Stoneworker
Footballguy
Totally agree that anticipated policies are part of the equation (e.g. tariffs, continued deficit spending, growth stimulated by tax cuts, etc)
(And that those are just facts and not political statements)
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US economy thread (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter Jayrod
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(And that those are just facts and not political statements)
SFBayDuck
Footballguy
Interesting article, The Walmart Effect. Tl;dr is that while a Walmart coming to a community does lower prices for consumers, it’s a net negative as incomes across that community go down even more than the savings being recognized.
So many people think prices/inflation are the biggest issue, for many it’s the only issue. This is another example of why that probably isn’t the best way to examine how an economy is doing.
So many people think prices/inflation are the biggest issue, for many it’s the only issue. This is another example of why that probably isn’t the best way to examine how an economy is doing.
Max Power
Footballguy
Listening to a guy break down inflation numbers on my drive into work today and it painted a solid picture on where we're really at and why some are feeling the impact more than others.
Since 2020 inflation is up 21% overall. The average wage is also up 20%. So while it seems like things shouldn't be too hard on people, the breakdown of the top 5 expenses adds the missing context.
Increases since 2020
Housing (mortgage/rent) is up 27%
Transportation (New/Used Vehs) is up 25%
Food up 20% - using the most charitable assessment
Auto Insurance - Up 112%
Health Insurance - up 24%
I went car shopping this weekend for the first time in 5 years and the stickers were bit high, but these automobile manufacturers are putting so many features on their basic models, I can see why prices are skyrocketing. On the plus side, we traded in two used vehicles for more than I expected after looking them up in the KBB.
We purchased a new SUV and I added it to my insurance... $1200 for 6 months. My monthly rate went up swapping one new car for two older ones.
Since 2020 inflation is up 21% overall. The average wage is also up 20%. So while it seems like things shouldn't be too hard on people, the breakdown of the top 5 expenses adds the missing context.
Increases since 2020
Housing (mortgage/rent) is up 27%
Transportation (New/Used Vehs) is up 25%
Food up 20% - using the most charitable assessment
Auto Insurance - Up 112%
Health Insurance - up 24%
I went car shopping this weekend for the first time in 5 years and the stickers were bit high, but these automobile manufacturers are putting so many features on their basic models, I can see why prices are skyrocketing. On the plus side, we traded in two used vehicles for more than I expected after looking them up in the KBB.
We purchased a new SUV and I added it to my insurance... $1200 for 6 months. My monthly rate went up swapping one new car for two older ones.
The Z Machine
Footballguy
Was the replacement value for the new car greater than the replacement value of the 2 older ones?
Max Power
Footballguy
It was, but I brought the overall mileage down because one of the cars wasn't being driven but was quoted for 8k miles a year. We inherited it from family thinking my 16 year old would use it, but he's stopped caring about trying to get a license. He has some growing up to do first.
beer 30
Footballguy
I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
.I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
urbanhack
Fight The Power!
There's more to it than just "inflation"
Kroger executive admits company gouged prices higher than inflation levels
According to the executive, Kroger intends to 'pass through our inflation to consumers.'
wchstv.com
Big foodies flaunt “pricing power” as consumers stomach higher costs (for now)
From Big Macs to Kraft mac… Americans aren’t giving up their comfort-food staples. Big food companies have crushed earnings expectations as consumers...
sherwood.news
Distributor of Lysol products pays $100K for price gouging during pandemic
Attorney General Letitia James has won a victory against pandemic profiteering this week when she secured a $100,000 settlement from Quality King Distributors, Inc. This wholesale grocery and drug distributor had been found guilty of dramatically increasing the prices of crucial Lysol products...
brooklyneagle.com
beer 30
Footballguy
I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
Brunell4MVP
Footballguy
I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
On the bolded, we are fortunate to have plenty of money being I guess middle to upper middle class, but I refuse to eat out anymore. Anything that provides table service is off limits for our family. In the rare case we order from somewhere, we pick it up and bring it home and leave a smaller appropriate tip. We went on a 3 week vacation and saved a ton by eating every meal at our rental. A trip to the grocery store is simply not that difficult. We have some not so well off relatives that eat out 3-5 times a week. It's just stupid IMO.
