4 ms·

Couldn't find data for the 60s and 70s, but FRED data shows that median real wages were essentially flat from 1979 to 2015ish: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/serie

by sxyuan 5y ago

Couldn't find data for the 60s and 70s, but FRED data shows that median real wages were essentially flat from 1979 to 2015ish: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q The picture gets worse if you look at men only: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881900Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881900Q (The COVID spike should be ignored - low wage earners going unemployed skews the median.) Say what you will about gender equality, but societal expectations around men providing for the family still exist. This is also using a CPI adjustment that offsets steep increases in the price of necessities like housing, education, and healthcare with hedonic adjustments for higher quality cars, TVs, and phones. So the real picture is even worse than the data might suggest.

dwohnitmok 5y ago
> FRED data shows that median real wages were essentially flat from 1979 to 2015ish Yeah that makes sense. Precipitous drop in real wages since the 60s though is a pretty big claim that deserves quite a bit of scrutiny before just being accepted as brute fact. > offsets steep increases in the price of necessities like housing, education, and healthcare with hedonic adjustments for higher quality cars, TVs, and phones. Right but the offset is proportional to the monetary amount spent right (I also don't believe cars actually get a hedonic adjustment but I may be misremembering)? That is for steep increases in housing, education, and healthcare to be offset by hedonic adjustments in TVs and phones, roughly the same amount of money would be spent on housing, education, and healthcare, as on TVs and phones (or would need astronomically large hedonic adjustments). That being said housing, education, and healthcare have indeed seen steep inflation-adjusted increases in costs, but I interpret that to mean a widespread low rate of increase in costs for the rest of the basket, which includes clothing, food, and the like (which is not necessarily a good thing, it would probably be a good thing to say triple the price of electronics if that could result in healthcare costs staying stable).
- sxyuan 5y ago
  Cars and trucks get a "cost based adjustment": https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/ https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/ According to this, hedonic adjustments and cost based adjustments are two ways that the US BLS performs quality adjustments for the CPI: [pdf] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/quality-adjustment-price-programs-presentation.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/quality-adjustm... For a higher level view of how these adjustments may have impacted the CPI, along with changes within individual categories, this article presents a fairly balanced view: https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/#cpi https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/#cpi
  - dwohnitmok 5y ago
    Oooo that's a fantastic article. > Plus, wages have barely kept up with inflation, which is compounded by the fact that more education (and thus more student debt) is required on average to get those same inflation-adjusted wages. In other words, on an inflation-adjusted and education-cost-adjusted basis, median wages have decreased. is a pretty compelling take.
imtringued 5y ago
>Say what you will about gender equality, but societal expectations around men providing for the family still exist. Unpopular opinion. Demanding that women receive the same pay as men is the same as demanding that the man does not provide for the family. Demanding both is a double standard as men are forced to increasingly compete with someone they are supposed to support.

by sxyuan 5y ago

dwohnitmok 5y ago

> FRED data shows that median real wages were essentially flat from 1979 to 2015ish Yeah that makes sense. Precipitous drop in real wages since the 60s though is a pretty big claim that deserves quite a bit of scrutiny before just being accepted as brute fact. > offsets steep increases in the price of necessities like housing, education, and healthcare with hedonic adjustments for higher quality cars, TVs, and phones. Right but the offset is proportional to the monetary amount spent right (I also don't believe cars actually get a hedonic adjustment but I may be misremembering)? That is for steep increases in housing, education, and healthcare to be offset by hedonic adjustments in TVs and phones, roughly the same amount of money would be spent on housing, education, and healthcare, as on TVs and phones (or would need astronomically large hedonic adjustments). That being said housing, education, and healthcare have indeed seen steep inflation-adjusted increases in costs, but I interpret that to mean a widespread low rate of increase in costs for the rest of the basket, which includes clothing, food, and the like (which is not necessarily a good thing, it would probably be a good thing to say triple the price of electronics if that could result in healthcare costs staying stable).

sxyuan 5y ago
Cars and trucks get a "cost based adjustment": https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/ https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/ According to this, hedonic adjustments and cost based adjustments are two ways that the US BLS performs quality adjustments for the CPI: [pdf] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/quality-adjustment-price-programs-presentation.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/quality-adjustm... For a higher level view of how these adjustments may have impacted the CPI, along with changes within individual categories, this article presents a fairly balanced view: https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/#cpi https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/#cpi
- dwohnitmok 5y ago
  Oooo that's a fantastic article. > Plus, wages have barely kept up with inflation, which is compounded by the fact that more education (and thus more student debt) is required on average to get those same inflation-adjusted wages. In other words, on an inflation-adjusted and education-cost-adjusted basis, median wages have decreased. is a pretty compelling take.

imtringued 5y ago

>Say what you will about gender equality, but societal expectations around men providing for the family still exist. Unpopular opinion. Demanding that women receive the same pay as men is the same as demanding that the man does not provide for the family. Demanding both is a double standard as men are forced to increasingly compete with someone they are supposed to support.