US inflation means families are spending $709 more per month than two years ago
cnn.com
cnn.com
I'm not saving nearly as much as I was years ago and I think my "lifestyle" has decreased post COVID (few vacations, eating out is a treat, gifts are for birthdays/holidays). Is everyone swimming in debt?
"$30+ pizza and $18 burgers" doesn't say much when you consider that there's a huge price/quality range between basic and premium offerings. For instance, a $18 waygu beef burger at a gastro pub doesn't seem very out of place at all, but a $18 mcdonalds burger would be outrageously expensive.
Groceries are about the same price. More expensive for some things, cheaper for others.
Health care's more expensive here, with lower quality, because it's a flyover red state.
HCOL only seems to apply to housing. Everything else is about the same or cheaper in "HCOL" cities. May not hold for other smaller/poorer cities, but very much does for ours.
Probably
Boomers benefited from New Deal then killed it. There is no market, just a legalized generational Ponzi scheme.
I'm not sure what it looks like if you adjust for population growth.
Debt to GDP is looking good, but with wealth inequality as bad as it is(thanks Jerome!) I'm not sure that matters as much.
- Henry Ford
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18247/did-henry...
But quoting Henry Ford, particularly his views on nefarious bankers, is a pretty questionable choice considering what he had to say about Jews.
You can quote me saying 1+1=2, even if 2 is my favorite number.
Now if he’s being misleading and you have evidence of that, then his feeling toward Jews might explain why he is biased
In the context of a formal argument, the act of quoting Henry Ford would have been either the fallacy of appeal to authority (if the quote's provenance were meant to demonstrate its veracity), or the fallacy of bare assertion (if it were meant to stand on its own). I didn't invoke those fallacies because I understand that, outside the context of a formal argument, appeal to authority is a reasonable heuristic, rather than a fallacy. There's nothing fallacious about saying, for example: "Most doctors recommend getting vaccinated, so you should probably get vaccinated."
In this context, my reply is also not fallacious: it's reasonable to doubt the reasoning ability of a vicious anti-Semite, particularly on the subject of nefarious bankers, which is closely intertwined with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Um.. sorry.. but this is absolutely false. Logical fallacies apply to all logic. Period. Flawed logic isn't ok just because you're speaking casually.
However, proving a conclusion is only one possible thing that an argument may set out to do. Oftentimes, we are more interested in probabilistic evidence than in absolute proof. Thus, an argument which does not prove anything (and which would thus be fallacious if treated as a formal argument) can nonetheless be useful.
It’s likely that was at the heart of Ford’s statement
My investment portfolio profits (or RSU vests or bonuses) never make their way to my checking account.
Are people really dipping into their investment accounts to cover living costs? Maybe for home or car purchases?
Dividend investing underperforms the market, and pulling that money into your spending budget typically underperforms inflation.
If I lost my job, then I would definitely use the money for my living costs. Until then, I prefer any bonuses, RSUs, Dividends, and interest stay in my investment account for further compounding.
I remember in 2010 there was an investigation reporting about how how shocking amount of credit card debt Americans have or etc.
I’m sure there is basis in reality, but I think these “X-type of person is having financial issues” blog articles are popular because people identifying with that problem (as small of a number of people that maybe) love sharing and pointing to the article to justify their own troubles. This creates more ad revenue for the producer.
Even if that’s not the case, what’s stopping you from selling enough stock yourself once they vest and make quarterly payments?
My tax rate was 22%+7.3% FICA near the end when I moved to Florida - a state with no state income tax.
While I could live off of my base income working remotely in the burbs of Atlanta, there is no way that my friend who had to relocate to Seattle and had two kids and a wife could have managed on the same $160K base.
When my base salary was $150k in SF, I worked a side contracting job to cover lifestyle costs so I could max out ESPP and 401k. Certainly if you have a family, you may not have the time to do that.
The reason I’m not at Amazon is for the same reason. I don’t work more than 40 hours a week on a normal basis and that’s what my new manager wanted me to do to show “improvement”.
Don’t cry for me. I saw it coming two months ago and I already had a few feelers out and I am 99% sure that one will come through within the next two weeks ago.
There are a many jobs that only require 20-30 hours per week. You can still limit yourself to 40 hours per week of work, but enjoy the benefits and security of multiple jobs.
That's your choice[1]. Some people sell upon vesting, and others liquidate periodically or to make down payments on property or health emergencies instead of going into debt. I suppose if one had a rainy day fund and the value of their RSUs doubled over one year, they may be tempted to spend the emergency fund since their net worth has gone up.
That said, I suspect you holding onto RSUs means you end up not saving as much for an emergency from your checking account, so you get an extra bit of liquidity.
1. I held onto RSUs too until I realized its indistinguishable from being paid extra cash and choosing to buy shares in my employer. I prefer rebalancing my portfolio with my preferred diversification mix.
43% of Ohio voters voted against their own interest last week. Majority of them are in lower side of the income.
What makes you think that raising the minimum wage would be in their interest? A comprehensive study[1] that factored in hours worked found that even though average hourly wage increased, hours worked went down, so total pay actually went down.
2. Looking at "unemployment" is what the study was specifically trying to avoid, because you could cut someone's hours but keep them on payroll. If you only looked at unemployment figures and average hourly wages, you might conclude that raising the minimum wage was an unalloyed good. However, if you drilled down to hours worked you'd see that they were taking home less per week.
Calculating inflation is difficult for the above reason.
People that were making near minimum wage before absolutely have though, and I think that's been a huge driver of the inflation. Pre-pandemic, the Walmart in our area had a starting wage of $10 or $11 an hour. It's now $18.