We also have kept our 4-5 year old cars that we've paid off. Insurance on the new rides is stupid.
To me it's not a question of cost and much as it is a sanity check. I grew up with no so much. The concept of dropping $100 for a family of 4 for burgers and salads, or $200+ at a nicer place makes no sense.
beer 30
Footballguy
Right there with you. The only reason I even mentioned it is because the wife has been laid up for a few days so dinner duties fell to me which is a "where do you want food from". You don't want me making dinner. So I've been reminded recently how outrageous eating out can be. Typically either the wife or daughter makes dinner 6 days of the week and then we grab lunch someplace on Sunday's that is reasonable. We used to eat out a lot when it was just the wife & I but since our flock has temporarily come home, we've adjusted. Daughter does most all of her shopping (and the majority of our dinner groceries) at Aldi. Wife fills in the gaps at Walmart. We're still spending probably $300-$400 more a month on groceries than we would have just a few years ago.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
On the bolded, we are fortunate to have plenty of money being I guess middle to upper middle class, but I refuse to eat out anymore. Anything that provides table service is off limits for our family. In the rare case we order from somewhere, we pick it up and bring it home and leave a smaller appropriate tip. We went on a 3 week vacation and saved a ton by eating every meal at our rental. A trip to the grocery store is simply not that difficult. We have some not so well off relatives that eat out 3-5 times a week. It's just stupid IMO.
We also have kept our 4-5 year old cars that we've paid off. Insurance on the new rides is stupid.
To me it's not a question of cost and much as it is a sanity check. I grew up with no so much. The concept of dropping $100 for a family of 4 for burgers and salads, or $200+ at a nicer place makes no sense.
Max Power
Footballguy
I've seen/heard the same thing. There was the push to $15 that a lot of minimum wage retail workers got. It was a 50-100% increase in some jobs.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
Sparky Polastri
Footballguy
Not sure "features" in a car are as big of a problem as steel/aluminum tariffs (among others) that are in place. Those likely have a FAR bigger impact than adding seats that warm/cool themselves. Now, if you want to talk about those features and how they impact maintenance costs, you're likely onto something.
I hear you on restaurants. We probably still eat out more than we should but we both work so there are nights we’ll pick something up and we usually eat out (our HS senior doesn’t usually want to go with us surprise, surprise) on Saturday or Friday. We’ve found great cheaper places (a couple Italian places with bigger portions for take home) but drinks are still crazy. I’d much rather pick something up if we don’t make something.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
On the bolded, we are fortunate to have plenty of money being I guess middle to upper middle class, but I refuse to eat out anymore. Anything that provides table service is off limits for our family. In the rare case we order from somewhere, we pick it up and bring it home and leave a smaller appropriate tip. We went on a 3 week vacation and saved a ton by eating every meal at our rental. A trip to the grocery store is simply not that difficult. We have some not so well off relatives that eat out 3-5 times a week. It's just stupid IMO.
We also have kept our 4-5 year old cars that we've paid off. Insurance on the new rides is stupid.
To me it's not a question of cost and much as it is a sanity check. I grew up with no so much. The concept of dropping $100 for a family of 4 for burgers and salads, or $200+ at a nicer place makes no sense.
FreeBaGeL
Footballguy
I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
It's an interesting dichotomy that the first 40 pages of this thread were people saying "well sure the overall numbers on the economy look good, but the real issue is that the people on the bottom are really struggling and that needs to be fixed!", and then when wages rise for those very same people, it is brushed aside.
