Who’s it getting better for? Wall Street? Prices on shit keeps fucking going up. My paycheck ain’t.
Yeah, according to a Federal Reserve survey from earlier this year “only 63% of adults surveyed said they would cover an unexpected $400 expense using cash or its equivalent, down from 68% the year before. Many noted they would lean on credit cards or family members to manage such a bill. About 13% said they wouldn’t be able to cover such an expense by any means.”
Upper middle class and above households have been doing great, but everyone else is in a bad way and getting worse.
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A retirement account, stocks, or a pension are all just money on paper. Yeah, it’s nice to see that number go up, but you either have to wait years to see it, or have to pay taxes once you get there, or both.
Not dismissing the effect that Biden has had on the economy, in spite of Republican fuckery. But it’s a mistake to point at the Stock Market and tell people who can’t pay their bills now that its all OK.
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Not at all, all I’m saying is that most people look at the money they make as “take-home pay”, where they don’t even see the taxes until it’s time to file. While when they look at their 401k nest egg, it’s the opposite: they will owe the money when they cash out, and it will be invisible until then.
Oh yeah, those stocks are going to really help me pay for my grocery bill which has nearly doubled, or the massive increases in rent that just keep going up.
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Maybe people can’t afford stocks when wages are suppressed and they’re struggling to pay for rent and food. Maybe stocks shouldn’t exist when their only purpose is to extract wealth from the working class. 🤷♀️
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I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that wealthy parasites have been spending decades siphoning money away from the working class, suppression unions, and propagandizing working people against their interests. No, it’s because us poors choose to waste money on trying to stay alive instead of throwing it away by gambling it into the stock market. You nailed it, champ.
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I didn’t have any fucking money back then either!
Once again, how is that helping me with rent and grocery bills? Once I sell the stocks I don’t have them anymore, yet expenses keep on going up.
Ah, so not me then
I’ll never be able to retire. I’ll be taking out the 9mm plan when I’m too old to work.
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I’m 31 with no degree and no retirement savings. I’m doomed and therapy isn’t going to help with that.
Lose the defeatist attitude . You’re only 31 years old. You’ve got over three decades to save for retirement and you don’t need a degree to get places in life. Start saving now, even if it’s a tiny amount. Just be consistent and increase contributions as you get raises or better opportunity. It adds up and having something is a lot better than having nothing. Don’t give up before you get started.
having something is a lot better than having nothing
Eating cat food is better than starving, sure, but I’d rather just save myself the trouble with the 9mm retirement package.
I can’t save money. I’m spinning my wheels paycheck-to-paycheck, I have no life, I have no friends, I almost fucking died when I collapsed at work from heat exhaustion, the climate is getting more extreme every damn year, everything is too expensive and only getting more expensive, I live in hell and I am sick and FUCKING tired of Dems telling me my shitty fucking life is worth living.
Why the fuck can’t you ever acknowledge that life is hard for people? Why do you have to belittle our suffering and tell us we’re worried about nothing and that if we really tried we could make our lives worth living? Is this funny to you? Do you like to make me angry?
Maybe I won’t make it to 65! Maybe they’ll make it illegal to be trans in my shithole state and I’ll be retiring early.
Life is hard, it’s always been hard. Some of the problems we face today may be new but having to push forward and survive despite adversity is certainly not. Throwing in the towel and giving up because of the problems you face today and the problems you “might” face tomorrow is not the way to live.
You can overcome, you can save, you can improve your life and it can be worth living even if it feels absolutely impossible right now. People tell you this because it’s true, because they’ve been through hard times, they’ve battled depression, and they’ve come out the other side with an appreciation and love for life despite it all.
I encourage you to seek support, there are many people out there who are currently going through and have gone through similar struggles. I wish you the best of luck and hope you get through this and can share you story with others one day.
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Nobody has money for that either. Our healthcare system is abysmal. Another thing corporations have robbed us of. Universal healthcare.
How many 9mm’s does that cost?
So, for old people it’s fucking wonderful.
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Completely convinced you’re just trolling, now
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Is that going to prove that everyone above 22 has stocks and a pension?
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Those things are very important, but unless you have some significant dividends, I don’t think they help people with the level of price increase that we see right now.
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Ding ding ding!
If a company can extract more value out of its workers while paying them less, that means the company is doing good. If this happens across a bunch of companies, that means the economy is doing good. All because they’re getting more value from our labor than the crumbs they toss to us.
