By many metrics, the US economy is humming along. The jobs market is robust; consumers are spending again; and inflation has eased to a three-year low.
Real wages have been growing in the past year, especially for those in the lowest quintile. In fact, there are almost no adults making the federal minimum wage any more.
Dude. Rents are skyrocketing, grocery prices are insane, everything is wildly more expensive and wage growth isn’t keeping up for a lot of people. This kinda “well look at the data” thing that the Democrats constantly do is not helpful. They always fail to account for some part of reality and it shows just how disconnected these rich fucks are from the common person.
So many people are living paycheck to paycheck and that is disastrous for a country without socialized medicine and with the incredible costs of retirement. Homeownership and freedom from vampire landlords isn’t a possibility for a vast majority of people and many are paying a significant portion of their take home just to keep a roof over their heads and the lights on.
They have no clue what it’s like to walk a day in a normal person’s shoes.
No doubt many people are suffering. But wages for the lowest quintile have been outpacing inflation for the past year. Which means that overall, most of those in the lowest quintile are better off now than they were a year ago. Of course, doing better is not the same as doing well.
The goal of public policy is to benefit the public as a whole. So the average will always be a more useful metric than the experience of an individual, or even a hundred individuals.
I think you’re on to something, but in reality people will quit a job that doesn’t provide enough to live on. In other words, the job is the one that doesn’t survive, not the worker.
So you might expect a rise in unemployment, but in fact we are seeing low unemployment. This suggests that employers respond to vacant minimum wage jobs by increasing the wage. And in fact there are plenty of well-known employers (e.g. Wal-Mart) where nobody works for minimum wage any more.
I’m also not sure how relevant my experience is to this whole thing since my work experience is 100% contract work in a specialized field instead of salaried or employer scheduled. From my perspective everything is becoming gig work, but that might not be the case. I think it’s hard to budget for groceries getting more expensive if one year I make 85k and the year after, I make 25k. Employers just don’t seem to have as much money to spend on advertising as they used to, so finding work is hard unless you take less than what you’re used to taking.
All my peers seem to be having issues with finances nowadays unless their parents are helping them out or have a partner making quite a bit as well. Combine that with businesses forcing the end of work from home means we have to move back to expensive cities. It’s looking pretty bleak even from my pretty privileged vantage point.
One thing to keep in mind is that you may not be in the bottom quintile. And if you’re not, then you may have a very different view of the economy.
Income inequality is decreasing right now, but many people don’t understand that this necessarily involves some zero-sum adjustments. You cannot reduce inequality if everyone grows at the same rate, something must be transferred from the upper X% to the lower X%. And if you’re in the upper X%, then the economy might feel worse to you than it really is.
I’d be interested to see a source on if income inequality is decreasing because I haven’t seen any articles about that tbh. In fact, since 2020 when I last looked at graphs on it, it’s seemed like the gap is just getting wider and wider every year.
And if I was told things would get harder for me and other people in my bracket to make it easier for people making less than me, I’d be fine with it, but I’m not seeing an indication that that is what’s happening. But to be honest, so long as I’m seeing record profits for corporations and billionaires continuing to breathe, I’ll continue to think income inequality is continuing to get worse regardless of a study that states the contrary.
Reduction in income inequality started under Biden, after 2020
But there’s some pretty good news that doesn’t readily appear in the steady stream of government data released each week. After decades in which the gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew by leaps and bounds, the strange rebound from the pandemic has led to something different: a slow reduction in inequality across the economy. Incomes of people in the bottom half of income distribution grew by 4.5% in the last calendar year, much faster than the 1.2% average income growth of all Americans
Looking at the Realtime Inequality source, I think the picture is a bit less rosy than the article gives it, if I’m reading the graphs correctly. It looks like the bottom 50% were absolutely financially destroyed during 2020 (as was everyone else) and measures have been taken to place them relatively close to where they were before the pandemic. But the upper class not only didn’t fall as hard as the bottom 50%, but they recovered to a higher level than they were previous.
To me, this seems like “the income inequality train is slowing down” rather than “the income inequality train is going in reverse”. That being said, I’m a dummy when it comes to economics, so I might not know how to read this correctly.
Note that the y-axis is income growth. Staying at zero means “no change”. So it’s more accurate to say that before late 2021 the bottom 90% stagnated (or slightly lost income) while the upper 10% grew, seemingly oblivious to hardship.
After late 2021, the income of the bottom 50% grew faster than the top 50% (or top 10%). That is exactly what is meant by “inequality is finally decreasing”, because the only way for two extremes to get closer together is for the bottom extreme to grow faster than the top extreme.
Faster growth among the highest incomes is a longstanding feature in our economy, and this differential growth means that income inequality has almost always been increasing. Faster growth among the lowest incomes, ie any period of decreasing inequality, is practically unheard of in recent American history.
Real wages have been growing in the past year, especially for those in the lowest quintile. In fact, there are almost no adults making the federal minimum wage any more.
Dude. Rents are skyrocketing, grocery prices are insane, everything is wildly more expensive and wage growth isn’t keeping up for a lot of people. This kinda “well look at the data” thing that the Democrats constantly do is not helpful. They always fail to account for some part of reality and it shows just how disconnected these rich fucks are from the common person.