This may be too political, but the reality is the only way the people at the bottom are going to get to play catch-up is if the people in the middle and upper-middle get stagnant and those funds more evenly distributed. That is the only way the free market can come close to balancing that as the free market will absolutely not take money from the tippy top (CEOs etc). The only way for that to happen is with government involvement and any hint of that gets immediately tossed out with hyperbolic claims of communism.
For instance, the plan to eliminate the tax loophole that billionaires use to avoid paying capital gains by taking loans against large positions that aren't available to regular every day consumers. This is something that everyone universally hated and a loophole everyone wanted to see closed. But then a plan that targeted only the taxation around those particular loans available only to billionaires was strategically framed as "communists want to tax your unrealized capital gains, Mr. Robinhood user that currently has a $300 in unrealized gains on TSLA!" and all of the sudden those same people that were complaining about billionaire tax loopholes are the ones going to their keyboards to defend those loopholes.
Cost segregation into bonus depreciation is another one I've posted about in the past in this thread, which I've taken advantage of in the past myself. This one where rich real estate investors are able to get huge tax writeoffs in real estate that have to be refreshed back into more real estate every year (leading to another tax refund, used as a down payment on another property, used for another refund, etc), taking housing supply off the market and driving up prices (higher home prices are not a negative for them in this scenario). So then you end up with Joe Plumber supporting legislation that takes HIS tax dollars and uses them to drive up home prices, while he simultaenously complains every day about rising home prices that he's chosen to donate his tax dollars to cause.
Bottom line, if we want the bottom to be less poor, that's going to come at the expense of the middle and the upper middle. Because the tippy top ain't giving it up and the only means to coerce them into it are untenable in the current climate.
Last edited:
beer 30
Footballguy
Really good post. I know in my mind and heart you are right as the middle has carried the load for a long, long time in this country. We get a bone thrown our way every once in a while to make us more docile but we still get squeezed.I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
It's an interesting dichotomy that the first 40 pages of this thread were people saying "well sure the overall numbers on the economy look good, but the real issue is that the people on the bottom are really struggling and that needs to be fixed!", and then when wages rise for those very same people, it is brushed aside.
This may be too political, but the reality is the only way the people at the bottom are going to get to play catch-up is if the people in the middle and upper-middle get stagnant and those funds more evenly distributed. That is the only way the free market can come close to balancing that as the free market will absolutely not take money from the tippy top (CEOs etc). The only way for that to happen is with government involvement and any hint of that gets immediately tossed out with hyperbolic claims of communism.
For instance, the plan to eliminate the tax loophole that billionaires use to avoid paying capital gains by taking loans against large positions that aren't available to regular every day consumers. This is something that everyone universally hated and a loophole everyone wanted to see closed. But then a plan that targeted only the taxation around those particular loans available only to billionaires was strategically framed as "communists want to tax your unrealized capital gains, Mr. Robinhood user that currently has a $300 in unrealized gains on TSLA!" and all of the sudden those same people that were complaining about billionaire tax loopholes are the ones going to their keyboards to defend those loopholes.
Cost segregation into bonus depreciation is another one I've posted about in the past in this thread, which I've taken advantage of in the past myself. This one where rich real estate investors are able to get huge tax writeoffs in real estate that have to be refreshed back into more real estate every year (leading to another tax refund, used as a down payment on another property, used for another refund, etc), taking housing supply off the market and driving up prices (higher home prices are not a negative for them in this scenario). So then you end up with Joe Plumber supporting legislation that takes HIS tax dollars and uses them to drive up home prices, while he simultaenously complains every day about rising home prices that he's chosen to donate his tax dollars to cause.
Bottom line, if we want the bottom to be less poor, that's going to come at the expense of the middle and the upper middle. Because the tippy top ain't giving it up and the only means to coerce them into it are untenable in the current climate.
