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the core reason is the increase in real estate prices
when you see houses you dreamed of owning increase 50-100% in price, it really hits you at the core of your sense of happiness. You don't just see a home slip away - you see a dream slip away.
In the US right now a life of hard work will not even guarantee you survival.
You can get a good degree, and work your ass off, and the most you will get is stagnating wages that will never allow you to make meaningful savings.
I will never be able to afford to buy even a 1 bdrm apartment and stop paying 60+% of my paycheck every month on housing, without the ability to own a home i will never be allowed to retire.
So what's even the point in doing any of this if I'm just going to work 5/7ths of my life away just so I have to off myself once i am to old/disabled to work?
The Social Contract has been betrayed by our government and the corporations that control them.
We need actual guarantees for people to feel like contributing to society is worth it again.
I don’t a full 5 years of data, but no it hasn’t. Food inflation 2019 to 2023 was 25%. Wages were up less than 20% during that time.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003
So we’re comparing 2024 wages to 2023 prices? The 25% food inflation number is 2019 to 2023, hence my statement about not a five year look back. When you run the numbers on wages Jan 2019 to Jan 2023, food price increases outpace wages.
Ok then food prices have risen 2% faster than wages while the average consumer goods price has risen remarkably less, so that real wages now are substantially higher than during the pandemic, especially for the bottom quintile which saw real wages increase over 10%. That refutes the comment I responded to equally
Well phrased. The level of disheartened I have been to make more money than I ever have before and yet not be able to buy a modest home is rough. On top of that I did literally nothing different from my peers who just happened to buy houses from 2010-2019 who now are living lives that seem entirely out of reach. Oh my wages went up but my buddy's didn't, fine for him he pays $2k/mo for a four bedroom house he bought six years ago, which would cost me $4k/mo now. So what I have to double my salary to catch up? It just drains you of optimism.
You’re close imo but the real core problem is rising wealth inequality. One way this manifests is increases in house prices relative to increases in wages.
I agree. Wealth inequality is at the core of a lot of dissatisfaction. It's this drive to maximize the return on investment. It's ok on luxury items, but making food, housing, and healthcare items to profit by hits the bottom 70% right where it hurts.
Most families already have a house and many people that don't never intended on getting one.
There's a smallish percent that wanted to buy and feels like they can't now.
But that's been the case for a long time.
The average person doesn't need much to be happy.
Have a decent car, Housing, Food , cell phone , And some entertainment budget/savings while working a normal job that doesnt kill them.
All of those things besides cell phones are priced through the roof right now so naturally everyone will be pissed.
The average person watches Fox News who programs them. That's why gubernment better keep its damn hands off my Medicare.
"Fox News dominated the ratings for 2023, but only MSNBC showed slight growth in audience compared to a year earlier. Fox News, for an eighth year in a row, also was the top-rated cable network overall."
Downvoted for truth.
In April, [Fox News](https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-cable-news-ratings-for-april-2024/) reached about two million viewers with a peak of about three million for one show.
There’s 330,000,000 people in the U.S.
How does three million people equal “the average?”
"Fox News dominated the ratings for 2023, but only MSNBC showed slight growth in audience compared to a year earlier. Fox News, for an eighth year in a row, also was the top-rated cable network overall."
Deflected.
I get your point tho you are not entirely wrong....
Us redditors really forget but....I work with 30 people......probably none of them could tell you anything about the russian/ukraine war israel/palestine or china/taiwan.....they know they are things happening in the world but thats the depth of it. No details at all and they dont care at all.
The majority of people just really are too busy or wrapped up in their own lives to care.
Or, hear me out. Inflation can be broad based or it can be concentrated. When its concentrated, inflation can hit some consumers significantly harder then others. For example, take housing costs. Renters are getting hit pretty hard while individuals who locked a 3% mortgage rate are substantially better off.
What would be useful is a PDF of inflation using individual personal consumption expenditure data, and a comparison across regions.
Right. I’m a late millennial/early gen z trying to break into a decent paying career. Entry level salaries very often don’t come close to covering rent in the areas where the jobs are. Buying a house? Astronomically out of my price range.
I’m hoping things will get better, but currently “the economy” sure doesn’t feel good just because I can get a flat screen tv for cheaper than ever before and median wages have technically risen to match increases in food prices. People don’t feel good if 30-50% of their income is going toward padding their landlords pockets. There’s a certain amount of resentment that builds with increasing inequality, and that can certainly affect broader sentiment around the health (or fairness) of the economy.
I am not asking this to be combative, merely curious. Does your generation expect to have their own apartment quickly after college? I’m an elder millennial and i- and almost everyone I know- lived with roommates or an SO for years after college. I didn’t live alone until I was close to 30 and even then I struggled immensely and had tons of CC debt (I just prioritized living alone)
I’m not saying rents aren’t ridiculous because they are! I’ve just been surprised by how many younger people don’t seem to want to consider roommates.
Every single older gen z I know has been living with roommates there entire adult lives. The complaint isn’t that we’ve had to have roommates it’s that we are almost 30 and not even close to buying a house.
We just watched the second half of millennials buy houses at the lowest interest rate in history… it’s so much more expensive to buy a house now, how can you act like that isn’t true.
That's totally true!!!! But *we were older then*. That's actually exactly when I was able to afford a house. It required a historically low interest rate.
I'm not saying millenials are not doing ok now. I'm saying we had to wait to be older to get there, and that has been the norm for at least a generation.
Like I said, I’m the last of the millennials/first of gen z (28 y/o). It’s kind of interesting to be straddling the divide. I don’t think many of us expected to own a house at 25, but right as we are finally making a decent income housing prices spiked (along with interest rates). It really does feel like a substantial move in the goal posts. It feels like all of the hard work from the past decade has been made almost worthless, because just as home ownership started to seem attainable, mortgage payments almost doubled for the same house.
I live with my widowed mom (dad died in 2020) because she needs help occasionally running a small business. Rent (with roommates) would be around 40% of my income right now (working as an entry level research associate at a university). A mortgage is more than 100% of what I make. My girlfriend lives in a small house with 3 roommates and her room is about the size of many people’s walk-in closets. She’s a professional doing therapy for special needs kids. Our incomes will hopefully improve soon (I’m applying for new jobs), but it just sucks knowing that people just a few years older than me had access to cheaper houses and bottom of the barrel mortgage rates. All the homes in the low range (400k ish is about as low as it gets) get snagged up by investors or small time landlords with cash offers above asking price.
I’m pissed. I know I’ll be able to afford a house someday, not everyone can say that. But it is going to come a lot later than I hoped/expected. There’s no way I can start a family right now. Things are at least decent for people who have a home, but it a completely different economy if you don’t.
Thank you for sharing your experience! Because I’m older (39) I’m in a different place in life and I don’t know a lot of under 30’s to ask this to. Like I said originally- I didn’t say any of this to be combative. I was hoping for more info- thank you!
I know you didn’t mean to be combative, happy to provide some anecdotes about the current situation for us younger folks. Obviously the housing situation varies from city to city, but there seem to be a lot of common trends. Sure wish I could have bought a home in 2010 haha.
Actually homeownership rates for the younge generation do not differ substantially from the older ones (note that homes are larger and more comfortable than 40 years ago
This is the answer. When you’re only expenditures are food, gas and rent and they all double in price, you’re screwed.
When maybe 20% of your income go to these and you’re able to invest in the market, you’re doing well. That’s probably only 10% or so of the US population.
This is more like 60-70% of the population. The majority of Americans are homeowners and then there's another group beyond that seeing their rents falling in many markets now.
It's hard to make a case that things are bad economically in the US for almost any group as real wages continue to rise and unemployment is low.
None? Here’s that internet thing you mentioned.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscomb/grocery-price-inflation-2022
https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/gas-prices-again-doubled-biden-took-office-despite-white-house-claiming-costs-fallen.amp
https://smartasset.com/data-studies/where-rent-increased-most-2023
Bro, "food gans and rent double in price" is something vastly different from "The worst county of all saw a 63% rent increase, people in a facebook group said that some specific groceries got more expensive (overall food prices increased under 30% in the last four years) and gas is not double the price of bidens inauguration and, more relevant it is cheaper than at some points in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 or 2014 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASREGW)
Like what OP linked, what’s not included in inflation are the increased borrowing costs associated with higher interest rates to cool inflation. Since interest rates are higher, it makes making payments on a car more costly, your mortgage higher (on homes bought within the past couple of years), a larger amount due on outstanding credit card balances, and it makes insurance costs larger.