So many people are living paycheck to paycheck and that is disastrous for a country without socialized medicine and with the incredible costs of retirement. Homeownership and freedom from vampire landlords isn’t a possibility for a vast majority of people and many are paying a significant portion of their take home just to keep a roof over their heads and the lights on.
They have no clue what it’s like to walk a day in a normal person’s shoes.
No doubt many people are suffering. But wages for the lowest quintile have been outpacing inflation for the past year. Which means that overall, most of those in the lowest quintile are better off now than they were a year ago. Of course, doing better is not the same as doing well.
This is as detached from actual people’s lives as the DNC’s messaging
Yes, and on average each human has roughly 0.98 testicles.
The goal of public policy is to benefit the public as a whole. So the average will always be a more useful metric than the experience of an individual, or even a hundred individuals.
By that logic, Medicare for All would only cover less than one testicle
Except testicle coverage is a policy, not a valid metric. A valid metric is the outcome of a policy, like average deaths from testicular cancer.
Yes, and if we simply remove the excess testicles from those who have them, we could halve testicular cancer rates.
That wouldn’t work unless the only metric you cared about was deaths from testicular cancer.
deleted by creator
Half joking response- but wouldn’t the survivorship bias mean those who were surviving only on minimum wage alone didn’t survive for very long?
I think you’re on to something, but in reality people will quit a job that doesn’t provide enough to live on. In other words, the job is the one that doesn’t survive, not the worker.
So you might expect a rise in unemployment, but in fact we are seeing low unemployment. This suggests that employers respond to vacant minimum wage jobs by increasing the wage. And in fact there are plenty of well-known employers (e.g. Wal-Mart) where nobody works for minimum wage any more.
Or they’ll get a second job. Or a third job. Or start doing gig work.
Especially if the job provides them with health insurance.
Either way, they aren’t working any minimum wage jobs.
Okay but they’re still living off ramen and putting off medical treatment and hoping their car doesn’t blow up
The solution to all those problems involves increasing real wages. Which is what has happened for the last year, especially for the lowest quintile.
I’m sure that will make the ramen taste better.
Increasing real wages is always better than decreasing real wages. Which is what was happening before Biden.
I’m also not sure how relevant my experience is to this whole thing since my work experience is 100% contract work in a specialized field instead of salaried or employer scheduled. From my perspective everything is becoming gig work, but that might not be the case. I think it’s hard to budget for groceries getting more expensive if one year I make 85k and the year after, I make 25k. Employers just don’t seem to have as much money to spend on advertising as they used to, so finding work is hard unless you take less than what you’re used to taking.
All my peers seem to be having issues with finances nowadays unless their parents are helping them out or have a partner making quite a bit as well. Combine that with businesses forcing the end of work from home means we have to move back to expensive cities. It’s looking pretty bleak even from my pretty privileged vantage point.
One thing to keep in mind is that you may not be in the bottom quintile. And if you’re not, then you may have a very different view of the economy.
Income inequality is decreasing right now, but many people don’t understand that this necessarily involves some zero-sum adjustments. You cannot reduce inequality if everyone grows at the same rate, something must be transferred from the upper X% to the lower X%. And if you’re in the upper X%, then the economy might feel worse to you than it really is.
I’d be interested to see a source on if income inequality is decreasing because I haven’t seen any articles about that tbh. In fact, since 2020 when I last looked at graphs on it, it’s seemed like the gap is just getting wider and wider every year.
And if I was told things would get harder for me and other people in my bracket to make it easier for people making less than me, I’d be fine with it, but I’m not seeing an indication that that is what’s happening. But to be honest, so long as I’m seeing record profits for corporations and billionaires continuing to breathe, I’ll continue to think income inequality is continuing to get worse regardless of a study that states the contrary.
Reduction in income inequality started under Biden, after 2020
Looking at the Realtime Inequality source, I think the picture is a bit less rosy than the article gives it, if I’m reading the graphs correctly. It looks like the bottom 50% were absolutely financially destroyed during 2020 (as was everyone else) and measures have been taken to place them relatively close to where they were before the pandemic. But the upper class not only didn’t fall as hard as the bottom 50%, but they recovered to a higher level than they were previous.
To me, this seems like “the income inequality train is slowing down” rather than “the income inequality train is going in reverse”. That being said, I’m a dummy when it comes to economics, so I might not know how to read this correctly.
Note that the y-axis is income growth. Staying at zero means “no change”. So it’s more accurate to say that before late 2021 the bottom 90% stagnated (or slightly lost income) while the upper 10% grew, seemingly oblivious to hardship.
After late 2021, the income of the bottom 50% grew faster than the top 50% (or top 10%). That is exactly what is meant by “inequality is finally decreasing”, because the only way for two extremes to get closer together is for the bottom extreme to grow faster than the top extreme.
Faster growth among the highest incomes is a longstanding feature in our economy, and this differential growth means that income inequality has almost always been increasing. Faster growth among the lowest incomes, ie any period of decreasing inequality, is practically unheard of in recent American history.