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Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

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Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#371

Post by mercy_dude »

dan-robertson wrote: post #276
Gareth321 wrote: post #250

Real wages have been flat since the 1970s ( https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us... ). "Okay, so people's living standards are about the same since 1970?" Not even close. The problem with inflation is that its calculation is fraught with all kinds of selective weighting, bias, and politics. Take a look at the relative differences between the things which have decreased and increased in cost in…

> most Americans are significantly worse off since the 1970s I think this is obviously false and hurts the credibility of the rest of this comment. There are many pitfalls with measuring long-term inflation. How much did an internet connection cost in the 1970s? What about a computer? What about a smartphone? These modern technologies make peoples lives much better and were somewhere between impossible and impossibly…

> How much did an internet connection cost in the 1970s? What about a computer? What about a smartphone?

This is the elitist fallacy that somehow having access cheap smartphones and plastics mostly manufactured in China at the back of our working class jobs make your life better while all else indicates life expectancy and quality of life across the board is declining for majority of Americans. Many Americans including my millennial generation feels we are worse off than our parents generation.

How does having cheap access to internet makes the quality of your life better if I may ask? Does it help with the ballooning cost of housing prices throughout the country? Or healthcare? Or education for that matter? These are three basic costs and they all have gone over 100% in most cities in a decade or so. Not to say people are more lonely and isolated than they ever have been.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#372

Post by meragrin_ »

WalterBright wrote: post #331
throwawaycities wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is obviously false and hurts the credibility of the rest of this comment. The answer to the question of “are we better of than we were in 19xx” is somewhat subjective. Take your points: cars are faster/safer/more comfortable/more fuel efficient and houses are bigger and better. Ok so cars and houses are better today than 1970, but how does that relate to us? 1970 Average salary/median house cost/median…

I have a circa 1970 car, and a modern car. The 1970 car is very cheaply built, and is mechanically simple. The quality, complexity, and sheer number of parts of a modern car has increased enormously. Much of that is due to regulation, most every aspect of a car is heavily regulated today. None of this comes for free.

Housing is also more heavily regulated today. Various places have different regulations for hurricanes, earthquakes, and other things.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#373

Post by sigmaprimus »

CraigJPerry wrote: post #353
sigmaprimus wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people have a misguided belief that home ownership was easy in the 70s, 80s or even the 90s. Yes the prices were lower and maybe the cost/average income ratio was lower but I can attest to the fact that it was no easy feat even back then. Plenty of people lost their homes, renters had far less rights and although when looking at things through averages seems to indicate a better off middle class, the wages of th…

>> maybe the cost/average income ratio was lower There’s no maybe about it. In the 70s, average house sale price was 4x the average salary. Today it’s 8x. How many lattes would you need to have skipped to have bought two homes at the time you bought your first? How many holidays would you have needed to skip to pay two mortgages while you were paying one? That is the scenario - well except todays generation would onl…

My house is currently valued at 100K USD that is not an unreachable goal. It might not be right next to your favorite coffee shop but that just one of the sacrifices You make when You want to own a home.

BTW in the 70s we didn't have lattes, it was just plain old coffee and what is this holiday's thing You are talking about? It sounds like something the privileged think they are entitled to.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#374

Post by angryfeller »

kccqzy wrote: post #159
zipiridu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch Ray Dalio's videos on the long term debt cycle and how the economy works in general. Another interesting topic is what is called the "fourth turning" which sort of says that major changes happen around once a human lifecycle. We are going to have some major economic changes in the next decade, but no one knows how that will look. I think it's 50/50 whether it's violent or not.

I read the fourth turning book. I couldn't finish it just because how tenuous the argument was. It was also debunked by experts. I find it absolutely not interesting at all.

Source for the debunk? Who are these experts you speak of?

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#375

Post by OtomotO »

antocv wrote: post #344
OtomotO wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great, now you have a job. You can't live with the pay, but at least you have a job. That is something, right? Spoiler: it's not

Sure it is something, it keeps you busy from making revolution.

Sorry forgot to mention the cui bono must be yourself for that question ;)

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#376

Post by ricardolopes »

Been thinking about this for a while.