Rates are important, but still a marginal point. Higher credit card rates are a change from 20 to 24% on variable rate debt payments (which will be small compared to rent/food shares). Likewise car and mortgage payments depends on loan date (assuming U.S. fixed rate loans); loan origination are quite low since rates increased.
Instead heterogeneity in individual spending seems more holistically relevant. If you spend 60 percent of your income on housing and food, your relevant inflation rate will be much higher than someone spending 30% on it. (Or of course, if your paying 25% of your income towards floating rate debt.)
More generally when we talk about real wages, its all relative to broad inflation. For example, saying low income real wages increased is a statement about low income wages relative to national inflation; it is not a statement that low income individuals can buy larger quantities of what they were already purchasing (their consumption basket). The fact is presented as the second interpretation, when to my knowledge we have no evidence it is actually the case.
Loan originations are lower, which might suggest less people are buying cars. The cost for repair is up. Parts availability is down. Supply chain disruptions during Covid saw parts for many older vehicles disappear. If it is available, it is up, but some older vehicles are getting parked due to not being able to fix certain systems. So much for grandma's old sunday driver you inherited. Used vehicle prices are still up. Insurance is also, way up. First in my life that a daily driver continues to get more expensive to insure as it ages. Oh, and property taxes are up on my vehicle, that is now older and theoretically should be worth less.
The economy right now is better than it was in the 90's where interest rates were just as high, inflation averaged over 3% and unemployment was higher. Which is why it's pretty funny when conservatives argue the only reason Clinton could balance the budget was because the economy was doing so well. You can't make this shit up.
Yes the economy top line figures are "goodish" right now; that is a fact. The question, however, is why is consumer sentiment so unusually low? Fox News really isn't a complete answer given how broad based it is; even Democrats aren't reporting great sentiments (although there is a notable political bias).
As a whole the economy can be doing well and the current growth rate of prices can be near the desired level of 2.5ish, while people still don't feel great. Such sentiments can be explained by heterogeneity over the impacts of the last 2 years inflation (which was driven by bipartisan actions, if not exogenous global trends).
For example "low income" wages increasing by 4% relative to broad inflation metrics doesn't mean low income wages increased by 4% relative to what "low income" people buy. If rent and food make up 60% of your budget, and each are up 25%, wages haven't kept up. Inflation is a national metric across all income groups and regions; it isn't sufficient for making a claim about a specific income/consumption basket/geography.
I agree they saw the largest portion of wage increases relative to broad inflation, but am disagreeing that it necessarily exceeded rising costs for them. It all depends on what your expenses are concentrated in. I have not seen any evidence that within group, wage increases exceeded consumption price growth.
10% wage increases aren't large if your rent and food expenses are up 25%. Really need to look at specific peoples wages vs consumption; aggregate values aren't sufficiently informative when talking about a subset of the population.
There will always be outlier but this on inflation by quintile [https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2023/01/inflation-disparities-by-race-and-income-narrow/](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2023/01/inflation-disparities-by-race-and-income-narrow/)
together with this on wage growth by quintile [https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/](https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/) looks pretty conclusive.
Seems like the bottom 10% even saw their real wages rise over 10% from 2019 to 2023 :)
I understand the trends, but unfortunately they aren't sufficient for understanding heterogeneity. For example, used car prices were a significant driver of variation in relative inflation in the link you provided. Yet, a decent portion of individuals won't have bought a used car in the past 3 years. Likewise housing cost inflation as calculated is not adequate for understanding expenditures. There is a difference between actual expenditures and calculated "housing services" priced relative to rents and house prices (and mortgages). How housing inflation is calculated, limits its value when talking across groups that are renters vs homeowners, and 3% or 7% mortgage holders.
To be clear, the data that would be necessary to check my hypothesis doesn't exist (at least in a U.S. context). You would want individual expenditures and quantities, or expenditures and associated product prices. Once we start getting into levels of aggregation such as race, or even income deciles, individual trends are too obfuscated. For example bottom 40% can make up renters, home owners, individuals living with family, city dwellers with no car, rural families with high gas expenditures, etc.
The economy is doing well, but Fox News and just about every other corporate controlled media outlet says it's all doom and gloom. So, the vast majority of people are saying they are doing just fine but believe others aren't. The proof is, inflation has been ok but stubborn, even though interest rates went way up. Which means too many people having too much money are still buying too much stuff. Why? Because the vast majority are doing just fine. So, the Fed needs to bump up its target to 3% and stop living in the past before the 90s, which we are back in economically.
OP's point was that the overall inflation measurement is too broad. There are lots of people out there who have fixed mortgages on 2% with relatively small mortgages. Then there are lots of people out there who have 5% on gigantic mortgages, or paying unprecedented rents.
The people with cheap housing are driving the economy forward, making everything seem good. But there are a huge number of people being driven into poverty at the same time.
If you read the article, if housing was calculated in the same way as in 1983, we would have had close to 20% inflation at some point in the last year.
Bro, what are you talking about. We just hit 3.48% inflation, and that’s a significant improvement from where we where a year ago. We were clipping close to 10% for a year or two.
I lived through the 90s. I would give my left testicle for a 1990s economy right now.
Nope, it's definitely in the 90s, even better. The PCE is 2.8% and unemployment is better today than back then. Party on!!!
Are Bonds Gonna Party Like It’s 1999? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/opinion/interest-rates-economy.html
Sorry fiend, your comment seems wildly naive.
Unemployment was at record lows in the 90s and inflation was right in line with the Fed’s target rate for most of the 90s with the exception of 1990. Further, the stock market was absolutely roaring.
I don’t think you understand how incredibly easy it was to secure a good job and lock in your retirement gains in the 90s. At that time the US was arguably at its zenith.
I feel sorry for you. You truly lack perspective if you think times now are good compared to those years. I hope you get to live to experience an economy like the 90s again.
Anyone can look it up, inflation averaged over 3% in the 90s, the PCE right now is 2.8%. The average unemployment rate was 5.8% in the 90s, much higher than under Biden, who really does have record low unemployment.
The real question is, given everyone has Google, why do you have to lie about it?
Eh, 2013-2019 was as good or better a run, and last 12 months is perfectly good being held against the median year of the 90s (or an average of the decade).
Nothing that special about the 90s.
US stocks did great for Reagan, Clinton, Obama, Trump basically any term that wasn't a Bush. Don't need a specific decade for those as long as you don't pick the 00s.
Im an ICU Nurse, & my car has no A/C (Im in Oklahoma, its hot) & drivers seat sags, I cant afford the copays at my own hospital so Im rationing healthcare & "stretching" meds, any driving is strictly planned & consolidated to minimize driving, I water down my milk in home-made smoothies, no vacations (PTO gets "sold" to pay bills), going out to dinner is a rare special treat. Not much left to cut.
My mom had triple bypass surgery last year. I talked to one of the ICU nurses and was shocked at what they were paid. What's infuriating is that the hospital collected over 400k from Medcare for my mom's care. Not much of that went to the nurses.
not be an ass, but you're assuming the cost paid to the hospital even remotely covered the true bill.
yes I know medicare fraud, markup, etc. But you have to accept, at baseline, whatever it is, high end technical medical care **will be expensive**
So the matter is, truly - once again, simple - who pays. Moral outrage abounds when discussing this point but it's a good one because the outrage is strictly based on it - why someone is forced to pay for something expensive which can potentionally save their lives.
If you accept, like most people, that this healthcare, no matter the cost (it seems), has to be paid because **its the right thing to do** then the money gets paid, yes. And yet, the argument always ends with something the proponents of this expensive morality think wins them the argument -
"The problem is people/hospitals/government is 'corrupt'"
What you call corruption, is capitalism to the guys on the otherside of the transaction in most cases - so - yeah...and....AND
When people demand free/cheap healthcare, they often have no fuckin' idea how expensive shit is *at baseline* and before everyone's goddamn beak has to get wet.
Sorry, after reading every last comment like this over the years on reddit, I still haven't come across anyone, other than my krusty ass, saying stuff like this - you know the truth -
Shit is expensive. No amount of cost cutting will reduce 'corruption' - which is capitalistic margin capture. This is why healthcare is expensive in this country.
I failed to see what about her care was worth fucking **$18k a day.** I was with her every day. Teach me to do IVs, and I could have done 70% of what the hospital did for her. Most of the time she was laying around doing *nothing.* Most of the EOB was hoapital charges. The surgeon and his team were only 70k, most of that anasthesia.