'Cause I can offer (up to!) $18.50 and then negotiate down. I can also give somebody 10 hours a week and duly provide no benefits. When I worked there they took me on PT no benies, and only after proving myself did they extend an offer for FT employment. PT can be highly flexible as to the definition. Whether it's a permanent or temporary position is also something noteworthy. I think these are just some of the elements we should be considering if we're going to say wages have risen.
The ones working at Walmart absolutely made $17 an hour (then). It's Walmart. They aren't playing games with stuff like that. I'm sure they're mostly doing under 32 hours a week where possible with their employees as usual.
Over the last year, real wages are up [1]. They're about flat with Q1 2020.
I wonder how in the world everyone else is getting by. Maybe we're all just smiling and pretending here...
Justed check July, and we spent over $1400 in groceries. That's from Walmart, not Whole Foods or some such. And we're in a low to medium COL city.
Sure, we could cut back to more staple stuff(more beans, less meats) if needed, I'm just illustrating how much the price of things have increased!
And we eat meat nearly all meals.
That's for one adult eating 3 meals at home, 2 eating 2 meals at home, and 1 eating 1 meal at home.
Like please share a receipt that shows how you spent $325 for one week's groceries. $43/day?? Maybe you're eating fresh fish every meal?
If you’re paying that much for groceries, one trip to Costco or Sam’s Club will probably pay for the membership.
I could go on and on, I'm sure I sound like a 'back in my day' old man. But the 'my day' in this case was just 5 years ago...
A quick Google search shows ~60% of households in Washington state don't even own an air conditioner. Compare that to nearly every home in the south, Atlantic states, and Midwest where AC is near universal.
Anyways all this really shows is to compare inflation what matters is price per kWh over time right? That excludes variations in usage.
IMHO vehicles are huge drivers of debt. There are almost no cars under $30k now, and the average sale price of new cars is pushing up near $50k. This is for bog standard stuff like Hondas and Fords, not luxury cars. Used cars are incredibly expensive too. People are financing cars for well over 5 years now--I've heard of people on 6 and 7 year loans now just to make monthly payments possible. It's nuts.
I went on toyota.com and a base level corolla is only selling for $22,795. This includes a "Delivery, Processing & Handling" charge of $1,095. If for whatever reason you think that driving a compact car is beneath you, you can have a mid sized car (toyota camary) for only $27,515.
When Scion was around it was supposed to be customer driven, but the sales people were the same Toyota salespeople and couldn’t help themselves. Are treacherous people drawn to (car) sales or does sales make people treacherous?
But back in the real world the on the lot availability of cars is abysmal and most makes are sold out for months of backlog. Like if you want a Toyota minivan it's something like a 2 year wait--unless you are willing to buy one on the lot with a $10k dealer markup.
I got some bad news, there is no dealership that thinks a $22k Corolla is worth their time when dozens of other buyers are willing to spend $30-40k or more for other models. The higher the price out the door generally the more money the dealership is making.
I'm well aware. It's just that toyota.com is an online resource that's easy to find and and verify. Sure, dealer pricing is more "accurate", but it requires much more legwork on my part and even then it turns the whole thread into an anecdote-fest with people saying "well the dealers in my area are charging $9000 market price adjustment (or whatever) so you're wrong!" or "I called around a few dealerships and found one that gave me a $2000 discount!". Doing a quick search on reddit for "dealer markups" in the past 6 months turns up plenty of anecdotes of people being able to secure cars with no or very little dealer markups.
In 2018 I bought a top end accord for $31k. So prices are definitely much worse now.
Now there are only really 5 models of minivan left, so any small jump in purchasing, or misforecasts by a manufacturer leads to huge backlogs.
In 1998 I bought a used 1989 Chevy Corsica for $1,800 all-in out the door. I'll admit I don't remember how many miles it had but it never had any major problems in all the years I drove it. There was a near unlimited sea of options for ~10 year old cars for around $2,000.
In 2023, if you want a similar size 10 year old car (2013) a quick Googling suggests you'll be paying about $10,000 minimum for a car with 100-120k miles on it. Expect to pay $20,000 if you want a low'ish amount of miles (under 25k). Keep in mind this is the price on the website which you know will be more by the time you really purchase it.
It's not quite that much. You calculated inflation off 1989 when the sale happened in 1998.
An inflation calculator puts $1,800 @ 1998 being worth $3,375 @ 2023. It's a massive difference in how much more expensive an inflation adjusted car is nowadays.
The only car we had problems with was 10 year old Jeep for my son that we had to keep taking back for various things for the first couple of months.
The manager proactively reached out to me and offered to reimburse one month payment. After those two months, we never had a problem with it.
The corolla isn't some niche car. It's the 12th best selling car in america with 222k units sold per year.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39628015/best-selling-car...
Other brands surely have cheaper basic options, and although I might not recommend going all the way to a Stellantis/GM car, a Ford/Honda/Mazda might be available for less and still be acceptable for quality.
I wanted to buy a Corolla Hybrid, but the wait list was ridiculous, something like 9 months. Toyota has major supply chain issues.
I ended up getting a (non-hybrid) Honda Civic for under $30k. I still had to wait a month though.
Armchair economist-shoppers, I love them. The other day a guy told me housing in NYC was absolutely affordable. Managed to find a bedroom for rent at $2k/mo. Sure bro, let me stuff my family of four into a shared 1br apt and then have my kids share a bathroom with some random guy in the other room.
Sure, i'd do this if I was desperate...but WTF would I want to aspire to this setup if I just spent 6yrs in college and went to a top Engineering CS program. Come on.
That's part of the problem - there are still some careers where people can "make it" and mentally say "well if you'd just done what I did, you'd be fine"
I don't think that situation is fine for anyone, and we should reinforce that. It's just not ok. People stay in abusive relationships for housing, all kinds of negative shit. Nobody should be forced to live like that.