For the record, I'm not opposed to revolution, I just don't have a lot of time for it given my current work schedule. If y'all come up with something say on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I could probably give you 4 hours. Let me know
Instinctive
Footballguy
For my little part, when I buy/take over/found a company as CEO in the next couple years, my goal will be to assert "don't be greedy" as a company value, and then come up with some rules of thumb for what that means for profits and wages and my own salary.Really good post. I know in my mind and heart you are right as the middle has carried the load for a long, long time in this country. We get a bone thrown our way every once in a while to make us more docile but we still get squeezed.I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
It's an interesting dichotomy that the first 40 pages of this thread were people saying "well sure the overall numbers on the economy look good, but the real issue is that the people on the bottom are really struggling and that needs to be fixed!", and then when wages rise for those very same people, it is brushed aside.
This may be too political, but the reality is the only way the people at the bottom are going to get to play catch-up is if the people in the middle and upper-middle get stagnant and those funds more evenly distributed. That is the only way the free market can come close to balancing that as the free market will absolutely not take money from the tippy top (CEOs etc). The only way for that to happen is with government involvement and any hint of that gets immediately tossed out with hyperbolic claims of communism.
For instance, the plan to eliminate the tax loophole that billionaires use to avoid paying capital gains by taking loans against large positions that aren't available to regular every day consumers. This is something that everyone universally hated and a loophole everyone wanted to see closed. But then a plan that targeted only the taxation around those particular loans available only to billionaires was strategically framed as "communists want to tax your unrealized capital gains, Mr. Robinhood user that currently has a $300 in unrealized gains on TSLA!" and all of the sudden those same people that were complaining about billionaire tax loopholes are the ones going to their keyboards to defend those loopholes.
Cost segregation into bonus depreciation is another one I've posted about in the past in this thread, which I've taken advantage of in the past myself. This one where rich real estate investors are able to get huge tax writeoffs in real estate that have to be refreshed back into more real estate every year (leading to another tax refund, used as a down payment on another property, used for another refund, etc), taking housing supply off the market and driving up prices (higher home prices are not a negative for them in this scenario). So then you end up with Joe Plumber supporting legislation that takes HIS tax dollars and uses them to drive up home prices, while he simultaenously complains every day about rising home prices that he's chosen to donate his tax dollars to cause.
Bottom line, if we want the bottom to be less poor, that's going to come at the expense of the middle and the upper middle. Because the tippy top ain't giving it up and the only means to coerce them into it are untenable in the current climate.
For the record, I'm not opposed to revolution, I just don't have a lot of time for it given my current work schedule. If y'all come up with something say on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I could probably give you 4 hours. Let me know
I don't have the framework yet, but there's gotta be something I can come up with like x% of net income at end of year goes back to everyone who works there pro rata. I wouldn't take a 10% raise unless everyone was getting one, etc.
Easier to do when I own the company too but that's kinda what I'm thinking. There's just no reason everyone can't make money.
beer 30
Footballguy
Good on you, I hope you achieve your goals (was just catching up in the business travel thread). I'm an avid Rogan listener and whatever you think of him, his approach to the comedy club he opened always makes me think the same, there's no reason everyone can't make their nut. Granted, having a couple hundred million bankroll makes that a lot easier to put into practice but it's something.For my little part, when I buy/take over/found a company as CEO in the next couple years, my goal will be to assert "don't be greedy" as a company value, and then come up with some rules of thumb for what that means for profits and wages and my own salary.Really good post. I know in my mind and heart you are right as the middle has carried the load for a long, long time in this country. We get a bone thrown our way every once in a while to make us more docile but we still get squeezed.I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
It's an interesting dichotomy that the first 40 pages of this thread were people saying "well sure the overall numbers on the economy look good, but the real issue is that the people on the bottom are really struggling and that needs to be fixed!", and then when wages rise for those very same people, it is brushed aside.
