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The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

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Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#201

Post by torginus »

artisinal wrote: post #119
contagiousflow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-wealthy > landlord If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.

Not American here. I know a couple of people who took out a second mortgage to buy a small appartement to rent out when mortgages rates were at 1%. They probably have €300k in equity in both the primary and secondary home. And around €600 in income from the rental. I do not consider that wealthy.

I would describe that as having invested in an appreciating asset (like stocks), and their main income comes from the gains of the property prices as they go up in value. Moreover, they leveraged themselves via loans to acquire income even faster.

These gains might be realized at any point if they're willing to pay taxes for them.

Having lots of money but choosing not to spend it doesn't make you any less wealthy.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#202

Post by CGMthrowaway »

legitster wrote: post #61

People are misreading the conclusion - the Covid related drop is normal and matches previous episodes, but the massive overall drop since 2000 is not. The situation on the ground is unchanged - the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us.

>the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us

I don't see where the article made that claim. Are you making it yourself and can you support it? That sounds like something that would happen when technology improves. What the article does do, is pose a question that it never answers: "When the labor share falls, it means that productivity, prices, or both [which?] are growing faster than wages."

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#203

Post by gruez »

Folcon wrote: post #156
gruez wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and half of the US is living in abject poverty Source? All the ones I know of use questionable methodology like: "being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage".

Out of curiosity, what is your expected baseline of what the average person and family in the US should be able to afford?

"should" is a pretty woolly concept. "should" we have to work at all? UBI proponents don't think so, and that apparently that has 45% support. What's hopefully obvious is that not being able to afford a 2 bedroom apartment at median wage is a far cry from "abject poverty".

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/19/more-amer...

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#204

Post by kudokatz »

MintPaw wrote: post #147
saghm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that you're not the one hanging around the "wrong people" to know better? You could just as easily be surrounding yourself with wealthy people as they could be with non-wealthy. Without data, it just sounds like "my social circle is more indicative of reality than yours". Maybe it is! But maybe not, so it's not particularly convincing

Data is the answer, it's just that so few people are willing to look at unbiased data. Although the start is asking a more measurable question.

some maybe-biased data for a steel man in [1]:

"The Census Bureau measure overstates current income inequality between the highest and lowest 20% of earners by more than 300% and claims that income inequality has risen by 21% since 1967, when in fact it has fallen by 3% ... In 2017, among working-age households, the bottom 20% earned only $6,941 on average, and only 36% were employed. But after transfer payments and taxes, those households had an average income of $48,806. The average working-age household in the second quintile earned $31,811 and 85% of them were employed. But after transfers and taxes, they had income of $50,492, a mere 3.5% more than the bottom quintile."

[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/income-equality-not-inequality-i...

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#205

Post by Seattle3503 »

Are there hollistic analysis? I generate income with my labor, but I also save in retirement and investment accounts. On analysis like this that we typically see, are these two things competing? Are we really just seeing a rise in retirement savings?

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#206

Post by autoexec »

wqaatwt wrote: post #67
throwway120385 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't a single-payer solution work? The margin that the insurance companies take for themselves seems like a good place to start. From there it would spiral out to the third to half of time that all of the clinical staff spend just dealing with insurance issues and insurance billing.

There are countries in Europe which have entirely privatized healthcare systems (not even medicare/medicaid equivalents). US tried adopting some of their practices with Obamacare and even that didn’t work out. Singlepayer isn’t really necessary to have a reasonably affordable and accessible healthcare system proper regulation is.

As successful as Obamacare has been it didn't really do much to lower the cost of healthcare or claw back the billions wasted to insurance company profits. There might be some kind of regulation just as effective as single payer, but we've never seen it anywhere in the US.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#207

Post by digitaltrees »

vdqtp3 wrote: post #112
dozerly wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have one of the worlds most prosperous economies, and half of the US is living in abject poverty while quality of life for everyone is decreasing.

> half of the US is living in abject poverty Anyone who believes this has absolutely no concept of what abject poverty looks like.

If you’re only complaint is the word “abject”, I encourage you to try to live on anywhere from $7 to $15 an hour, in a part-time job that doesn’t guarantee week to week how many hours you’ll get.

That is a very common reality.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#208

Post by nradov »

saghm wrote: post #123
wqaatwt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps its not compatible. But that’s tangential to the situation in the US, at the very minimum you need to have price transparency in any ‘free market’ system.

I think the point is that we might as well just give up the pretense of a free market healthcare solution and just focus on what's humane.

Is it humane to leave a patient to die in an ambulance when a single-payer nationalized healthcare system is over capacity?

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/06/englands-nhs...

I'm not trying to be snarky here, the point is that there is no easy solution and optimizing based on what politicians subjectively consider "humane" isn't going to get us anywhere. If we want to actually fix the problem then we need to focus on what's economically feasible rather than low-effort hot takes and sound bites. Free markets, with reasonable limits, can be part of that solution by revealing consumer preferences and allowing for efficient allocation of limited resources.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#209

Post by logicchains »

saghm wrote: post #162
MintPaw wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data is the answer, it's just that so few people are willing to look at unbiased data. Although the start is asking a more measurable question.

What's the question I should be asking, and what data answers it? I'm genuinely asking

Median household income is the stat usually used to measure income and it's still increasing.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#210

Post by mrtksn »

playorizaya wrote: post #110
mrtksn wrote: post #15

And yet for some reason all the algorithmic pricing targets the laborers, when apps hunt for whales they target teenagers. Ridiculous. There is a need for proper pricing for the rich, i.e. Elon can pay a million dollars per meal. Someone is leaving money on the table.

Love this. Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least. In the early Internet I saw this thing, no idea if it’s true but it sounds good (someone can math check it), goes something like: A person pays $2 to play basketball on a public court. Michael Jordan gets paid $2k to play on the same one. A person pays $100 for basketball shoes. Michael Jordan gets paid $100k to wear the same ones. A perso…

> Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least

AFAIK in some countries this exist but my case is more capitalist oriented. Rich people obviously can pay more since they keep accumulating wealth. It is an obvious sub optimal pricing since the low and even middle class rent/mortgage and other services quickly approaching the most they can pay so they can’t actually save and make wealth.

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