We have the materials and the money; the system is broken.
Cars are dramatically more reliable than they used to be, so you will get more utility than you would for the same (inflation adjusted) expenditure 20 years ago.
My vehicle is 16 years old and I have no intention of replacing it any time soon.
Me, I use the credit card as a 6 week interest-free loan, plus getting the cash back discount.
> Credit utilization rates (for revolving accounts). Computed as proportion of available credit in use (outstanding balance divided by credit limit), and for reasons discussed above are likely to overestimate actual credit utilization.
0: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/househo...
For me, I charge and pay every month so never pay interest. But my credit report always shows a 2-5k balance (or whatever I charged).
Theoretically, if I paid off the balance BEFORE my statement period ends it would show $0, but I never do this because I have 25 days of 0% interest to pay, so I do.
I don’t think credit reports track interest paid but that would be one way to track if it’s “real” credit card debt or people just cycling.
But also you could look at average. I average $3k over the past 10-30 years or whatever. If this increased to some new stable level it would mean an increase in income. But if it increased at some rate or increased sporadically then it means I’m taking on more debt.
So I expect if credit card debt increases in total it probably means more debt and not more people paying their balance in full each month.
I've also had credit report hiccups because of the "debt" on my credit card.
Occasionally the CC company will send me an offer of a loan for very low interest for a year. I run the numbers, and if it looks good, I'll take the loan and invest the money, and pay it back at the end of the term.
The CC company, of course, is hoping I'll miss payments so they can charge me 30% interest. I disappoint them.
Being aware of the time value of money is essential for managing your finances in your own best interest.
How do you keep that from negatively impacting your credit rating?
But when you have $100k of available balance and $10k of debt, the credit bureaus don’t change much when you have $100k of available balance and $20k of debt for 15 months (or whatever the term is).
Now you can easily get 5% returns in money market accounts so if you take a 0% loan with a 3 percent transfer fee on $10k you can basically get $200 for “free” for the juggling. You have to determine if it’s worth it, but if you have larger amounts maybe it’s $500-2k for effectively setting some reminders and not screwing up.
I once read an article on how Amazon made money selling items at wholesale prices. The answer is astute money management. When you bought an item, Amazon charges your credit card immediately, and they get the funds right away. Amazon does not pay the vendor, however, until 90 days have elapsed.
This means they have the use of the money for 90 days, and (of course) they invest the money. Multiply this over millions of purchases, and you're making a boatload of moolah.
I do the same thing, it's just on a very small scale. It's called working the float.
Banks do it, too. Ever notice that when you get a cashier's check, your account is debited immediately? But if you deposit a cashier's check, you have to wait a day or two for the credit. The bank is doing the same thing.
I do agree that being your own bank is really smart, that's why I like DeFi so much... it makes it super easy, without any impact on your credit score.
That said, doing it at a small scale doesn't really seem like it is worth the hassle. $200 isn't worth the time or dings on your credit score. When I've done it before, other cards notice and also start to cancel you or lower your available credit as well.
I have "excellent" credit (780+), a fairly large credit line across several cards (~$100k+) and I never get those year long offers for 0% (or anything less than current interest rates) any more. Those dried up years ago. I don't see how anyone is making this work.
It has, my credit score isn't the greatest. But I don't care. I don't take out loans to buy things because of the high interest rates. Instead, I pay for things with investments.
Borrowing money to buy things is a trap. Borrowing money to buy a new car is financially inept. Buy a beater for cash, invest what you would have spent towards a new car, and eventually the growth in that investment will provide enough to buy that new car. You'll be much better off.
Indeed, this is annoying nonsensical. They should not count credit card balance as debt until it has rolled over at least one payment cycle.
Every summer my credit score drops ~40-50 points when I put the upcoming school year payment on the credit card (they give a nice-enough discount for prepaying) and then a month later bounces right back up after I pay it.
Household debt to GDP is around at a multi-decade low [1]. Payments as a fraction of disposable income, similarly low [2]. Total debt is rising [3]. But non-housing debt rose 5.8% from Q2 2022 to the same quarter '23; that's about inflation.
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N
It's a fantastic metric to compare aggregate debt to. It isn't the end of the story, which is why I also cited debt payments to disposable income.
American households are not, in aggregate, in a painful or even deteriorating position with respect to their debt. That doesn't mean many households, or even entire regions, e.g. West [1], aren't in pain.
[1] https://usafacts.org/articles/the-state-of-household-debt-in...
The US has free healthcare for the bottom ~25%, including the poor. If you are in the low income working group, you're often largely out of luck. Those are the people suffering the most. They often don't qualify for EBT cards, they don't qualify for free healthcare, they don't qualify for housing subsidies, and so on.
“Free healthcare” in the form of Medicaid is a bit generous of a description for people under 65 and over 18. Few providers take it, and the benefits are really bad in many places.
So the metric to measure “working class burden” (or whatever) is the percent increase in consumer, non-housing debt for people who had debt.
Well off people who went from $0 credit card debt to $0 while having their networth double since 2020 (high gdp) are not very useful to predict bankruptcy or political upheaval like people who went from $5k to $40k in credit card debt, are renting so didn’t see their networth go up and had their wages increase 5-10%. Those people are having a really rough time. And are worse off now day to day, and have increased exposure to risky negative events.
Consumer debt service payments as a percent of disposable personal income - is at 5.6%. In 2016 it was around 5.5%-5.6% - despite far lower interest rates. The same figure was 5.6-6% in the 1995-2000 years.
Household debt service payments as a percent of disposable personal income - at 9-10% this year is at one of the lowest levels in 43 years. That figure was over 11% in the 1995-2000 years.