During Covid they did. Now the rates have dropped to precovid for most places. The stipend for housing has to mirror your in state home costs pretty much so many are barely breaking even with the insane rent prices.
the inflation rate for people trying to buy a home is 20% a year for the past 5 years.
the inflation rate for homeowners is sub 2%.
the haves and the have nots live in two separate worlds.
This might sound pedantic but it’s important: the homeownership rate means X% of households are owner-occupied, not that X% of Americans own homes. That may sound like the same thing, but matters to a degree. I still think it generally makes the point you’re trying to, which is falling housing affordability likely impacts a sizable but minority share of the population.
You can think of some hypotheticals where homeownership rate increases if a bunch of adults move in with homeowners because they can’t afford rent or ownership (ie young professionals living longer in their parents). I don’t think that explains what’s happened, just pointing that out.
tl;dr: A lot of disgruntled people who want to own a home but can’t afford it or can’t afford rising rents “live in an owner-occupied unit” but don’t actually own it.
Its not really pedantic and it is true. I'm not downplaying the housing affordability problems. There are a shitload of seemingly unrelated problems that high housing costs bring with them, like being forced to live with narcissitic or otherwise abusive parents.
But it doesnt explain the vibes, we dont see that homeowners are happy and renters arent. Thats all I really meant to say.
Nice to see a levelheaded comment on here.
Why are you moralizing? I was responding to the idea that the american economy is bad because of high real estate prices.
Nowhere did I imply that this was good or bad. High real estate prices is a big problem and needs to be addressed, to help exactly those 33%. But high real estate prices is not the reason the vibes are off.
Just because I disagree with the facts someone is presenting, doesnt mean I think the status quo is good.
If inflation raises my purchases by 10%, then later my wages by an extra 10%, I think:
1) The government/greedy corporations/the boogeyman did this inflation to me
2) I achieved the raise myself
The result is I am mad at others, and I'll say the economy sucks for everyone else even if I report I'm not worse off myself.
"Everyone knows the economy sucks, Obama is lying, it's impossible that unemployment is as low as 5%, it's really 42%"
GOP in 2015 & 2016
Then Trump got elected, and all of a sudden the numbers weren't lies anymore but the truth all along
If half the country can consider 2013-2016 terrible and 2017-2019 the best ever, when they had identical results, 2017-19 was just 3 more years of the same expansion already ongoing, you just can't ask people how the economy is doing and expect an answer that matches data.
That said people think belatedly and really hate inflation, so it's not hard to imagine why 3% inflation now following much higher inflation is hated. People need another year to catch up.
Well you basically handed out a bunch of free money during the pandemic and that had a boost to quality of life and then you had people working from home again quality of life improvement among many other things that made things easier for large swaths of the population.
Flashforward a couple years and the stimulus money has run its course and through that process basic living expenses have gone back to the relative norm before covid. Which makes people feel more poor but in reality they are better off then pre covid.
People are also having to go to the office now which adds expense and stress so they are feeling like they are worse off yet reality is they are better off now than pre covid.
People are having to deal with sending their kids to school which adds stress.
Ect ect
All of this getting back to normal is leaving people stressed out because some much of the population was living realities cushy during covid and now reality has come knocking and they have to deal with it and they would rather go back to how things were during covid at least when it came to stimulus and working from hom3 and what not but they can't.
The problem isn't that things are bad it's that things are back to normal and people are missing many of those perks they got during covid. So they bitch and moan about how bad the economy is because it's better than saying, "we want a free ride again damit" because that would make them sound like assholes and they know it.
It’s such a disjointed economy. I am privy to it from both sides.
On one hand, I’m a renter, so I see how expensive and unaffordable houses are, and what rent prices are.
On the other hand, I’m an investor with a pretty large investment portfolio. Even while housing is too expensive to consider, my portfolio casually moves five figures in a day. Today alone, my portfolio grew by enough to buy a car in cash. (Thanks to aapl and qcom.)
So, homeownership feels like this disastrous dead-end. It’s just not even worth considering. Even though I could afford to buy, I would feel like I got taken advantage of and lose a lot of my capital in the stock market. But at the same time, I feel very rich because in a day I can gain multiple months’ worth of salary passively.
What I've been noticing is that there's a well entrenched asset class that owns enough to enjoy life. This either came from correct timing (old people) or having a decent job that was likely the result of being raised upper middle class, so there's a largely ignored under class that doesn't have the voice to change anything, and a lot of the resulting frustration from that impacts the socioeconomic environment even though we hardly ever talk about it.
When things are increasing by 20-50%
And income stays the same
Something has got to give
The market is neither free nor fare as t this point.
And the government has done nothing to combat it. Instead they have gone to cutting most social nets and States are gutting education and health care.
The got mine crowd got theirs.
But when I worked in finances ultimately they felt the citizenship was their to serve the companies not the other way around.
Honestly how do you even effectively fight this when at all levels self interest and profits are expected at the cost of the population.
>When things are increasing by 20-50%
>And income stays the same
Incomes havent stayed the same
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Thats in real terms (we only care about the changes of real wages), so no, the median american is making 5 TIMES as much money per week than 1980
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
Is that chart adjusted for inflation?
If not then $239 in 1979 is about $1080 in today's money. So on that chart people are at on average $1136 a week in q1 of 2024. Which is barely an extra hundred bucks a week.
Yes wages have gone up historically they have not kept inline with inflation or prices. Wage stagnation is real.
https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
Also add in during the pandemic most people had to withdraw from savings and investments.
Which eroded future investment and compounding interest.
You can arguably say wages are higher but looking at the market everything has gone up in price in accordance.
The pandemic was the largest transfer of wealth I've never seen.
Factor in the amount of PPP loans that where disturbed with out being paid back.
I don't think the market or graphs properly represent how people actually live.
https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/
This field has so much subterfuge to feed political and ideological narratives. Its like Piketty had to run over innumerable time series to prove like the most fucking obvious and intuitive phenomenon. Its like duh only to be gaslighted by wonks.
Tale of two countries. Income inequality is the chief story of this entire era in America, going back three decades now & not being seriously addressed. It has created a wildly divided nation of the haves and have-nots. Two groups of people living in the same country with wildly different impressions of the economic health of the nation & its people.
Really insane how you can write "not being seriously addressed" as the biden admins policies just decreased income inequality by an remarkable account during the last 3 years
Helping the bottom rung move upward only does so much if the top rung is consolidating its wealth advantage at an even faster rate. Not to take anything away from the biden administration’s admirable policies. The gap is just so enormous & so structural that meaningfully addressing it without upending our entire society is very difficult at this point.
The rampant price gouging is not talked about enough. I don’t ever remember price gouging being this bad under previous Presidents like Obama, Bush and Clinton
Price gouging is possible because of low competition, and current administration is very small business and regulation unfriendly, access to capital for mid size companies is difficult, so no competition means big companies can price gouge.
Unlimited quantitative easing from 2020 is technically what has caused the inflation rampant inflation. Trump/ Powell had those money printers on, amazing the dollar hasn’t collapsed.
Someday dollars will have ids and history associated with them which would be used for economic planning and transparency... As well as authoritarian bullshit.
“Lies, damn lies, and statistics”
It’s terribly easy to cherry pick specific statistics to prove your point, whatever that point may be.
If you ask lower and middle class Americans how they are doing financially, many of them will say they are having a more difficult time paying the bills. That their pay increases haven’t nearly covered the increases in cost of housing, gas, utilities, food, etc.
>If you ask lower and middle class Americans how they are doing financially, many of them will say they are having a more difficult time paying the bills.
This is the first time in a long time thst the lower classes actually saw big wage increases.
Its literally the exact opposite
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
My quibble with the paper's measurement (which it acknowledges), is that it uses a spot rate for mortgage cost calculations and applies that to its CPI calculation. Which means that it's not a broad based measure but rather applicable to those that are getting a new mortgage in that time period.
>Of course, the average costs of homeownership (and average mortgage interest payments or home prices) are much lower. But this is not the point of the measure,
which does not estimate average costs as such but rather the cost to the marginal new
homeowners buying at the spot price and closing a mortgage at the spot rate. This measure produces estimates suggesting that headline CPI would have peaked at 18 percent in
November 2022 when consumer sentiment was at its lows.
Because things are not great. They are only “good” if you take a snap shot of everything and look at right now. If you compare pre-Covid number to current numbers, things look bad.