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Groceries and gas is still inflated. Services are steadily raising rates and some people are still not being paid a living wage.
So is rent.
As others have already stated, the job market is fine, the stocks are fine, but the ability to afford living day to day is worse than I have ever remembered. Here in my cheaper state here are some random prices:
- A bag of Doritos is over $7.
- Beef shortage makes ground beef for a family of 4 $14
- Gas prices are over $3.70
- My grocery bill increased by nearly 50% overall and we are buying less on top of that
- Car prices are through the roof, making it impossible for people like me to change cars (I’m hearing they are going to drop again soon)
- Rent prices are soaring to the point where it isn’t sustainable
- Interest rate keeps rising
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Exactly. It all depends on which metrics you’re looking at, and some are not even being looked at, conveniently enough for those with more money.
Buying power is not going down. Do you at least have a source for that?
I think you might be talking about the productivity-pay gap but it has nothing to do with purchasing power.
Inflation adjusted wages are going up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
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I don’t agree with putting home prices in cpi, because a small number of home sales would dramatically swing inflation, so yeah while it’s a really critical number for people looking to buy a home it is not a good litmus test for the average purchasing power when there are better imputed metrics like “owner cost or equivalent rent”.
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Housing costs are included in CPI. What I’m saying is i agree with the current methodology. Do you know what the current methodology is? It does make sense.
$7 for a bag of Doritos is ABSURD
That’s because (yes, others here beat me to it) – the economy is not the stock market. People’s costs of living and wages aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse, even as giant corps have record profits and that is reflected on the stock tickers. If the average person was heavily invested early on in some of these corporate behemoths and could actually share in the rapacious profits, maybe things would be different… but that’s not the case.
Woah now!
That’s starting to sound like Socialism and having public ownership
a society with an economic underpinning that meaingfully lifts all boats with a rising tide?! that… would be un-american! gotta have winners and loosers to feed that zero-sum game they love so much.
and dont even MENTION the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund!
Neoliberal heads would explode left and right!
If you need losers in order to have winners, we should all be doing really well right now thanks to Trump.
That’s because no matter how well stock prices are doing, it still costs substantially more to buy groceries than it did last year, by way of example. The average American is screwed just as hard with a good economy as a bad one, and the poorer you are, the rawer the screwing.
No one measures the economy based on stock prices.
Inflation is going down, real wages are going up, unemployment is down.
Been to a grocery store lately? Looked at rent prices? How about clothing? Gas? Basic necessities?
People think the economy’s getting worse because it IS for consumers. I don’t really give a shit if a company is paying less for grain than they did a year ago if the prices they charge for the final product havn’t gone down!
Until basic costs of living start decreasing, most people aren’t going to see any positive change.
Yeah, this kind of headline has no bearing on 99% of people’s lives, it’s just corporate gaslighting to try to keep the population sedated.
This is my thinking. I guess it’s good the economy is good but prices of housing and food are skyrocketing for me so I don’t feel it lol
Guys, we just have to wait for it to trickle down! Don’t worry, any decade now and it will finally pay off…
Months of gaslighting that they were doing great didn’t work out so well. Being told wages are up, inflation down, economy great while wondering how they are gonna pay rent contradicted the desired message.
Agreed. Yeah wages are up and inflation is down compared to last year. But so long as inflation is higher than wage growth then people will continue to lose ground financially.
That’s because it is getting worse. No one believes the bullshit that it’s getting better. It’s fake news.
I mean, I do. The job market is probably the best it’s been in decades. The economy is doing extremely well. Food prices are high because two of the world’s largest grain producers are fighting a war with one another.
My business and everyone else in my area that I talk to have all said this year has been slow for them as well.
The kob market was better 2 years ago
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Corporate profits are relatively flat as a percentage of national income (it has gone up a bit since COVID): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A445RE1A156NBEA
People always seem to remember to adjust wages for inflation but understandably because of media headlines almost never adjust profits for inflation.
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So if they’re hidden how do you know they are at record levels?
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The economy is fantastic for like the 10% of the country who owns 75% of the country’s junk
Or maybe… just maybe… this is backwards and the notable thing is that statistics have been cited in support of a claim that the economy is improving, despite the fact that at least half of Americans believe that it isn’t.
The stock market isn’t the economy. Wall Street has a vested interest in us believing the opposite, however, so of course CNN and others will keep acting like they’re the same thing.
