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> To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since then has been an ever-tighter

> To put it another way: The author happened to be born very close to the peak for average Americans' wages, and every year since then has been an ever-tighter vice squeeze between declining wages and rising rents (in both the real estate and economic senses of the term) Yeah... This isn't true. You can see the data here, among other places: https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/chart/17679/real-wages-in-the-unite.... The average real hourly wage is higher today than any time since 68 (which was the peak) and is about a dollar higher than the 90s. Note that this is the real hourly wage, so it's already inflation adjusted.

93po 6y ago
If this is true then why do I also see graphs showing that wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s? Is it possibly that this chart is using "average" rather than "median"? Housing is everyone's largest expensive and I feel like I've seen figures that show housing has a percentage of income is something like 2-3x higher than it was 50 years ago.
- will4274 6y ago
  > wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s This was true until 2019. Wages dropped in the late 70s and in the 80s, then went up in the 90s, spent the 00s mostly flat, and rose a little in the 10s. It took 50 years (until 2019) for them to go back up to the 1968 high. So "we've made no progress since 1970" economic quotes are mostly true, but "we've made no progress since 199x" economic quotes are mostly false.
- enriquec 6y ago
  post your charts, if you don't mind.
blululu 6y ago
Averages are not relevant for something as skewed as income distribution. As the Gino coefficient rises the average is increasingly dominated by a minority. The OP is most likely talking about wages for jobs that actually pay by the hour, which have gone down along with the minimum wage from its 1968 peak.

93po 6y ago

If this is true then why do I also see graphs showing that wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s? Is it possibly that this chart is using "average" rather than "median"? Housing is everyone's largest expensive and I feel like I've seen figures that show housing has a percentage of income is something like 2-3x higher than it was 50 years ago.

will4274 6y ago
> wages have declined in purchasing power since the 70s This was true until 2019. Wages dropped in the late 70s and in the 80s, then went up in the 90s, spent the 00s mostly flat, and rose a little in the 10s. It took 50 years (until 2019) for them to go back up to the 1968 high. So "we've made no progress since 1970" economic quotes are mostly true, but "we've made no progress since 199x" economic quotes are mostly false.
enriquec 6y ago
post your charts, if you don't mind.

blululu 6y ago

Averages are not relevant for something as skewed as income distribution. As the Gino coefficient rises the average is increasingly dominated by a minority. The OP is most likely talking about wages for jobs that actually pay by the hour, which have gone down along with the minimum wage from its 1968 peak.