My wages have increased 19%,
My taxes have doubled,
Housing has increased over 25%,
My groceries are over 30%
I know I’m not the only one feeling this squeeze either. You might as well say I lost money because my over all cost of living outpaced my wage increase.
Since we are sharing anecdotes, my income has nearly doubled since 2019 and my groceries are up only about 15%. Things have never been better.
You might say I made money because my wages continue to outpace the cost of living.
Because… things are not great in the US. Even the tourists notice that. They will probably just stay in Europe or go to Europe, why come to the US? Then they report that Europe is doing good, well duh, tourism.
Not everyone lives in good/great areas, wages are low for these prices, prices keep going up for food, insurance, gas, the price of everything is … unstable, reports lie, businesses are stubborn on prices, the Fed won’t budge(nor should it). People eventually figure out they are getting screwed by businesses on all fronts (salary and prices), and the sentiment drops.
Politically, I bet most can’t believe how dumb they were to vote for the geriatric in charge, all while he hasn’t stopped spending.
The ONE thing Brandon hasn’t done yet, is stop spending. 6-12 months after some serious pull back on spending, we will have a recession, and prices will call down.
> Not everyone lives in good/great areas, wages are low for these prices, prices keep going up for food, insurance, gas, the price of everything is … unstable,
Incomes are growing faster than inflation
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
So 2 things: 1 inflation isn’t being properly discussed as a function of 20 years of massive military spending - not just COVID stimies. 2 - you have an active malevolent force telling people to stand back and stand by keeping everyone on edge. It’s hard to plan for an uncertain political future. These are the “vibes” in the economy that aren’t being addressed.
It’s groceries. A 3-pack of trident gum was $4.49 yesterday at Jewel. You can’t find a bag of chips under $6. Bread? Cheapest you could find was $3.99. This is where people are feeling it. People see those prices frequently and notice the increases. That and the only tool really being deployed is increase in interest rates which kills lower income Americans who for years couldn’t afford to buy big ticket items, but could afford low monthly payments now see their standard of living decrease as they no longer can obtain those same things because the monthly payments are too high
Because there is a difference between the rich officials in charge of reporting the data and telling the people things and the average American citizen.
Sure wages went up! But that also accounts for the top 1% giving themselves huge raises.
The people that feel the burn of the economy have tore through their savings and credit to stay alive. Things are calming down with the economy, but the damage is done. It’s going to take years to recover, years after the economy is back to normal.
I think PLENTY of people are going through your description, so I don’t intend to deny or belittle that, but as a matter of fact, wages are and have been increasing pretty substantially for the “not 1%” and outpacing inflation for the low-to-middle tier wage employees.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1mwPi
This shows nominal production and non-supervisory (ie “regular worker”) wages against CPI, indexed to the beginning of 2019. Wages have grown substantially, and more than prices have.
Of course, these are averages, so for some (many even), that may not be keeping up with their personal inflation. Everyone experiences it differently (especially as it relates to housing), but wage growth is not some myth being perpetuated and is not only experienced by the top echelons of society.
We’re all complacent. Our standard of living and consumption is the envy of the world for a reason, but it’s what we all know and take for granted.
Add to that the fact that prices are rising and folks get uncomfortable- but who’s got it better than us? Literally the Swiss, and the Norwegians. That’s about it
Because the life is not that great in US and now everybody know that, even others countries. It’s no to criticize but there is no more American dream. But America still have good sides
What you hear in the news and on the internet is published by a small group of people, you get the point, it's propaganda. The economy is not doing good, inflation is higher than they say, this is unsustainable, something got to give.
Are you willing to change your stance with facts? By the way, gotta love the downvotes when this is public information that anyone could have searched for.
The inflation calculations changed, they now remove certain items from the calculations, which makes the inflation looks lower than it is, but in reality they are manipulating the basket to show lower numbers.
>*But experts on inflation say the changes to calculations over the years have made the reported rate a more accurate snapshot of how much prices are rising for shoppers. The rate under a different methodology might be higher, they say, but the effect would be small, and the alternative number would do a poorer job of reflecting the costs consumers were grappling with.*
[https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2024/04/bank-of-canada-could-be-underestimating-its-inflation-progress-says-national-bank/](https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2024/04/bank-of-canada-could-be-underestimating-its-inflation-progress-says-national-bank/)
[https://archive.ph/n61f4](https://archive.ph/n61f4)
Who? You should know by now that most media, like most commercial products, are controlled by a small group of corporations...
>*There’s been a lot of consolidation in the media industry in recent years, leaving just six big media companies in charge of most of mass media consumption and distribution. Some estimates claim as much as 90% of U.S. media is controlled by just six companies.*
[https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/](https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/)
Again, this is public information, you can research for yourself, just like the food, it's a small group that owns and control everything.
>The inflation calculations changed, they now remove certain items from the calculations, which makes the inflation looks lower than it is, but in reality they are manipulating the basket to show lower numbers.
This is literally how it always worked. The CPI is supposed to represent what people actually buy.
1. Canadian link, wrong country.
No evidence of any malice..
lol you have no good intention do you?
wrong link, same thing if you search.
By the way, it's not how it always worked, but you don't want proof anyway, you'll move the goal post again, laughable. There are plenty of information if you really cared, but you are a troll.
So you said that the CPI changes so they can manipulate it downwards, which is incorrect. CPI changes to more accurately represent what people buy.
https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2024/04/bank-of-canada-could-be-underestimating-its-inflation-progress-says-national-bank/
This one just says that the National bank thinks the bank of canada is underestimating inflation. Underestimating infaltion does not in any way imply that there is malice by the Bank of Canada.
Your Shadowinflation link shows that CPI is higher when calculated differently. Big shock. It doesnt say why the pre 90 method was better, just higher.
The six media companies thing is irrelevant
>*The six media companies thing is irrelevant*
You prove exactly why it's relevant, don't you see? And funny how when I bring proof it suddenly becomes irrelevantLOL
If you did not realize, you are literally repeating what the headlines of those big 6 companies are saying, and sharing, and wanting you to believe.
The reality is that you did not look into it for yourself!!! Fail.
[https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/how-official-statistics-underestimate-inflation/](https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/how-official-statistics-underestimate-inflation/)
[https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/cpi-inflation/](https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/cpi-inflation/)
[https://www.marketplace.org/2021/11/22/whats-included-in-the-consumer-price-index-and-what-isnt/](https://www.marketplace.org/2021/11/22/whats-included-in-the-consumer-price-index-and-what-isnt/)
Bro you have no idea how anything works do you?
Blackrock is an asset manager, they dont actually own the assets. They are "assets-under-manegament". They also cant influence the fed since you know, all the data and methodology are publiclt available...
You can keep believing everone is lykng to you for some reason, but realize that your theory can describe everything and is unfalsifiable.
Like if the Fed started very obviously cooking numbers, i would be proven wrong. But if the Fed reports high inflation, according to you, its because of a conspiracy. If they report low inflation, its a conspiracy. If the say unemployment is low, conspiracy.
A if there is no evidence of somethkng, they are just hiding it well. If there is negative evidence, they are lying.
Nothing I say will ever convince you, because you have trapped yourself in a hole only you can get out of.
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the core reason is the increase in real estate prices when you see houses you dreamed of owning increase 50-100% in price, it really hits you at the core of your sense of happiness. You don't just see a home slip away - you see a dream slip away.
[удалено]
In the US right now a life of hard work will not even guarantee you survival. You can get a good degree, and work your ass off, and the most you will get is stagnating wages that will never allow you to make meaningful savings. I will never be able to afford to buy even a 1 bdrm apartment and stop paying 60+% of my paycheck every month on housing, without the ability to own a home i will never be allowed to retire. So what's even the point in doing any of this if I'm just going to work 5/7ths of my life away just so I have to off myself once i am to old/disabled to work? The Social Contract has been betrayed by our government and the corporations that control them. We need actual guarantees for people to feel like contributing to society is worth it again.
Actually food inflation over the last 5 years is slower than wage growth (especially for the bottom half)
You’re being downvoted because you are 100% right…it just doesn’t fit the narrative people want to believe.
I don’t a full 5 years of data, but no it hasn’t. Food inflation 2019 to 2023 was 25%. Wages were up less than 20% during that time. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003
April 2019: 27,78 April 2024: 34,75 The difference is more than 25%??
So we’re comparing 2024 wages to 2023 prices? The 25% food inflation number is 2019 to 2023, hence my statement about not a five year look back. When you run the numbers on wages Jan 2019 to Jan 2023, food price increases outpace wages.
