- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
[P]erhaps the voters are sensible and the economists are obtuse. And perhaps the indicators on which economists rely no longer mean what economists suppose them to mean.
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The metrics are better, but the situation is worse. We’re also at an inflection point where things are starting to improve, but it still feels shitty overall.
Because Biden has been stabilizing things, but no one has attacked the problem of income inequity which has been rolling for decades. We’ve just gotten to the point that the inequity is truly affecting a ton of people.
Income inequality is actually improving in fairly unprecedented ways right now. That’s one of the metrics that the OP article for some reason feels it’s really important that we don’t look at.
The actual inflation-adjusted real wage growth at the bottom has been very strong, about 7 percent between January 2020 and November of this year. Compare that to the last 50 years, you’ll be hard-pressed to find that type of leveling up.
We’re seeing that because of the pandemic and post pandemic pressures, but income inequity has been growing for decades. A couple of years in the positive direction isn’t fixing it. And we’re already seeing businesses clawing that back with layoffs.
Pandemic pressure would naturally produce a historic rise in wages for low-income workers? Can you explain a little more?
A couple of years in the positive direction isn’t fixing it.
So we’re moving the goalposts from “things are getting worse” to “okay things are getting better in recently-unprecedented ways, but that’s not important right now”?
I mean, I do agree with you that a couple of years of good progress isn’t going to mean issues with the American economy are “fixed,” but I didn’t think that’s what we were talking about.
I’m saying the last couple of years is an illusion. As soon as things get back to normal economically, the inequity will continue its march.
And yes, mid to post pandemic saw rising wages. 1 million+ died, 3.5-4 million retired. When the restrictions loosened up, what was the big problem? “No one wants to work!!!” Because a lot of people took those relief checks and retrained themselves. When the low wage jobs could go back to normal, most of those former low wage workers had already found other, higher paying jobs. Eventually even the most stubborn restaurants or retail jobs raised wages to compete. Remember everyone complaining that low skilled McDonald’s workers making $15/hr? Or did you conveniently forget the last 4 years to argue with an idiot on the internet?
I’m saying the last couple of years is an illusion. As soon as things get back to normal economically, the inequity will continue its march.
And yes, mid to post pandemic saw rising wages. 1 million+ died, 3.5-4 million retired. When the restrictions loosened up, what was the big problem? “No one wants to work!!!” Because a lot of people took those relief checks and retrained themselves.
So… things will get back to inequality again, as soon as all those people un-retrain themselves, un-retire, and come back to life?
I’m mean, I’m partly kidding; I actually do think people straight-up dying or becoming disabled had a big unrecognized impact in wage growth, yes. But also, supply chain inflation and companies that went bust during the pandemic and didn’t come back, put some weight on the scale on the other side.
Biden’s policies created 700,000 new manufacturing jobs so far. We raised corporate taxes significantly and then put hundreds of billions of dollars back into domestic industry in a way that was specifically designed to create jobs. It would be weird if the impact of that was 0.
Let me ask this – if your assertion is that wages rising is just a natural response after Covid killed all these people and made the market tighter (if I’ve understood you right) – why hasn’t it happened that way in any other first world country within the same time frame? Pretty much all of them except the US have seen wages falling (or, have seen inflation rising fast enough to overpower the slight rise in wage growth).
Yeah. The numbers are moving historically faster, but that is because, in part, history has been so shitty.
I bet that these numbers would do better under Biden than Trump. It just happens to be that a decent size of the population doesn’t have the patience.
This was about the best article I’ve read about the matter. Cogent and articulate, if not insightful. Worth the read.
Did we read the same article?
I posted here with a more in depth look at what it’s saying, but TL;DR as far as I can tell its main theses are “please don’t listen to expert analysis of the economy” and “here are some ways economic metrics COULD be misleading, I will take no questions about whether they actually ARE misleading in this case, next topic pls.”
The author is an economics professor. This IS an expert analysis of the economy. It gave very clear and cogent reasons old metrics are not reliable any longer. Not sure what more you want
The author is an economics professor.
A lot of economics professors are wrong about a lot of things, famously so.
(Edit: Actually, a better way to say it. If I can find an economics professor or expert who outranks this guy, is more of an expert, who has the opposite opinion, does that cancel out what this guy says? Because that person’s an expert? That’s the problem with the appeal to authority.)
It gave very clear and cogent reasons old metrics are not reliable any longer.
No it didn’t. It gave very clear, cogent, and accurate reasons why these particular metrics (old or not) are sometimes not reliable. It made no effort to justify why they wouldn’t be reliable right now or why the reality differs from the indication of the metrics. Just “these metrics are imperfect, therefore the opposite of what they say must be true, QED.” Like I say I went into some detail in my other message, if you want to see.
And, the metrics the author tried to promote instead (on the rare occasions he was trying to promote anything in particular) were incredibly more flawed than the ones he was pointing out the limitations of. Again, I went into some detail in my other message.
If you’re planning to simply appeal to authority, like “well this guy’s a professor so you’re not allowed to think his argument is shit even if you can explain in detail why,” then we can end our conversation simply agreeing to disagree about how it works.
Friend, you made the appeal to authority when you said
TL;DR as far as I can tell its main theses are “please don’t listen to expert analysis of the economy”
I was just pointing out that this person is of equal authority.
I don’t really care to argue with you as there is no real point. You’re either in way too deep to be convinced or you are astroturfing for the DNC or some other political org. I think it is just the former, but the more times I see your comments saying a lot of the same things and vehemently defending Biden, I am beginning to wonder.
Oh, and I read your other comment, but I always doubt someone’s intent when they are asking folks to go outside beehaw for a comment. Often times that is to lure folks somewhere with fewer rules. Again, I don’t think that is what you are trying to do, but also again I have seen you do it a couple times which gives me a kernal of doubt.
Anyhow, have a good evening.
I posted an incredibly detailed layout of what I think of this guy’s analysis and why I think it’s crap, and invited you to talk about it with me if you’d like.
You could have saved yourself some typing just by saying “no, I don’t want to do that.” You don’t need to justify. Cheers as well.