This may be too political, but the reality is the only way the people at the bottom are going to get to play catch-up is if the people in the middle and upper-middle get stagnant and those funds more evenly distributed. That is the only way the free market can come close to balancing that as the free market will absolutely not take money from the tippy top (CEOs etc). The only way for that to happen is with government involvement and any hint of that gets immediately tossed out with hyperbolic claims of communism.
For instance, the plan to eliminate the tax loophole that billionaires use to avoid paying capital gains by taking loans against large positions that aren't available to regular every day consumers. This is something that everyone universally hated and a loophole everyone wanted to see closed. But then a plan that targeted only the taxation around those particular loans available only to billionaires was strategically framed as "communists want to tax your unrealized capital gains, Mr. Robinhood user that currently has a $300 in unrealized gains on TSLA!" and all of the sudden those same people that were complaining about billionaire tax loopholes are the ones going to their keyboards to defend those loopholes.
Cost segregation into bonus depreciation is another one I've posted about in the past in this thread, which I've taken advantage of in the past myself. This one where rich real estate investors are able to get huge tax writeoffs in real estate that have to be refreshed back into more real estate every year (leading to another tax refund, used as a down payment on another property, used for another refund, etc), taking housing supply off the market and driving up prices (higher home prices are not a negative for them in this scenario). So then you end up with Joe Plumber supporting legislation that takes HIS tax dollars and uses them to drive up home prices, while he simultaenously complains every day about rising home prices that he's chosen to donate his tax dollars to cause.
Bottom line, if we want the bottom to be less poor, that's going to come at the expense of the middle and the upper middle. Because the tippy top ain't giving it up and the only means to coerce them into it are untenable in the current climate.
For the record, I'm not opposed to revolution, I just don't have a lot of time for it given my current work schedule. If y'all come up with something say on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I could probably give you 4 hours. Let me know
I don't have the framework yet, but there's gotta be something I can come up with like x% of net income at end of year goes back to everyone who works there pro rata. I wouldn't take a 10% raise unless everyone was getting one, etc.
Easier to do when I own the company too but that's kinda what I'm thinking. There's just no reason everyone can't make money.
Corporate greed is the basis for a bunch of dystopian novels (Atlas Shrugged comes to mind) and they all have a similar look & feel to where our country is heading now. Might be coincidence, might not but something needs to change.
Max Power
Footballguy
Saying goodbye to the penny. It was a nice run.
www.nbcconnecticut.com
What the end of the penny means for the economy, your piggy bank, and the way America prices items
President Trump and Elon Musk want the U.S. penny gone. There are currently 114 billion pennies in circulation, but the economy will be OK without the coin.
www.nbcconnecticut.com
Brunell4MVP
Footballguy
Saying goodbye to the penny. It was a nice run.
What the end of the penny means for the economy, your piggy bank, and the way America prices items
President Trump and Elon Musk want the U.S. penny gone. There are currently 114 billion pennies in circulation, but the economy will be OK without the coin.
Don't most people pay digitally anyway? There's zero effect on those transactions. Heck, stocks and others operate on thousandths of a decimal. The penny should have been gone 20 years ago. My kids don't know what cash looks like.
Max Power
Footballguy
Yeah, less than 20% of transactions are cash based and it's declining every year.Saying goodbye to the penny. It was a nice run.
What the end of the penny means for the economy, your piggy bank, and the way America prices items
President Trump and Elon Musk want the U.S. penny gone. There are currently 114 billion pennies in circulation, but the economy will be OK without the coin.
Don't most people pay digitally anyway? There's zero effect on those transactions. Heck, stocks and others operate on thousandths of a decimal. The penny should have been gone 20 years ago. My kids don't know what cash looks like.
I was just reading the biggest need for new pennies comes from the fact that people don't spend the current ones they have. They are sitting in jars and not put back into circulation because they aren't worth much.
