https://finance.yahoo.com/news/staggering-80-american-households-worse-120000535.html
Only the richest 20% have held onto their COVID savings.
Is this surprising given stagnant wages and drastic inflation for the last few years straight?
Don't forget about the absolutely massive wealth transfer that happened: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/16/richest-1percent-amassed-almost-two-thirds-of-new-wealth-created-since-2020-oxfam.html
That's so strange. So you're saying the entire capitalist system, that funnels value and wealth ever upward, where consolidation has been rampant, oligopolies are the order of the day and some of our "most successful" companies face charges of but then nothing is done about their monopolies, where at these same titans of industry, an even narrower funnel shovels obscene wealth to those with access to the company's equity grants and options, while those who actually provide the work in the company get 2.3% wage increases because wage stagnation must increase until beatings improve, where these same few companies set and increase prices to enrich their own quarterly stock grants while their employees can't get an increase that even matches inflation let alone provides value...
You're saying that this system somehow allows for wealth concentration? /s
I was thinking about it today as I went by a Les Schwab where behind the front desk they proudly offer payment plans for those with good credit in an enormous banner. Why can't Americans afford to buy car tires? Why would they need to exist in a system where interest would need to be paid to be able to fix their common mode of transportation? Why are tire companies opening finance arms to loan usuriously? Why does a mobile telephone take 2 months of salary to afford? Ask GE finance I suppose and Jack Welch.
This isn't inflation. This is greed. Record profits with soul crushing wages. Governments that allow this are complicit. We need heavy windfall taxes
Windfall taxes are reactive and bad policy in general.
What we need is a return to pre-Reagan tax policy. Higher upper tax brackets, corporate taxes, and the closing of loopholes that allow the rich to hide their wealth offshore.
saying "greed" in the context of capitalism makes no sense. the word doesn't have meaning because the system is morally agnostic.
edit: its a headless system optimized for profit accumulation as its sole parameter. there's no systemic incentive for anyone to behave otherwise.
What word do you prefer to use to describe people who hoard more wealth than they or their children can spend in a lifetime while the vast majority of workers are on the edge of financial ruin? Why can't they be satisfied with just having one mega yacht? One giant mansion? If not "greed" what do you call it?
Are you being sarcastic? I’ve seen a lot of sarcasm in my days, and this looks a lot like that. Nah, who’d be sarcastic on the internet without a “/s“? Everyone would just assume you’re not being sarcastic, and then the whole conversation would devolve.
Anyways, I’m not sure how neo-feudalism is charming. Could you expand on that a bit?
The system isn’t morally agnostic dumbass, it literally is greed. It was created for the purpose of greed and it continues funnel all the wealth to the greedy. Loopholes are found around all the rate limiters and speed governors that get designed into the law and federal agencies. They’re trying “company store” tactics again. Fucking child labor is back.
“The system is morally agnostic” imagine the fucking Stockholm Syndrome (yes I’ve heard it’s not actually real stfu)
the word doesn’t have meaning because the system is morally agnostic.
The people at the top of it swimming in their Scrooge McDuck piles of money while the rest of us struggle seem pretty fucking greedy to me.
there is no such thing as a morally agnostic system, you either agree with or disagree with the outcome of the economic system, it is moral or immoral.
True, a system whose only imperative is personal upside maximization with no consideration for anybody else is morally agnostic if you put aside the moral dimensions of having no consideration for anybody else whilst acting for personal upside maximization.
Same as murder being morally agnostic if you put aside the moral dimensions of killing another human being.
Consider the possibility that you're confusing familiarity, common use in your environment and even normalization of something with it actually being devoid of a moral component: just because people around you got used to act in some way without questioning such way of acting doesn't mean it's morally agnostic: after all, slavery too used to be normal.
So many people seem to have mistaken what you said for a defense of capitalism.
I think a better way to say it is that greed isn't a useful way to explain any particular thing that happens in a capitalist system, because everything that happens in capitalism is driven by greed. Saying one particular problem is caused by greed is like a doctor saying someone's illness is a symptom of being alive; it's true, but it explains nothing.
Those are here for the same reason...
People act like inflation is the invisible hand of the market, this is capitalism, companies will charge whatever they want to maximize profits, and that rarely results in a lower price.
Like, if you made thingamajigs, and if you made as many as you could (10 million) and sold as much as you could to saturate the market and end up making 10 million, that's less profit than if you charged $5 a piece and only sold 2 million. Same income, much lower overhead.
So you cut staffing and make 1/5th of what you can because that maximizes profit.
Which is fine until your thingamajig is something that people need like food, water, or shelter. If you're putting profit over production, then people who can't afford it have to go without.
