Yeah, it’s not great that some people are obscenely wealthy, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are getting poorer, we’re also getting richer, just more slowly than the very rich.
It takes a simple google search to show how bad those statistics are being collected today in the US. Both Trump administrations actively attacked funding and reporting of these statistics which hastened their existing decay. The powerful have a lot to gain from stats coming off sunnier than reality. Plus it doesn’t account for cost of living expenses or how income is distributed very well at all. It’s a blunt instrument that does little to show how the bottom half of American wage workers are actually struggling. I’m glad you seem to be doing well enough to defend this system, but most of the people I know are barely getting by and have nothing for retirement. If you look at generational wealth, the majority of younger Americans have far less wealth than our parents or grandparents did at our age. Fewer own houses or have the stability of a large savings account for emergencies. The costs of essentials like food, housing/rent, insurance (health/property,etc), and just about everything has gone up at a much higher clip than wages. The trends are going downward and it is a direct result of billionaires influence through “charitable foundation” spending and dark money. Read the book “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer and “The Network State” and other plans by the ultra rich to take more money and power from the majority and government assistance. Any gains regular people have made have come from collective action and technology inevitably creating some surplus, not trickle down from the rich. With climate change causing further disasters as insurance companies raise rates and deny coverage - it will only exasperate the issues. Not to mention the inevitable climate refugees that will be created. Trends may have improved at a macro level from industrialization over the last half a millennia, but the last 50 years have not been kind to poorer Americans.
how bad those statistics are being collected today in the US
Most of that data was collected outside of Trump’s terms, either under Biden or Obama, and the trend is consistent.
it doesn’t account for cost of living expenses
It uses “real” dollars, which accounts for inflation. So yes, it does.
Income distribution is irrelevant here, I’m looking at median incomes rising over time, relative to inflation. Musk or Bezos making billions doesn’t skew these numbers since they’re not mean numbers (average).
I could probably dig up some stats that break it down by income percentile, but I’m worried you’ll just reject it because it doesn’t fit your worldview. If you provide some evidence to back up your claims (not just income gap, that’s well known, but that people are becoming worse off), I’ll go dig through the data and see what I can find. But “things are actually getting better” don’t make headlines, so there’s a lot of rage bait to dig through.
most of the people I know are barely getting by and have nothing for retirement
Anecdotes aren’t statistics.
If you go back 50 years, people still didn’t save enough for retirement. Pensions largely filled in the gap there, but a lot of people still fell through the cracks. That’s largely not an income problem and more a priorities problem. Show me someone who doesn’t have enough for retirement and I can show you someone with a similar income who did. Even people with huge incomes often live paycheck to paycheck.
Obviously individual circumstances differ, but individual circumstances don’t define trends.
the majority of younger Americans have far less wealth than our parents or grandparents did at our age
Do you have sources to back any of this up?
Dark Money
That certainly happens, but stories like this are mostly rage bait.
Do you think companies suddenly got greedy recently? They’ve always been greedy, and have been screwing people over since time immemorial.
The reason things get more expensive isn’t because some capitalist decided to suddenly become more greedy, it’s because of supply and demand.
Things shot up in price during COVID for a number of reasons:
less supply due to supply chain disruption
more cash due to stimulus payments and less work expenses
more time at home, so people invested more in things to do at home
Yet people blame “those greedy capitalists” when really it’s consumer behavior largely driving up prices.
When the cause of higher prices is resolved, prices tend to return to normal. For example:
eggs were $5+/dozen at the start of the year and hard to find due to supply shortage from a bird flu epidemic, now they’re around $2.50 (both at my local Costco); that’s about where they were a year ago
houses in my area are dropping in price and staying on the market longer since construction is catching up
used cars were frequently more expensive than new back in 2022 or so, and now both new and used are largely in line with inflation adjusted 2019 figures (e.g. base model 2026 Prius is ~$30k, vs $25k MSRP for 2019, or ~$31k after inflation)
technology inevitably creating some surplus, not trickle down from the rich
I don’t know what you mean by “trickle down from the rich,” but things like technological change is funded by the rich. Reagan was certainly an idiot here, my point is merely that things get better partially because of investments by the rich. That generally doesn’t mean you make more money, but that you get more for your money (e.g. everyone seems to have smartphones now vs almost nobody 20 years ago).
climate change
This doesn’t seem related, not sure why you bring it up. If anything, it’ll create jobs since we’ll need people to build dikes, rebuild coastal homes, etc, at the cost of reduced GDP since it’s not actually productive work.
the last 50 years have not been kind to poorer Americans.
Afaik, no time is kind to poorer people. But I firmly believe poorer people are better off today than they were 50 years ago.
Wage stagnation is completely fucked, though, and housing and rent prices are shooting up at absurd rates all over the place. Every year comes a shitty raise that can’t keep up and companies pat themselves on the back for being so generous while their employees are effectively poorer than they were the year previous.
