Americans are 40% poorer than before the recession

Post by tokenadult » Tue, Dec 16, 2014, 4:02 AM UTC

It's really amazing to contrast this thread with the thread currently up about the Gates Foundation report on good news in reducing disease in poor countries. I live in the United States, I do NOT own a house (I never have), I've had several career changes (bad planning on my part, no one else to blame) but I still consider myself very well off. I have use of this amazing device called the Internet to have intellectual conversations with friends any hour of the day or not. That alone would have been unimaginable in my childhood. There has been a lot of progress, and Americans are staggeringly wealthy by any reasonable worldwide standard. Moreover, Americans are living longer and healthier lives than ever before, and mostly don't even notice that.[1] So, sure, many Americans don't have as many on-paper financial assets as they appeared to have at the peak of the housing bubble, but so what? Americans can still take care of their children, still enjoy leisure, and still change where they live and what they do for a living with a freedom unknown in much of the world. If this is what it's like to be poor in America, I have no problem with being poor. (Disclosure: I have lived outside the United States, and I have been to places with stark poverty. I have a point of comparison as I type this.)

[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_... http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...

Post by wavefunction » Tue, Dec 16, 2014, 4:29 AM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #69

wavefunction wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you for your trash analysis. I will be back this evening (1:45PM here at the moment) and I will cite sources until you scream for mercy. The loss of wealth for the average American (note I didn't say MEDIAN lol) is well-established at this point.

I failed reading comprehension 101 so I don't think this is required. But I'm always interested in reading interesting links if you have anything you'd still like to share.

Ok, well my comment about "screaming for mercy" was hopefully taken as tongue-in-cheek. My conversational writing style is somewhat cold sometimes without intention. Plus it's night here, so I must beg pardon for claiming that I would get back here in the evening. I had a dog dependency I had to resolve.

I will definitely try to find the raw data for my main issue, which is that through Quantitative Easing by the Fed (Rounds 1 and Two) the purchasing power of the dollar was devastated, which makes dollar wealth comparisons pre- and post-recession even worse than reported. If your wealth drops 20% from $100 to $80 but each $1 of that $80 buys half of what it used to, then your wealth has actually dropped by 60%: your eighty dollars has the purchasing power of forty dollars when once you had one hundred dollars of purchasing power. These hypothetical values don't exactly match the specific situation rendered by QE but give you an illustration of the worst aspects of the austerity imposed in America. I don't want to quote the exact drop in purchasing power of the dollar pre- and post-recession but I have found the data before and calculated that drop for a co-worker, and the drop was precipitous and un-reported by-and-large. I'll be back with that data when I have it.

In addition, many corporations snuck further cost-savings for themselves in terms of reducing volume of a product by unit but did not modify the unit price respectively, so they are receiving marginal increases in revenue despite the down-turn and all the weight being thrown directly on consumers.

Here are some general articles about the loss in wealth for most Americans while the wealthiest experienced a gain in wealth for the wealthiest.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/04/23/a-rise-in-wealth-f...

In the UK, pensioners feel the bite of QE:

http://www.sharingpensions.co.uk/quantitative-easing-annuity...

There are a ton of blogs out there with people talking about the issues surrounding QE but I am trying to sift through the chaff for you. I should have bookmarked the links I used with my coworker.

Re: Americans are 40% poorer than before the recession

Re: Americans are 40% poorer than before the recession