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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

#261

Post by Schiendelman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #49
Schiendelman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cases you're talking about are all delaying taxation, not eliminating it. Eventually someone has to draw that wealth - the foundation has to spend for public benefit to be eligible for 501(c)3 status, for instance.

How Elon Musk's secretive foundation hands out his billions - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-... - January 23rd, 2019 "Spending for the public benefit" has a lot of latitude.

If any significant part of that article is true, I see self dealing that would already be against IRS code. It's just a matter of enforcement. We often already have the laws to solve the problems we identify.

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

#262

Post by 9rx »

Jabrov wrote: post #153
idiotsecant wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quickly going to devolve into 'nobody suffers unless their suffering as at least as bad as the worst suffering that exists', so let's just go ahead and get that out of the way and move on to something less pointless.

It's not about being pointless, it's just plain wrong. The median (not average) household income in the US is 80K USD. p25 is 40K. p10 is 20K. They're struggling, sure. But I wouldn't call that abject poverty.

> But I wouldn't call that abject poverty.

But you could. There is no law of the universe that is going to stop you. Words are something randomly made up by humans.

> it's just plain wrong.

Again, words are completely made up, so it can't really be wrong in the traditional mathematical sense. It could be misinterpreted, perhaps. Of course that is dependent on how you've chosen to randomly make up "wrong".

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

#263

Post by mc32 »

shimman wrote: post #237
mc32 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mississippi, the poorest state, has similar median income to Germany. I’m pretty sure 50% of the people there are not in abject poverty.

Okay and what exactly do you get for that income? What are the material outcomes for having a "higher" income than Germany? Because I know very few people that would openly choose to live in Mississippi versus Germany.

The GP claimed that 50% of the US lives in abject poverty. Mississippi our poorest state compares with Germany in terms of median income and Mississippi itself does not suffer from 50% rate of abject poverty. So by extension the US as a whole doesn’t suffer from a 50% rate of abject poverty (begging, trinket selling, selling off relatives, shitting in public, etc.) rates of abject poverty. That’s stuff you’d see in the Great Depression or Weimar Germany level stuff.

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

#264

Post by legitster »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #202
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, pric…

The Fed tracks this: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tjto

Unit cost on labor has increased at a more or less steady pace this whole time. Ergo, it's not so much that labor is decreasing as other things are increasing faster.

It's hard to argue that technology is increasing labor productivity an order of magnitude faster than it was in the 50s. It's more likely something else in the dataset (returns on capital/rent) is exploding in value.

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

#265

Post by digitaltrees »

zer00eyz wrote: post #126
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 while quality of life for everyone is decreasing. The 350 million Americans looking at the top of the US economy and crying need to turn around and take a look at what's behind them. There are something like 7 billion people behind them, worse off.

It can be both. Look at the stress hormones people live with. Look at other stats like rising infant mortality, dropping IQ etc.

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

#266

Post by torginus »

ETH_start wrote: post #86

I wonder if labor itself will become an anachronism in the age of AI. Perhaps the future economic landscape will be dominated by capital because everyone will own capital. You will command a small army of agents to do whatever you want. You will no longer need to work for someone. You own small businesses far more than you could possibly operate in the pre-AI era and they will mostly operate autonomously with minimal…

We live in a world with a severe housing crisis - not shortage, as there are usually enough units, people just can't afford them.

One would assume the difficulty of building housing has gone down with the general progress of technology - and if all else fails, you can just do what they did 50, 100 years ago where affordability was far less a struggle - people, who had less income in real terms spent proportionally less on it.

So did society devolve that an unit of industrial output has become more expensive? Or did money and resources just go into a parallel 'rich people economy', that has created a constant drain on the resources of average people?

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

#267

Post by coffeecantcode »

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.

Benn Jordan just released a new video proposing that we are not in “late stage capitalism” and instead we are currently an offshoot of capitalism called “leverageism”.

In the video he describes how when people like Elon Musk get to the level of wealth that they are at, it becomes far more beneficial for them to take from (or stunt) the spending power of lower classes than it is to add to their own net worth dollar figure - simply put, the former moves the needle far more in their favor than the latter.

Definitely explained the idea of our slice remaining the same while the overall pie around us is getting larger.

*Edit: Benn not Ben

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

#268

Post by prithvip »

hash872 wrote: post #29

I don't have time for a longer comment, but AIUI this is mostly a statistical illusion caused by changes to US tax law- previously income that was attributed to 'labor' shifted over to LLCs/S corps for more beneficial tax rates. The doctor, lawyer, financial advisor, CPA etc. that in past decades would have had his/her income run through a W2 arrangement shifted to becoming a one-person corporation

Exactly. Crazy you are getting downvoted for having the most informed comment here. The other aspect of this is the rise of franchisees in America. Previously, the salary of the manager of a corporate store would be measured as labor income. In a franchise, it would be measured as capital income.

https://bfi.uchicago.edu/insight/research-summary/the-rise-o...

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

#269

Post by colechristensen »

scottyah wrote: post #176
honeycrispy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's wild to me how we can't seem to figure out how to bring the cost for this down. Building affordable houses should be our no. 1 priority.

If you build plenty of houses, they become affordable. The latest Affordable Housing is mostly gov-enabled scams, at least in San Diego. They are being made for greater costs than the luxury housing since the funding is guaranteed. Then the same developers are incentivized to keep all rates high by building less. https://sdhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/107_Workshop_RAN...

I don't want affordable housing mandated, I want the opposite. Force builders to build 1500 sq ft three bedroom apartments. Flood the market at the top end with SPACE and then tax vacancies of these spaces aggressively.

This sets a price cap, makes these high density spaces affordable for people who want to live their whole lives there and not just their single 20's, brings diversity into communities and drops the floor out of the prices on these single occupancy closets going for $2000 per month.

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

#270

Post by carlosjobim »

idiotsecant wrote: post #130
carlosjobim wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. The real estate share of income is probably at its highest among a lot of people who belong to the non-labouring class, but are far from ultra wealthy. But it's nice to have a scapegoat, isn't it?

If you belong to the 'non-laboring class' you are by definition the ultra wealthy. It's wild how much people are willing to slide goalposts to make themselves feel better.

Ultra wealthy literally means "beyond wealthy". A double digit percentage of the population, maybe 30-50% belong to the non-laboring class.

If I was talking about "ultra obese" people, you wouldn't assume I was talking about everybody who has a couple of extra pounds?

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