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Financial sentiment has collapsed over the last 50 years? No shit... Real wages have stagnated or declined. Barriers to entry for good careers have increases.

Financial sentiment has collapsed over the last 50 years? No shit... Real wages have stagnated or declined. Barriers to entry for good careers have increases. Entire industries have been outsourced, mainly effecting lower skilled workers. Workforce participation is extremely low. Multiple financial crises. A system built on consumerism that is dependent on almost free money not to crumble. If the system doesn't look like a house of cards, then I don't know what does...

eru 3y ago
> Real wages have stagnated or declined. Wages as a proportion of GDP, ie the so called 'labour share' has been relatively steady. If you believe that real GDP has increased, then real wages have increased. > Workforce participation is extremely low. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti... says it's about 62.5%.
- bendbro 3y ago
  Total real wages have gone up, while median real wages have stagnated. Your 62.5% labor force participation rate only aligns with the past if you completely discount women's unpaid and unaccounted work in the home and elsewhere. The male labor force participation rate has declined from around 90% to around 68%. Thanks to our glorious new economy instead of basically everyone getting a house, spouse, and kid, now many will rent, work and die. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001
  - eru 3y ago
    Huh? When women do stuff at home, you want to count that. Sure. But when men do stuff at home, you refuse to count that? > Total real wages have gone up, while median real wages have stagnated. An investigation of median wages can be interesting. The comment only talked about wages in general. > Thanks to our glorious new economy instead of basically everyone getting a house, spouse, and kid, now many will rent, work and die. The US doesn't build enough housing, yes. Though renting by itself isn't a problem, but that housing (whether rented or owned) has become less affordable. That's mostly because of various regulations (especially zoning) that limit how much developers can build. See eg https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Shortage-Recession-University/dp/1538122146 https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Shortage-Recession-Universit...
    - bendbro 3y ago
      Men don't do stuff at home which is evidenced by marriage rates and fertility declining. There is no home to do work in. > An investigation of median wages can be interesting. The comment only talked about wages in general Looking at it I find my claim is false. Median real wages have gone up (excluding the last 5 years or so). I could make an argument from inflation being wrongly calculated (due to stuff missing from the basket, or housing excluded, or shrinkflation, pick your poison) but I'm too stupid for that. Comparing CPI (which includes housing) to median nominal wages over the past 5 years, it shows cost growth has exceeded wage growth. This though doesn't hold further into the past. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
      - eru 3y ago
        Thanks for checking! Btw, many economist argue that CPI overstates inflation. Mostly because CPI has a relatively fixed basked, but people adjust what they are buying if relative prices shift. (Eg if bread becomes relatively more expensive than pasta, people buy less bread and more pasta. The CPI basket does not reflect that.) A modern alternative is to use the GDP deflator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator Basically, it means to use everything that got produced / consumed as the basket for your inflation measurement.
        bendbro 3y ago
        > if bread becomes relatively more expensive than pasta, people buy less bread and more pasta. The CPI basket does not reflect that That makes sense. But say bread at $1(2023) is objectively worse than pasta at $1(2023); is there any way to account for that? It seems like a generic form of shrinkflation: without holding the basket constant, how do we know we are getting the same value? To be fair, it could work the other way and the pasta at $1(2023) is better than the bread at $1(2023).
        eru 3y ago
- giantg2 3y ago
  "Wages as a proportion of GDP, ie the so called 'labour share' has been relatively steady. If you believe that real GDP has increased, then real wages have increased." Distribution is important. The high earners are the ones eating up the GDP increase. The middle class and lower class are mostly flat or negative. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ "says it's about 62.5%." Which is relatively low over the past 20 years, and somewhat low compared to other countries with strong economies.
  - eru 3y ago
    > Which is relatively low over the past 20 years, and somewhat low compared to other countries with strong economies. Maybe, but it's not 'extremely low'. See https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/labor_force_participation/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/labor_force_partic... for a global comparison. Yes, the distribution is important. Alas, the article that you linked is mostly rubbish. Eg their figure 2 is that infamous misleading graph that I commented on in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953586 They also seem to imply that minimum wage legislation is good for poor people. The evidence is mixed at best. (The original supporters for the introduction of minimum wage laws were more honest, and admitted that it was about cutting black people and cripples etc out of the workforce.) Figure 9 seems to forget that correlation ain't causation.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      "Eg their figure 2 is that infamous misleading graph that I commented on in" If it's so infamous, do you care to point to something explaining what is wrong with it? "They also seem to imply that minimum wage legislation is good for poor people." I wasn't discussing this point, but agree that it's mixed. "Figure 9 seems to forget that correlation ain't causation." Figure 9 is just data. Sure, the explaination that goes with figure 9 talks of it as causative. I haven't read the journal article that data comes from, so I can't objectively say if there is a causative mechanism in that study that supports the text or not (can you?). That figure isn't really part of what I was discusing, although it does demonstrate the increase in top earners (not as well as charts comparing it to the changes for other labor groups).
bendbro 3y ago
The best part about this comment is it could clock you as either far left or far right. You speak only facts that a "polite" person should ignore.

