https://wtop.com/consumer-news/2024/07/despite-economic-growth-70-believe-economy-is-getting-worse/
According to a new Gallup poll released this week, most Americans are feeling negative about where things are heading with the economy and inflation.
Well yeah. Who gives a fuck about a 2% increase in the GDP? Prices are high and wages are low.
Housing (homes and apartments) is either in yet another bubble, or I guess just going to permanently remain absurdly high, slowly filtering more and more people into homelessness and death.
EDIT: (derp i fucked it up, EDIT 2)
Average rent vs median wage, cpi adjusted, and indexed to 1982 = 100.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1raP7
(Basic take away: the average real rent is about 4.2x or 420% what it was in 1982 whereas the median real wage has only risen by about 1.2x or 20%)
Edit 3: I would do median rent vs median wage, but FRED does not appear to track median rent.
Personal debt levels are astoundingly bad EDIT: If you do not own a house. The average US renter credit score is 638, and most places won't even consider you if it is below 620.
https://www.investopedia.com/do-you-need-credit-to-rent-apartment-8600564
... a study from Rent Cafe found that the average credit score of renters in the U.S. was 638 in 2020 (the most recent data available),...
The medical system remains ruinously expensive and corrupt.
The proportion of those who are not counted as unemployed, but who are not working, climbs higher and higher. is lowering, but still has not recovered to Pre-Covid levels, much less abated its general downward trend since the 90s.
(Labor Force Participation Rate).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1raRG
College costs climb further and further, offering less and less likelihood of an actual decent paying job.
Wealth inequality is the worst in the known economic history of the world.
In 2/3 of the US states it's still legal to pay someone $7 an hour.
5.1% of $7 an hour is 35 cents.
Don't spend it all in one place, I guess.
I did too... almost 20 years ago with multiple roommates. My friend is making $12 and he had to move back in with his parents. This is in a very low cost of living state.
Less than 2% of the population is making minimum wage. Median income is more than double minimum wage. Even in rural areas
I agree it's not enough, should be raised and all that, but it's not the reality (because that number is so ridiculous)
I agree it's not enough
shrugs
5.1% of $14 is 70 cents an hour. $28 bucks a week.
Don't spend it all in one place.
This economy is objectively atrocious for working people. I'm glad we can connect on the fact that it is most definitely not enough.
This seems like an unnecessary debate, because it's the wrong metric for "fair" pay.
I think the better metric is something like average employee pay ratio to C-suite pay, or something calculated compared to the stock market value, like market capitalization.
Because the biggest problem is that absolute and year-to-year value created by increased productivity is going to the bosses and owners at an unfairly disproportionate rate.
Agreed.
The only upside in this economy is that it's so bad, and there's so little leadership for workers at the federal level, that it's forced unions to become stronger by necessity.
On wages, exactly.
A small percent of a poverty wage is objectively worth criticism, if we're putting it nicely. If we want to talk in percentages, you'd need a 400% increase on the minimum wage in Mississippi to get to a living wage.
That's why I'm criticizing this reply.
Sorry but I'm criticizing your initial reply to the fact that wage increases are statistically high. Yes, 70 cents raise is a lot for a grocery worker. And it's especially important, as OP said, when compared to the rest of the world US is rising faster.
The "2/3 of states" reply, while factual, was misleading as well as tangential to the original point you were replying to.
Idealism has an important place, but not when it results in pure cynicism
You get that a lot on Lemmy in regards to these topics.
They really don’t like it when you compare them to conservatives denying covid.
Anecdotal evidence is trash except when it’s their anecdotes. Then it’s second to none.
And you will keep being a pedant about it and just ignore that those extra pennies, just like the 5.1% referenced earlier in the thread, don't add up to anything when you're not being paid a living wage to begin with.
What I don't understand is why you're angrier with me than you are at Democrats and Republicans.
More than double is still woefully inadequate. A study from over a decade ago showed that people need to make an average of $75,000 a year to get by in America, it's more now.
It's going well for anyone making capital gains. It sucks for anyone else earning a fucking wage.
I'm sure there is a different metric that could be reported then, like adjusted buying power.
Yeah, corporations are doing great, the "economy" is a good indication of that, but it means fuck all for us.
I'm ready for progressive Roosevelt-types and I'm voting as hard as I can to get them. I'll take Teddy, I'll take FDR, I'll take Eleanor.
I just want someone scrappy enough to succeed on our behalf.
I just want things to hurry up and get to the stage where rich investors start jumping from windows again because even the stock market can't hide shit anymore
I don't think we'll see that again, at least not voluntarily. A crash of that magnitude almost happened in 2008, but the corporate owned government bailed out the failed businesses. And now, the owner class is even more heavily invested in real estate, so even if the stock market tanks, having a captive market on a human right means they always have a way to steal from the workers.
