Wages have somewhat more than kept up with inflation.

1955-2017: https://www.statista.com/chart/18418/real-mean-and-median-fa...

1984-2021: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

(I couldn't find a single series that ran 1950s through 2021/2022, so had to use two above.)

Those charts show wages growing at an annualized rate of 1.5% at best. Any years with inflation greater than 1.5% were effectively years of wage LOSS, rather than growth. Most of those years had inflation greater than 1.5%.

Doesn't the "adjusted dollars" mean the numbers are already adjusted for inflation? Pretty sure the median wage in 1984 was a lot less than 56K in 1984 dollars.

QED

Those charts show real wages, not nominal wages. "Real" in economics means "after taking inflation into account".

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/real-value.asp

A year showing any growth in real terms is a nominal growth that is higher than inflation.

Fair enough. There still seems to be a disconnect though, as the cost of various goods, such as housing, have far exceeded inflation. Are there any charts that try to track wages against a basket of goods?

That's what the CPI is and the real wage growth charts are exactly what you're asking for.

That being said, there's definitely a disconnect. The CPI metric is constantly changing, and is such a broad economic indicator that many people's experiences will not "feel" like what the federal data suggests.

The root of the growing wealth gap is the massive deficit we've been running. Especially since the GFC, the strategy has been to rack up a bunch of debt and inflate that debt away. This inflates the value of financial assets, property, and commodities...none of which is owned by the average joe whose cash savings gets destroyed in the interim.

I agree with everything you say except for one point:

> none of which is owned by the average joe

About 66% of US households "own" a home (often with a fixed-rate mortgage, which makes inflation doubly good for those homeowners) and 58% of homes are owner-occupied. The median Joe is a homeowner, not a renter.

Yeah you’re right thanks for the correction. I’d rephrase to say among those three categories cumulatively most Americans own very little.

This all started when the dollar stopped being indexed on gold

Not really. The divergence only became meaningful in the 80s which corresponds closer to Reagan's economic reforms and the massive chilling effect on unions that occurred in that period (ex: the 1981 PATCO strike and Reagan's subsequent retaliation).

okay, now explain how those things are in any way related to what's going on

going downhill does not stop

We had inflation before the 1970s.

The divergence happened in 1914, starting the very next year.

That divergence reached 2:1 around 1929, and (as always happens when currency is inflated while being pegged to something else) a massive correction occurred (the banks collapsed). The response by FDR was to make it illegal to trade dollars for gold.

Then for decades there was the absurd fiction that the dollar was pegged to gold, but of course nobody was allowed to make such a transaction. This continued until the 1970s when that ersatz pegging was repealed.