6 ms·

Depends on where you are standing. The best metaphor I've seen for the world these days is Scott Adams' about us watching two different movies in parallel at t

Depends on where you are standing. The best metaphor I've seen for the world these days is Scott Adams' about us watching two different movies in parallel at the same time. It's equally possible to look at the same world, and see that business is booming, the stock market is at record highs, employers are hiring and making investments at rates we haven't seen in years. Tension in areas of the world that have been problematic my entire life appear to be on the ebb at the moment. Maybe it's a regional thing... But things are looking pretty fricking awesome over on this side of the fence.

gfodor 8y ago
You can go a long way towards flipping between these parallel universes by logging in and logging out of social media.
prolikewh0a 8y ago
You're looking at things from the side of the elite and I absolutely agree, that side of the fence looks fantastic. Business is booming for the elite, the stock market is almost entirely owned by the top 10%[1] so nobody is really seeing those gains except people who already have plenty, employers are hiring but nobody has really seen a wage increase since the 90's[2] and wages are actually slightly falling[3]. Where's the bargaining power as we close in on full employment? It's nowhere to be found, and conditions are getting worse for the people who do the work. [1] http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/ http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ric... [2] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/11/hillary-clinton/debate-hillary-clinton-says-americans-havent-had-r/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-the-biggest-group-of-american-workers-wages-arent-just-flat-theyre-falling/?utm_term=.13c656824069 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t...
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > wages are actually slightly falling According to your source wages fell, in real terms, between May 2017 and May 2018 by 0.1%. They're up from 5 years ago, up from 10 years ago and way up from 50 years ago. The principal cause of that real decline was gas prices rising unexpectedly.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    Are you adjusting for inflation? Most Americans haven't seen any real wage growth when adjusted for inflation since the 70's. If they have seen real income growth, it has been extremely small. Wages have actually dropped since 1970 for the bottom 40% when adjusted for inflation. https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-income-is-hiding-a-chilling-fact-2017-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-inco...
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > Are you adjusting for inflation? Yes. "Without adjusting for inflation, these 'nonsupervisory' workers saw their average hourly earnings jump 2.8 percent from last year. But that was not enough to keep pace with the 2.9 percent increase in inflation, which economists attributed to rising gas prices" [1]. > Most Americans haven't seen any real wage growth when adjusted for inflation since the 70's This is not true for people employed full time [2]. Real hourly wages for hourly nonfarm workers [3] are up. About the only people I can find who are earning less, in real terms, than they were in the 1970s are manufacturing workers, and even they are up over the last decade. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-the-biggest-group-of-american-workers-wages-arent-just-flat-theyre-falling/?utm_term=.216350778033 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [3] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t01.htm
- gfodor 8y ago
  I mean the question you need to be asking is if things are getting better or getting worse. A year ago, you would have included "nobody is hiring" in your list of criticisms, but now you are forced to say "employers are hiring, but...." Clearly improvements in the things you mention can't happen overnight. But improving the availability of jobs and having the stock market going up instead of crashing are objectively better than the opposite. The article you cite explains that the net loss of YoY wages was entirely due to inflation, and in nominal terms wages actually increased YoY, and it also cherry picks the "production and nonsupervisory" group of workers (inflation adjusted wages for all workers actually increased) -- so its somewhat dishonest to not clarify those aspects. Inflation adjustments are also a notoriously tricky business, and without delving into the details of what inflation metric was used, and if it was applied on a region-by-region basis, hair splitting over the effects of inflation on wages to drive a narrative around wage growth (when the direction is generally "upwards") seems wrong. You seem to be looking for reasons to explain why the trajectory of the US economy is negative, but I'm afraid that the evidence is mounting that wage growth and job opportunities should be expected to improve over time going forward, absent some new financial crisis. edit: Also worth mentioning: staring at medians around wages is, imho, missing an critical aspect to understanding the actual experience of participants in the economy: income mobility. There's evidence that upward mobility has been stable despite an increase in point-in-time income inequality [1]. The question we should be asking is if income inequality at a point-in-time is necessarily bad if participants in the economy have ample opportunity to move up to higher levels of income. I don't have the answer to this, but any arguments about wage growth or income inequality need to take into account mobility, and they almost never do. https://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobility-no-tougher-in-u-s-than-two-decades-ago https://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobili...
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    Wage growth without accounting for inflation makes any wage growth insignificant. The lower 40% of Americans have seen NEGATIVE wage growth since the 1970's, and the 40%-60% of wage earners have seen a measly 0.5% increase since the 1970's when adjusted for inflation [1] Stock market is entirely irrelevant for most of Americans [2] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-income-is-hiding-a-chilling-fact-2017-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-inco... [2] http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/ http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ric...
efa 8y ago
I don't understand the down voting of comments like this. Is there something controversial here?
- megaman22 8y ago
  For some, it's heresy to express such opinions, and confirmation that the speaker of such blasphemy is a no-good terrible person.