"Space travel" is the new "Build a house so big it can hold the the entire population of Newport."
because it doesnt matter how great the economy is, because only the rich and businesses benefit from it.
Meanwhile us peasant folk are still struggling to buy overpriced essentials and afford the worst, most unsuitable, barely qualifying roofs over our heads.
Woah there, slow down money bags. Around this economic level we pad our food with high fructose corn syrup, pink slime and sand for flavor.
It is mind boggling the shit that you can pick up off the shelf, read the ingredient list of, and find HFCS.
american bread is legally cake in other countries due to how much sugar is in it.
It is why Subway will always be the cake bread place in my head, great case with simple reasoning.
I also love how it was not due to food quality laws but tax that caught them, no VAT on simple food stuff but VAT applies to confections like candy and cake. So what is the legal difference between cake and bread? The sugar content, and the fact subway instead of changing their bread fought that in court is just peak subway cake bread to me.
Wow what in the actual fuck? I mean Flintstones vitamins for kids have some I'm sure but this is in adult vitamins? Which brand?
The gummy ones from walmart (I like the idea of candy for my health).
Also what is up with the brand "one a day" making vitamins where you have to take 2 a day?
It's almost like the word has a different meaning on Wall Street than it does for the average person!
It doesn't matter that the economy is growing if it isn't lifting up your life as well. Hundreds of millions of people still live in US states where it's legal to pay $7 an hour. (2/3 of them) All of us are dealing with rampant inflation and crippling costs for utilities, housing, and food.
The government's position on this is that the Biden Administration has created 16,000,000 jobs, and while that may be true, I'd wager my savings that most of those are second and third jobs, because it's become impossible to live with just one in the United States of America.
I'd wager my savings
Well if you're like most sub 35yr olds, that's not a big wager at all.
That's a really depressing statistic. I wish we could get everyone under 40 to vote differently, but I don't think we can.
I'm always really disturbed when I see how much value and assets and savings I am supposed to have...
Like depressed too but really fucking disturbed that neither I nor basically anyone I know except once rich kid who his parents paid for everything while he got a $200,000 a year coding job have any legitimate savings or plans to be able to grow it.
And it's not like I haven't been working for the last 2 decades since I was 14.
I’d wager my savings that most of those are second and third jobs, because it’s become impossible to live with just one in the United States of America.
I've wondered this as well - and wondered if Biden ever really grokked what's happening. Hopefully others do and they follow through once they win (if they do).
Biden ever really grokked what's happening
I don't think anyone at the federal does. If they do, they simply don't care, judging by their actions.
We're about to hit 20 years of the minimum wage being $7 at the federal level, across three administrations, two of which were Democratic with control of Congress. I expect more of the same no matter who we elect in the fall.
We think the economy is worse because it is for us. Food prices have doubled or more than doubled in the last ten years and our income is stagnant so we make the same but everything costs more. We don't see any growth or stability in the quality of our lives.
Inflation is nothing compared to price gouging and price fixing by businesses that no one tries to curtail. This is approved of by the powers that be.
But let one opportunistic asshole corner the market on hand sanitizer in one region of the US at the beginning of a pandemic and he has to give it all away because nearly everyone thinks he is a monster.
Inflation is nothing compared to price gouging and price fixing by businesses that no one tries to curtail.
Lina Khan is on the case and making waves.
She's the single most hated person in the C-Suite across the USA.
Not to mention energy costs, transportation costs, basically all necessary costs have gone up. In the meantime, the cost of electronics and frivolous items have gone down. It almost seems like a goddamn ploy so they can continue to write snide articles about, “oh, you all complain about being poor? Why are you still buying TVs and iPhones?”
Electronics often have subscriptions, ads, and data theft baked in. So the sticker price is less, but companies are still making more money off us.
I think what people are feeling is what has been often described as enshitification. The definition of that term as given by its creator doesn't match the context in which I see it increasingly used. However, I think that the phenomenon that people often use it to describe is what is killing consumer confidence.
If the economy is actually serving consumers, then those at the top are making less profits. This is unacceptable. They have to keep making money. They have to keep increasing how much money they make. They have to keep increasing the rate at which they increase the money they make. If they're not, then they are stagnating according to investors. This is incompatible with the survival of normal people. Growth cannot be infinite.
So the companies consolidate and find corners to cut and we absolutely feel it even if it doesn't show in the numbers. They find new and creative ways to create "shrinkflation". They don't have to literally shrink the product - that's too obvious. They can instead alter the formula, find cheaper low quality components, squeeze their workers harder or outsource labor, stand behind their products just a little less by updating wording to sound the same but technically promise less, add a little friction to their warranty process, hedge against inevitable future failure with no class action clauses or forced arbitration in their terms...
