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Forget flying cars. If you ignore gadgets, things have gotten worse for the working and middle classes of most developed nations in the past 30 years. Wages ar
by api 10y ago
Forget flying cars.
If you ignore gadgets, things have gotten worse for the working and middle classes of most developed nations in the past 30 years. Wages are stagnant yet housing and other essential costs have exploded... largely due to asset price inflation driven by financial attempts to reinflate. The problem is that without wage inflation QE only makes housing more expensive.
People in the developed world would be happier with what they had 30 years ago: stable jobs, pensions, a house, infrastructure that is not crumbling.
- dv_dt 10y agoExactly! The average may be improving but for too many in the middle class in the US, progress has reversed. Work and earnings opportunity has been reduced, and the millennial generation onwards does not seem to have it better then the generation before.
- api 10y agoThe best description of what's happening that I've heard is "in-deflation." That's inflation in everything you need (housing, health care, education, etc.) and deflation in everything else including wages. It's basically a result of QE in a very soft labor market.
- return0 10y agoElegantly summarized by the elephant chart https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-27/get-ready-to-see-this-globalization-elephant-chart-over-and-over-again https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-27/get-ready...