• Fedizen@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    not to mention housing still is unaffordable.

    The economy currently has an outlier problem where a few very rich people are posting massive gains. As soon as you remove them from the analysis the portrait is a grim picture of austerity and price fixing.

      • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        daily costs for most people have risen and rich people tend to have less of their income spent on the things actually going up in price so my guess is wages are a response.

        • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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          8 months ago

          Okay, let me be a little more complete since “inflation adjusted” seems to be confusing and I feel like maybe you’re not the only one.

          Per capita income, current dollars:

          • 2019: $55,311
          • 2020: $53,811
          • 2021: $59,905
          • 2022: $64,984

          Now that’s not a fair comparison, because exactly in 2022 was when post-Covid and supply chain and corporate greed fueled inflation to its peak. So, what we do is correct it down to constant dollars, which gives us inflation adjusted income in constant 2015 dollars:

          • 2019: $52,070
          • 2020: $50,024
          • 2021: $53,417
          • 2022: $54,274

          … i.e. even after accounting for the factor you’re claiming means we’re making less, we’re making more.

          Income for the top 10% of wage earners actually went down by about 5% from 2020 to 2022, and income at the bottom tiers (again inflation adjusted) actually went up by enough to counterbalance it and result still was a net gain.

            • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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              8 months ago

              At least I haven’t had anyone accuse me of “sealioning” for quite some time. There are some advantages to the main-stream-ification of Lemmy I guess.