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[SalmonGod]

Fuck efficiency or growth through the concentration of wealth, give people their lives back. TBH, I'd gladly give up most of today's modern amenities and securities for more time and space to just exist without expectation.

Yes.  We have lots of cool stuff, but no time to enjoy it.  What's the point?  Almost anyone who's doing well these days is either dedicating 90% of their waking life to work, or in a multiple income household with no kids, or lucked into a cheap living arrangement by themselves with a moderately well-paying job and no kids, or is independently wealthy.

Purchasing power is a shit measure, because the situation these days is luxuries are dirt cheap but necessities are exorbitant.  You can maintain a range of fancy gadgets and convenient entertainment services for less than 1% of your yearly income.... but the other 99% of your income can't pay your rent/mortgage and car.  When your rent is $1500 a month, spending $1000 a year on luxuries won't be the deciding factor in whether you make rent or not.  So if you're doomed to fail and be homeless, you might as well do it with a nice smartphone.

A better indicator would be the record numbers of people who are 3+ months behind on car payments, the rising rates of homelessness, the abysmal lack of savings among people under 50, and the near-universal experience of economic anxiety so severe that young adults are being massively diagnosed with PTSD.

[Dunamisdeos]

I fully agree that our society utterly fails to provide proper avenues of care of parents and children, and furthermore that it 100% discriminates by wealth and ethnicity. We have a huge problem with that in our society. My wife and I both work full time jobs with available benefits, and we can't afford basic child care let alone the kind of help my special needs son requires. Not if we want to pay rent.

It would be cheaper to get a mortgage with no down-payment at all, but I can't even afford the 400$ or so it costs to get certified for a mortgage.

It's nice that the economy is doing well according to the standards of a bunch of bullshit nebulous arithmetic, but the only upturn I've seen is a bit more on my tax return for having a child from both Obama and Trump's tax programs. Woohoo, that's like a whole month that I can reliably avoid eating rice and beans before that runs out. Thanks for the bread ration, I'm living the American Dream. And what's more, I know for a fact that I'm better off than many.


note: Made minor edits after posting

[Pwnzerfaust]

Real wages growth is slow, but moving in a positive direction for now.

Obvious troll is obvious.

What?

Real wages growth is slow, but moving in a positive direction for now.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Yeah, I'd like to know what qualifies as a bad economy.

Stagnating or contracting GDP, high unemployment, extraordinary number of people below the poverty line, deflation or inflation out of control. Those are a few indicators of a bad economy.

I'll agree that wealth is flowing upward and that's a crisis that needs to be dealt with. However, over the past twenty years, median income has not declined but rather remained roughly stagnant. It's not that purchasing power is reducing. It's more that it's stayed the same, and in our society, stagnation often feels like regression.

You did just give us information that showed inflation increasing 2% on average for the last two decades, so I'm not sure you can get away with saying purchasing power isn't reducing if wages aren't increasing alongside it.

Note I said real wages. Real wages are wages adjusted for inflation. You can have a 10% per annum increase in wages but still have a 0% real wages increase, if the inflation matches that wage increase. As it stands, median (not mean) wages are increasing at roughly the same rate as inflation, meaning that median real wages remain stagnant.

Edit: I just realized I neglected to specify "real" income in the part you quoted. That was an oversight on my part; it was meant to be connected to the earlier parts about real wages.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

An increase in real wages doesn't necessarily mean anything, as some of the most important investments in life have exploded in cost, far beyond adjustments for the inflation of currency--like housing.

So sure, you might be making a tad bit more, but everything is still VASTLY more expensive than it was.

It's impossible to limit costs in any meaningful way without causing production of actually important goods to implode, and honestly im 100% fine with some people making a percentage more than others (hey, if you're old, you want to live off the fruits of your labor, and probably transfer a portion of that income to your children), but measures have to be taken to ensure that the excesses of a few do not affect the basic comfort and dignity of everyone else (and frankly, I'm pretty sure there are actually enough resources and services to give everyone a GOOD life, not just an okay or dignified or basic one, but one full of ease and happiness).

At one point Warren Buffett was making nearly $40 million A DAY. I don't care if he is a saint, that kind of accumulation of wealth is a violation of the social contract. We agree to live peaceably in a society that is beneficial to everyone, but if a single person can just go around doing nothing (if he wanted to) and make that kind of money he should be considered an outlaw. It's a zero-sum game, you are literally TAKING THE WEALTH FROM OTHERS to give to yourself.