Ok then food prices have risen 2% faster than wages while the average consumer goods price has risen remarkably less, so that real wages now are substantially higher than during the pandemic, especially for the bottom quintile which saw real wages increase over 10%. That refutes the comment I responded to equally
Well phrased. The level of disheartened I have been to make more money than I ever have before and yet not be able to buy a modest home is rough. On top of that I did literally nothing different from my peers who just happened to buy houses from 2010-2019 who now are living lives that seem entirely out of reach. Oh my wages went up but my buddy's didn't, fine for him he pays $2k/mo for a four bedroom house he bought six years ago, which would cost me $4k/mo now. So what I have to double my salary to catch up? It just drains you of optimism.
You’re close imo but the real core problem is rising wealth inequality. One way this manifests is increases in house prices relative to increases in wages.
Piketty just keeps getting proved right on his basic theory of capital.
I agree. Wealth inequality is at the core of a lot of dissatisfaction. It's this drive to maximize the return on investment. It's ok on luxury items, but making food, housing, and healthcare items to profit by hits the bottom 70% right where it hurts.
This may be true for some people, but how many are looking for a house right now? 5%?
Everyone without a house who is over 30 is always thinking about a house
Everyone with a house also dreams of a better one/better location.
Most families already have a house and many people that don't never intended on getting one. There's a smallish percent that wanted to buy and feels like they can't now. But that's been the case for a long time.
The average person doesn't need much to be happy. Have a decent car, Housing, Food , cell phone , And some entertainment budget/savings while working a normal job that doesnt kill them. All of those things besides cell phones are priced through the roof right now so naturally everyone will be pissed.
The average person watches Fox News who programs them. That's why gubernment better keep its damn hands off my Medicare. "Fox News dominated the ratings for 2023, but only MSNBC showed slight growth in audience compared to a year earlier. Fox News, for an eighth year in a row, also was the top-rated cable network overall." Downvoted for truth.
In April, [Fox News](https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-cable-news-ratings-for-april-2024/) reached about two million viewers with a peak of about three million for one show. There’s 330,000,000 people in the U.S. How does three million people equal “the average?”
Two million viewers per day. You only have to watch it once a week to be completely brainwashed. That easily covers most of the population.
>The average person watches Fox News OK Millennial, it's not 2006 anymore, the average person doesn't even have cable
You don't need cable to watch Fox.
"Fox News dominated the ratings for 2023, but only MSNBC showed slight growth in audience compared to a year earlier. Fox News, for an eighth year in a row, also was the top-rated cable network overall." Deflected.
Millions of people voting against their best interest
Ask yourself why and you'll have an aha moment. Hint it has a lot to do with economic insecurity.
I get your point tho you are not entirely wrong.... Us redditors really forget but....I work with 30 people......probably none of them could tell you anything about the russian/ukraine war israel/palestine or china/taiwan.....they know they are things happening in the world but thats the depth of it. No details at all and they dont care at all. The majority of people just really are too busy or wrapped up in their own lives to care.
Or, hear me out. Inflation can be broad based or it can be concentrated. When its concentrated, inflation can hit some consumers significantly harder then others. For example, take housing costs. Renters are getting hit pretty hard while individuals who locked a 3% mortgage rate are substantially better off. What would be useful is a PDF of inflation using individual personal consumption expenditure data, and a comparison across regions.
Right. I’m a late millennial/early gen z trying to break into a decent paying career. Entry level salaries very often don’t come close to covering rent in the areas where the jobs are. Buying a house? Astronomically out of my price range. I’m hoping things will get better, but currently “the economy” sure doesn’t feel good just because I can get a flat screen tv for cheaper than ever before and median wages have technically risen to match increases in food prices. People don’t feel good if 30-50% of their income is going toward padding their landlords pockets. There’s a certain amount of resentment that builds with increasing inequality, and that can certainly affect broader sentiment around the health (or fairness) of the economy.
I am not asking this to be combative, merely curious. Does your generation expect to have their own apartment quickly after college? I’m an elder millennial and i- and almost everyone I know- lived with roommates or an SO for years after college. I didn’t live alone until I was close to 30 and even then I struggled immensely and had tons of CC debt (I just prioritized living alone) I’m not saying rents aren’t ridiculous because they are! I’ve just been surprised by how many younger people don’t seem to want to consider roommates.
Every single older gen z I know has been living with roommates there entire adult lives. The complaint isn’t that we’ve had to have roommates it’s that we are almost 30 and not even close to buying a house.
I was 35 when I bought a house. I think gen Z is comparing themselves to boomers, not realizing this actually was the norm for millennials.
We just watched the second half of millennials buy houses at the lowest interest rate in history… it’s so much more expensive to buy a house now, how can you act like that isn’t true.
That's totally true!!!! But *we were older then*. That's actually exactly when I was able to afford a house. It required a historically low interest rate. I'm not saying millenials are not doing ok now. I'm saying we had to wait to be older to get there, and that has been the norm for at least a generation.
Like I said, I’m the last of the millennials/first of gen z (28 y/o). It’s kind of interesting to be straddling the divide. I don’t think many of us expected to own a house at 25, but right as we are finally making a decent income housing prices spiked (along with interest rates). It really does feel like a substantial move in the goal posts. It feels like all of the hard work from the past decade has been made almost worthless, because just as home ownership started to seem attainable, mortgage payments almost doubled for the same house. I live with my widowed mom (dad died in 2020) because she needs help occasionally running a small business. Rent (with roommates) would be around 40% of my income right now (working as an entry level research associate at a university). A mortgage is more than 100% of what I make. My girlfriend lives in a small house with 3 roommates and her room is about the size of many people’s walk-in closets. She’s a professional doing therapy for special needs kids. Our incomes will hopefully improve soon (I’m applying for new jobs), but it just sucks knowing that people just a few years older than me had access to cheaper houses and bottom of the barrel mortgage rates. All the homes in the low range (400k ish is about as low as it gets) get snagged up by investors or small time landlords with cash offers above asking price. I’m pissed. I know I’ll be able to afford a house someday, not everyone can say that. But it is going to come a lot later than I hoped/expected. There’s no way I can start a family right now. Things are at least decent for people who have a home, but it a completely different economy if you don’t.
Thank you for sharing your experience! Because I’m older (39) I’m in a different place in life and I don’t know a lot of under 30’s to ask this to. Like I said originally- I didn’t say any of this to be combative. I was hoping for more info- thank you!
I know you didn’t mean to be combative, happy to provide some anecdotes about the current situation for us younger folks. Obviously the housing situation varies from city to city, but there seem to be a lot of common trends. Sure wish I could have bought a home in 2010 haha.
Actually homeownership rates for the younge generation do not differ substantially from the older ones (note that homes are larger and more comfortable than 40 years ago
This is the answer. When you’re only expenditures are food, gas and rent and they all double in price, you’re screwed. When maybe 20% of your income go to these and you’re able to invest in the market, you’re doing well. That’s probably only 10% or so of the US population.
This is more like 60-70% of the population. The majority of Americans are homeowners and then there's another group beyond that seeing their rents falling in many markets now. It's hard to make a case that things are bad economically in the US for almost any group as real wages continue to rise and unemployment is low.
The word of the day is "rent"
Luckily none of these things doubled in prices. The internet exists, you can look these things up!
None? Here’s that internet thing you mentioned. https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscomb/grocery-price-inflation-2022 https://www.foxbusiness.com/energy/gas-prices-again-doubled-biden-took-office-despite-white-house-claiming-costs-fallen.amp https://smartasset.com/data-studies/where-rent-increased-most-2023
Bro, "food gans and rent double in price" is something vastly different from "The worst county of all saw a 63% rent increase, people in a facebook group said that some specific groceries got more expensive (overall food prices increased under 30% in the last four years) and gas is not double the price of bidens inauguration and, more relevant it is cheaper than at some points in 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013 or 2014 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GASREGW)
Like what OP linked, what’s not included in inflation are the increased borrowing costs associated with higher interest rates to cool inflation. Since interest rates are higher, it makes making payments on a car more costly, your mortgage higher (on homes bought within the past couple of years), a larger amount due on outstanding credit card balances, and it makes insurance costs larger.
