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This is bad journalism. It only tracks the incomes of percentiles - ignoring the fact that the composition of the percentiles changes - and without specifying

This is bad journalism. It only tracks the incomes of percentiles - ignoring the fact that the composition of the percentiles changes - and without specifying if that's earned or total income... This is how they came to the conclusion that only the 1% saw real wage gains - in spite of that being extremely misleading. As a group of workers, some of the lowest paid service sectors like hotel workers and restaurant workers saw some of the biggest real wage gains [1, 2]. The article even acknowledges that the 0.1% is the only group that saw significant real wage gains. The composition of this group is highly volatile - as it's almost exclusively from capital gains. Pretty much everyone except a lucky few are losing to wreckless government spending and needlessly low interest rates that caused malinvestment for 2 years. But this comment will get downvoted because it goes against the narrative that the reason you don't own a yacht is because Bill Gates and the Billionaires are taking all your money instead of the government is taking 40%+ of your money (more the lower your income) and spending 50% more money on debt (causing inflation / your wages to get lower in real terms), and not having much to show for it... Oh, well. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/22/many-u-s-workers-are-seeing-bigger-paychecks-in-pandemic-era-but-gains-arent-spread-evenly/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/22/many-u-s-wo... [2] https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker?panel=1 https://www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker?panel=1

jimbob45 4y ago
I don't think you're wrong. The article refers to "the top 1%" but doesn't definitely specify if it means the top 1% of wealth holders or the top 1% of actual workers. If it's wealth holders, then we would expect their gains to mostly come from investment, which are gains that are (theoretically) accessible to everyone. If it's workers, then where are they drawing the line? Do C-suite execs and owners with company stock count toward compensation? Does that really fit the spirit of "wages"?
Mikeb85 4y ago
> hotel workers and restaurant workers saw some of the biggest real wage gains Yeah, after a significant amount of them left the industry after seeing wages go to zero for an extended period, several times in some places.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  I suppose you could apply that to the "top 1%" group as well .. people are constantly entering and leaving that category.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Only when it comes to wages. When it comes to wealth, the 1% of wealth arrive there and stay there (their families) for centuries... The 1% from wages is their high-level employees That said, I pretty much doubt the 1% of wages is that volatile too...
    - Retric 4y ago
      People tend to fall out of top 1% income earners for all kinds of things like retirement. However, for a great many things it’s lifetime earnings or wealth that matter. A billionaire who lost money this year isn’t the same as a poor person.
richbell 4y ago
> As a group of workers, some of the lowest paid service sectors like hotel workers and restaurant workers saw some of the biggest real wage gains [1]. Not to ignore your other point, but an 18.4% increase (to $482 a week) is only a big number if you ignore that many were and still are making peanuts. Someone making significantly more receiving a 5 or 10 percent increase will receive substantially more "real wage gain" — and that's the point of the OP. In terms of real money, the top 1% and 0.1% receive a far larger slice of the pie. > That tracks with a 40-year-long trend of wages for the top 1% and 0.1% rising by 206.3% and 465.1%, respectively, between 1979 and 2021, while wages for the bottom 90% grew by a far more modest 28.7%.
- saurik 4y ago
  Sure, but to me the point of the comment you are responding to is that absolute wage gain is a pointless metric: the percentage increase is the correct metric, as it shows how "the pie" is being skewed.