It feels like every company is doing something like that these days... and if they aren't, they are being abused or bought by a company that is.
How can confidence then not be down?
No, no, the economy goes very well to the bourgeois elite that controls the state.The workers who are getting worse and worse.
Because the measures that economists use to measure the economy are not relevant to regular people. GDP tells you nothing about living standards.
Only getting better for the ultra wealthy. That's what the system is for and it's working better than it ever has.
If you think about. When capitalism is less capitalist is when regular people benefit. (Regulation, healthcare, free education)
Socialist American policies were the best.
I'd say even for the wealthy, their living standards aren't getting better. At their level of wealth, getting more either means number in accounts goes up if they are passive with it or power over others goes up if they are active with it.
But yeah, capitalism is for those with capital; it's right in the name.
"Economic growth" = stock market up
Stock market is just the scoreboard for theft of economic value, it is useless as a measure of economic health except maybe inversely (if stock market is up that means more wealth is being extracted and funneled upward)
That "economic growth" is for the benefit of capital owners at the expense of everyone and everything else. I'm so done with capitalism.
I had/have such a hard time convincing people that this isn't traditional inflation as much as it's corporate price gouging. This is being done to us, not a result of Biden's economic policies
Yep. Just reading the title, the "economy" is up, and people are worse for it.
The fact is, despite record breaking profit, nearly none of that "growth" is being provided to the people creating the value for companies to sell, and is instead being handed upwards to people with more money than brains, who have "invested" in the business.
The lines on the stock market graphs go up, and the people working for that company who create all the things that are generating the profit, are robbed, and their would-be wages are handed to the shareholders.
Is anyone shocked by this? Is anyone surprised by this?
Did anyone not know this already?
What a stupid article.
I work with people that really struggle to grasp this concept. I work rotations and every hitch I find myself spending the first few days explaining that what they call "the economy" I would call the CPI, whereas what capitalists refer to is corporate profits - and never the twain shall meet. But this is yet another complexity that the right benefits from obscuring, and complexity requires thoughtful consideration for understanding. I realize I'm asking a lot from a bunch of blue collar rubes.
Part of it is that when people say the "economy" is up, they're usually only referring to valuations of public companies which is only part of the picture. The price-to-earnings ratio is so wack right now that many companies are trading at 18x their earnings per share, so while profits may be up, the companies are still wildly overvalued compared to their expected output.
Real wage growth has lagged significantly compared to the historical trend. If the labor market continues to take a beating, consumer spending will tank and bring equities down with it.
Don't eat the orange ones. That shit is toxic. Prepare it if you want, but it's definitely best to food waste that shit.
Stock market gains or shareholder gains mean absolutely shit to the average american.
If I can't afford housing and bread, shit isn't good. Let's change how we report on the economy.
We've known the ownership class was treated differently after the bank bailouts in 2008 which ran entirely contrary to capitalist theory as it was taught: if your company fails, then your company fails, and its detritus will feed growth elsewhere.
But it turns out some companies are special and are too big to fail because when they go, dozens of other propped up companies collapse with them.
I can't help but wonder if we let that catastrophe happen, would it serve as a reminder why capitalism needs to be strictly regulated? Because we undid all the regulations erected thanks to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007, and private equity is still demolishing huge chunks of the economy while investors get rich on bankruptcy shenanigans. This is the same kind of aristocratic bullshit as 1789.
We had a peaceful protest. OWS. Then one night, NYC turned off all the cameras and unpeacefully swept it away. We were told they didn't have specific demands. But they did, and their grievance was legit regardless.
So now, society is stratified. The ownership class has segregated itself from the working class and they won't consider grievances from the third estate. We saw during the Obama administration a _recovering economy _is not felt by the working class. We see now they're glad to install a one-party autocracy to keep it that way.
To be fair this was always the endgame. Our industrialst betters were sore over the New Deal. And later, school integration and interracial marriage.
I think their plan is to literally arm robotic dogs with guns and try to to rule us at gunpoint, kinda like Hebron. See XKCD 1968.
There's the "economy" and then there's the real economy. The one that affects the 1% and the one that affects the 99%.
The 1% love the current "economy".
The 99% hate the current economy.
The economy as reported is a measure of rich people sentiment, not a measure of how we’re doing.
I see prices going down, here and there. It's good but it's also bullshit. They raised the prices to make record profits and when people can no longer afford anything, they drop them. "See how nice we are, we lowered our prices for you", when in reality they're scared because people gave up buying their shit altogether.
Wow.
It's almost like pathologically fetishized "growth" (perpetually fetishized by the rich and their trained sycophants in the media, that is) is completely disconnected from the socio-economic condition of the majority of people on this planet.