None of that talks about the fact that we can take care of everyone but the rich are hell-bent on taking as much as they can regardless of what it does to others. The true reason the US is the worst country on earth, in my opinion, is because there’s no reason why they need to be such a flaming dumpster fire full of dogshit but they are anyway just so a handful of the worst people in history can make little bit more money.
housing and rent prices are shooting up at absurd rates
They’re actually stabilizing and coming down a little in some areas, so I think we’re likely to see a bit of a correction now that construction seems to be catching up with demand.
But housing is also a major factor in inflation, which is why I linked inflation-adjusted figures. That data shows that wages are rising slowly relative to the prices of things. Some things will increase in price faster than others, so housing has been outpacing other things people spend money on. All that comes out in the wash in the averages.
we can take care of everyone
Right, and I agree with you.
My point is that despite all that, the average person is better off each year than they were the previous. There are obviously ups and downs, and each person is affected differently, but the median person generally does better each year. It’s easy to lose sight of that when we see prices going up w/ inflation, but it tends to work out.
It’s also easy to become complacent looking at small increments of gain while the wealthy consolidate power over international governments. The Trump administrations alone is a drastic ramping up of corruption and infliction of pain for regular people. The “big beautiful bill” is going to hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways. Many western nations like the UK and Australia are following suit on some levels. The rich have gained astronomically more wealth and power than the majority at levels higher than the gilded age. With AI and robots making such advances and that technology being firmly in their control, it’s more important than ever for people to stand in solidarity and push harder for a more equitable society. There’s a reason social media has been so weaponized with propaganda to divide us. Things are at a huge inflection point in history. The next couple decades are going to be very challenging for the majority of people.
The Trump administrations alone is a drastic ramping up of corruption
Agreed, and if opinion polls are to be believed, people are noticing.
The “big beautiful bill” is going to hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways.
I obviously haven’t read through the whole thing, but it’s honestly a lot more tame than I expected. It’s still horrible, but I’m much more worried about what Trump is doing outside of legislation, like messing with tariffs and deporting people.
With AI and robots making such advances and that technology being firmly in their control, it’s more important than ever for people to stand in solidarity and push harder for a more equitable society.
I don’t see what AI and robots have to with anything. Are you worried they’re going to take everyone’s jobs?
This sounds like the same FUD every time there’s a big tech change. People were worried the cotton gin would, automobile, and computers would kill jobs, yet here we are with relatively stable employment figures. Yes, it’ll cause change, but at the end of the day, businesses need consumers, so it’s in their interest to keep money circulating.
I agree we need to make changes, but that’s completely separate from recent innovations. I think we need something like UBI (my preference is to replace Social Security with a negative income tax), not because I’m worried about mass unemployment, but so we can increase innovation. Many people don’t pursue their ideas because they’re worried about putting food on the table.
Things are always at an inflection point. I’m more worried about the protectionist BS countries are doing today than anything involving AI.
That doesn’t match the stats I see, which is a pretty constantly increasing standard of living for the average person. Real median household income in the US had been consistently rising (here’s a bit longer term data). If the rich really are taking from everyone, surely we’d see those numbers go down, no?
Yeah, it’s not great that some people are obscenely wealthy, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are getting poorer, we’re also getting richer, just more slowly than the very rich.
It takes a simple google search to show how bad those statistics are being collected today in the US. Both Trump administrations actively attacked funding and reporting of these statistics which hastened their existing decay. The powerful have a lot to gain from stats coming off sunnier than reality. Plus it doesn’t account for cost of living expenses or how income is distributed very well at all. It’s a blunt instrument that does little to show how the bottom half of American wage workers are actually struggling. I’m glad you seem to be doing well enough to defend this system, but most of the people I know are barely getting by and have nothing for retirement. If you look at generational wealth, the majority of younger Americans have far less wealth than our parents or grandparents did at our age. Fewer own houses or have the stability of a large savings account for emergencies. The costs of essentials like food, housing/rent, insurance (health/property,etc), and just about everything has gone up at a much higher clip than wages. The trends are going downward and it is a direct result of billionaires influence through “charitable foundation” spending and dark money. Read the book “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer and “The Network State” and other plans by the ultra rich to take more money and power from the majority and government assistance. Any gains regular people have made have come from collective action and technology inevitably creating some surplus, not trickle down from the rich. With climate change causing further disasters as insurance companies raise rates and deny coverage - it will only exasperate the issues. Not to mention the inevitable climate refugees that will be created. Trends may have improved at a macro level from industrialization over the last half a millennia, but the last 50 years have not been kind to poorer Americans.
Most of that data was collected outside of Trump’s terms, either under Biden or Obama, and the trend is consistent.
It uses “real” dollars, which accounts for inflation. So yes, it does.