  - richbell 4y ago
    Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but I don't see how a relative metric (percentage increase) that does not account for the existing disparity is 'correct'. If I make $7/hr and receive a 100% increase, and you make $100/hr and receive a 10% increase, things are still skewed in your direction.
    - gizmo686 4y ago
      Skewed is not a binary. Pre-raise, you made 7% of my salary. Post raise, you make 13% of my salary.
      - richbell 4y ago
        That's true, and perhaps a bad example in the context of the article. The difference is orders of magnitude, so not $7 vs $100 but $10,000+. But even in my prior example your wages are increasing more and faster, and are likely to continue increasing regularly compared to lower-earning jobs. It's also the distribution of that money: why does one person receive more than the hundreds or thousands of people that do the actual work? Percentage wage increase is a shallow metric that does not account for all these things, not to mention cost-of-living, inflation, assets, the ultra-wealthy not earning money via income or other comparable methods, etc.
sokoloff 4y ago
> without specifying if that's earned or total income... If they’re using total income and calling it “wages”, they’re just flat out lying IMO.
epivosism 4y ago
Very important point. it's like saying "the world series champions continued to have highly paid players and make a lot of money, more than ever before!" without mentioning that the identity of the championship team changes every year. I'm not saying the 1% turns over every year, but neither is it static as many common descriptions of it make it sound like.
CPLX 4y ago
> But this comment will get downvoted because it goes against the narrative that the reason you don't own a yacht is because Bill Gates and the Billionaires are taking all your money That narrative, edited to its actual substantive form, is clearly and obviously true, and that's why it's continuing to grow as a political force. The reality is that we stopped regulating corporate power, market domination, antitrust, and anti-competitive behavior about two generations ago. As a result, an increasingly dominant group of conglomerate companies are extracting rents and profits from every tiny corner of the internet. This manifests in things like the cost of insulin, rents being set by market collusion tools, rising fares and abysmal service as the number of major airlines is cut in half, concert tickets, and so on. But not just the obvious stuff, it's everywhere. There are monopolies leading to looting, poor service, and rent extraction in cheerleading leagues, pet hospitals, church software, hearing aids, portable toilets, and like everything else. Since this is a software focused crowd look up "Thoma Bravo" and familiarize yourself with the Solarwinds disaster. Learn about the role of private equity in the recent Lastpass debacle. And yes, the extracted profits from all this are accumulating with the billionaire and 100+ millionaire class. It's not a secret, it's obvious to basically any normal person trying to lead a normal life and people are mad about it.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  > This manifests in things like the cost of insulin, Insulin is capped at $35 for a 30-day supply starting 2023 (very soon). > rents being set by market collusion tools, This is relatively new, and the DoJ is already investing RealPage. Time will tell what happens. The reality is - renters have always been seen as second class citizens in the US - nothing is new here in the last two generations. > rising fares and abysmal service as the number of major airlines is cut in half, Airline tickets adjusted for inflation and gas prices are cheaper than ever. You get what you pay for. > concert tickets, These are one of the few things that went down in price recently...
dahart 4y ago
> the government is taking 40%+ of your money (more the lower your income) Rich people escaping taxes is definitely a big problem, but taxes aren’t the reason people are paid unlivably low wages in the first place. And a 40% tax rate is much lower than several other countries that happen to have much higher income equality than the US, right?

