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Rent/housing, education and insurance of all varieties and transportions wipe out all these gains in actual income. You get some of it back in the form of food
by altcognito 6y ago
Rent/housing, education and insurance of all varieties and transportions wipe out all these gains in actual income.
You get some of it back in the form of food costs and energy costs which are relatvely low.
On paper you're absolutely right. On paper even the poorer amongst should be better off than they would have been in 1990.
- bhupy 6y agoThese income gains are inflation adjusted, and about half the entire weight of most inflation indexes is just housing, education, and health care costs: https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1308799186301747200 https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2019.txt Even if housing costs have gone up more than overall inflation, other things have fallen, and OVERALL inflation rate is the best rough measure of "cost of living". There's some disagreement around whether we should use CPI-U, CPI-W, or PCE — CPI-W underweights housing, for eg — but importantly, the median income has increased since 1981 regardless of the choice of index. The median total compensation has increased since WW2 regardless of the choice of index.