The Real Reason No One Is Giving Biden Credit for How Good the Economy Is Right Now
The Real Reason No One Is Giving Biden Credit for How Good the Economy Is Right Now
Sharp and sustained economic criticism from Biden's ostensible allies established a narrative of failure that has proved alarmingly resistant to reality.
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You're ignoring previous inflation. Again. Wages beat inflation just this year. They are not higher relative to inflation over the last few years. They are certainly not higher relative to the wage-production split in the1970's.
Since the beginning of 2020 wages are down from inflation by seven points. And this is after decades of losing ground. Weasel wording the numbers from 2023 where wages beat inflation by 1 percent to gaslight people is disgusting.
Inflation-adjusted wages grew by 6% in 2020, 8% in 2021, and 6% in 2022. Here's the citation. Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale -- inflation-adjusted wages for the top 10% of earners actually fell by 5% from 2020-2022, meaning for the average to rise, quite a few of people in the lower percentiles saw their wages go up.
I suspect that a lot of the Lemmy community is tech people in that top 10%, which makes the anecdotal "IDK things are bad for me and my friends" resonate with them. And fair play if you want to say that's a problem, I won't say it's not.
But it seems like you're just trying to create a narrative that wages for everyone have gone down, because of stacked year-on-year inflation, that simply doesn't exist anywhere in the data, even in any given year in isolation. What are you saying was the change in wages that justifies what you're saying? Where are you getting your actual numbers and what are they?
This is Business Insider. You really need to check the sources. And the OECD chart they linked does not show what they claim. OECD has a table for real wage growth. It's not nearly as fun to read.
OECD: Annual average wage growth
OECD: Table N2. Real wage growth of average gross annual wages per full-time equivalent employee
Now those do stop in 2022, which also makes BI's assertion in 2024 kind of suspect.
- That's their old site, they have a new one that works better now.
- I'm not completely sure, but that looks to me like those are two different ways of measuring average income per person who's already full-time employed. Reducing unemployment won't have an impact on that number, nor will getting someone from a barely-scraping part time position into a higher-paying full time position (in fact the latter will actually bring that metric down, if the new position makes less than like $70k in 2024 dollars).
I think what you want to look at is something like Per capita income, inflation adjusted on the new site. It shows (in constant 2015 dollars):
- 2019: $52,070
- 2020: $50,024 (Covid takes wages down even with stimulus)
- 2021: $53,417 (+6.7%)
- 2022: $54,274 (+1.6%)
So, substantial growth of income overall, even after adjusting for cost of living. I don't know if those are the exact numbers BI used (seems like not) or what the numbers after 2022 look like, but this so far seems very consistent to me with the economic outlook getting better for people at the bottom, back to and better than pre-Covid, and offset partially but not completely by some wage loss for the people at the top. If you can find some more recent ones or ones that tell a different story, I'd be happy to look at them though.
Well substantial growth in Average terms at least. Per Capita is the literal Average, total divided by population. Which is why we talk about medians and modes. Now finding a mode is hilarious, much less for each year. But median is actually pretty available. When even the Fed can't make the line go up, you know there's a problem.
Here's the Fed showing a 15 percent gap in inflation and wages up to 2022. Median Income / Inflation Consumer Price
Why do you want to use household / family income instead of individual income? Median personal income in constant dollars is independent of any confounding factors and doesn't show the same drop; it shows no change at all.
And yes, I could see this being consistent with what I was talking about. I actually already sent you data points (the link text is "fell by 5%") showing the 10th, 50th (i.e. median), and 90th percentiles, which showed -1% change in real income at the 50th percentile. The census bureau numbers show +0.01% instead at the 50th percentile, but pretty similar.
All of that is consistent with a boost for the lowest earners, which is what I've been saying this entire time. "Most of that growth happened at the lowest-wage end of the scale" is how I phrased it.
Because until that data says IRS, it's far easier to collect household income, and far more applicable to things like rent and grocery costs. It doesn't matter if one person's income goes up, if the household income has gone down.
It doesn't matter if one person's income goes up
...
I'm comfortable ending the conversation here
Dunno what else to tell you man, but that's why so much is measured in household. And it's not hard to create that situation either. One person gets promotion and the other person loses their Covid tax stimulus. And honestly anything for 2023 numbers is still preliminary. The final reports for 2023 don't get published until the summer.
You said that wages had gone down because of inflation from previous years
Then when we looked at that, and determined it wasn't true, you said average doesn't count and we need to look at the median
Then when we broke it down into percentiles and showed that the median income was steady and income compared with inflation was going up at the bottom end of the pay scale, you started saying it needed to be by household instead of by individual
The average low-income person is now making more than they used to. They can buy more at the grocery store than they could even pre-Covid. To me, that is economic progress.
I think when you're 0 for 3, you don't get to keep the goalposts that you've now moved to the 4th location based on whatever logic you're using to justify income going up only matters if it's per household. You can think what you like about it though.
Then when we looked at that, and determined it wasn’t true, you said average doesn’t count and we need to look at the median
No you tried some bullshit article with bad data. I showed you the charts they should have used. And explained that the average is heavily skewed because of high earners. That makes it a bad measure. I dare you to find an actual Economist arguing we should be releasing the Average instead of the Median.
Then when we broke it down into percentiles and showed that the median income was steady and income compared with inflation was going up at the bottom end of the pay scale, you started saying it needed to be by household instead of by individual
You showed old data. And According to the Census 2022 Report, those gains are gone. We did actually decrease the Gini for the first time since 2007. Then we undid it. "However, the post-tax Gini index was 3.2% higher due to substantial declines in post-tax income among lower-income households."
And yes. We measure by household because that's how people live. Unless your prescription for financial troubles is to tell Grandma it's time for her kill herself.
The average low-income person is now making more than they used to. They can buy more at the grocery store than they could even pre-Covid. To me, that is economic progress.
You never showed anything to prove this. And the BLS Preliminary Reports for 2023 don't paint much of a rosier picture. Production and Non-Supervisory employees broke even with CPI-U in 2023.
The deal here is I do not have the time, mental power, or inclination, to teach you statistics in economics on a forum. There are free classes available online that are at your own pace. And saying I'm moving the goalposts is hilarious. You're the one who keeps looking for cherrypicked data to support your conclusions. I don't have goalposts except, Inflation still sucks. 5 years later, 10 years later, 50 years later. Wake me up when Biden comes out and says we need (checks inflation calculator) a $12.37 minimum wage.