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TLDR Not so simple. First, purchasing power is not considered. If wages are stagnant, but most consumer goods have gotten cheaper, then the bottom 50% with sta
by dreamdu5t 8y ago
TLDR Not so simple.
First, purchasing power is not considered. If wages are stagnant, but most consumer goods have gotten cheaper, then the bottom 50% with stagnant wages is capturing productivity gains.
Second, there’s no account for economic mobility. Wages for the bottom 50% are stagnant but most people don’t stay the same income all their life. There’s no account of economic mobility.
From the article: “As in the other panel studies, when you follow the same people, the biggest gains go to the poorest people. “
- irq11 8y agoThat is not the TLDR. The post is about cross-cohort vs. same-cohort comparisons. The argument is that if you follow the same people over time, the poor make the biggest percentage gains. Nothing in this is about inflation or prices of consumer goods. And in fact, inflation metrics take that into account.
- rconti 8y agothe beginning of the piece implies that inflation measures will be covered, but they're not. I thought TL;DR was supposed to be FOR people who didn't read it, not FROM people who didn't read it.
- rfugger 8y agoIf wages are stagnant with respect to the consumer price index, they are not capturing productivity gains, because the CPI accounts for lower prices on goods.
- michaelmrose 8y agoWhile health insurance captures an increasing share of the stagnant income.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bootlooped 8y agoThe benefit of the decrease in cost of some consumer goods is strongly handicapped by the fact that child care, health care and education have all gone up in price. I'm skeptical of how much economic mobility mitigates the fact that the top 1% controls so much wealth. If you randomly assigned every bank account to a different person you could also say that the poorest people had the most to gain by this, but things are just as unequal as before.