estate, health care, education, elderly and child care.
They can’t charge endlessly because at some point people are priced out. Homelessness, lack of education, delaying medical care until an emergency and relying on laws that non-payers cannot be denied treatment.
But they can travel up the supply demand curve and take from everybody that can still afford it, because the supply is constrained. TVs are cheap, because of competition from overseas. Land or health care prices are not.
What do you think would be the best way to help ensure everyone gets a fair share?
I suspect this includes people of all ages, so if we distribute this only to working age, that’s probably close to $100K (six figures)
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-by-ag...
median wage at 45yo (the peak) is $64k.
GDP/capita is that maximum hypothetical number where the full gross domestic production is evenly distributed to all people.
There are billionaires that don’t make a single penny a year, and broke folks pulling in 6-7 figures.
Looking at some type of combination of income + net worth is probably better in most cases.
That being said, most folks in the US make less than $100,000/year and have less than a $100,000 net worth.
I assume it includes everyone regardless of age, so the average salary when only considering people working if probably $100K or above