It's literally what's going on with insulin. This is t a hypothetical, this is what's been happening for a long time.
It's just with the same few giant corporations making everything, if just one does, the other 2-4 giant corporations crunch the same numbers and come up with the same plan.
Something that used to be called price fixing is suddenly just "internal analytics"
So... The Chinese real estate model? Overbuild, saturate the market, and suddenly housing is no longer an issue.
wait, all we have to do is make more than what the optimal profit supply/demand curve dictates, and we can get rid of homelessness? maybe do the same with food so no one has to starve?
I could have bought a decent house alone, albeit uncomfortably. But I was happy enough in my condo. Now I have a wife and dual income, and we'd have to really stretch for a shitty house on the outskirts. And neither of our wages have changed much.
Wages are not stagnant.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
You can see rising median wages for several decades. The covid stimuluses caused a bump but cant expect that level of government spending forever.
It went from 335 in 1979 to 365. That's less than a 9% increase. In 34 years. How do you not see this as stagnant?
The advice in that article is primo out of touch and humorous. They give statistics that people's savings and assets are down X amount, and the first advice is save for an emergency. Running out of savings?! Just save more, five head.
I am reminded of that quote along the lines of “it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.” I did everything right, and had a more than adequate emergency fund.
But then my house vaporized that emergency fund… and only then did COVID happen and I lost my job twice. So that’s roughly three “holy shit thank god we saved for a rainy day” events in three years.
I’m sure I will be in “just save money” mode some day in the future. Lots of shit left to clean up right now though.
and only then did COVID happen and I lost my job twice. So that’s roughly three “holy shit thank god we saved for a rainy day” events in three years.
You just explained the last three years of my life. I have no savings left. Period. If anything happens to the car, or either one of us loses our jobs, we're done. That's it.
Well, you aren't "done". Life continues.
Even when the state conspires against you having shelter from weather when you're homeless. Life still goes on.
Until it doesnt.
I love that the guy who penned that gold was one of the world's richest people, and not that long ago called for increasing unemployment, so that the worker learns his place again.
Ok, yeah! I’ll just set aside the (checks notes) almost nothing I have left after food, rent, utilities, gas, and my exactly two streaming services.
yeah, I'm seeing discretionary spending right there that could be accruing interest instead. and judging by your profile pic I think you know what I'm suggesting.
Most of them got richer. So no they did not put off anything.
About $42 trillion in new wealth was created in the first two years of the pandemic. Two-thirds of that has gone to the richest 1% of the world’s people
Mitch McConnell staring off into space - Good thing Americans had those stimulus checks to live off of for the past 30 months.
Speaking of, where did that money come from?
Did they just print it?
Weird how when it comes to helping the working class, taxing the rich is never an option. But when it comes to helping the ruling class, you can tax the working class and print money.
There is ALWAYS more money available to kill people with. Never so much to help folks with.
And just to add lyrics to your facts
You don't give money to the bums
on a corner with a sign bleeding from their gums
Talking about you don't support a crackhead
What you think happens to the money from your taxes
Shit the governments an addict
With a billion dollar a week kill brown people habit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO18F4aKGzQ
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/brotherali/unclesamgoddamn.html
Sorry, have a complicated day ahead and I'm in a goofy mood as I allow myself to finish this coffee before jumping into it.
Just busy and a lot of moving parts. Thanks!
(I swear I didn't notice your username until after my prior comment!)
Didn't it just come from taxes. I know they claim there's never any money but there's always money, they just don't to use any of it.
They're always claiming they need to raise taxes but they don't, they just need to spend them. Also possibly maybe they shouldn't give contracts to their chums as backhanders. Maybe then they get better deals.
But, but, but ... how could big politically connected companies ever be able to be competive in the Free Market without subsidies???
Every dollar they can save by not spending on making US citizens lives better can be used to buy another missile or drone. The Ukrainian and Israeli armies have benefitted more from our tax dollars than US citizens have in recent times, it seems.
I'm all for weakening our second biggest potential enemy, who got into their current situation through an act of baseless aggression, by spending tax money supplying high tech weaponry to an ally willing to spend it's populations lives in defense of their country and ideals. That is a win-win.
I'm not so much ok with spending tax dollars to support a genocide.
Fair. I will agree that the tax dollars are most certainly better off going to Ukraine over Israel, at least morally speaking.
Didn’t it just come from taxes.
No, Treasury directed the fed to issue bonds and run those loans through banks and businesses. When Congress spends money, it spends it into existence- it doesn't have a pool of dollars that people have sent in somewhere. For that matter, when you pay your taxes, the money is used to zero out the bonds (again, in the Fed's ledger) used to issue it. Remember, money in circulation is (from the POV of the fed) a liability on its books.
