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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.
Who’s it getting better for? Wall Street? Prices on shit keeps fucking going up. My paycheck ain’t.
Real wages are up in the last two years the largest amount in nearly five decades. Rent costs are down year over year for two and a half years straight. Employment is up, new jobless claims are down, both while hours worked is down. Inflation continues to revert to the mean.
If it doesn’t seem good for you, you’re either an extreme outlier or are just denying reality.
Source: Trust me bro.
Rent costs are down? Where??? What’s a “real wage”? Do you have anything to back any of this up or are we just guessing?
Probably just cherry-picked data, tbh.
The wage increases haven’t kept up with inflation so people aren’t feeling it.
Rent costs are down year over year for two and a half years straight
You have no idea what you are talking about. Rent has more than doubled. I know people living in shitty 1 bedroom apartments who pay more than twice what I pay for my mortgage on a fairly average house.
Data is data my dude. Get your head out of the sand.
You should try looking at it some time. An apartment that was $700 5 years ago is now around $2000 in my area. And this is a low cost of living area where people aren’t exactly desperate to live.
If you live in LA, rent only goes up.
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
Yeah, “the economy” doesn’t mean anything.
More commerce just means more money changing hands. Unemployment rate just measures jobs. None of this impacts the average person.
Buying power is down and has been dropping for longer than I’ve been alive. This especially impacts the low and vanishing middle class Americans.
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
The way cpi is measured makes it a flawed indicator. It’s essentially been designed to minimize the appearance of inflation.
Pick a period and do a median-to-median comparison of income to expense. Rent/home price, tuition, groceries, direct item-to-item is usually bad.
Then consider the new expenses many people take on. A cell phone every few years, a laptop, the cost of recreation.
Most people are in a horrible position compared to any period in the last century.
Don’t get me wrong, many many things have improved. But economic outlook is NOT one of them.
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”.
Are you suggesting that the amount a person spends on housing doesn’t impact their purchasing power? No wonder you don’t think it’s declining.
Rent has jumped by 100-200% every 20 years since the Great Depression.
Companies have started shifting to shrinkflation because they realized that raising their prices was so unpopular with their consumers.
All of these things need to be considered and don’t get measured by CPI.
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.
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
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.
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.
When toxic “econimistism” comes home to roost. A “strong economy” as measured by stock markets and company profits, both owned primarily by the extremely wealthy is not the same as “working class people are doing well economically”, which is what should be meant by “a strong economy” if it were not for the neoliberal brain rot.
Honestly. There needs to be (probably is and I’m unaware) an index that measures the Average Joe ™️ economy health. So not just like the big Mac index, but a measure of how have the average Americans in the lower to middle class have gained increased take-home pay, reduced debt, asset valuation appreciation, and more indicators that actually increase their day to day life and financial situation.
There’s a FRED series called real disposable income: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0
Which is after-tax personal income adjusted for inflation.
Yeah I got a 20% raise and my rent is going up 24%. Any progress I make is immediately thwarted.
If I stay here I’ll be paying half my take home income on rent for a 1BR
That is literally the deal in Boston, MA. Where the going rate for a 1 bedroom apartment is in the ballpark of $2500 USD/month. Exactly half of my take-home income.
Oh, that’s without factoring in utilities.
Pretty sure it’s measured by gdp
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.
Corporations and the 1% keep posting record profits.
The rest of us keep having to pay higher prices.
CNN: Why do many Americans think the economy is getting worse?? It’s working as designed.
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.
Major corporations in America hide most of their profits. If you listen to their earnings calls, they’ll still be boasting about record profits.
So if they’re hidden how do you know they are at record levels?
As per my last comment:
If you listen to their earnings calls, they’ll still be boasting about record profits.
That’s because our useless news media has been beating the drum of recession for literally years now because fear mongering is all they know how to do.
Also because wages are still stagnant and costs keep going up. On average, the economy is doing great, but that news to the people on the bottom is just an indicator of how much they are being exploited.
But that isn’t entirely true.
“wages are still stagnant”
Wages saw the biggest bump in decades just a couple of years back. The article is from late 2021, and while that feels like it was an eternity ago, the reality is that it was less than 2 years ago.
https://apnews.com/article/business-wages-salaries-increase-8ce98ea3bcc14c4810eb5a1111e1df49
“costs keep going up”
US inflation is the lowest of almost all industrialized nations - down to 2.97% right now, compared to 3X that a year ago.
US inflation is the lowest of almost all industrialized nations - down to 2.97% right now, compared to 3X that a year ago.
Tell me why I should give a shit when my grocery costs have more than doubled since 2020 and have yet to come down. Inflation rate is meaningless for those of us not in the top 1%. What good is it to me to hear the inflation rate was only 3% last month if a bag of cereal still costs $7? Should I simply be grateful that things aren’t getting worse, faster?
Your grocery costs have not doubled.
doubled since 2020
You’re just being a drama queen.
https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/averageretailfoodandenergyprices_usandwest_table.htm
Lots of real, actual data there that I am sure you will claim is false even without looking at it.
Wait, at the moment you are being severely downvoted for posting a link to the best statistical source we have for the US on this topic? WTF is wrong with people?
Because people don’t want the truth, they just want to complain.
And I get that.
It’s a natural human reaction, but it is also annoying because some of these same people would demand a citation and I’ve given them exactly that.
Lately I’ve been telling people who ask for sources that they need to convince me they are asking in good faith. Real sincere responses will get a source, the real utility is it ends the conversation more quickly when it’s a disingenuous request. Best to save energy for the teachable.
I just looked over that page, and I couldn’t find any data on I_Has_A_Hat’s grocery costs between 2020 and now. Would you mind pointing it out for the benefit of me and other particularly dense people in the audience?
The first column. Cookies, beef, chicken, milk, pasta… literally anything you’d buy at a grocery store.
Why don’t you try clicking on historical data and selecting 2020?
Wages went up, now this is the counter attack.
Can’t let the poors gain anything.
I don’t understand why people have trouble finding current data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Rent is up, grocery prices are up, gas is up again, pay hasn’t kept up with inflation, corporate profits at all time highs and Powell at the Fed is literally trying to weaken labors negotiating power, but sure it’s the media brainwashing people…
The economy is fantastic for like the 10% of the country who owns 75% of the country’s junk
Remove the income of the top 1% of Americans from the equation and you’ll REALLY see how good the “economy” is.
Yeah I mean, gains on Wall Street may be considered “stronger economic news” by some, but it tends to matter for relatively few.
A strong economy doesn’t rely on news stories about Wall St. If I see my money going further, I take it as strong economic news. If I see my wages go up, I take it as strong economic news. If I ever see rents go down, or housing in general become more affordable, or literally anything that affects most common people in a positive way based on some financial change, I’ll take it as strong economic news.
Wall St making more money? Not strong economic news. Just stories that highlight how the rich continue to get richer and how out of touch one small subset of the population is from the rest.
just because the ball is bouncing doesn’t mean it’s getting any higher.