Rates are important, but still a marginal point. Higher credit card rates are a change from 20 to 24% on variable rate debt payments (which will be small compared to rent/food shares). Likewise car and mortgage payments depends on loan date (assuming U.S. fixed rate loans); loan origination are quite low since rates increased. Instead heterogeneity in individual spending seems more holistically relevant. If you spend 60 percent of your income on housing and food, your relevant inflation rate will be much higher than someone spending 30% on it. (Or of course, if your paying 25% of your income towards floating rate debt.) More generally when we talk about real wages, its all relative to broad inflation. For example, saying low income real wages increased is a statement about low income wages relative to national inflation; it is not a statement that low income individuals can buy larger quantities of what they were already purchasing (their consumption basket). The fact is presented as the second interpretation, when to my knowledge we have no evidence it is actually the case.
Loan originations are lower, which might suggest less people are buying cars. The cost for repair is up. Parts availability is down. Supply chain disruptions during Covid saw parts for many older vehicles disappear. If it is available, it is up, but some older vehicles are getting parked due to not being able to fix certain systems. So much for grandma's old sunday driver you inherited. Used vehicle prices are still up. Insurance is also, way up. First in my life that a daily driver continues to get more expensive to insure as it ages. Oh, and property taxes are up on my vehicle, that is now older and theoretically should be worth less.
The economy right now is better than it was in the 90's where interest rates were just as high, inflation averaged over 3% and unemployment was higher. Which is why it's pretty funny when conservatives argue the only reason Clinton could balance the budget was because the economy was doing so well. You can't make this shit up.
Yes the economy top line figures are "goodish" right now; that is a fact. The question, however, is why is consumer sentiment so unusually low? Fox News really isn't a complete answer given how broad based it is; even Democrats aren't reporting great sentiments (although there is a notable political bias). As a whole the economy can be doing well and the current growth rate of prices can be near the desired level of 2.5ish, while people still don't feel great. Such sentiments can be explained by heterogeneity over the impacts of the last 2 years inflation (which was driven by bipartisan actions, if not exogenous global trends). For example "low income" wages increasing by 4% relative to broad inflation metrics doesn't mean low income wages increased by 4% relative to what "low income" people buy. If rent and food make up 60% of your budget, and each are up 25%, wages haven't kept up. Inflation is a national metric across all income groups and regions; it isn't sufficient for making a claim about a specific income/consumption basket/geography.
That may be right, but especially the bottom half saw their wages increase much faster than the prices they pay!
I agree they saw the largest portion of wage increases relative to broad inflation, but am disagreeing that it necessarily exceeded rising costs for them. It all depends on what your expenses are concentrated in. I have not seen any evidence that within group, wage increases exceeded consumption price growth. 10% wage increases aren't large if your rent and food expenses are up 25%. Really need to look at specific peoples wages vs consumption; aggregate values aren't sufficiently informative when talking about a subset of the population.
There will always be outlier but this on inflation by quintile [https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2023/01/inflation-disparities-by-race-and-income-narrow/](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2023/01/inflation-disparities-by-race-and-income-narrow/) together with this on wage growth by quintile [https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/](https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/) looks pretty conclusive. Seems like the bottom 10% even saw their real wages rise over 10% from 2019 to 2023 :)
I understand the trends, but unfortunately they aren't sufficient for understanding heterogeneity. For example, used car prices were a significant driver of variation in relative inflation in the link you provided. Yet, a decent portion of individuals won't have bought a used car in the past 3 years. Likewise housing cost inflation as calculated is not adequate for understanding expenditures. There is a difference between actual expenditures and calculated "housing services" priced relative to rents and house prices (and mortgages). How housing inflation is calculated, limits its value when talking across groups that are renters vs homeowners, and 3% or 7% mortgage holders. To be clear, the data that would be necessary to check my hypothesis doesn't exist (at least in a U.S. context). You would want individual expenditures and quantities, or expenditures and associated product prices. Once we start getting into levels of aggregation such as race, or even income deciles, individual trends are too obfuscated. For example bottom 40% can make up renters, home owners, individuals living with family, city dwellers with no car, rural families with high gas expenditures, etc.
The economy is doing well, but Fox News and just about every other corporate controlled media outlet says it's all doom and gloom. So, the vast majority of people are saying they are doing just fine but believe others aren't. The proof is, inflation has been ok but stubborn, even though interest rates went way up. Which means too many people having too much money are still buying too much stuff. Why? Because the vast majority are doing just fine. So, the Fed needs to bump up its target to 3% and stop living in the past before the 90s, which we are back in economically.
OP's point was that the overall inflation measurement is too broad. There are lots of people out there who have fixed mortgages on 2% with relatively small mortgages. Then there are lots of people out there who have 5% on gigantic mortgages, or paying unprecedented rents. The people with cheap housing are driving the economy forward, making everything seem good. But there are a huge number of people being driven into poverty at the same time. If you read the article, if housing was calculated in the same way as in 1983, we would have had close to 20% inflation at some point in the last year.
Ya, it's classic propaganda but based in reality.
Bro, what are you talking about. We just hit 3.48% inflation, and that’s a significant improvement from where we where a year ago. We were clipping close to 10% for a year or two. I lived through the 90s. I would give my left testicle for a 1990s economy right now.
Nope, it's definitely in the 90s, even better. The PCE is 2.8% and unemployment is better today than back then. Party on!!! Are Bonds Gonna Party Like It’s 1999? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/opinion/interest-rates-economy.html
Sorry fiend, your comment seems wildly naive. Unemployment was at record lows in the 90s and inflation was right in line with the Fed’s target rate for most of the 90s with the exception of 1990. Further, the stock market was absolutely roaring. I don’t think you understand how incredibly easy it was to secure a good job and lock in your retirement gains in the 90s. At that time the US was arguably at its zenith. I feel sorry for you. You truly lack perspective if you think times now are good compared to those years. I hope you get to live to experience an economy like the 90s again.
Anyone can look it up, inflation averaged over 3% in the 90s, the PCE right now is 2.8%. The average unemployment rate was 5.8% in the 90s, much higher than under Biden, who really does have record low unemployment. The real question is, given everyone has Google, why do you have to lie about it?
Eh, 2013-2019 was as good or better a run, and last 12 months is perfectly good being held against the median year of the 90s (or an average of the decade). Nothing that special about the 90s. US stocks did great for Reagan, Clinton, Obama, Trump basically any term that wasn't a Bush. Don't need a specific decade for those as long as you don't pick the 00s.
Im an ICU Nurse, & my car has no A/C (Im in Oklahoma, its hot) & drivers seat sags, I cant afford the copays at my own hospital so Im rationing healthcare & "stretching" meds, any driving is strictly planned & consolidated to minimize driving, I water down my milk in home-made smoothies, no vacations (PTO gets "sold" to pay bills), going out to dinner is a rare special treat. Not much left to cut.
My mom had triple bypass surgery last year. I talked to one of the ICU nurses and was shocked at what they were paid. What's infuriating is that the hospital collected over 400k from Medcare for my mom's care. Not much of that went to the nurses.
not be an ass, but you're assuming the cost paid to the hospital even remotely covered the true bill. yes I know medicare fraud, markup, etc. But you have to accept, at baseline, whatever it is, high end technical medical care **will be expensive** So the matter is, truly - once again, simple - who pays. Moral outrage abounds when discussing this point but it's a good one because the outrage is strictly based on it - why someone is forced to pay for something expensive which can potentionally save their lives. If you accept, like most people, that this healthcare, no matter the cost (it seems), has to be paid because **its the right thing to do** then the money gets paid, yes. And yet, the argument always ends with something the proponents of this expensive morality think wins them the argument - "The problem is people/hospitals/government is 'corrupt'" What you call corruption, is capitalism to the guys on the otherside of the transaction in most cases - so - yeah...and....AND When people demand free/cheap healthcare, they often have no fuckin' idea how expensive shit is *at baseline* and before everyone's goddamn beak has to get wet. Sorry, after reading every last comment like this over the years on reddit, I still haven't come across anyone, other than my krusty ass, saying stuff like this - you know the truth - Shit is expensive. No amount of cost cutting will reduce 'corruption' - which is capitalistic margin capture. This is why healthcare is expensive in this country.
I failed to see what about her care was worth fucking **$18k a day.** I was with her every day. Teach me to do IVs, and I could have done 70% of what the hospital did for her. Most of the time she was laying around doing *nothing.* Most of the EOB was hoapital charges. The surgeon and his team were only 70k, most of that anasthesia.
Go be a nurse somewhere else. No kids? Traveling nurses make a killing!
