31 ms·

Well, yes and no. The wealthy have not experienced a hard landing, and at the same time, the wealth inequality has never been greater. An entire generation now

Well, yes and no. The wealthy have not experienced a hard landing, and at the same time, the wealth inequality has never been greater. An entire generation now has no prospects of buying a house, even renting is hard, etc.

drewcoo 3y ago
"The economy" is solely a measure of how rich people are doing financially. Any other concerns aren't captured there no matter how important we keep saying they are. I think we ought to track a "bloody revolution index" but that would probably just give people ideas.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  Which is exactly why the things that are tracked are the things that are. To keep from giving people ideas. I mentioned this not long ago, but by far most people don't know when GDP began to be calculated, plus how & why it got to be that way then, and the way it is now.
Phiwise_ 3y ago
I don't know where you got this impression from, but that's not what the official data says. In relative terms, the bottom 50% hold a larger share of the total net worth than they have since 2003 (ignoring the obviously temporary Cantillon spike), which is over 5 times as much as they did in 2011, and finally comfortably above 50% of their record in 1993 (since 1990) [1]. In absolute terms, they hold twice as many real dollars as they did in 1990 [2], which they got to through the largest relative spike and smallest relative fall of all the tracked tranches. Meanwhile the relative wealth of the two rich segments of 99-100 and 90-99 have been flat for a decade and hardest-landed slightly above the all time low in 1996 [3]. It's truly remarkable to me that people don't remember just how bad things used to be. It's not even been eighteen years; what's the excuse for such short institutional memory? I even doubled the standard graph height and it still pretty much disappears both absolutely and relatively. Or perhaps the talking points are just a little under eighteen years out of date? In that case, there's some good news on the horizon: The yield curve has risen dangerously close to un-inverted [0], which has precipitated or tracked with every recession since the mid 50s, and will probably rise more soon as the market prices back out Powell's flinch in the face of thirty-five months of inflation over 3%; the poor usually take it on the chin the hardest during malinvestment blowups as they scramble to underbid each other for the remaining jobs that didn't fold under the weight of unprofitable compassion, so we can expect the reality of poverty to give wealth inequality rhetoric a comeback. Give it two good years and we can all join Alan Kay in complaining about "That [second] time the bankers stole all our money" once again when the data refresh our memories on just how bad they can get. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317951 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317951 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317969 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317969 [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317984 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317984 [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y
- leereeves 3y ago
  And yet: > 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009. https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highest-2009.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highe... I suspect cash flow and the price of expensive purchases like cars and homes matters a lot more to working people than total share of net worth.
  - Phiwise_ 3y ago
    If you had read my graph before commenting, you would have noticed that the bottom 50% had 1.289 million millions in Q3 2022, and have 1.189 million millions in Q3 2023, which is indeed a smaller number. You should also be aware that consumer sentiment surveys that drill down into concrete sentiments usually find consumers are very negative about the current price of durables, which are indeed quite high compared to historically [1]. They also tend to come down slowly without a inciting crash. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUS0000SAD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUS0000SAD
    - leereeves 3y ago
      I'm not commenting to dispute your numbers, which I trust are correct. I'm considering the possibility that the measures you've chosen don't reflect the impact of the economy on people's lives. As GP said "entire generation now has no prospects of buying a house, even renting is hard, etc.". You've convinced me that the phrase "wealth inequality" is a ghost of the past, a lingering rally cry from 2011, when wealth inequality truly was historically high. We need a new term for the current situation. The data shows that the wealth of the bottom 50% has recovered - but their lifestyles and happiness have not.
      - TMWNN 3y ago
        >We need a new term for the current situation. The data shows that the wealth of the bottom 50% has recovered - but their lifestyles and happiness have not. "The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-212315127.html https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>

drewcoo 3y ago

"The economy" is solely a measure of how rich people are doing financially. Any other concerns aren't captured there no matter how important we keep saying they are. I think we ought to track a "bloody revolution index" but that would probably just give people ideas.

fuzzfactor 3y ago
Which is exactly why the things that are tracked are the things that are. To keep from giving people ideas. I mentioned this not long ago, but by far most people don't know when GDP began to be calculated, plus how & why it got to be that way then, and the way it is now.

Phiwise_ 3y ago

I don't know where you got this impression from, but that's not what the official data says. In relative terms, the bottom 50% hold a larger share of the total net worth than they have since 2003 (ignoring the obviously temporary Cantillon spike), which is over 5 times as much as they did in 2011, and finally comfortably above 50% of their record in 1993 (since 1990) [1]. In absolute terms, they hold twice as many real dollars as they did in 1990 [2], which they got to through the largest relative spike and smallest relative fall of all the tracked tranches. Meanwhile the relative wealth of the two rich segments of 99-100 and 90-99 have been flat for a decade and hardest-landed slightly above the all time low in 1996 [3]. It's truly remarkable to me that people don't remember just how bad things used to be. It's not even been eighteen years; what's the excuse for such short institutional memory? I even doubled the standard graph height and it still pretty much disappears both absolutely and relatively. Or perhaps the talking points are just a little under eighteen years out of date? In that case, there's some good news on the horizon: The yield curve has risen dangerously close to un-inverted [0], which has precipitated or tracked with every recession since the mid 50s, and will probably rise more soon as the market prices back out Powell's flinch in the face of thirty-five months of inflation over 3%; the poor usually take it on the chin the hardest during malinvestment blowups as they scramble to underbid each other for the remaining jobs that didn't fold under the weight of unprofitable compassion, so we can expect the reality of poverty to give wealth inequality rhetoric a comeback. Give it two good years and we can all join Alan Kay in complaining about "That [second] time the bankers stole all our money" once again when the data refresh our memories on just how bad they can get. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317951 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317951 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317969 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317969 [3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317984 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?graph_id=1317984 [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y2Y

leereeves 3y ago
And yet: > 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009. https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highest-2009.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highe... I suspect cash flow and the price of expensive purchases like cars and homes matters a lot more to working people than total share of net worth.
- Phiwise_ 3y ago
  If you had read my graph before commenting, you would have noticed that the bottom 50% had 1.289 million millions in Q3 2022, and have 1.189 million millions in Q3 2023, which is indeed a smaller number. You should also be aware that consumer sentiment surveys that drill down into concrete sentiments usually find consumers are very negative about the current price of durables, which are indeed quite high compared to historically [1]. They also tend to come down slowly without a inciting crash. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUS0000SAD https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUUS0000SAD
  - leereeves 3y ago
    I'm not commenting to dispute your numbers, which I trust are correct. I'm considering the possibility that the measures you've chosen don't reflect the impact of the economy on people's lives. As GP said "entire generation now has no prospects of buying a house, even renting is hard, etc.". You've convinced me that the phrase "wealth inequality" is a ghost of the past, a lingering rally cry from 2011, when wealth inequality truly was historically high. We need a new term for the current situation. The data shows that the wealth of the bottom 50% has recovered - but their lifestyles and happiness have not.
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      >We need a new term for the current situation. The data shows that the wealth of the bottom 50% has recovered - but their lifestyles and happiness have not. "The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-212315127.html https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>