"The data reveal that as of late 2023, most workers are earning more, in inflation-adjusted terms, than they were one year prior, and the fraction of workers receiving real wage increases is about the same as it was in the years before the pandemic. The data also suggest that most individual workers are earning more today than they were before the pandemic; every prime-age worker cohort has higher inflation-adjusted median wages than before the pandemic. "
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/chart-wage-growth-beating-i...
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/workers-paychecks-a...
The impact of that chart on real prices means that it would take about two decades for people to have the same economic power as they did before the pandemic.
Let's not forget that we have price misalignment because of a decade of zero interest.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/08/excess-profits-of-big-firms-...
And wages did not increase at the same rate as corporate profit taking.
>>> the normal people are faring compared to other/previous years.
The economic disparity is gross, you can't argue excess.
Comparing to the past is isn't going to play out the way you think. What time period do you want to compare to? Is that a period where "better off" was for a narrow segment of the population, where "better off" was robbing tomorrow?
The problem is that life looks a lot like the classic game design dilemma of "power creep".
I'm not sure that this is 100% accurate, but its close enough to convey the point: https://compasscaliforniablog.com/have-american-homes-change...
If it was 1950, no cell phone (1 house phone bill), no internet, no cable, no streaming, no Spotify, no computer... You might have a tv (one, singular), radio, those are one time costs. Power, water, phone, food, house/transport (and likely 1 car for many family's). My neighborhood grocery story is a gym... so we traded a close by place to shop for more travel for food, and a place you pay to go exercise.
People ate canned and frozen veg, not fresh trucked in from everywhere items. And before you make the argument for health, go look at the nutrient content of a flash frozen green bean vs one that sat in a box for a week to get to your plate, the frozen wins.
Guess what, all of what we have, unsustainable. 8 billion people can't live like middle class Americans! As more of the globe wants in on the action things are only going to get HARDER for people, unless we make some drastic lifestyle changes.
In 2005 I managed to wiggle my way out of poverty by splitting a $615/mo apartment 4 ways on minimum wage (and I considered that quite lucky at the time). I ate mostly rice, soy, beans, and frozen veggies because that was the cheapest thing I could eat. Eggs were a luxury.
That same apartment is $1799/mo now and minimum wage is virtually the same. I would probably be dead or worse trying to escape poverty in those same conditions. Add in that the humiliation people must feel driving for Uber or running Doordash. You're helping others live a lifestyle that's unreachable for you, ever.
Even though I can afford it these days I still refuse to Doordash / Uber because I feel like these services are fundamentally dehumanizing. I will fetch my own food, and drive/transport myself. It's not hard.
These unemployment numbers just bury the struggle of regular people with a numerical handwave.
Participation rate is much more meaningful IMO
Example, the participation rate is currently ~67%, so its inverse is 33%.
This means that 33% of the working age population are currently not employed
These sources both give the civilian labor force participation rate as 62.5% in December 2023.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-lab...
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
> The Labor Force Participation Rate is defined by the Current Population Survey (CPS) as “the number of people in the labor force as a percentage of the civilian noninstitutional population […] the participation rate is the percentage of the population that is either working or actively looking for work.”
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1dLeQ
Is a start but you'll want to fiddle with the units.
I would like to see a chart with overlays of GDP, unemployment, average CEO-to-worker-pay-multiplier, average congressional and presidential election campaign expenditure, average net worth increase for different brackets (including top 0.1% individuals), etc.
I highly suspect that the CEO multiplier, campaign expenditure, and 0.1% net worth increase lines would move similarly... and would imply that they are more significant indicators of how (poorly) the normal people are faring compared to other/previous years.