Outcast_Searcher wrote:Funny how the US public is so "impoverished", and yet the median household income has surged so much (in current dollars) in the decade since The Great Recession. Oh, and in the last 3.5 decades as well.
Yet in terms of homes, food, education, healthcare, and other necessities, an hour of work at both the median wage and minimum wage buy less and less, and the debt load keeps rising ever higher to compensate.
Priced in terms of electronic gadgets, computers, entertainment, and plastic pumpkins, an hour of work at median income does buy a lot more. In terms of necessities and productive assets, it buys a lot less. This benefits the rich with lots of disposable income and harms the poor and middle class who have a lot less disposable income, of course.
There's a reason Americans feel they are slipping behind in spite of the government claiming median income increases.
https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/15/news/economy/americans-falling-behind/index.htmlThey feel they're falling behind because, in spite of the numbers saying they're better than ever, they actually are falling behind.
The U.S. public is basically being pissed upon and told it's raining.
And let's remember, that since 1984, inflation in the US has been quite tame on average, especially sin the past decade.
The CPI's data is suspect. It discounts increases in the cost of housing, or even uses dishonest tactics like substitution. A can of beans that is 16 oz is shrunk the next year to 15oz for the same price, and the CPI claims no price increase occurred for that product. A high quality ground beef that was $5/lb and pink-slime laden hamburger that was $3/lb increase to $8/lb and $5/lb respectively, and then the new price of the pink slime hamburger is substituted for the old price of the quality hamburger, and then the CPI tells us no price increase occurred. Then when products have mandatory quality improvements added, regardless of whether the buyer wants them or uses them, the price can go up while the CPI claims no cost increase occurred, which applies to things like fuel, furniture, automobiles, ect.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4086464-cpi-understates-inflation-skews-expectationsDo this for a plethora of goods and services people use everyday, and magically inflation is now low, even though in reality everyone has seen major price increases on the things they buy, without a commensurate wage increase to go with it. Do this over the decades, and we are now in a situation where a living standard that used to require one member of the household working, supported without debt, now requires both members of the household working, supported using unsustainable levels of debt.
The Chapwood Index tells the real story, and it much more more closely matches what I've seen on the prices of things I buy and use everyday. Typically, year over year price increases on all the items I've bought are on the order of 6-10%. I certainly see this at the grocery store, the hardware store, and on the utility bills, and not the laughable 1.5-3% the CPI claims.
http://www.chapwoodindex.com/And of course, let's ignore the surge in interest and movement re raising the minimum wage by a LOT, to help the poor.
Somehow, claiming the same politically motivated nonsense over and over just doesn't stand up to real world facts.
I have nothing to gain by talking about this. I'm not in politics.
The real world facts are disparate from the published government numbers. It's not a "conspiracy theory" to point that out.
What's next? Telling us about all the "starving" people in the US (as though social programs don't exist to the tune of a good $trillion a year), due to poor diet choices?
The cost of a diet free of pesticides, GMOs, nanoparticles, growth hormones, BPA, microplastics, and antibiotics in the U.S. is quite prohibitive to most people. The processed semi-edible nutritionally-void flotsam posing as food is comparatively cheap, and heavily subsidized. People buy what they can afford. And they're starving for nutrients, even if calories may be abundant.
The social programs fall far short of meeting peoples' needs. I've lived among people that lived off of food stamps. In order to make it stretch to the end of the month, they had to buy peanut butter, cheap bread, ramen noodles, TV dinners, factory farmed hamburger with pink slime, boxed flavor-packet dinners(like Hamburger Helper), candy, chips, soda, cheap snack cakes, cereal, canned fruits/vegetables(and a nice dose of carcinogens to go with it), and the like. On a calories per dollar basis, these things went greatly further than say, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, grass fed beef, and wild caught fish. If they bought real food, their food stamps would have run out halfway before the month is over.