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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

#541

Post by jimbokun »

montblanc wrote: post #404
mercy_dude wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 includi…

> How does having cheap access to internet makes the quality of your life better Whoa that's a bit of a reach no? How about the ability to drive around with GPS? Or stay easily in touch with family living far away? Taking photos of your baby and having it stored on the cloud for free? The ability to learn almost anything for free? I'm not saying it's all great, it isn't, but we can't deny the benefits.

> Or stay easily in touch with family living far away?

The flip side is that technology has made it more likely to not live near friends and family, and the accompanying challenges for mental health.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#542

Post by whimsicalism »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #332
dan-robertson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

You can't eat a smartphone, you can't sleep in an internet connection, you can't do your nursing job through a computer. Formal education is more expensive. A balanced diet is harder to get, and more expensive. Housing is more expensive near your work. But gas as well if you live far from it. Today's people debt is higher, and you can't easily work one job, raise a family, and afford education plus buy a home. It was…

Oh come on. People were literally starving in the US in the 60s-70s. Not really something that is easy to happen nowadays, even if it is difficult to get a balanced diet.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#543

Post by thedragonline »

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…

>I think this is obviously false and hurts the credibility of the rest of this comment.

What you think of this graph? https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/

Because by my reading, it looks like the average American is not reaping the gains of this country's GDP output by a significant margin.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#544

Post by commandlinefan »

dnautics wrote: post #39

If it does, inflation has failed as a policy: https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/the-case-for-hi... "in the long run, it’s really, really hard to cut nominal wages. Yet when you have very low inflation, getting relative wages right would require that a significant number of workers take wage cuts. So having a somewhat higher inflation rate would lead to lower unemployment, not just temporarily, but on a sus…

So Krugman's wrong, again. Has he ever been right?

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#545

Post by pydry »

shakezula wrote: post #519
pydry wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because both parties are owned by oligarchs who would lose money if that happened. Minimum wage hikes chew through profits and profits are pretty much the #1 legislative priority because that's the primary concern of those doing the campaign financing. Same reason gun control wont happen no matter how many people get killed - ultimately its because gun manufacturers would lose money. American politics is the art of t…

And the reason countries like NZ seem to be able to quickly and efficiently pass sweeping gun reform laws is because it’s not effecting any major gun producers bottom line. In America that is very much not the situation. Additionally, even if profits were a moot point, the 2nd amendment is a culture war wedge issue that runs bone-deep for the average American.

The gun industry started the culture war for profit and fans the flames for profit.

Take away the profit margins and have a few more mass shootings and I imagine the 2nd amendment would melt away as easily as the 4th did.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#546

Post by NoGravitas »

PickledHotdog wrote: post #494
sigmaprimus wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>I've also heard this bullshit before from older generations, including my parents. Mark those words my friend...There is truth in them and one day not too long from now that same BS will be coming out of your mouth, I guarantee it! On a side note, put some of your savings into physical precious metals it may very well be the only thing that will allow You to prosper in the next decade.

This reminds me of people from a certain generation who say "You'll be more conservative as you get older!" which happened to them because they accrued wealth and assets and (somewhat naturally) want to protect them. But when you can't accrue wealth or assets (for all of the reasons other posters have listed above), you probably don't end up becoming more conservative as you get older. Quite the opposite. You're tryi…

Yep. I'm pushing 50, and over the last 20 years, I've gone from being a progressive liberal to a Marxist-Leninist. You don't get more conservative as you get older, you get more conservative as you get wealthier.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#547

Post by jimbokun »

montblanc wrote: post #436
willcipriano wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly convinced that having to do things as you described was better for mental health as well. The always on, always connected lifestyle has big downsides.

Driving with a map was better than how it is now? We're 10 years from having the damn thing drive itself for us. I suck at directions, I can imagine without the internet I would just avoid drives to places I wasn't familiar with and miss out on a bunch of things.

You would discover you are better at directions than you think, if you need to find places without a phone and GPS.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#548

Post by sudosysgen »

treis wrote: post #506
wonderwonder wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the important numbers here are the salary and housing cost ones. In 1970 the average house could be purchased for less than 2 years of salary. Today it costs 5.8 years of salary. The cost of housing has sky rocketed relative to income. Housing is the largest bill for the vast majority of people and it eats a massive portion of their take home. Likewise the cost of a vehicle has seen a very large increase perc…

>think the important numbers here are the salary and housing cost ones. In 1970 the average house could be purchased for less than 2 years of salary. Today it costs 5.8 years of salary. But no one pays cash for their house. They get a mortgage and so the monthly mortgage payment is (mostly) what matters. Back in the 70s you're paying 10%+ on your mortgage while today it's more like 3.

The reason rates were so high was because of interest. Back then you could expect your income to increase so the interest wasn't as bad as the nominal rate.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#549

Post by abeppu »

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…

A number of responses to this are arguing over whether real wages were really flat since the 1970s or how one would judge given the differences in the things we spend money on (larger houses, new tech, etc). But for any choice of how to calculate inflation which makes worker's wages go up over time, doesn't that imply that the total growth since the 1970s is also larger, and the absolute value captured by the capital-owning class is even larger? You can skew the picture to make the situation for workers less crappy, but not without making the success of the capital owners even more extreme.

Piketty frames stuff in terms of the share of growth that goes to labor vs capital-owners, and I can't stop viewing the situation in those terms. My understanding is that recent data shows that in general, companies selling a lot of consumer goods have improved their margins -- they're raising prices faster than their costs are increasing -- meaning effectively we're shifting money from consumers to shareholders. Every crisis is an opportunity to argue for the richest to enrich themselves further.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#550

Post by kiba »

dtech wrote: post #305
nickpp wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things with massive government involvement and heavily regulated like are incredibly more expensive: health care, housing and education. Meanwhile, things provided by the free market have become incredibly less expensive and more powerful: technology, communication, entertainment. Nothing to do with your rich vs poor class wars.

Government is also heavily involved in car manufacturing and air travel those have become much cheaper. The real reason is non-scaling vs scaling, IP like tech and entertainment and internet are incredibly cheap to scale. Manufacturing has also become a lot cheaper and automated. In contrast, things that are supply constrained (housing) or mostly depend on human labour have become expensive. A nurse spends approximat…

Cars are very expensive, not because of the car in themselves, but the infrastructure and land use policies required to make them convenient. Think of parking lots and roads.

A more compact society would simply be less costly to maintain, and you can use public transit to scale transportation.

Housing is only very expensive because of land use policies and we don't build enough of them. Once we have a more liberal land use policies, then maybe labor costs will start to matter.

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