Americans are spending less on clothing

Re:Americans are spending less on clothing by adventured on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @11:17AM (#16325436)

That's refuted by the increases in US consumer spending while clothing expenditures are simultaneously falling.

You'll need to support your claims about the second item. Saying it, does not make it so.

Real disposable income is at an all-time high. Personal consumption expenditures are at an all-time high.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCE

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96

Americans are also spending less each year on soda. It's not because incomes are plunging 7% per year and they can't afford Coca Cola.

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Re:Americans are spending less on clothing by freejulian on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @12:18PM (#16326111)

I mean, my statements are pretty well documented at this point.

1) After adjusting for inflation, wages have fallen and rents have increased. They've been increasing at a pace of roughly 3% above inflation/year: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/new-census-data-show-rising-rents-...

Additionally, people aren't saving money like they use to. In fact, the savings rate is currently the lowest its been...ever: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

This is made obvious by the fact that the amount of actual dollars Americans have saved is also at the lowest point in history: https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-american-savings-statis...

Not sure what you're trying to show with your charts. Real DPI is merely a measure of dollars left over after taxes. Several issues with the Real DPI measurement: 1) it tells you nothing about the median household. 2) The inflation adjustments are optimistic -- who honestly believes inflation is less than 2%. 3) It doesn't change the fact that most of that after-tax income is going straight to either housing or healthcare.

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Re:Americans are spending less on clothing by vonmoltke on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @12:49PM (#16326420)

> After adjusting for inflation, wages have fallen and rents have increased. They've been increasing at a pace of roughly 3% above inflation/year:

Where in that link does it say per year? The text and the chart show a 4% rise above inflation total from 2007 to 2015. That rate of rise is in line with the numbers from last year[1] that show housing as a whole rose somewhere between 0.5% and 1% more than overall inflation.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/mobile/consumer-price-inde...

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Re:Americans are spending less on clothing by astura on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @11:45AM (#16325750)

I wonder what is counted as soda. I've noticed, among my ageing peer group, people are switching en mass to flavored carbonated water (seltzer). Of course, that might just be due to age, but I've also noticed that more store space seems to be dedicated to these beverages, again, might just be because I'm buying them now, thus noticing.

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Re:Americans are spending less on clothing by Retric on Wednesday February 07, 2018 @11:34AM (#16325613)

Talking about total spending misses the income gap.

The median consumer has real impact even as the wealthy consumers have an ever larger impact on the averages.

Consider housing, people that make 10x as much rarely spend 10x as much on their home as excess becomes useless. Similarly, some people spend a lot of disposable income on clothing, but plenty of rich people don't care about clothing and spend relatively little.

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