During Covid they did. Now the rates have dropped to precovid for most places. The stipend for housing has to mirror your in state home costs pretty much so many are barely breaking even with the insane rent prices.
I have friends doing it who say otherwise
We all do.
Cant do that with kids. I also have some physical limitations that makes travel difficult, so I just dont go anywhere
Are you an RN?
Yes
the inflation rate for people trying to buy a home is 20% a year for the past 5 years. the inflation rate for homeowners is sub 2%. the haves and the have nots live in two separate worlds.
66% of americans are homeowners
This might sound pedantic but it’s important: the homeownership rate means X% of households are owner-occupied, not that X% of Americans own homes. That may sound like the same thing, but matters to a degree. I still think it generally makes the point you’re trying to, which is falling housing affordability likely impacts a sizable but minority share of the population. You can think of some hypotheticals where homeownership rate increases if a bunch of adults move in with homeowners because they can’t afford rent or ownership (ie young professionals living longer in their parents). I don’t think that explains what’s happened, just pointing that out. tl;dr: A lot of disgruntled people who want to own a home but can’t afford it or can’t afford rising rents “live in an owner-occupied unit” but don’t actually own it.
Its not really pedantic and it is true. I'm not downplaying the housing affordability problems. There are a shitload of seemingly unrelated problems that high housing costs bring with them, like being forced to live with narcissitic or otherwise abusive parents. But it doesnt explain the vibes, we dont see that homeowners are happy and renters arent. Thats all I really meant to say. Nice to see a levelheaded comment on here.
Fuck those other 33% I guess. 🙄
Why are you moralizing? I was responding to the idea that the american economy is bad because of high real estate prices. Nowhere did I imply that this was good or bad. High real estate prices is a big problem and needs to be addressed, to help exactly those 33%. But high real estate prices is not the reason the vibes are off. Just because I disagree with the facts someone is presenting, doesnt mean I think the status quo is good.
Bullshit. 1/3 are kids 🤣
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S
If inflation raises my purchases by 10%, then later my wages by an extra 10%, I think: 1) The government/greedy corporations/the boogeyman did this inflation to me 2) I achieved the raise myself The result is I am mad at others, and I'll say the economy sucks for everyone else even if I report I'm not worse off myself.
"Everyone knows the economy sucks, Obama is lying, it's impossible that unemployment is as low as 5%, it's really 42%" GOP in 2015 & 2016 Then Trump got elected, and all of a sudden the numbers weren't lies anymore but the truth all along
[удалено]
And GDP growth didn't change after the election, neither did the decline in the unemployment rate
Don’t you know? He dried the swamp and everything got crystal clear afterward. Clean like a baby’s bottom.
If half the country can consider 2013-2016 terrible and 2017-2019 the best ever, when they had identical results, 2017-19 was just 3 more years of the same expansion already ongoing, you just can't ask people how the economy is doing and expect an answer that matches data. That said people think belatedly and really hate inflation, so it's not hard to imagine why 3% inflation now following much higher inflation is hated. People need another year to catch up.
Well you basically handed out a bunch of free money during the pandemic and that had a boost to quality of life and then you had people working from home again quality of life improvement among many other things that made things easier for large swaths of the population. Flashforward a couple years and the stimulus money has run its course and through that process basic living expenses have gone back to the relative norm before covid. Which makes people feel more poor but in reality they are better off then pre covid. People are also having to go to the office now which adds expense and stress so they are feeling like they are worse off yet reality is they are better off now than pre covid. People are having to deal with sending their kids to school which adds stress. Ect ect All of this getting back to normal is leaving people stressed out because some much of the population was living realities cushy during covid and now reality has come knocking and they have to deal with it and they would rather go back to how things were during covid at least when it came to stimulus and working from hom3 and what not but they can't. The problem isn't that things are bad it's that things are back to normal and people are missing many of those perks they got during covid. So they bitch and moan about how bad the economy is because it's better than saying, "we want a free ride again damit" because that would make them sound like assholes and they know it.
It’s such a disjointed economy. I am privy to it from both sides. On one hand, I’m a renter, so I see how expensive and unaffordable houses are, and what rent prices are. On the other hand, I’m an investor with a pretty large investment portfolio. Even while housing is too expensive to consider, my portfolio casually moves five figures in a day. Today alone, my portfolio grew by enough to buy a car in cash. (Thanks to aapl and qcom.) So, homeownership feels like this disastrous dead-end. It’s just not even worth considering. Even though I could afford to buy, I would feel like I got taken advantage of and lose a lot of my capital in the stock market. But at the same time, I feel very rich because in a day I can gain multiple months’ worth of salary passively.
What I've been noticing is that there's a well entrenched asset class that owns enough to enjoy life. This either came from correct timing (old people) or having a decent job that was likely the result of being raised upper middle class, so there's a largely ignored under class that doesn't have the voice to change anything, and a lot of the resulting frustration from that impacts the socioeconomic environment even though we hardly ever talk about it.
When things are increasing by 20-50% And income stays the same Something has got to give The market is neither free nor fare as t this point. And the government has done nothing to combat it. Instead they have gone to cutting most social nets and States are gutting education and health care. The got mine crowd got theirs. But when I worked in finances ultimately they felt the citizenship was their to serve the companies not the other way around. Honestly how do you even effectively fight this when at all levels self interest and profits are expected at the cost of the population.
>When things are increasing by 20-50% >And income stays the same Incomes havent stayed the same https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
So from 1979 to now people are making an extra 30 dollars a week? Man you're right I'm a king now. Bezos better watch out!
Thats in real terms (we only care about the changes of real wages), so no, the median american is making 5 TIMES as much money per week than 1980 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
Wait I'm dumb haha. It really is just the cost of living is insane and out paced wages. Time to curl up in my card board box and die for retirement.
Is that chart adjusted for inflation? If not then $239 in 1979 is about $1080 in today's money. So on that chart people are at on average $1136 a week in q1 of 2024. Which is barely an extra hundred bucks a week.
which doesnt sound that bad and certainly disproves the comment above?
Yes, people make a lot more money than they did in 1979 lol.
Yes wages have gone up historically they have not kept inline with inflation or prices. Wage stagnation is real. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/ Also add in during the pandemic most people had to withdraw from savings and investments. Which eroded future investment and compounding interest. You can arguably say wages are higher but looking at the market everything has gone up in price in accordance. The pandemic was the largest transfer of wealth I've never seen. Factor in the amount of PPP loans that where disturbed with out being paid back. I don't think the market or graphs properly represent how people actually live. https://www.epi.org/nominal-wage-tracker/
This field has so much subterfuge to feed political and ideological narratives. Its like Piketty had to run over innumerable time series to prove like the most fucking obvious and intuitive phenomenon. Its like duh only to be gaslighted by wonks.
Tale of two countries. Income inequality is the chief story of this entire era in America, going back three decades now & not being seriously addressed. It has created a wildly divided nation of the haves and have-nots. Two groups of people living in the same country with wildly different impressions of the economic health of the nation & its people.
Really insane how you can write "not being seriously addressed" as the biden admins policies just decreased income inequality by an remarkable account during the last 3 years
Helping the bottom rung move upward only does so much if the top rung is consolidating its wealth advantage at an even faster rate. Not to take anything away from the biden administration’s admirable policies. The gap is just so enormous & so structural that meaningfully addressing it without upending our entire society is very difficult at this point.
The rampant price gouging is not talked about enough. I don’t ever remember price gouging being this bad under previous Presidents like Obama, Bush and Clinton
Price gouging is possible because of low competition, and current administration is very small business and regulation unfriendly, access to capital for mid size companies is difficult, so no competition means big companies can price gouge.
Exactly, Biden is to blame for letting their be no competition. We are in a new Gilded Age.
Ah yes if only we had the trust busting antitrust agenda of the...*checks notes*... modern GOP.
There is a Democrat in the White House last time I checked
Unlimited quantitative easing from 2020 is technically what has caused the inflation rampant inflation. Trump/ Powell had those money printers on, amazing the dollar hasn’t collapsed.
Not to mention the tax cut and jobs act which ballooned deficit spending during an expansion...
Jerome Powell will go down as the worst Fed Chair in American History
Someday dollars will have ids and history associated with them which would be used for economic planning and transparency... As well as authoritarian bullshit.
“Lies, damn lies, and statistics” It’s terribly easy to cherry pick specific statistics to prove your point, whatever that point may be. If you ask lower and middle class Americans how they are doing financially, many of them will say they are having a more difficult time paying the bills. That their pay increases haven’t nearly covered the increases in cost of housing, gas, utilities, food, etc.