The ratio of household debt to gdp is around 0.73%. That's lower than 2011-2019 years.
US households are in fact in decent condition, despite a loud minority of people proclaiming the end of the world. The facts do not support the dire claims.
Household assets in Q1 2023: $168 trillion. Liabilities: $19.6 trillion. $149t net worth.
Household assets in Q1 2016: $106 trillion. Liabilities: $14.5 trillion. $91t net worth.
In seven years US households added $62 trillion in assets against $5.1 trillion in liabilities.
The US has gotten dramatically wealthier in the past seven years. That's how people are affording everything.
US gdp per capita is $80,000 (with ~337 million people). That's nearly France + Britain combined. There is a vast underestimation of how much income the US has and how rich the US is.
The US median household has a higher net worth than either Sweden or Germany. And the US household income and disposable income figures are typically among the highest in the world.
top X% got dramatically wealthier.
If you believe this is true in a practical sense for the bottom half of income earners, then I've got a bridge to sell you....
I don’t know if there’s a good median equivalent of gdp per person as it’s not really household income.
Whereas mortgage payments with a fixed interest rate don’t increase so really only expenses like taxes and insurance increase over time. So after 40 years your monthly spend may be 1.5-2x.
I’m expecting that eventually there will be an interest only perpetual mortgage where the principal never decreases so banks are basically just buying secured annuities based on the real estate collateral.
Some countries have 99 leases that sort of operate like this and I thought it was strange that people would be willing to pay to purchase these leases where they never owned the property. But I guess some stability is better then none.
Every apartment I've lived in outside the US I've been closer to at least one grocery from my front door than a parking space I'd be likely to find in a US suburban shopping center would be. A two minute walk down a cobblestone street usually. When I was in the US I tried to stay in as "walkable" places as I could and (other than in NYC* ) I still needed to hop in a car and drive 5 minutes down usually a 6 (!) lane street, wait at no less than two traffic lights at large intersections. We are talking about around $15-20 million of infrastructure involved in my trip to the grocery, plus wear and tear on my car, gas, a parking garage at my apartment compared to some trivial amount to maintain a pedestrian walkway. You don't notice it when you live in the US because it's just part of the background.
Not only are there the direct costs of the infrastructure, but the wasted space reduces available land and drives up prices significantly.
* NYC is a special case, Manhattan is essentially the only walkable place in the country (and even there it falls short of global standards), the geography and history impose unique constraints, and the city draws a lot of people for reasons that aren't generally relevant when we're talking about the housing situation globally.
This is nowhere near true. Tons of suburbs are perfectly walkable to all kinds of stores and service you could want. I've lived in 6 places in the US and only one of them was not within convenient walking distance of plenty of stores, entertainment and services (and that one was because I chose a fairly rural area at the time).
Yes you can find unwalkable places in the US but you can also find plenty of walkable places if you look for that.
The New York subway system is the only mass transit system in the US which could stand up to international comparison with a straight face, and NYC is still quite car focused. Sure there are some bike lanes, a few temporary street closures and 14th is closed to private cars now during the day, but still there is no large dedicated pedestrian area in New York of the kind you find in nearly all European cities.
I'd say that's trending into No true Scotsman territory. If it isn't exactly like some elsewhere, it's not true walkability?
To me the definition is very simple: a home is walkable when I can get to my daily & weekly needs by walking. Enough supermarkets, restaurants, assorted shopping, entertainment, bars and plenty of services are all within walking distance.
> even most people who can afford to choose not to own one
I think this is throwing off your walkability definition. A home can be extremely walkable even when the residents own a car. Owning a car in the US is cheap and easy so even if I walk to 95+% of my needs (which I can), it's still nice to own cars for the edge cases. That
When times get tough they’re no more secure than those who make less.
I’ve seen this with many peers who have Teslas and 1.5M homes who are now struggling despite such an income.
It kind of depends on your mortgage rate. If your rate is low it technically makes more sense to invest your money, as that'll have a great return. If your mortgage rate is high, you might be better off paying extra each month against the principle as it'll drastically reduce how much you pay in interest over the course of the loan.
You could do half that, make minimum payments if you want, and invest the rest. But either way, you find yourself in such immense control. You could lose half your income and not change your lifestyle. Or retire early. Or take bigger risks.
I’ve always been fascinated how people decide what kind of home and car and such they go for. It usually seems to be: as big as I can go. And then you’re not really that more secure. I guess you can sell your home and find something smaller, but that’s hard to do at any time with kids in school, let alone during bad times.
That doesn't necessarily mean lever up. But it does mean take that extra X% you'd put into your mortgage and place it in some CDs/Bonds/whatever. Or even better, if inflation is still higher than the current rate you could even use it to buy an investment property and then pay that off as slow as possible as well. Let the banks hang themselves being long the dollar!
Debt is only bad when you're losing. The problem is it takes a level of sophistication to understand when you're winning. Hence, the need for Ramsey-type all-or-nothing solutions.
What’s interesting is the idea that some people take on a lifestyle based on their income and they leave themselves no flexibility.
This is often the case, but not always. It also doesn't account for the much better sleep I get at night, or the unshackled feeling I experience knowing I am debt free. There's an enormous psychological benefit that is not easily quantified.
real estate is the thing to watch, if even a small number job losses happen people will have no choice but to sell even if they want to keep their low interest rate(home prices have stayed relatively flat because everybody is staying put, so low inventory on paper). Interest rate increases have resulted in significantly lower buying power, so home prices will have to drop. Forced sales will cause others to rush for the exit and cause even further price drops
Keep in mind that daycare centers themselves need to profit, so going "direct" would be cheaper.