jimbob45 4y ago

I don't think you're wrong. The article refers to "the top 1%" but doesn't definitely specify if it means the top 1% of wealth holders or the top 1% of actual workers. If it's wealth holders, then we would expect their gains to mostly come from investment, which are gains that are (theoretically) accessible to everyone. If it's workers, then where are they drawing the line? Do C-suite execs and owners with company stock count toward compensation? Does that really fit the spirit of "wages"?

Mikeb85 4y ago

> hotel workers and restaurant workers saw some of the biggest real wage gains Yeah, after a significant amount of them left the industry after seeing wages go to zero for an extended period, several times in some places.

HPsquared 4y ago
I suppose you could apply that to the "top 1%" group as well .. people are constantly entering and leaving that category.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Only when it comes to wages. When it comes to wealth, the 1% of wealth arrive there and stay there (their families) for centuries... The 1% from wages is their high-level employees That said, I pretty much doubt the 1% of wages is that volatile too...
  - Retric 4y ago
    People tend to fall out of top 1% income earners for all kinds of things like retirement. However, for a great many things it’s lifetime earnings or wealth that matter. A billionaire who lost money this year isn’t the same as a poor person.

richbell 4y ago

> As a group of workers, some of the lowest paid service sectors like hotel workers and restaurant workers saw some of the biggest real wage gains [1]. Not to ignore your other point, but an 18.4% increase (to $482 a week) is only a big number if you ignore that many were and still are making peanuts. Someone making significantly more receiving a 5 or 10 percent increase will receive substantially more "real wage gain" — and that's the point of the OP. In terms of real money, the top 1% and 0.1% receive a far larger slice of the pie. > That tracks with a 40-year-long trend of wages for the top 1% and 0.1% rising by 206.3% and 465.1%, respectively, between 1979 and 2021, while wages for the bottom 90% grew by a far more modest 28.7%.

saurik 4y ago
Sure, but to me the point of the comment you are responding to is that absolute wage gain is a pointless metric: the percentage increase is the correct metric, as it shows how "the pie" is being skewed.
- richbell 4y ago
  Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but I don't see how a relative metric (percentage increase) that does not account for the existing disparity is 'correct'. If I make $7/hr and receive a 100% increase, and you make $100/hr and receive a 10% increase, things are still skewed in your direction.
  - gizmo686 4y ago
    Skewed is not a binary. Pre-raise, you made 7% of my salary. Post raise, you make 13% of my salary.
    - richbell 4y ago
      That's true, and perhaps a bad example in the context of the article. The difference is orders of magnitude, so not $7 vs $100 but $10,000+. But even in my prior example your wages are increasing more and faster, and are likely to continue increasing regularly compared to lower-earning jobs. It's also the distribution of that money: why does one person receive more than the hundreds or thousands of people that do the actual work? Percentage wage increase is a shallow metric that does not account for all these things, not to mention cost-of-living, inflation, assets, the ultra-wealthy not earning money via income or other comparable methods, etc.

sokoloff 4y ago

> without specifying if that's earned or total income... If they’re using total income and calling it “wages”, they’re just flat out lying IMO.

epivosism 4y ago

Very important point. it's like saying "the world series champions continued to have highly paid players and make a lot of money, more than ever before!" without mentioning that the identity of the championship team changes every year. I'm not saying the 1% turns over every year, but neither is it static as many common descriptions of it make it sound like.

CPLX 4y ago

> But this comment will get downvoted because it goes against the narrative that the reason you don't own a yacht is because Bill Gates and the Billionaires are taking all your money That narrative, edited to its actual substantive form, is clearly and obviously true, and that's why it's continuing to grow as a political force. The reality is that we stopped regulating corporate power, market domination, antitrust, and anti-competitive behavior about two generations ago. As a result, an increasingly dominant group of conglomerate companies are extracting rents and profits from every tiny corner of the internet. This manifests in things like the cost of insulin, rents being set by market collusion tools, rising fares and abysmal service as the number of major airlines is cut in half, concert tickets, and so on. But not just the obvious stuff, it's everywhere. There are monopolies leading to looting, poor service, and rent extraction in cheerleading leagues, pet hospitals, church software, hearing aids, portable toilets, and like everything else. Since this is a software focused crowd look up "Thoma Bravo" and familiarize yourself with the Solarwinds disaster. Learn about the role of private equity in the recent Lastpass debacle. And yes, the extracted profits from all this are accumulating with the billionaire and 100+ millionaire class. It's not a secret, it's obvious to basically any normal person trying to lead a normal life and people are mad about it.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
> This manifests in things like the cost of insulin, Insulin is capped at $35 for a 30-day supply starting 2023 (very soon). > rents being set by market collusion tools, This is relatively new, and the DoJ is already investing RealPage. Time will tell what happens. The reality is - renters have always been seen as second class citizens in the US - nothing is new here in the last two generations. > rising fares and abysmal service as the number of major airlines is cut in half, Airline tickets adjusted for inflation and gas prices are cheaper than ever. You get what you pay for. > concert tickets, These are one of the few things that went down in price recently...

dahart 4y ago

> the government is taking 40%+ of your money (more the lower your income) Rich people escaping taxes is definitely a big problem, but taxes aren’t the reason people are paid unlivably low wages in the first place. And a 40% tax rate is much lower than several other countries that happen to have much higher income equality than the US, right?