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Also, "family income" now includes the wife, kids and dog. It used to be that ONE person could earn enough to pay for housing, food, car, Healthcare, etc.
So "family income" is NOT "keeping up with the cost of inflation" despite what the business world wants us to think.
There is an economic rule about this
Basically what it says is that new developments - like electricity, cars, computers - cause a temporary increase in demand for labor - and therefore higher wages.
As the technology becomes routine, optimization and automation remove the need for labor - demand for labor decreases and by the rule of the market wages go down.
This development is natural and has nothing to do with who's currently president, policies or anything like that. To quote from the link above:
Stephen Cullenberg stated that the TRPF (Tendency of the rate of profit to fall) "remains one of the most important and highly debated issues of all of economics" because it raises "the fundamental question of whether, as capitalism grows, this very process of growth will undermine its conditions of existence and thereby engender periodic or secular crises."
The only thing that guarantees that the population in the US can continue to live in the long-term is Universal Basic Income - which says that the state should distribute resources among the population even if the people don't work. Basically a form of state-backed social welfare. Without it, the issue will continue to get worse, until people will die on the streets by hunger and cold in masses. UBI is a necessity for the person and for peace.
Serious question: wouldn't Universal Basic Income rely on everyone paying their taxes instead of certain groups trying to hide or avoid paying it? I can't see governments affording this without a serious look at their spending to pull back om somethings, or there being a sufficient amount in the coffers from taxation.
Debt money is constantly being created for the benefit of the already rich. Taxes are just another punishment for the poor. It's not a real issue, just political theater/distraction.
There's some monetary theory that suggests careful creation of money is actually fine and won't lead to hyperinflation. So potentially, measured money printing to support UBI and stabilize the world economy might actually be fine? Honestly I don't know enough about the theory and proofs to really say, but there's some interesting possibilities if you allow for measured money creation
The most disturbing stat is that our contempt for the rich hasn’t really multiplied at all.
Speak for your damn self
Luigi converted a few people but so much more work to be done.
The land of the free and the poor \o/
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And the difference went to fill the coffers of the rich.
Don't forget that Medicaid and Social Security Disability still have the same $2,000 MAX asset limit (aside from a car and low-value residence). Back in 1974, that was a down payment on a house. Now that isn't enough to rent a place to live, not enough to fix a car, and if you somehow have more than $2k in assets,( (DHS does bank and tax monitoring) they take your medical and food away, despite being disabled. If adjusted for inflation, it would be about $13k. Enough to put a down payment on a small house. A 2k limit enough for people with disabilities is BARBARIC.
I've written to so many politicians about this archaic rule and Lisa McClain told me that it's that low, so that only the truly destitute use it... despite us paying taxes all our lives to protect us from starving. I was told that the disabled weren't as important as older voters who deserve retirement disability.
I was told that the disabled weren’t as important as older voters who deserve retirement disability.
As a voting block with UBI (Social security) and Medicare, lifting the ladder up after them as a class is a reliable voting influence, and they turn out to vote. A lifetime of Israel first warmongering rulership brainwashing makes them an important constituency.
The first stat is a little misleading IMO. While the median car cost has increased ~2x (inflation adjusted), an entry level car price has only gone up ~1.2x (1971 AMC Gremlin vs 2023 Kia Rio LX; $1.8k/$14.8k vs $17.8k) and that's more important for measuring relative quality of life.
Of course add on to that the fact that there's easy access to second hand car markets and the number of features included with that base model vs the 1971 AMC Gremlin and it doesn't seem like things are much worse.
Basically, average car prices increasing could just indicate that people are willing to spend more on cars for whatever reason that may be (better features, more car-centric culture, etc.). For this reason I'd like to see similar stats but about entry level options within each category. Probably less sensationalistic but still interesting.
That being said, I bet stats for the housing market and others would still show a notable increase even at the entry level, but I'd still like to verify this before blindly jumping on the sensationalist bandwagon.
There's another important part of this equation: these are the things being sold. If someone can't afford any car at all, they still wouldn't show up in the entry-level car stats. But I think with how car-centric the US is, there won't be many people going carless? But like you said, if the second hand market is good, everyone could be driving a barely used BMW and they still wouldn't show up in any stats about new cars.
Basically, the only thing these stats tell us is that some people would have to spend a higher proportion of their income if they want to buy these things new. It doesn't tell us if that means they don't buy it, they buy it and go hungry, they buy an alternative, or they buy it without issue (because some other expense is cheaper or disappeared).
Inflation calculations try to account for this by considering a mix of products and services. If everything goes up across the board, people will get in trouble no matter their exact spending habits. You could also look at buying power or discretionary income to see if a population is doing alright.
The prices above increased a little harder than inflation, so you'd expect to see that as a decrease in discretionary income. The same would happen if wages didn't keep up with inflation, which is a happy coincidence? Or exactly what the discretionary income stat is designed to do: show how much financial breathing room people have.
Also was the 1971 household income number a single income or dual income like today? If not dual then we are working twice as muchh to make the 5.5x increase
I hate the "household income" statistic for this exact reason. It obfuscates the number of people working. Not just both parents but also adult children living with their parents and working.
If you look at Canada's single income household data from 2000-2020, the average income for males went from $30k to $34k CAD and females were roughly $17k to $25k. I would bet the US wages went up by a similar amount.
But screens have gotten cheaper per unit of area!
People see all this and then continue worshiping the state, promoting its fiat paper covered in slavemasters, and actively participating in its planetary destruction. The whole system is a scam. It's completely obvious.
It's ok if people want to criticize crypto because it's also garbage capitalism. But that's nothing compared to what the state is doing...
How would you guarantee my safety without a state? What would stop some group of people who decided to rape and pillage from doing so?
Let me save you some time :)
There are never actual well-thought-out answers, just a chain of poorly constructed what-ifs
The answers always put them in control without any guardrails and just require everyone to assume they're good-hearted people with good intentions.
Exactly. And then when you question them further, you often find out that they would not be one of those good-hearted people who would pay them to solve the problem.
What would stop some group of people who decided to rape and pillage from doing so?
Who is stopping our oligarchs and their CEO lapdogs from doing this now?
Elites in fact rape poor people's children... Healthcare CEO pillage family's bank accounts if one of them has health issues?