Also, no windows. They built it in an old mall. I couldn't get past those two things.
You can never judge people's financial situations from their spending habits.
Someone in my extended family spent years living large, buying new cars, building new houses, and wearing nice clothes. They had a family business and always said that the business wad doing well. Several years later the husband died unexpectedly. His wife was suddenly struggling to make ends meet, despite nothing actually changing with their "business".
As we later discovered, they were experts at amassing debt. The business wasn't really successful but they had used every possible angle to get more lines of credit, debt, "investments", and loans. They had even made a habit of "buying" supplies from vendors with Net 30 terms, reselling them, and then never paying the vendors back. They moved from state to state to scam new vendors every time they were blacklisted by the all of their local vendors.
That's an extreme example, but it highlights how appearances can differ so much from reality. More commonly, I think a lot of people just never learned how to save anything at all. I know an alarming number of people in their 30s who still haven't bothered saving anything more than the $1-10K they have in their checking account at a given time. When the number goes up, they spend it back down. You could have the same net income as these people but never achieve their level of lifestyle spending because you're doing some savings.
On the other end of the spectrum, many people are actually doing well. Wages are up (contrary to what you see on social media) and people's investments have done very well in recent years. Many of my friends are doing quite well for themselves by simply getting working a little harder to get jobs that pay a little above average and then carefully budgeting and investing over the long haul. Do this for a couple decades with some careful attention paid to where you live and the job you get and it's not hard to get a rather comfortable financial position by 40, especially in tech.
Consumerism going steady. At least in the US you have the 401k. When I begin a discussion with friends/ acquaintances on "hey guys anyone got a decent EFT? I go my VOOG and SOXX all set up but I am looking to diversify further with some water, consumer, international, etc" and they look at me as if I speak some ancient language.
So.. most save minimal, invest nothing. Paycheck-to-paycheck is a big thing in the US and it is happening in the EU now.
(and don't get me started on parents of 14yo kids buying their kids the new iPhone every darn year)
Yes, you should not get started because according to Apple’s 10-K, it does not happen on any meaningful scale. Objectively, phones are being used for longer and longer time periods.
But it’s simple numbers. They spend less than you do or make more.
There is a lot of regional variation in production [1] and income [2][3]. On the whole, real disposable income and savings rates are up [4].
But someone in the midwest (income up, annualized, 7 to 11% Q4 '22 to Q1 '23) or Florida (7.9%) is seeing a very different economic landscape than someone in California (0.7%) or Indiana (-1%) [5].
[1] https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/gross-domestic-product-state-a...
[2] https://www.bea.gov/system/files/rpp1222b_0.png
[3] https://www.bea.gov/data/income-saving/personal-income-count...
[4] https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/personal-income-and-outlays-ju...
[5] https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/gross-domestic-product-state-a...
The article itself says this. Somehow, it manages to spin it into bad news.
>Even though prices have soared, real earnings, which adjust for inflation, are stuck at late 2019 levels.
People can afford the same lifestyles they could a few years ago. The US weathered the outbreak of war in Europe and the worst pandemic in generations without serious economic hardship. Somehow, in CNN's view, this is a problem. Real wages haven't been stable. They haven't been resilient. No, they've been "stuck".
I hear you perfectly. What I did a while ago was to fully embrace a more frugal lifestyle where attention and time are the most valued. So consumption went to a minimum and all that. Now after prices jumped up we’re where we started and despite being frugal we’re left with a lot less. It is quite unsettling to be honest…
The price of meat is going wild - on track to double this year
I also switched to more staple foods like lentils and beans and rice and canned vegetables instead of fresh vegetables. And to buying ground beef on sale and freezing.
It seems kind of crazy that prices keep going up and even simple “luxuries” like a coffee while networking went from $3.5 for a small latte at my local coffee shop in 2019 is now $5.5.
I think for some people it doesn’t seem to affect them and they just pay the higher prices but base costs seem to have really gone up a lot for my family. Fortunately some big expenses are fixed (mortgage and transport) but if they had to change it would be extra rough.
Have you talked to any kind of building work contractor, insurance company, etc. lately? They've all jacked up their prices just because their supply prices touched a certain level and now they have to plan for it. And to be sure, some of them are using the cover of inflation to test how willing people are to pay more.
Inflation really is a vicious cycle. And I don't think we've in recent memory seen prices actually decrease after an inflationary cycle. Do things pegged with CPI even allow for negative inflation?
And what's worse? The FED does not want negative CPI. They want slowly rising CPI. A negative CPI is deflation, something they want to absolutely avoid. They don't want prices to go down. They only want them to rise up slower.
Which leads to us humans always stuck on the hedonic treadmill. If one is relying on wages, one is absolutely fcuked in this system. The only way to keep up is to keep switching jobs to a higher pay.
Any solution that would be fair to the employees will immediately be met with resistance.
However, if instead of diffusing the cash through the government, it was directly granted to citizens by the government/FR one might would presume similar results as the current modality, just more beneficial to the individual. However this takes on some degree of complication: there are manifold ways to disburse it, for instance we could make a straight cut for every individual, weigh it based on income, weigh it based on wealth, and one could justify weighing in either direction - presumably the wealthy are better arbiters of economy than are the needy... But also the needy are needy and it may help alleviate some degree of disparity.
Also, inflation is difficult to measure. The CPI is not a great mark. Expanding the monetary base by 2% on paper may not result in a 2% increase in CPI. CPI is, I reckon, used as a check on the dollar's relative value, which can change dynamically as a result of cultural, economic, and political shifts on top of monetary policy. So resultsay vary, but considering market behavior over the pandemic, I think it points to a rapid dissemination of whatever money is given. I think that would probably, actually be a really efficient means to deal with inflation, however a lot of that money is actually doled out in subsidies, grants, et cetera. So a new system of public goods funding would necessarily have to be set up.