If worker pay isn't keeping up but company profits and equity are, this means that people are overvaluing being a worker and undervaluing being an owner, compared to market equilibrium.

Why would that be? Risk aversion? With the latest advances in global connectivity, online business infrastructure, ubiquitous technology and so on, I'd expect risk to be as low as it ever was.

Something else? What am I missing?

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#377

Post by rocgf »

nickpp wrote: post #357
rocgf wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gonna leave out housing and education, but for healthcare, you are painfully incorrect. European countries has vastly more regulated healthcare and yet pay about an order of magnitude less for it.

You have a good point, USA healthcare has the worst kind of regulation: it did lots of damage and helped very little. But Western European countries (which you probably compare to) had an immense, unspoken advantage: an incredible supply of highly educated, unexpensive health care work force - the Eastern Europe. If you want to truly compare the healthcare of USA with Europe's please include countries like Bulgaria,…

You want to compare the richest country in history with Moldova? I'm not sure I see the point.

My point was very simple. Out of all of the world's developed countries, the USA is the one with the most expensive healthcare, despite less regulations. My point was that regulation by the government does not lead to "incredibly more expensive healthcare", as you have have stated.

From there, comparing the USA to Bulgaria is simply beside the point, the conversation was about regulation leading to "incredibly" higher costs.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#378

Post by tsimionescu »

kukallan wrote: post #325
toyg wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a non-American, it's heartbreaking to see efforts to unify the underclass completely derailed by this ridiculous race war. Yeah, well, it's not like things are much better in Europe. Far-right parties are now mainstream in most major EU countries, and their n.1 priority is exactly the same. Signed, a Brexit victim.

I can't speak for the whole of Europe and I might be a sheep - but at least in Scandinavia, these far right parties are more of a symptom of the mainstream parties refusal to talk about problems related to immigration combined with US cultural influence. Sweden is no.1 in Europe when it comes to gun violence right now and only last year non-right political parties started discussing current crime waves link to integr…

Hard on crime and hard on immigration IS the far right. Sure, if the old parties had veered far-right, new far-right parties wouldn't have shown up.

The problem are not the parties, the problem are the policies. Kicking immigrants out or licking them up will not improve the life of the local lower class, despite all the promises. It may improve the life of the rich, who won't have to fear bring mugged. But the reasons why immigration is happening, and why immigrants remain poor, will either continue (no one wants to do the dirty jobs) or mine too the local lower class (let's pray locals less so that they are competitive with immigrants).

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#379

Post by ricardobayes »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #340
ricardobayes wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saaw that happening in Budapest. Every young person has a new iPhone and wearing new sneakers, but living with parents.

yeah and most of those parents have been refinancing their homes to support their spoiled children. That is going to end real soon and many of those kids are going to witness their parents lose their homes and become impoverished due to their lazy yet extravagant lifestyles.

It's not about spoiled children, I see janitors walking around with 800 euro phones here. It's just a psychological way for low earning people to 'keep up with the Kardashians'. AS they can't buy cars or houses they buy gadgets.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#380

Post by fareesh »

kamaal wrote: post #227
silisili wrote: post #58

As someone who does OK, but lives in reality (not the bay area), I feel a revolution coming. I hope it's not a violent one, but who knows at this point. Hopefully it's just a politician with big policy changes. People feel completely disenfranchised. You keep hanging housing over their head but just out of reach like some baby toy, then inflation spikes everything else. What's the point of working even? I don't know…

>>As someone who does OK, but lives in reality (not the bay area), I feel a revolution coming. As some one who lives in India, where inflation is perennially high. I can assure you revolution is not coming, in fact not even a protest march. Revolutions needs a lot of hunger and suffering, its not things like milk going from being $9 to $12 a unit. The common man delays things like fighting for almost as long as they…

Culturally, the average person here in India is absolutely clueless about what freedom is. The idea of small government is non-existent in the minds of people.

Based on hundreds of conversations with my red state friends, attitudes are very different. You may be right, but the comparison is missing many key details.

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