Fun fact: more money was printed during the pandemic than in the history of the US. And 80+% of it went to the top 1%.
I canceled all our streaming services and Amazon prime. I canceled my phone service and opted for a $15/month plan (Mint). I buy a cheap phone, about $70 bucks. I asked my wife to stop buying me snack foods at the grocery store to save ~$50/week. All told I think we are not spending ~$300/month that I can now put towards our cars that are starting to break down. Someone said something about savings but I only cultivate dust and stones there.
Don't feel like you have to do without just because you're smart enough not to subscribe!
You can stream pretty much anything for free here: https://fmoviesz.to/
Just make sure you have uBlock Origin installed.
if your cars are totaled one day, definetely buy a toyota made around 2000-2015. those things are modern but still indestructible. (but definetely don't cheap out on maintenance, oil is especially important)
I'm not sure if you are aware but this advice is so ubiquitous that Toyotas made from 2000-2015 are worth half their MSRP up to their full MSRP despite being 20 years old, and 100k miles.
It's a fuckin disaster what has happened to car prices lately.
Especially with the war on work from home that seems to be going on at the moment.
Can't you guys just apply to work for European companies remotely wouldn't that be a workaround? I know my company has a few remote American employees and they're not totally useless.
Most companies would rather not perform the hassle of hiring international workers. Taxes are... Complicated. The only reason it makes sense is to save a shit ton of money - see India.
The other time would be for high demand skills that they can't staff locally which only applies to certain industries like tech, etc. Even then it usually only makes sense if they're getting top quality talent in those industries.
I consider myself to be a decent software engineer which is fairly in demand (even with recent layoffs imo), but even then I think I'd have a hard time finding a remote European job.
Oh and let's not forget that for most engineering positions the salaries are usually lower in European companies. Unless they'd be willing to pay relative to where I live, it would probably mean a pay cut. And I doubt even the benefits would make it worth it given I'd still be living in the US with our private health insurance system, terrible/expensive transportation, etc.
If it offered relocation then that could make it worth it but that's probably even more difficult to get hired for and has obvious downsides
Same. Huge promotion, way more responsibility and stress, annnnnnd I'm just treading water financially.
I got a second degree in computer science to try and get ahead and instead entered the market just in time for hundreds of thousands of layoffs so now I'm stuck making less than I did at my last job meanwhile inflation and rent have increased the cost of living by like 50%.
Edit: oh and suddenly WFH = evil according to every CEO because of their billions of dollars of real-estate investments
Hey now, it's not just office space investments! It's also useless middle managers who don't actually do anything useful but don't think people working from home do any work because they can't be stared at to make sure they're working constantly
I found out my wife was pregnant about a week before shit really hit the fan. We were completely prepared, had money saved up and everything.
The covid hit. We both lost our jobs, and unemployment wasn't nearly enough to cover the bills. I couldn't find another job anywhere.
We lost everything. Both of my cars got repoed, I get eviction notices every single month because rent is behind. We pulled out credit cards for food because we don't qualify for assistance.
Slowly, we both got jobs, I got lucky and jumped right back into my career that I love, and we're still trying to get on our feet. The credit cards are killing us.
Oh, and when our daughter was born, she had to be life flown to another city because she almost passed away (long story). 150k bill. After insurance.
There was an (executive order ?) during covid where you weren't allowed to receive a large bill from medical emergencies and be required to pay it, if you had insurance.
Have you heard of/looked into this?
They could send a bill, but they would call it 'an accident', and then ask if you wanted to pay it out of the kindness of your heart. If you don't, they just write it off on their books and call it a day.
Source: happened to me
That would be amazing if true. I know it happened to you, but still sounds too good to be true in the US of A.
I wanna say part of the stipulation was that it couldn't be a surprise bill. Like I had a surgery that the insurance said they would cover 100% after my deductible. I have the surgery, and get bills from every mf in the building that day, basically, 'cause everyone billed individually as contractors in some way. Some contractor nurses they had called in to fill in, the anesthesiologist, supplies used by a doctor, the homeless guy panhandling outside, I forget what else, all billed separately. None of it pre-authorized, and I had already contacted the hospital and my surgeon's office previously to try to prevent some nonsense like this. Anyway, I called and bargained some of it down, as insurance gets a higher bill, which they passed onto me as it wasn't pre authorized, then spent months trying to save up to pay this additional burden of debt. I was looking into getting cheap legal counsel 'cause it was gonna be near impossible, it was a struggle, etc. etc. So I called them back one day seeing if I could negotiate further, got transferred a few times, until someone was nice enough to explain to me what I said earlier, and that if I just ignore it, they'll write it off before the end of the year, but if I could make any kind of payment, as everyone put work in and it leaves "them" high and dry. Just to highlight the gouging, one of my bills before the surgery was over a thousand bucks for some gauze, bandaids, and a cane from my initial emergency visit (also billed separately from the rest of the visit). I saw how much insurance had already paid the surgeon and hospital, and shrugged my shoulders and slept fine that night not giving them another cent. I thanked the Ctulhus for liberals.