This absolutely happens with individual goods. Egg prices are back to normal. Car prices are going down.
It is statistical trickery and a headline number used to make people think things are OK. It is also a convenient number for COLA increase targets which make people think their incomes/pensions are going up (when effectively they are not on a real basis.)
Also, as you note, we re-baseline each year and dont talk about the cumulative compounded inflation e.g., over the past 5yrs.
Americans on fixed incomes (e.g., pension, social security) and those without wage elasticity (e.g., restaurant workers) are absolutely miserable right now because they are squeezed from both sides, even after modest wage increases in 2021/2022. This is not good for a Democracy.
Yes and no(?)
From the study "Real wage growth across the wage distribution, 2019–2022" shows 9% real wage growth. The "real" portion is compared to engineered inflation figures. In the day-to-day world where people pay actual prices, price increases have not be 2% or whatever CPI claims them to be, they are much worse.
We can back into rosy numbers, but the real numbers are felt by people. I'd suggest speaking to a variety of people and see how they feel. Ensure to also speak to someone on social security income. I speak to my mom and see the numbers on a weekly basis.
Then, the pesky Law of Supply and Demand devalues the extra money, which we call "inflation".
The pesky law you mention is indeed the issue. Not enough people are willing to work in restaurants, and/or not enough people are willing to modify their habits to avoid eating in restaurants when the prices increase.
Whether "printing" money was a cause of generalized inflation is a matter of debate. It's hard to argue it didn't have some effect, but I think you'd probably expect the inflation to have been worse if it were just dependent on the amount of dollars in the system. Given the tightness in the labor market and reduced workforce participation, it seems to me that the pandemic was a large-scale, impromptu test of the UBI, and society failed it very badly. Turns out people will actually not work if they don't have to, and robots are not yet prepared to pick up the slack.
It's only a debate for people who haven't looked at the history of money and inflation. Inflation is always the result of an increase in the supply of money relative to the value of goods and services in the economy. It happens when there are gold rushes, silver rushes, and running the government printing press.
Our current inflation happened soon after a massive increase in deficit spending.
The ever-popular Scrooge McDuck cash vault theory. Nobody has a cash vault. Any "cash" is stored in banks, which loan it out into the economy. People who borrow money save/spend it.
To your specific point about targeting negative inflation, that's deflation, which most people believe is bad for the economy. Even if there are types of "good deflation", government policy inentionally targeting deflation would almost definitely be a bad thing.
1. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/milk-prices-...
This is a drastic oversimplification but that’s basically it
The reason for my skepticism is that even without deflation, a dollar tomorrow is usually worth more than a dollar today, yet tons of people* don't save or invest much/any of their money, even if they're able to.
* I'm speaking from the perspective of an American FWIW.
No, that’s deflation.
If you’re talking about investing, that’s different. The dollar is still worth less on its own. It just made extra dollars in the meantime.
The US economy had zero net inflation from 1800 to 1914. No death spiral.
The whole "2% is good for the economy" is propaganda to hide the fact that deficit spending causes inflation and is a tax on the economy.
I've heard that £1 was worth the same in 1914 as in 1614.
I can imagine this happening with large deflation (10%, say), but what about 2% or 1%? It's not obvious to me that people would not buy a TV they really wanted if they knew it would be $392 instead of $400 next year. If consumers actually acted this sensitively toward a drop in prices, then wouldn't nearly all consumers wait for sales for all purchases? But we know that is not the case. Hell, if consumers were this sensitive toward their finances, they certainly wouldn't pay lots of interest on avoidable credit card debt, right?
Also, I think in the real world today, a home would still sell in a deflationary environment, given serious supply shortages. Especially for those buyers which are looking for a home and not an investment (investors would lose long term in a deflationary environment, as you say). Couldn't temporary, modest deflation actually open the housing market up for those "real" buyers primarily looking for a place to live?
So it's pretty reasonable to be concerned about deflation.
Broadly it was a time of sustained growth in both the United States and United Kingdom, despite the deflation which was driven by industrialization and productivity gains. However, certain industries did suffer as a result of the deflation, so it was neither an unvarnished good or bad economic period.
You know what causes a downward spiral? People stop buying things, sales drops, layoffs / cuts, people buy less, etc.
I see companies freak out over 1-2% drops in sales, how is inflation not causing people to drop consumption by 10%? I don't travel, I'm eating out WAY less, I am price/bargain hunting far more. I never buy gas without gas price map checking. I'm holding back on as much purchases as possible. I don't even think about buying any clothes not on sale. Hell, I basically don't buy clothes unless absolutely needed.
Academics and have studies the pros and cons. I don't have time to post summaries, but maybe someone else can step in:
https://www.stlouisfed.org/-/media/project/frbstl/stlouisfed...
If it’s an annuity, you can get annuities that vary based on changes to the CPI. If you put a lot of money into a fixed annuity years ago, you did not properly hedge interest rate/inflation risk.
> For those on a fixed income, this is money we lost forever.
Yes, that's a fundamental problem with fixed incomes and why minimum support programs don't tend to use fixed nominal benefits across time. Most people aren’t on fixed incomes, and if we tried to manage price levels around people on fixed incomes, not only would it be bad for everyone else, but it would also threaten the investments underlying the sources of those fixed incomes (which aren’t really fixed, because they can drop, including to 0.)
That said, basic expectations of things growing up are just unreachable for many. My parents lived much more comfortable lives than I do. My grandparents even more so.
Recall how food inflation was a major suspected cause of the Arab Spring (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/world-july-dec11-food_09-...).
