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You can make more money and still have lower QOL because of higher COL - like with housing prices, which have shot up much more than incomes have.

No. This is obviously adjusted for inflation.

https://twitter.com/johanknorberg/status/1780892502070898828

Yeah, it's practically become a cliche that if you want to downplay wealth inequality (which is gargantuan), you cite income inequality (which is quite moderate by comparison) instead and subtly try to pretend that they're the same thing (they're not) or equally important (they're not).

Nonetheless, this meme has reached the level of conventional wisdom, so any response feels a bit like trying to empty the Atlantic Ocean with a thimble.

The ultrawealthy know that there is no way to sate the desires of the poor to tax the rich but they can get away with pretending that "the rich" are exemplified not by them by people earning $150k with no assets and lead the charge to tax them to the hilt.

If you normalize by age, younger generations are wealthier than previous generations. A 50 year old gen-xer is wealthier than 50 year boomers were, a 25 year old z-er is wealthier than previous generations were at that age, etc.

Yes, wealth inequality is increasing. There is more variation in that set of 50 year old gen-x'ers than there was in that set of 50 year old boomers.

But on average and normalized for age, younger generations have both more wealth and more income than older generation.

I don't get the Economist, but I'm wondering how bimodal the distribution is - are we seeing a small cohort run away with the game or is everyone better off?

With where I am compared to family, that's my bet - people doing absurdly well in tech are screwing up the numbers. And I'm not even close to what some people casually toss out on here.

These are medians.

Yeah it's honestly insane to me the number of my peers who own homes (expensive ones sure...) And eat out way more than I ever remember and have subscriptions for every entertainment service imaginable and who take multiple international trips per year, but will then talk about how everyone's living paycheck to paycheck.

My parents are shocked by how often we eat out. And not without cause. These life conveniences are way more common today, and we have the money to support it. And before someone talks about dual income, my parents both worked and we are single income.

By all measures, material standard of living has improved.

In reality people are more stressed out today not because of money but because they choose to live complicated, stressful lives mainly driven by unhealthy social media addictions. That's why they feel materially poorer than their parents despite all evidence to the contrary.

If someone is prettier than you or has more luck with women than you and it's in your face every single days you'll feel shitty no matter how much money you have.

Do you make the US median household income of $75K?

No but I have a household size almost 4x the median american size of 2.1, so my 200k in income is actually pretty close.

> eat out way more than I ever remember and have subscriptions for every entertainment service imaginable and who take multiple international trips per year

> By all measures, material standard of living has improved.

Ah! You've fallen for it. Those are not the same thing. Consumer luxuries do not a standard of living make.

Material standard of living is a secure home, ready and sufficient access to nutritious food, ready access to remedies and ease for illness, welcoming opportunities for fulfilling work, etc

Access to all of those things is eroding, and for essentially everyone (not just young people). You can have 5 ways to watch a video now, and your choice of 500 varieties of sugar water, and can hop on a plane instead of taking a road trip, but none of those have made the life of yourself or your family meaningfully improved.

The conflation of idle luxuries for secure living is a trap that lets people not notice as real standards continue to decline.

Wasn't GP's point that were people to engage in fewer consumer luxuries, they would be able to invest in their "real" standard of living instead?

Oh, I read them as saying that the experience of hardship was materially inaccurate and just a psychological fiction fed by social media and perpetually measuring against others.

I still read it that way on a second look, but maybe I'm reading it wrong.

And you've fallen for the idea that simply since I'm a believer in using real economic data, I must also believe in all the various consumeristic nonsense that Americans engage in, which is their real source of unhappiness.

> The conflation of idle luxuries for secure living is a trap that lets people not notice as real standards continue to decline.

I agree, which is why you should have read my comment:

> In reality people are more stressed out today not because of money but because they choose to live complicated, stressful lives mainly driven by unhealthy social media addictions. That's why they feel materially poorer than their parents despite all evidence to the contrary.

That's the end point. People work too much to make money so they can afford junk and material improvements in their life, instead of working to make their life nice. My family had less growing up and was much better off. As adults, my wife and I have chosen to replicate my parents and her parents way of life (one working parent, heavy time spent with family and friends, no divorce, no broken families, no spending all day at work, prioritizing life over money, etc). That works. Always has. Doesn't matter how many yachts you own. If you don't have a loving wife / husband and a good family or you never see them, and you have no friends (not the fake superficial friendships many Americans have, but actual friends), then you're always going to be sad.

These numbers don't appear to be adjusted for inflation, but even if they were, I still wouldn't trust it. Lot of people know by now that the government fudges those numbers to understate them.

They are adjusted for inflation (standardized to "2019 prices"). In unadjusted nominal terms, the average annual wage in 1900 was in the order of hundreds of dollars.