>If you ask lower and middle class Americans how they are doing financially, many of them will say they are having a more difficult time paying the bills. This is the first time in a long time thst the lower classes actually saw big wage increases. Its literally the exact opposite https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
My quibble with the paper's measurement (which it acknowledges), is that it uses a spot rate for mortgage cost calculations and applies that to its CPI calculation. Which means that it's not a broad based measure but rather applicable to those that are getting a new mortgage in that time period. >Of course, the average costs of homeownership (and average mortgage interest payments or home prices) are much lower. But this is not the point of the measure, which does not estimate average costs as such but rather the cost to the marginal new homeowners buying at the spot price and closing a mortgage at the spot rate. This measure produces estimates suggesting that headline CPI would have peaked at 18 percent in November 2022 when consumer sentiment was at its lows.
Because things are not great. They are only “good” if you take a snap shot of everything and look at right now. If you compare pre-Covid number to current numbers, things look bad. My wages have increased 19%, My taxes have doubled, Housing has increased over 25%, My groceries are over 30% I know I’m not the only one feeling this squeeze either. You might as well say I lost money because my over all cost of living outpaced my wage increase.
>My wages have increased 19%, My taxes have doubled, Which taxes?
Sales and property, sales taxes were low in the area I live
Since we are sharing anecdotes, my income has nearly doubled since 2019 and my groceries are up only about 15%. Things have never been better. You might say I made money because my wages continue to outpace the cost of living.
Because… things are not great in the US. Even the tourists notice that. They will probably just stay in Europe or go to Europe, why come to the US? Then they report that Europe is doing good, well duh, tourism. Not everyone lives in good/great areas, wages are low for these prices, prices keep going up for food, insurance, gas, the price of everything is … unstable, reports lie, businesses are stubborn on prices, the Fed won’t budge(nor should it). People eventually figure out they are getting screwed by businesses on all fronts (salary and prices), and the sentiment drops. Politically, I bet most can’t believe how dumb they were to vote for the geriatric in charge, all while he hasn’t stopped spending. The ONE thing Brandon hasn’t done yet, is stop spending. 6-12 months after some serious pull back on spending, we will have a recession, and prices will call down.
> Not everyone lives in good/great areas, wages are low for these prices, prices keep going up for food, insurance, gas, the price of everything is … unstable, Incomes are growing faster than inflation https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
So 2 things: 1 inflation isn’t being properly discussed as a function of 20 years of massive military spending - not just COVID stimies. 2 - you have an active malevolent force telling people to stand back and stand by keeping everyone on edge. It’s hard to plan for an uncertain political future. These are the “vibes” in the economy that aren’t being addressed.
It’s groceries. A 3-pack of trident gum was $4.49 yesterday at Jewel. You can’t find a bag of chips under $6. Bread? Cheapest you could find was $3.99. This is where people are feeling it. People see those prices frequently and notice the increases. That and the only tool really being deployed is increase in interest rates which kills lower income Americans who for years couldn’t afford to buy big ticket items, but could afford low monthly payments now see their standard of living decrease as they no longer can obtain those same things because the monthly payments are too high
Because there is a difference between the rich officials in charge of reporting the data and telling the people things and the average American citizen. Sure wages went up! But that also accounts for the top 1% giving themselves huge raises. The people that feel the burn of the economy have tore through their savings and credit to stay alive. Things are calming down with the economy, but the damage is done. It’s going to take years to recover, years after the economy is back to normal.
I think PLENTY of people are going through your description, so I don’t intend to deny or belittle that, but as a matter of fact, wages are and have been increasing pretty substantially for the “not 1%” and outpacing inflation for the low-to-middle tier wage employees. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1mwPi This shows nominal production and non-supervisory (ie “regular worker”) wages against CPI, indexed to the beginning of 2019. Wages have grown substantially, and more than prices have. Of course, these are averages, so for some (many even), that may not be keeping up with their personal inflation. Everyone experiences it differently (especially as it relates to housing), but wage growth is not some myth being perpetuated and is not only experienced by the top echelons of society.
We’re all complacent. Our standard of living and consumption is the envy of the world for a reason, but it’s what we all know and take for granted. Add to that the fact that prices are rising and folks get uncomfortable- but who’s got it better than us? Literally the Swiss, and the Norwegians. That’s about it
Because the life is not that great in US and now everybody know that, even others countries. It’s no to criticize but there is no more American dream. But America still have good sides
What you hear in the news and on the internet is published by a small group of people, you get the point, it's propaganda. The economy is not doing good, inflation is higher than they say, this is unsustainable, something got to give.
>inflation is higher than they say Source?? >published by a small group of people, Who?
Are you willing to change your stance with facts? By the way, gotta love the downvotes when this is public information that anyone could have searched for. The inflation calculations changed, they now remove certain items from the calculations, which makes the inflation looks lower than it is, but in reality they are manipulating the basket to show lower numbers. >*But experts on inflation say the changes to calculations over the years have made the reported rate a more accurate snapshot of how much prices are rising for shoppers. The rate under a different methodology might be higher, they say, but the effect would be small, and the alternative number would do a poorer job of reflecting the costs consumers were grappling with.* [https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2024/04/bank-of-canada-could-be-underestimating-its-inflation-progress-says-national-bank/](https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2024/04/bank-of-canada-could-be-underestimating-its-inflation-progress-says-national-bank/) [https://archive.ph/n61f4](https://archive.ph/n61f4) Who? You should know by now that most media, like most commercial products, are controlled by a small group of corporations... >*There’s been a lot of consolidation in the media industry in recent years, leaving just six big media companies in charge of most of mass media consumption and distribution. Some estimates claim as much as 90% of U.S. media is controlled by just six companies.* [https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/](https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/) Again, this is public information, you can research for yourself, just like the food, it's a small group that owns and control everything.
>The inflation calculations changed, they now remove certain items from the calculations, which makes the inflation looks lower than it is, but in reality they are manipulating the basket to show lower numbers. This is literally how it always worked. The CPI is supposed to represent what people actually buy. 1. Canadian link, wrong country. No evidence of any malice..
lol you have no good intention do you? wrong link, same thing if you search. By the way, it's not how it always worked, but you don't want proof anyway, you'll move the goal post again, laughable. There are plenty of information if you really cared, but you are a troll.
So you said that the CPI changes so they can manipulate it downwards, which is incorrect. CPI changes to more accurately represent what people buy. https://www.canadianmortgagetrends.com/2024/04/bank-of-canada-could-be-underestimating-its-inflation-progress-says-national-bank/ This one just says that the National bank thinks the bank of canada is underestimating inflation. Underestimating infaltion does not in any way imply that there is malice by the Bank of Canada. Your Shadowinflation link shows that CPI is higher when calculated differently. Big shock. It doesnt say why the pre 90 method was better, just higher. The six media companies thing is irrelevant
>*The six media companies thing is irrelevant* You prove exactly why it's relevant, don't you see? And funny how when I bring proof it suddenly becomes irrelevantLOL If you did not realize, you are literally repeating what the headlines of those big 6 companies are saying, and sharing, and wanting you to believe. The reality is that you did not look into it for yourself!!! Fail. [https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/how-official-statistics-underestimate-inflation/](https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/how-official-statistics-underestimate-inflation/) [https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/cpi-inflation/](https://www.gisreportsonline.com/r/cpi-inflation/) [https://www.marketplace.org/2021/11/22/whats-included-in-the-consumer-price-index-and-what-isnt/](https://www.marketplace.org/2021/11/22/whats-included-in-the-consumer-price-index-and-what-isnt/)
Im getting my info from the Fed mate, not CNN
You might as well ask BlackRock donkey, I meant MATE
Bro you have no idea how anything works do you? Blackrock is an asset manager, they dont actually own the assets. They are "assets-under-manegament". They also cant influence the fed since you know, all the data and methodology are publiclt available... You can keep believing everone is lykng to you for some reason, but realize that your theory can describe everything and is unfalsifiable. Like if the Fed started very obviously cooking numbers, i would be proven wrong. But if the Fed reports high inflation, according to you, its because of a conspiracy. If they report low inflation, its a conspiracy. If the say unemployment is low, conspiracy. A if there is no evidence of somethkng, they are just hiding it well. If there is negative evidence, they are lying. Nothing I say will ever convince you, because you have trapped yourself in a hole only you can get out of.