US leaders should be careful. People get upset when they have nothing to feed their children. I hope we solve these problems with sensible fiscal and monetary policy.
My wife’s grandma got married as a teenager to a trucker passing by because her family couldn’t support all their kids. This was not unusual in that generation.
I will compare very roughly and anecdotally across generations. I'm an Engineer (CS). So was my father, though he ended up doing accounting. So was my grandfather (civil.)
My grandfather owned a home by 23 on his engineering salary.
My father owned a comfortable home by 35 on his salary. The salary:homeprice ratio was almost 1.5:1
My salary:homeprice ratio for the same exact house as my father is 4:1. Arguably, i'm better educated than my father and grandfather, and have much better credentials.
Im not trying to be ungrateful for what has been given to me, but the ratios seem completely off.
It's nearly impossible to actually compare these things. Comfort, and safety, are inherently difficult to value. Things like energy efficiency are difficult to price because of externalities. Externalities along make these kinds of things impossible to compare.
For example, one of the reasons building was much cheaper 80 years ago was because there was very little environmental regulation.
You raise all great points. My father's home was in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn NYC. It cost under $50,000 in 1980.
The same house has a Zestimate today for $1,049,800. I wish we still owned it. For comparison sake, yes, there are 4 decades of upgrades and also 4 decades of deprecation, floods, hurricane sandy, etc.
In 1980, my mother didnt work, nor did most moms in the neighborhood. Today, many moms in the neighborhood work to make ends meet.
Interest rates were very high then, 10% compared to 6% now, though my did did re-fi when they dropped, so it wasnt a life-long issue.
It is hard to compare electric/gas/water/proptaxes because I was too young to remember that. However, at the highest level, you just need to look at:
RATIO of prevailing engineer wages in 1980 : $50,000
RATIO of prevailing engineer wages in 2023 : $1,049,800
That alone tells you there is a huge problem.
I'll admit:
- Food options today are way better
- Cars today are way more comfortable and way safer
- Entertainment in 2023 is way better (music, streaming tv, books)
- Healthcare is better for extreme cases (cancer) though arguable for the average case?
BUT
- College was almost free after grants. Student debt was tiny
Not arguable at all. The population, by and large, is receiving healthcare worth far more than whatever was available decades ago.
You can't look at the price increase for the same house without accounting for the changes in the neighborhood and surrounding areas.
A neighborhood increases in desirability, it now costs more to live in that nicer neighborhood. The population of a city increases, such that you now have to live farther away from the city to find comparably priced real estate etc...
That's why I said if you want to compare, you'd need to find out how much it would cost to build a comparable house in a neighborhood that is comparable to the neighborhood as it was 40 years ago.
That said, I would totally disagree that the real apples-to-apples comparison would be to find an equivalent home further away. That literally proves my original argument -- that the current generation has to work the same for less. That our parents could live in the city while we commute from the exurbs.
In the case of New York, desirability of the city (not just the specific suburb you're comparing) has increased massively. The only way to find a comparable neighborhood, that is a comparable distance to a city center that is as desirable as Manhattan or Brooklyn was in the 1980, is to either look farther out or look at an area near a different city.
Interesting how you stopped at "grandparents".
To be clear, absolutely not intended as any kind of attack on you or what you've written - just some thoughts passed on to me that made it easier to be grateful for that which is in my life, period:
Consider past generations - we're in "the 1%" by that metric alone. No / hardly (any "real") medicine, completely unstable food supplies, other tribes coming over the hills and killing everyone ... and, that's describing more of the "history" part of human existence, to date.* Further, a core bias of psychology is "the golden age bias".** Including feelings as simple as: when events are in the past, things can seem so "neat", "orderly", and ... "simple". Oh for one income to feed a family of four, right? But, how many had that experience - what proportion? And, that ties in with "survivor bias" etc.
Don't get me wrong, instability is a PITA. I get where you're coming from. It's not as though I don't have such thoughts. But, I can always come back to various bits of wisdom I've picked up from a myriad of sources, including a phrasing I've always liked that AFAIK is from Bill Maher:
If you think you have it tough, read history books.
That always helps me to remember that I didn't just watch my village burn to the ground due to the Mongol or European or etc. raiders, my relatives get raped and murdered, my child die of ... well, just about anything ...
... maybe some in this thread will find these ideas useful as well.
* Zooming out a bit more ... I always find it amusing walking in a park, especially - hearing the birds chirping, seeing the squirrels "frolicking" ... what passes for a pleasant "pastoral" experience for us, is filled with advertisements for sex / nasty "neighbor property line disputes" (birds chirping), animals desperately trying to find the next meal or water, etc.
>> AFAIK is from Bill Maher: If you think you have it tough, read history books.
Be careful when Conservatives tell you to be complacent or grateful. There is a typical line "you are worrying about your $15hr minimum wage when kids half your age work in coal mines".
You can use such arguments for all sorts of nefarious purposes "you think your public school is overcrowded? go to Africa" "you think healthcare in the US is bad? go to rural Nepal" "you think crime is high in SF? go to 1800s NYC"
But why should we aspire to that? Why not aspire to more?
Obviously we are fortunate to not live on credit cards and have our bills paid, but it feels like we worked hard to get here to be no better off than we were.
I wonder how other folks in the middle class are making ends meet especially trying to afford a home with employers forcing RTO/RTH to HCOL in many cases.
And then not to mention there are probably literally millions of enterprise devs living in major cities across the country making much less than you are probably making in cheaper places that are living a good middle class lifestyle with 2.1 kids in the burbs, going on vacations and not struggling.
