The problem is that wages are rising in absolute terms, but tanking or stagnating in relative ones. The rise is also very, very unevenly distributed; the top percentile are making great strides but the so-called "low skilled" are getting shafted badly.

Again, that's not true, at least not to the extent you think. It's a meme. It's something you believe because everyone else believes it.

> the top percentile are making great strides but the so-called "low skilled" are getting shafted badly.

Tell that to the UAW and the monster contract they just negotiated. Or the minimum wage laws that keep getting passed in almost every major metro area. (Again, this is all US stuff because those are the facts in my head, but this is a global phenomenon).

I mean, how about you personally: are you personally making more or less in nominal terms than you were ~6 years ago. By how much? If it's not less than the 26% rise in CPI inflation since then, you are doing better, not worse.

Again, the data doesn't support your impression. It just doesn't. And I find it absolutely fascinating that these impressions persist in the complete absence of evidence.

For the record, I currently make what I was making 6 years ago in absolute terms (pathetic, I know), but I am just about in the top 10% of wage-earners in the country I live in (UK), so it doesn't really matter.

As far as I know, the story is not particularly different across the big European countries.

Yes! Exactly! This is the disconnect right here. First: real wage growth is always a good thing. It's not always above zero, by definition. Sometimes real wages contract. This i good news you're posting.

And specifically it's historically good news: making a reasonable assumption about your age, wages are growing faster for your market right now than they have at any time in your career so far.

And... you're trying to spin that... as... "bad" news? Seriously, how?

Again, this is a meme. Someone sold you a line and you bought it. Seriously, what number do you think should be in that box to make you happy if "best in two decades" doesn't qualify?

Not good news, it's "slightly better than it could be" news.

> wages are growing faster for your market right now than they have at any time in your career so far.

Best in two decades doesn't mean "best in the postwar era", which is the usual horizon for labor conditions. And yeah, having started working in 2000, I've been blessed with real-terms wage stagnation for most of my working life. What luck! Why am I not grateful to unbridled capitalism?!?

The average over 160 years has been above 2%, and between 1950 and 2008 we've sailed close to double digits at times. This in a situation where, obviously, return from capital grew at much higher rates, increasing inequality - so hardly ideal, but decent.

> What fraction of historical workers have lived under those conditions?

The modern economy was effectively forged with Bretton Woods. Wages hit the brakes in the mid '90s, so for roughly 50 years workers had it decent - not always great, but decent. The subsequent 25 years have sucked. Here in UK we kinda papered over the cracks with an increase in public service provisions until roughly 2008, and it's been effectively "managed impoverishment" since then.

I just don't know what you want. You're doing well relative to your recent compatriots and very acceptably relative to your ancestors. You're fine. If you can't find a way to be happy with that kind of wealth, well, that's on you and not macroeconomics. There's clearly no number someone can give you that's going to make you happy.

[1] Which seems awfully cherry picked. It moves the boundary all the way back to before the industrial revolution. Surely you'd agree that the turn of the century was a huge economic outlier, no?

[2] Not 2%, I can't find that number anywhere.

HN, Reddit, twitter and Facebook are all flooded with right wing bots.

The more fascinating part is why these platforms continue to enable clear bot presence.

Hilariously, HN limited my account on the basis of replying to these bots with actual facts, so get ready for your rate limit to fire up.

Here is a chart for Canada: https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FE0PIr9kXoAQvbeR.jpg unfortunately only goes up to 2020. Things got even crazier in 2021/2022 (though have leveled off this fall, but just a bit)

Now tell me again how disconnected my thinking is. In Canada it actually is a disaster. We have people unable to make their rent (because naturally landlords are passing on inflated housing prices to tenants).

I don't know if Canada has an equivalent to FRED and I'm too lazy to do your research for you, but I'm 100% convinced that if you find a measurement in the right units (c.f. "median household income" that I used -- be sure that if you find a graph that is inflation-corrected ("real median household income" in FRED-speak) that you use corrected values for both your data points!) you will find that Canada and the US look broadly the same throughout the past century or so.

I mean, come on. You guys are literally right there, we read the same media. You really think that if things were that different we wouldn't notice? You don't think americans whine about housing prices too?

It still remains the case that housing prices in Canada did not go through the downward correction that US housing prices did in 2008. That and our immigration rates are very high, so pressure from population growth has also been high.

I gotta get back to work, so can't go hunting for raw data right now. I think you'll find though that US and Canadian data don't co-relate in the way you're assuming they should.