eru 3y ago

> Real wages have stagnated or declined. Wages as a proportion of GDP, ie the so called 'labour share' has been relatively steady. If you believe that real GDP has increased, then real wages have increased. > Workforce participation is extremely low. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-parti... says it's about 62.5%.

bendbro 3y ago
Total real wages have gone up, while median real wages have stagnated. Your 62.5% labor force participation rate only aligns with the past if you completely discount women's unpaid and unaccounted work in the home and elsewhere. The male labor force participation rate has declined from around 90% to around 68%. Thanks to our glorious new economy instead of basically everyone getting a house, spouse, and kid, now many will rent, work and die. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001
- eru 3y ago
  Huh? When women do stuff at home, you want to count that. Sure. But when men do stuff at home, you refuse to count that? > Total real wages have gone up, while median real wages have stagnated. An investigation of median wages can be interesting. The comment only talked about wages in general. > Thanks to our glorious new economy instead of basically everyone getting a house, spouse, and kid, now many will rent, work and die. The US doesn't build enough housing, yes. Though renting by itself isn't a problem, but that housing (whether rented or owned) has become less affordable. That's mostly because of various regulations (especially zoning) that limit how much developers can build. See eg https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Shortage-Recession-University/dp/1538122146 https://www.amazon.com/Shut-Out-Shortage-Recession-Universit...
  - bendbro 3y ago
    Men don't do stuff at home which is evidenced by marriage rates and fertility declining. There is no home to do work in. > An investigation of median wages can be interesting. The comment only talked about wages in general Looking at it I find my claim is false. Median real wages have gone up (excluding the last 5 years or so). I could make an argument from inflation being wrongly calculated (due to stuff missing from the basket, or housing excluded, or shrinkflation, pick your poison) but I'm too stupid for that. Comparing CPI (which includes housing) to median nominal wages over the past 5 years, it shows cost growth has exceeded wage growth. This though doesn't hold further into the past. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881500Q
    - eru 3y ago
      Thanks for checking! Btw, many economist argue that CPI overstates inflation. Mostly because CPI has a relatively fixed basked, but people adjust what they are buying if relative prices shift. (Eg if bread becomes relatively more expensive than pasta, people buy less bread and more pasta. The CPI basket does not reflect that.) A modern alternative is to use the GDP deflator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator Basically, it means to use everything that got produced / consumed as the basket for your inflation measurement.
      - bendbro 3y ago
        > if bread becomes relatively more expensive than pasta, people buy less bread and more pasta. The CPI basket does not reflect that That makes sense. But say bread at $1(2023) is objectively worse than pasta at $1(2023); is there any way to account for that? It seems like a generic form of shrinkflation: without holding the basket constant, how do we know we are getting the same value? To be fair, it could work the other way and the pasta at $1(2023) is better than the bread at $1(2023).
        eru 3y ago
giantg2 3y ago
"Wages as a proportion of GDP, ie the so called 'labour share' has been relatively steady. If you believe that real GDP has increased, then real wages have increased." Distribution is important. The high earners are the ones eating up the GDP increase. The middle class and lower class are mostly flat or negative. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ "says it's about 62.5%." Which is relatively low over the past 20 years, and somewhat low compared to other countries with strong economies.
- eru 3y ago
  > Which is relatively low over the past 20 years, and somewhat low compared to other countries with strong economies. Maybe, but it's not 'extremely low'. See https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/labor_force_participation/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/labor_force_partic... for a global comparison. Yes, the distribution is important. Alas, the article that you linked is mostly rubbish. Eg their figure 2 is that infamous misleading graph that I commented on in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38953586 They also seem to imply that minimum wage legislation is good for poor people. The evidence is mixed at best. (The original supporters for the introduction of minimum wage laws were more honest, and admitted that it was about cutting black people and cripples etc out of the workforce.) Figure 9 seems to forget that correlation ain't causation.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    "Eg their figure 2 is that infamous misleading graph that I commented on in" If it's so infamous, do you care to point to something explaining what is wrong with it? "They also seem to imply that minimum wage legislation is good for poor people." I wasn't discussing this point, but agree that it's mixed. "Figure 9 seems to forget that correlation ain't causation." Figure 9 is just data. Sure, the explaination that goes with figure 9 talks of it as causative. I haven't read the journal article that data comes from, so I can't objectively say if there is a causative mechanism in that study that supports the text or not (can you?). That figure isn't really part of what I was discusing, although it does demonstrate the increase in top earners (not as well as charts comparing it to the changes for other labor groups).

bendbro 3y ago

The best part about this comment is it could clock you as either far left or far right. You speak only facts that a "polite" person should ignore.