Brunell4MVP
Footballguy
Don Vultaggio at ABC Beverages (Arizona Iced tea) comes to mind. keeps prices the same. Apparently takes care of employees. Worth $3B.For my little part, when I buy/take over/found a company as CEO in the next couple years, my goal will be to assert "don't be greedy" as a company value, and then come up with some rules of thumb for what that means for profits and wages and my own salary.Really good post. I know in my mind and heart you are right as the middle has carried the load for a long, long time in this country. We get a bone thrown our way every once in a while to make us more docile but we still get squeezed.I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
It's an interesting dichotomy that the first 40 pages of this thread were people saying "well sure the overall numbers on the economy look good, but the real issue is that the people on the bottom are really struggling and that needs to be fixed!", and then when wages rise for those very same people, it is brushed aside.
This may be too political, but the reality is the only way the people at the bottom are going to get to play catch-up is if the people in the middle and upper-middle get stagnant and those funds more evenly distributed. That is the only way the free market can come close to balancing that as the free market will absolutely not take money from the tippy top (CEOs etc). The only way for that to happen is with government involvement and any hint of that gets immediately tossed out with hyperbolic claims of communism.
For instance, the plan to eliminate the tax loophole that billionaires use to avoid paying capital gains by taking loans against large positions that aren't available to regular every day consumers. This is something that everyone universally hated and a loophole everyone wanted to see closed. But then a plan that targeted only the taxation around those particular loans available only to billionaires was strategically framed as "communists want to tax your unrealized capital gains, Mr. Robinhood user that currently has a $300 in unrealized gains on TSLA!" and all of the sudden those same people that were complaining about billionaire tax loopholes are the ones going to their keyboards to defend those loopholes.
Cost segregation into bonus depreciation is another one I've posted about in the past in this thread, which I've taken advantage of in the past myself. This one where rich real estate investors are able to get huge tax writeoffs in real estate that have to be refreshed back into more real estate every year (leading to another tax refund, used as a down payment on another property, used for another refund, etc), taking housing supply off the market and driving up prices (higher home prices are not a negative for them in this scenario). So then you end up with Joe Plumber supporting legislation that takes HIS tax dollars and uses them to drive up home prices, while he simultaenously complains every day about rising home prices that he's chosen to donate his tax dollars to cause.
Bottom line, if we want the bottom to be less poor, that's going to come at the expense of the middle and the upper middle. Because the tippy top ain't giving it up and the only means to coerce them into it are untenable in the current climate.
For the record, I'm not opposed to revolution, I just don't have a lot of time for it given my current work schedule. If y'all come up with something say on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I could probably give you 4 hours. Let me know
I don't have the framework yet, but there's gotta be something I can come up with like x% of net income at end of year goes back to everyone who works there pro rata. I wouldn't take a 10% raise unless everyone was getting one, etc.
Easier to do when I own the company too but that's kinda what I'm thinking. There's just no reason everyone can't make money.
Keerock
Footballguy
Yeah, less than 20% of transactions are cash based and it's declining every year.Saying goodbye to the penny. It was a nice run.
What the end of the penny means for the economy, your piggy bank, and the way America prices items
President Trump and Elon Musk want the U.S. penny gone. There are currently 114 billion pennies in circulation, but the economy will be OK without the coin.
Don't most people pay digitally anyway? There's zero effect on those transactions. Heck, stocks and others operate on thousandths of a decimal. The penny should have been gone 20 years ago. My kids don't know what cash looks like.
I was just reading the biggest need for new pennies comes from the fact that people don't spend the current ones they have. They are sitting in jars and not put back into circulation because they aren't worth much.
Dodds!BlackCrowes
Footballguy
weird timing, i actually used pennies the other day to pay for something exactly. couldn't remember the last time i did that. i'm good getting rid of them. unnecessary mining.
fruity pebbles
Footballguy
The nickel is next
Max Power
Footballguy
Costs 11 cents to make a nickle
Alex P Keaton
Footballguy
Best idea yet. Didn’t we have standardized tests talking about this concept like 30 years ago? They referenced how there used to be a half-penny, which the govt discontinued at some point.Saying goodbye to the penny. It was a nice run.