The growth of the economy means nothing, more money does not equate to more value for the average person when any given worker is only actually receiving a fraction of the worth of his work in the form of payment (after all, currency is ideally supposed to represent how much work you do and you are to be fairly compensated for your TIME).

Coupled with morally reprehensible land rights, banking systems, and taxes--it's some fucked up shit. Communism... doesn't work, it just doesn't. Karl Marx didn't know how to reach his utopia back then and we don't know how to reach it now, but there needs to be CONSIDERABLY more regulation in how wealth is distributed among the citizens of the world.

EDIT:


This chart is hella fucked up.

EDIT2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

Even the wikipedia article is hella fucked up.

[Pwnzerfaust]

An increase in real wages doesn't necessarily mean anything, as some of the most important investments in life have exploded in cost, far beyond adjustments for the inflation of currency--like housing.

So sure, you might be making a tad bit more, but everything is still VASTLY more expensive than it was.

That's the CPI (Consumer Price Index) that I referenced earlier. It tracks prices over time for various consumer goods -- those are the ones that have increased on average 2.185% per year, roughly tracking with median income. That's what real wages refers to: Essentially how many things you can buy with your wages. If how much stuff you can buy with $50,000 per year goes down, your real wages go down. If they go up, they've gone up. Broadly speaking.

Or to turn it around to make it a bit more clear: If you can buy ten loaves of bread with your wages one year, and then the next you can only buy eight, your real wages have gone down, even if the nominal wages went up or stayed the same; conversely if you can buy twelve loaves the next year your real wages have gone up. Again, broad overview of what real income is. Substitute loaves of bread for any consumer good.

EDIT:


This chart is hella fucked up.

EDIT2:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

Even the wikipedia article is hella fucked up.

Yes, I agree. This massive growth in wealth inequality is one symptom of median wages stagnating even while average wages increase. The median person's real wages (ie. how much the average person can buy) had stayed roughly the same over the past decades, while the upper 10% (and even more pronounced, the upper 1% and 0.1%) have seen their wages explode. Conversely the lower half have seen their wages decrease in the face of substantially lowered demand for unskilled labor due to automation and outsourcing.

[McTraveller]

I do believe that wealth inequality has been getting a bit out of whack - but you have to be careful when you read those graphs.  A significant chunk of wealth consists of present value of stocks, which is not "real" wealth.

You could take all that paper wealth and... it's not going to give you cheaper housing or cheaper health care or more affordable cars or anything like that.  It sounds like it should, but it just won't, because although money is fungible, wealth is not.  You can't convert a supercar into five family cars.  You can't convert a luxury yacht into four fishing boats.

The only thing you can do is change culture and/or incentives, over the course of a generation, so that people would rather invest in lower prices for things rather than more features for the same price, which is what we have now: the cheapest cars are the same (real) price as they used to be but with new gadgets. I'd rather have cars with the features from 10 years ago but at 75% the real price.  But this is just not what society is doing...

[Max™]

You could totally convert a supercar into a trade for a number of less expensive cars, though nobody does that.

[MrRoboto75]

Or to turn it around to make it a bit more clear: If you can buy ten loaves of bread with your wages one year, and then the next you can only buy eight, your real wages have gone down, even if the nominal wages went up or stayed the same; conversely if you can buy twelve loaves the next year your real wages have gone up. Again, broad overview of what real income is. Substitute loaves of bread for any consumer good.

In recent times due to technology I went from producing 8 loaves of bread to 12 loaves of bread.  I get paid as if I produce 6 loaves of bread.  Sadly, rent is 12 loaves of bread this month and will probably 13 loaves a month by the end of the year.  Better get two loaf jobs to get those 12 loaf rents.  Also Trump decided to tariff flour and used napkins, which will probably upset the loaf industry.

Meanwhile, I better not get injured loafing around, as my loaf contracting job(s) gives no benefits whatsoever and bread is a pre-existing condition.  Speaking of which, having kids also incurs massive loaf debt.  Not raising them, mind, just having them.  Just have nothing bad happen ever and maybe, just maybe, I'll be fine.

[hector13]

You should try feeding them kids self-raising flour, bloody freeloaders. It’s not like they knead anything!

[Cyroth]

Bread lightly guys, these buns are getting out of hand.

[MrRoboto75]

Bread lightly guys, these buns are getting out of hand.

Just roll with it

[Kagus]

We used to talk about politics in semi-civilized tones...

Now we just have a yeast inflection.

[Max™]

I'm going to rise above these puns and just wish I had more dough.

The missus hit me for that.

[wierd]

I find them half-baked, personally.

[Egan_BW]

Gentlemen you can't pun in here, this is the ameripol thread!