https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_pr...
So if your $16/hr job pops by 30%, the net impact on the household is much lower in many cases. For teen workers, it’s beer money. For single moms, it’s a net loss as costs for daycare and healthcare have increased 50%.
All of this stuff is relative. I’m a tech exec in a large organization, and essentially live the same lifestyle as my parents, who were in “lower end” jobs relatively speaking in the 80s when I was little.
(However, I don't have a pension.)
The biggest difference is housing and healthcare. My healthcare expense is equivalent to their mortgage. My dad family healthcare coverage was $0 until I was in high school. The total cost of my, excellent health insurance is about $35k, which is 90% of the salary of my first professional job in 1999!
Our policy with respect to healthcare is essentially a regressive tax on the working public. Rich people have a limited cost exposure, poor people get limited access to poor care, and everyone else gets increasingly expensive, lower quality care.
And I'm not even sure what this graph is supposed to be showing. The biggest difference is when he 1st quartile stagnates while the 4th quartile loses 4-5%. 95% of $200,000 is still a lot more than even a 100% increase in salary for $40,000. my most generous, lazy interpretation of this chart shows a whopping $15% increase in wages for the first quartile.
> Since 2016, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have risen quickly for people in the bottom quartile
This "quick" wage growth, as you point out with your image, is on the order of 1 or 2% for the past few years, and was massacred by recent inflation i.e. if raising the minimum wage raised your standard of living, you've almost exactly kept up with inflation.
Meanwhile, wealth amongst people who hold investments, a group that often includes upper-income workers, has massively increased during that time. The S&P has had a 130% adjusted return since 2016. The share of wealth held by the top 10% is as high or higher than it was in 2016.
It is incredible how Internet armchair technocrats will attempt to reduce human existence to a few equations and wonder why broader populations despise the Ivory Tower.
I'm uncertain if I missed the sarcasm or perhaps more likely my lack of comprehension.
It’s not sarcasm, it’s reality
lol.
The whole point of this discussion is that our metrics are not properly measuring things. The reported inflation number is a joke. See: anything in life that matters like - a house - a car - an education - health care - raising a kid - basically any life-milestone
but TVs and electronic toys have never been cheaper so it's all okay! Hedonic adjustment!
The community college in the area I briefly lived growing up was $17 a credit hour in 1997. Inflation adjusted that's $31.67 a credit hour.
It's now nearly $140 a credit hour. Almost 4.5x more than inflation.
For a community college.
So done with Americans finally getting into boom times and still feeling like it’s 2008. No one here ever wants to admit that they have it good.