What the end of the penny means for the economy, your piggy bank, and the way America prices items
President Trump and Elon Musk want the U.S. penny gone. There are currently 114 billion pennies in circulation, but the economy will be OK without the coin.
Pennies are useless. Good riddance.
Nugget
Footballguy
Without clicking, I'm going to go with "Eggs". Final Answer.
Sparky Polastri
Footballguy
Kinda feels like the list of things not affected might be a shorter list. Inflation, here we come!!
SWC
Bromigo
i went to the grocery store to get some eggs yesterday and they wanted to run my credit score take that to the bank brohans
Desert_Power
Footballguy
HomerSimpson
Footballguy
Why be worth $3B when you can be worth $6B by charging a extra dollar!?Don Vultaggio at ABC Beverages (Arizona Iced tea) comes to mind. keeps prices the same. Apparently takes care of employees. Worth $3B.For my little part, when I buy/take over/found a company as CEO in the next couple years, my goal will be to assert "don't be greedy" as a company value, and then come up with some rules of thumb for what that means for profits and wages and my own salary.Really good post. I know in my mind and heart you are right as the middle has carried the load for a long, long time in this country. We get a bone thrown our way every once in a while to make us more docile but we still get squeezed.I'm all for a rising tide raises all ships and have really come to appreciate that as I've gotten older. I want ALL people to have an opportunity at moving up the ladder, it just makes life better. But you can't do it at the sacrifice of another class of people and I feel like that's what we're seeing here. Don't have any data to back it up other than 60 years of experience so I'm probably wrong but squeezing the middle class isn't the solution to raise up those that are a rung down on the ladder. Not in the country that is arguably the richest nation in the history of ever.I'll be the first to say um, no. At least not my pay or anybody that works around me. My CEO's pay doubled though, from $7m a year to $14m a year so I'm happy for that
I have gotten increases but our standard is 3% whether you kill it or you don't so while it's always nice to get a bump, there's no meaning associated with it. I suspect that wage bump is being driven either by top end folks (like my CEO) or bottom end folks making at or slightly above minimum wage. For a good chunk of us in the middle, I don't feel like we are seeing that almost one-for-one offset. I know we're paying a lot more for food whether at the grocery store or eating out (which is out of hand now). Our auto insurance went up by about 6% for no apparent reason other than I turned 60 last year.
Google is focking terrible, and I cannot find a non-political article. However a few months ago I did read an economic article that was not driven by politics, and it did say the major wage growth has been in low earners last few years.
Middle class wages have been stagnated during that time.
This is good that poor people are making more money, but we also need to increase the wages of middle class.
I'll use my company as an example. We are up year-over-year in most all of our metrics, revenue, growth, EBITA, EBITDA, all the things. We're still missing budget by 5-6% which we won't make up by April 30th which is the end of our fiscal year an yet our CEO successfully negotiates an almost 50% increase in his pay based almost solely on the premise that the CEO of a company of our size ($16 billion) is getting more in the range of what he is getting now rather than the $7m he was being paid. Just doesn't sit right, ya know? The optics of it aren't good when we are scrutinizing $100 purchase orders to make sure we are doing all we can to preserve cash.
I'm also not trying to spend his cash. I'm a big believer in you get what you can when you can. I'd just like to see that trickle down to the folks in the middle every once in a while. As I mentioned earlier, the company has been on a heater for the last decade, double digit growth in every metric year-over-year-over-year-over year for a decade. We got 3%. Last few years have been lean...got 3%. The meme about the 500% growth in the business = a bitching pizza party hits real close to home sometimes. A 5% raise would go a long way to making someone feel a little better about their job as opposed to the same 3% the slacker sitting next to you is getting. Give me 5, give them 2 but you can't do that anymore so everybody gets 3% so nobody gets bent.