Income distribution is irrelevant here, I’m looking at median incomes rising over time, relative to inflation. Musk or Bezos making billions doesn’t skew these numbers since they’re not mean numbers (average).
I could probably dig up some stats that break it down by income percentile, but I’m worried you’ll just reject it because it doesn’t fit your worldview. If you provide some evidence to back up your claims (not just income gap, that’s well known, but that people are becoming worse off), I’ll go dig through the data and see what I can find. But “things are actually getting better” don’t make headlines, so there’s a lot of rage bait to dig through.
Anecdotes aren’t statistics.
If you go back 50 years, people still didn’t save enough for retirement. Pensions largely filled in the gap there, but a lot of people still fell through the cracks. That’s largely not an income problem and more a priorities problem. Show me someone who doesn’t have enough for retirement and I can show you someone with a similar income who did. Even people with huge incomes often live paycheck to paycheck.
Obviously individual circumstances differ, but individual circumstances don’t define trends.
Do you have sources to back any of this up?
That certainly happens, but stories like this are mostly rage bait.
Do you think companies suddenly got greedy recently? They’ve always been greedy, and have been screwing people over since time immemorial.
The reason things get more expensive isn’t because some capitalist decided to suddenly become more greedy, it’s because of supply and demand.
Things shot up in price during COVID for a number of reasons:
Yet people blame “those greedy capitalists” when really it’s consumer behavior largely driving up prices.
When the cause of higher prices is resolved, prices tend to return to normal. For example:
I don’t know what you mean by “trickle down from the rich,” but things like technological change is funded by the rich. Reagan was certainly an idiot here, my point is merely that things get better partially because of investments by the rich. That generally doesn’t mean you make more money, but that you get more for your money (e.g. everyone seems to have smartphones now vs almost nobody 20 years ago).
This doesn’t seem related, not sure why you bring it up. If anything, it’ll create jobs since we’ll need people to build dikes, rebuild coastal homes, etc, at the cost of reduced GDP since it’s not actually productive work.
Afaik, no time is kind to poorer people. But I firmly believe poorer people are better off today than they were 50 years ago.
Wage stagnation is completely fucked, though, and housing and rent prices are shooting up at absurd rates all over the place. Every year comes a shitty raise that can’t keep up and companies pat themselves on the back for being so generous while their employees are effectively poorer than they were the year previous.
None of that talks about the fact that we can take care of everyone but the rich are hell-bent on taking as much as they can regardless of what it does to others. The true reason the US is the worst country on earth, in my opinion, is because there’s no reason why they need to be such a flaming dumpster fire full of dogshit but they are anyway just so a handful of the worst people in history can make little bit more money.
They’re actually stabilizing and coming down a little in some areas, so I think we’re likely to see a bit of a correction now that construction seems to be catching up with demand.
But housing is also a major factor in inflation, which is why I linked inflation-adjusted figures. That data shows that wages are rising slowly relative to the prices of things. Some things will increase in price faster than others, so housing has been outpacing other things people spend money on. All that comes out in the wash in the averages.
Right, and I agree with you.
My point is that despite all that, the average person is better off each year than they were the previous. There are obviously ups and downs, and each person is affected differently, but the median person generally does better each year. It’s easy to lose sight of that when we see prices going up w/ inflation, but it tends to work out.
It’s also easy to become complacent looking at small increments of gain while the wealthy consolidate power over international governments. The Trump administrations alone is a drastic ramping up of corruption and infliction of pain for regular people. The “big beautiful bill” is going to hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways. Many western nations like the UK and Australia are following suit on some levels. The rich have gained astronomically more wealth and power than the majority at levels higher than the gilded age. With AI and robots making such advances and that technology being firmly in their control, it’s more important than ever for people to stand in solidarity and push harder for a more equitable society. There’s a reason social media has been so weaponized with propaganda to divide us. Things are at a huge inflection point in history. The next couple decades are going to be very challenging for the majority of people.
Agreed, and if opinion polls are to be believed, people are noticing.
I obviously haven’t read through the whole thing, but it’s honestly a lot more tame than I expected. It’s still horrible, but I’m much more worried about what Trump is doing outside of legislation, like messing with tariffs and deporting people.
I don’t see what AI and robots have to with anything. Are you worried they’re going to take everyone’s jobs?
This sounds like the same FUD every time there’s a big tech change. People were worried the cotton gin would, automobile, and computers would kill jobs, yet here we are with relatively stable employment figures. Yes, it’ll cause change, but at the end of the day, businesses need consumers, so it’s in their interest to keep money circulating.
I agree we need to make changes, but that’s completely separate from recent innovations. I think we need something like UBI (my preference is to replace Social Security with a negative income tax), not because I’m worried about mass unemployment, but so we can increase innovation. Many people don’t pursue their ideas because they’re worried about putting food on the table.
Things are always at an inflection point. I’m more worried about the protectionist BS countries are doing today than anything involving AI.