Health care benefits don't help with rising food and housing costs...
Could you please provide a citation for the claims that food and housing prices are going up? I looked, but could only find information to the contrary on food (especially as a proportion of household spending), and very short term, noisy, and confusing information on housing (not house prices, but housing).[1]
Re:U.S. GDP Shrank in Q1 2015
by toomuchtodo on Friday May 29, 2015 @05:55PM
(#9627733)
The cost of food continues to drop, but wages have also been stagnant since the 70's.
Housing vs wages: https://makewealthhistory.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/wages-...
That data is on house prices, not on cost of housing; do you have any long-term data on cost of housing?
Re:U.S. GDP Shrank in Q1 2015
by toomuchtodo on Friday May 29, 2015 @06:19PM
(#9627846)
Worldwide? Nationwide (US)? Major metros? What are we constraining to?
The parent was speaking to US nationwide policies and conditions, so nationwide US data would be most relevant, but I would appreciate any illuminating data, as it appears very hard to support the points I initially responded to.
Data from the BLS:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HtrOZSmjUEM/U2nEwmvNm5I/AAAAAAAABM...
Re:U.S. GDP Shrank in Q1 2015
by yummyfajitas on Saturday May 30, 2015 @02:13PM
(#9631135)
Which doesn't address the point at all.
Instead of giving people money, you give them non-wage compensation (e.g., health care benefits rather than wages, and similar things). That's exactly what happened, in fact - wages are "stagnant", but compensation per hour is not.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/COMPRNFB
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/LES1252881600Q