Edit: some further advice for the commenter and anyone else, Reddit was a good place to learn tactics on how to negotiate medical debt down, it also gave me a bit of hope, knowing there were plenty of "success" stories. I've been able to negotiate other medical bills down by massive percentages.
Moving forward, do you think you will save up more in an emergency fund than you did previously?
I would say yes, but I am drowning in debt now. Always a month behind which brings late fees which makes things harder to keep up on.
Also, pg&e burnt the town next to us entirely down (today is the anniversary!) and their solution to dealing with all the lawsuits, was to raise everyones utility bills. My bill was $50 to $100 before the fire. Last month it was $400. I haven't been running heat or AC and the app says my energy usage is consistent for my home size.
It's expensive to be poor.
So, is nobody going to mention the picture of two smiling kayakers chosen to accompany this article?
After buying kayaks with their COVID checks, their outdoor gear addiction has spiraled out of control
Yes, let's raise rent 40% just as people are financially disadvantaged.. That is sustainable.
Rent price coordinator website says I can get $6,922/month for my shed that's partially submerged, I'll be fair and ask $6,900/month as that's a nicer number!
/s
Not surprising at all.
Corporations made BANK and all the CEOs put it directly into their pockets.
Increasing the money supply didn't help the poor and instead helped the rich just like every other time we've tried that?! I can't believe it!
Increasing the money supply would have been fine if it had gone into working people's pockets, infrastructure, jobs, housing, and other productive uses. But yeah, when it's just pumped into the stock market or funneled through business via PPP then, go figure, the rich get richer while everyone else suffers.
Meanwhile, comparing 2019 with 2023, Elon Musk had an increase in net worth of about 707%. That's a plus of ca. $157.700.000.000. Yes, that's 157,7 billion.
Dolly would never become a billionaire, she'd give away that money to help people lomg before.
Yeah, I think about this a lot. I tend to think of myself as a good person (making other people happy makes me happy) but if, somehow, I was made Queen of Earth the first thing that would HAVE to happen is I'd need a panel of people who aren't afraid to tell me "no". I would absolutely be a dictator otherwise
It’s rather negligent of the article to ignore inflation on other areas such as basic needs as well such as price gouging for toilet paper, the immediate war with Russia that suddenly caused gas spikes, and the continuing shrinkflation of basic necessities to be considered ‘luxury’. Bread for the fam shouldn’t be considered a luxury.
rather negligent of the article to ignore inflation
Also, while we note that high prices hurt directly, in major ways the Fed's response to that (it's been raising interest rates to reduce the money supply) is a major source of the pain associated with the high prices/price gouging we're calling inflation.
Higher interest rates mean higher mortgage payments (or rent pressure), etc. This way, price gouging leads to higher profits, and if you hold bonds, also higher profits there- while consumers of those things are doubly-fucked
Why stop at their wealth?
As someone pointed out to me, round them all up. Throw in them into an island penal colony and let them all go Lord of the Flies on each other.
My suggestion for improvement, was every once awhile, lob some artillery shells at the island. Can't let those billionaires get comfortable.
I think the worst punishment for the ruling class is to make them part of the working class.
I guarantee you, most of them would rather kill themselves or others than live like us.
I agree, I was pretty pro-guillotine till that was pointed out to me. Redistribute their wealth and tell them where it's all going too.
"Congratulations Jeff Bezos, you donated $1.3 billion to various labor organizations." "Congratulations Richard Branson, you donated $1.21 billion to climate change initiatives." "Congratulations Warren Buffet, you donated $1.14 billion to support low income people."
Knowing where their money is going to support society in general will fucking kill them. Each of these shit bags all think that they are needed for civilization. Let's watch them put that delusion to the test on an island penal colony that gets bombarded with artillery shells every once and awhile.
People who had the assets got that money.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/economic-inequality-wealth-gap-pandemic/
I didn't find "PPP" in that article, but I'm guessing those loans helped fuel that fire?
Undoubtedly. Many PPP loans were taken fraudulently as well (how many "businesses" do MTG and Matt Gaetz operate exactly?) so that had to have negative repercussions.