While I’m able to get by, I feel that I can’t get ahead. I don’t see home prices falling anytime soon; the current high home prices are fueled by a lack of inventory caused by people not wanting to give up their 3% interest mortgages, yet if interest rates fall, demand will increase, pushing up purchase prices. The only way out is building more homes, except due to NIMBYism and geographical constraints, the only affordable new homes that are being built are in the Central Valley. I’m seeing the writing on the wall; eventually I’m going to need to make some drastic changes in my career and my location if I hope to own a home instead of being a perpetual renter.
Housing prices go up because there is a shortage of housing and the housing that exists is being used as investments. The solutions could be to make it easy to build more housing and also to make policy changes to encourage other ways to save money.
Energy prices go up because we've wedded ourselves to fossil fuels that are controlled by very few players who can set whatever prices they want. The solutions might be to diversify energy sources and reduce energy consumption.
Food prices go up because of energy prices and because food companies are gouging for profits. The solutions might be to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels for food production and to not allow food production to be a for profit enterprise.
The prices of other goods went up because there was a global pandemic that disrupted supply chains around the world. The solution might be to build a more resilient system for providing goods rather than one that's cut to the bones to increase profits.
There are real solutions to the problems that cause price rises but as long as we treat "inflation" as some sort of magic force in the universe those solutions will continue to be ignored in favor of magical thinking and political arguing.
Now? I regularly don't buy things after seeing their price. It's not that we can't afford it, but I simply can't stomach the price. I'm not paying $11 for two shrinkflationed bags of "regular size" Doritos apparently on sale. An empty calorie snack like that just isn't worth it for me, and it pisses me off that they'll charge that much for what's basically a small amount of corn...and that enough people still buy it to maintain that price.
Eventually I may adjust to these new prices, but in the interim I'm regularly shocked at what things cost and it's causing me to spend less.
Teacherman @jboyd33488892
Replying to @Markzandi
Is that extra $700/month a mean or a median?
Hourly wage gains have exceeded inflation vs. pre-pandemic:
+20.5% wages of prod & non-supv workers
+17.4% inflation (CPI-All)
+15.5% inflation (CPI-Core, ex food & energy)
Yes, workers have more purchasing power now than in the vaunted 2019 economy.
Instead of taxing people directly, which requires voter approval and creates bad press for the politicians involved, why not instead just create the money you need and pass the costs down to taxpayers in the form of inflation?
It is the worst kind of tax though because it affects the poorest people the most, since rich people have their assets that rise with inflation.
I am casually investigating the possibility of moving from Berlin to Copenhagen and some of the apartments in Copenhagen that I am looking at have risen close to 30% in the last few years. This burden of course mainly falls on the younger generations.
Meanwhile they complain about a hiring and retention problem. Gee, I wonder why?
This happens at every company because they realize most people dont leave, or so few leave that it is worth the few that leave.
You have three options
1. Leave
2. Work less given your effective pay increase. Invest the time into finding a better job and into leetcoding
3. (not ethical, but commmon) work less given your effective pay increase. invest the free time into freelance work to make up for lost pay.
I wonder why they don't have enough workers when almost every other retail business around pays 50% or more than that, and it's not like their employees would have to go through a grueling tech hiring process to jump ship.
Is the customer still showing up and living with “please be patient”? Then why reduce margins by paying more?
But by definition, if he starts interviewing and gets an offer, the company who gave him an offer doesn’t care about the length he has been at his current employer.
Covid receded, and I got an okay raise but it was still below inflation. Then inflation got crazy(er) and my rent finally went up 30%, so that’s when I started making noise about it. They gave me another raise which was higher than they gave anyone else, but still below inflation again.
So now I’m telling them I want at least 10% over what I was making in 2019 or I’m out. Already have something lined up if they try to lowball me, I’m sick of this.
I don’t consider my primary residence an “investment” as much as an inflation hedge. Sure property taxes will go up as well as insurance. But usually that’s not as bad as rent.
- Homeschooling at-home parents take on a side hustle (teach piano lessons, mobile notary, dog sitting)
- Buy a side of beef
- Buy beans in bulk (25# boxes)
- Grow a small garden for salad greens and herbs
- Don’t eat out
- No extracurriculars that cost money
- Use the library whenever possible
- Vacations are now camping with 2nd hand gear
- In general, buy used. As a result, prices in 2nd hand market are also inflated.
Guess we get what we vote for in the end
The real killer has been gas, electric, water, property tax, etc.
You don't need much of a conspiracy when virtually every industry, everywhere has gone through significant consolidation.
It's even a problem for the military. Private contractors are gouging the US Government to the tune of *billions* and we can't do anything about it because critical parts, once produced by a few competitors, now have only one producer.
Pretty much every economic problem and distortion in Canada today can be directly attributed to the socialist policies put in place by the various left-wing and "right-wing" (who are still quite left-of-centre) governments over the last half-century or so.
For example, significant taxation and public debt are needed to pay for the bloated, inefficient, and low-quality provincial public health care and education systems, as well as the various government bureaucracies.
Large, unaccountable bureaucracies have resulted in there being intrusive regulation all over the place, even when it's completely unnecessary.
The high taxation, the intrusive regulation, and onerous bureaucracy make starting and operating businesses in Canada far harder than it should be.
Things that should be simple and routine, such as hiring and paying an employee, becomes a significant burden, especially for small businesses.
Ever-increasing minimum wages, which in many cases are economically infeasible relative to the real wealth that the employees would be creating, discourage job creation, and introduce economic distortions throughout the supply chain.
Excessive regulations have also made it unnecessarily challenging and costly to build homes and buildings for businesses, resulting in high property and rental costs.
The extremely high levels of immigration have only exacerbated many of the aforementioned problems.
That's all just the tip of the iceberg.
Socialist policies have been quite detrimental to Canada, and have noticeably decreased the standard of living over time.