gfodor 8y ago

You can go a long way towards flipping between these parallel universes by logging in and logging out of social media.

prolikewh0a 8y ago

You're looking at things from the side of the elite and I absolutely agree, that side of the fence looks fantastic. Business is booming for the elite, the stock market is almost entirely owned by the top 10%[1] so nobody is really seeing those gains except people who already have plenty, employers are hiring but nobody has really seen a wage increase since the 90's[2] and wages are actually slightly falling[3]. Where's the bargaining power as we close in on full employment? It's nowhere to be found, and conditions are getting worse for the people who do the work. [1] http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/ http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ric... [2] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb/11/hillary-clinton/debate-hillary-clinton-says-americans-havent-had-r/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/feb... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-the-biggest-group-of-american-workers-wages-arent-just-flat-theyre-falling/?utm_term=.13c656824069 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t...

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> wages are actually slightly falling According to your source wages fell, in real terms, between May 2017 and May 2018 by 0.1%. They're up from 5 years ago, up from 10 years ago and way up from 50 years ago. The principal cause of that real decline was gas prices rising unexpectedly.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  Are you adjusting for inflation? Most Americans haven't seen any real wage growth when adjusted for inflation since the 70's. If they have seen real income growth, it has been extremely small. Wages have actually dropped since 1970 for the bottom 40% when adjusted for inflation. https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-income-is-hiding-a-chilling-fact-2017-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-inco...
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > Are you adjusting for inflation? Yes. "Without adjusting for inflation, these 'nonsupervisory' workers saw their average hourly earnings jump 2.8 percent from last year. But that was not enough to keep pace with the 2.9 percent increase in inflation, which economists attributed to rising gas prices" [1]. > Most Americans haven't seen any real wage growth when adjusted for inflation since the 70's This is not true for people employed full time [2]. Real hourly wages for hourly nonfarm workers [3] are up. About the only people I can find who are earning less, in real terms, than they were in the 1970s are manufacturing workers, and even they are up over the last decade. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-the-biggest-group-of-american-workers-wages-arent-just-flat-theyre-falling/?utm_term=.216350778033 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/15/for-t... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [3] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t01.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.t01.htm
gfodor 8y ago
I mean the question you need to be asking is if things are getting better or getting worse. A year ago, you would have included "nobody is hiring" in your list of criticisms, but now you are forced to say "employers are hiring, but...." Clearly improvements in the things you mention can't happen overnight. But improving the availability of jobs and having the stock market going up instead of crashing are objectively better than the opposite. The article you cite explains that the net loss of YoY wages was entirely due to inflation, and in nominal terms wages actually increased YoY, and it also cherry picks the "production and nonsupervisory" group of workers (inflation adjusted wages for all workers actually increased) -- so its somewhat dishonest to not clarify those aspects. Inflation adjustments are also a notoriously tricky business, and without delving into the details of what inflation metric was used, and if it was applied on a region-by-region basis, hair splitting over the effects of inflation on wages to drive a narrative around wage growth (when the direction is generally "upwards") seems wrong. You seem to be looking for reasons to explain why the trajectory of the US economy is negative, but I'm afraid that the evidence is mounting that wage growth and job opportunities should be expected to improve over time going forward, absent some new financial crisis. edit: Also worth mentioning: staring at medians around wages is, imho, missing an critical aspect to understanding the actual experience of participants in the economy: income mobility. There's evidence that upward mobility has been stable despite an increase in point-in-time income inequality [1]. The question we should be asking is if income inequality at a point-in-time is necessarily bad if participants in the economy have ample opportunity to move up to higher levels of income. I don't have the answer to this, but any arguments about wage growth or income inequality need to take into account mobility, and they almost never do. https://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobility-no-tougher-in-u-s-than-two-decades-ago https://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265356290/study-upward-mobili...
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  Wage growth without accounting for inflation makes any wage growth insignificant. The lower 40% of Americans have seen NEGATIVE wage growth since the 1970's, and the 40%-60% of wage earners have seen a measly 0.5% increase since the 1970's when adjusted for inflation [1] Stock market is entirely irrelevant for most of Americans [2] [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-income-is-hiding-a-chilling-fact-2017-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/record-median-household-inco... [2] http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/ http://time.com/money/5054009/stock-ownership-10-percent-ric...

efa 8y ago

I don't understand the down voting of comments like this. Is there something controversial here?

megaman22 8y ago
For some, it's heresy to express such opinions, and confirmation that the speaker of such blasphemy is a no-good terrible person.