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Under Biden, U.S. economic growth becomes the ‘envy of the world’ (www.msnbc.com)
submitted 5 months ago by mozz@mbin.grits.dev to c/usnews@beehaw.org
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[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Boy do I have some good news for you

The nation’s unemployment rate has sat below 4 percent for more than two years now, the longest such streak since the 1960s. With labor markets persistently tight, low-income workers have finally secured some leverage over their employers, and wage inequality has fallen as a result.

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 12 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Nice! How have wages at these new jobs been stacking up with inflation?

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Don't be deceived. This person is misrepresenting statistics.

Here's the link they provided me about their claims about the low-end wage growth:

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/

This is where they're getting their 35% claims from.

And here's what it says under Key Findings:

Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that's me, Mr. Deceptive, over here explaining what the cumulative wage growth is, and the cumulative inflation, so that people can compare the two and see which one is higher

I actually originally cited the source which simply said that inflation-adjusted wages had grown by 12%, incorporating both into a single number, but that led to a certain amount of confusion, so I separated it out into the two relevant numbers

You know, like a terribly deceptive person would do

(And yes, the poorest 10% of this country is still fucked and needs quite a lot of help. My point was not that they're doing okay now, it was that they have seen substantial gains relative to where they were, which is a notable thing, and that we should keep doing the things that got them going in the right direction for once in God knows how long.)

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

So let me ask, if the actual people are "still fucked", why post articles claiming that our economy is the "envy of the world"?

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I feel like we've been over this at this point

  1. There are quite a lot of countries where the poorest 10% are fucked. The US isn't unique in that respect
  2. A lot of countries are struggling to hold their heads above water at all, after the Covid apocalypse; the fact that by almost any metric you want to choose, the US is actually gaining right now puts it in an enviable position given what happened
  3. The fact that the average worker, and the poorest 10% worker, are both making gains of significant size when usually they are the first ones to get fucked even harder when times are tough, is notable, and "we haven't fixed things for them yet or even close to it" doesn't negate that

Pick any or all

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Wait, are "times tough", or are we in a "great" position, economically? I can't keep up.

But in all seriousness, this all boils down to a simple truth:

Low and middle-class workers today are in far worse positions than our parents' generation(s).

We can't afford homes. We can't afford childcare. We can't afford healthcare. Many of us can't even afford food consistently.

That is where we are at, bottom-line.

Arguing about percentage gains among certain groups belies the fact that this is a shitty economic system, that funnels money upwards.

Do we sometimes claw back a few steps? Sure. But praising the 2 steps forward, while ignoring the previous 10 steps back, just comes across as caping for it.

One particularly depressing graph is home ownership among Millennials. As of 2019, that number sits at 43.3%. But in the year 2000, that number was 20%. The oldest millennials were born in 1981, which means they were 19 years old in 2000.

So at minimum, HALF of the Millennials who own homes now, were rich kids who had their homes bought for them as highschool grads. And that was just the ones literally born in 1981-82. How many of the new millennial home owners are just rich kids who were younger millennials?

This economy is fucked.

I'm sure boiling frogs appreciate when you reduce the heat by a couple degrees, but it doesn't mean they're in a good position.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Dude you're putting up a spirited drive towards this conclusion you are trying to bolster. Sure. One more message maybe.

I don't actually disagree with anything you just said. There are two ways to look at that bleak reality.

  1. One way to look at it is, hey, let's look at which direction things have been moving recently, and try to do more of the things that produce gains and less of the things that produce losses, because it's pretty fuckin urgent to fix all that.
  2. The other way it to move the goalposts allllllll the way from "wages never caught up with the giant price jumps from the pandemic" to implicitly blaming Biden for everything that's happened throughout generations of neoliberal betrayal of the American dream, as a way of disagreeing with an article which is accurately describing some notable successes for the people most in need of help right now including wages catching up and exceeding the giant price jumps from the pandemic

I'm not into the idea of indefinitely disagreeing with every new location you wanna move the goalposts to. I will agree with you about how fucked things are on a generational time-scale, and the urgency of fixing it.

Which is why I like identifying honestly when and why things are moving in the right direction

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

implicitly blaming Biden for everything that’s happened throughout generations of neoliberal betrayal of the American dream

No dude, I have literally blamed Biden for nothing. He has no blame, but also no credit, because he doesn't control the economy.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

New goalposts I do not have time for but fortunately there are a couple of articles which go into why this is wrong pretty comprehensively.

Edit: TL;DR in addition to normal interest-rate stuff and etc, he raised corporate tax by around a trillion dollars which he then sank into among other things domestic manufacturing and infrastructure, and he staffed the NLRB with actual labor people which enabled them to support a lot of these union fights which have been winning gains recently

I keep saying I don’t have time and then you keep suckering me into swinging at wherever the new goalposts are. That’s really it though

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It's one of those cruel ironic twists. Wages actually have increased, but inflation has far outpaced them.

It's only barely begun to level back out. The real question is if the wages will stay high once inflation (and greedflation) calms the fuck down.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Don't be deceived. This person is misrepresenting statistics.

Here's the link they provided me about their claims about the low-end wage growth:

https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/

This is where they're getting their 35% claims from.

And here's what it says under Key Findings:

Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah that's me, Mr. Dishonest, over here explaining what the cumulative wage growth is, and the cumulative inflation, so that people can compare the two and see which one is higher

I actually originally cited the source which simply said that inflation-adjusted wages had grown by 12%, incorporating both into a single number, but that led to a certain amount of confusion, so I separated it out into the two relevant numbers

You know, like a terribly dishonest person would do

(And yes, the poorest 10% of this country is still fucked and needs quite a lot of help. My point was not that they're doing okay now, it was that they have seen substantial gains relative to where they were, which is a notable thing, and that we should keep doing the things that got them going in the right direction for once in God knows how long.)

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 3 points 5 months ago

inflation has far outpaced them

This actually isn't fully true -- inflation hasn't outpaced wages at the bottom end, and the only place it's "far" outpaced them is at the top. (The Vox article talks about more details about how and why)

  • Cumulative inflation from 2019 to 2023 is about 18% (which is fuckin massive, mostly due to the 2022 spike)

But then:

  • Wages at the bottom (10th percentile) in that time went up by about 35% in current dollars, well outpacing inflation
  • Median wages basically held steady with inflation, I think they're a couple percent behind it but basically the same as they were just with people unhappier when they look at their grocery bills
  • Wages at the top (90th percentile) actually didn't hold pace with that historic inflation; for those people their constant dollar wages have been falling, yes
[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 7 points 5 months ago

Exceeding it

It actually makes it a lot more remarkable - short summary is that wages at the bottom end have gone up by like 35% un adjusted, with some but not all of that gain being eaten up by inflation. Wages at the middle and the top have kept pace with inflation or fallen slightly relative to it.

Basically, wages have gone up hugely (especially at the bottom which I suspect is invisible to a lot of the Lemmy-reading and news-article-writing class since they’re in relatively okay tech savvy types of jobs), which was Biden’s doing, even in the face of huge inflation which wasn’t Biden’s doing. If it wasn’t for having to dig out from COVID we’d be in a historic economic boom right now.

(The Vox article I linked goes into some additional detail which I hadn’t been aware of about the inflation piece - TL;DR is that after Covid, Biden had to accept either inflation or unemployment, and he chose inflation where most of the neoliberal garbage that is our political class would have chosen unemployment.)