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Do you have any data for that position? Wage growth for example has been flat overall: https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker/?panel=1 https://frbatl

Do you have any data for that position? Wage growth for example has been flat overall: https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker/?panel=1 https://frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker/?panel=1 Half of Americans make under 30k a year: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-51-percent-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-30000-dollars-a-year.html http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/goodbye-middle-class-... Yet the cost of goods has been increasing steadily: http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infla...

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Wage growth has been flat because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. Real compensation per hour has done nothing but increase. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  98 dollars in 2004 to 105 dollars now is a downward trend once you factor inflation.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    The data I cited already takes inflation into account. You can tell from the word "real" in the title of the series.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      My mistake. Still how much of this growth is hitting the poor and middle class as opposed to executives? My data excludes salaries above 100k.
6502nerdface 10y ago
I guess it will be hard to link such things causally to automation, specifically. I'm not an economist, but just speaking from the consensus that improvements to efficiency in the allocation of scarce capital should make everyone better off in a liberal economy (and even illiberal ones). Perhaps zooming out from the US to the whole world, it's more apparent that vast swathes of humanity have been lifted up in part by things like automation and freer trade. I suppose the US's experience is not typical of the world's... after ww2, the US alone was something greater than 50% of global gdp, and its manufacturing base equally huge in comparison. Life is good when you are so far on top, even for the common worker, who with minimal education and no experience could find a job that supported an owned home, a homemaking wife, kids, a car, and two vacations a year. A couple of decades of that, and it starts to seem normal. But it was always abnormal, a result of fortunate post-war circumstances, and now that the rest of the world is catching up, perhaps we are returning to normality.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Wage growth has been flat because compensation has shifted from wages to benefits. Real compensation per hour has done nothing but increase. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/COMPRNFB

cmdrfred 10y ago
98 dollars in 2004 to 105 dollars now is a downward trend once you factor inflation.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  The data I cited already takes inflation into account. You can tell from the word "real" in the title of the series.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    My mistake. Still how much of this growth is hitting the poor and middle class as opposed to executives? My data excludes salaries above 100k.

6502nerdface 10y ago

I guess it will be hard to link such things causally to automation, specifically. I'm not an economist, but just speaking from the consensus that improvements to efficiency in the allocation of scarce capital should make everyone better off in a liberal economy (and even illiberal ones). Perhaps zooming out from the US to the whole world, it's more apparent that vast swathes of humanity have been lifted up in part by things like automation and freer trade. I suppose the US's experience is not typical of the world's... after ww2, the US alone was something greater than 50% of global gdp, and its manufacturing base equally huge in comparison. Life is good when you are so far on top, even for the common worker, who with minimal education and no experience could find a job that supported an owned home, a homemaking wife, kids, a car, and two vacations a year. A couple of decades of that, and it starts to seem normal. But it was always abnormal, a result of fortunate post-war circumstances, and now that the rest of the world is catching up, perhaps we are returning to normality.