It's an interesting dichotomy that the first 40 pages of this thread were people saying "well sure the overall numbers on the economy look good, but the real issue is that the people on the bottom are really struggling and that needs to be fixed!", and then when wages rise for those very same people, it is brushed aside.
This may be too political, but the reality is the only way the people at the bottom are going to get to play catch-up is if the people in the middle and upper-middle get stagnant and those funds more evenly distributed. That is the only way the free market can come close to balancing that as the free market will absolutely not take money from the tippy top (CEOs etc). The only way for that to happen is with government involvement and any hint of that gets immediately tossed out with hyperbolic claims of communism.
For instance, the plan to eliminate the tax loophole that billionaires use to avoid paying capital gains by taking loans against large positions that aren't available to regular every day consumers. This is something that everyone universally hated and a loophole everyone wanted to see closed. But then a plan that targeted only the taxation around those particular loans available only to billionaires was strategically framed as "communists want to tax your unrealized capital gains, Mr. Robinhood user that currently has a $300 in unrealized gains on TSLA!" and all of the sudden those same people that were complaining about billionaire tax loopholes are the ones going to their keyboards to defend those loopholes.
Cost segregation into bonus depreciation is another one I've posted about in the past in this thread, which I've taken advantage of in the past myself. This one where rich real estate investors are able to get huge tax writeoffs in real estate that have to be refreshed back into more real estate every year (leading to another tax refund, used as a down payment on another property, used for another refund, etc), taking housing supply off the market and driving up prices (higher home prices are not a negative for them in this scenario). So then you end up with Joe Plumber supporting legislation that takes HIS tax dollars and uses them to drive up home prices, while he simultaenously complains every day about rising home prices that he's chosen to donate his tax dollars to cause.
Bottom line, if we want the bottom to be less poor, that's going to come at the expense of the middle and the upper middle. Because the tippy top ain't giving it up and the only means to coerce them into it are untenable in the current climate.
For the record, I'm not opposed to revolution, I just don't have a lot of time for it given my current work schedule. If y'all come up with something say on a Tuesday or Wednesday, I could probably give you 4 hours. Let me know
I don't have the framework yet, but there's gotta be something I can come up with like x% of net income at end of year goes back to everyone who works there pro rata. I wouldn't take a 10% raise unless everyone was getting one, etc.
Easier to do when I own the company too but that's kinda what I'm thinking. There's just no reason everyone can't make money.
Sparky Polastri
Footballguy
And it's only going to get worse if we stay on current path. The sad thing is NONE of this is a surprise. People were told exactly what they wanted to do.
Orange&Blue
Footballguy
wait till tariffs/etc hit
Max Power
Footballguy
I saw this the other day. People have been pointing at the flaws in how the government calculates its numbers for a while now. The below was still shocking to me...
Desert_Power
Footballguy
This is a bizarre article (or ad?). You can click through to his website and see that most of his alternative wage or employment metrics are at or near all time highs as well. Something tells me the founder of one of the most prolific banking consultancy/lobbying firms isn't playing straight here.
I would wager that none of these government statistics are still being collected by the end of this year anyways.
djmich
Footballguy
In addition the government has played an outsized role in employment and gdp growth over the past few years, of course paid for with money we don’t have. The reversal as we attempt to get our fiscal house in order is very likely going to hurt.
Sand
Footballguy
Knowing the affiliation of this outlet and the timing of this article this is a massively political hit piece and should be deleted from this forum.
So his argument seems to be that the measures of the economy being used are imperfect. Is this something new? Seems like this is well known and has been the case for decades. To be fair, I skimmed the article so feel free to fill me in on what i'm missing.
the moops
Footballguy
It may be too political, but it seems to be the opposite side of what you are saying here
Sand
Footballguy
It may be too political, but it seems to be the opposite side of what you are saying here
What's now is now and the crew in charge now gets the blame for everything. Just the way it works. No way this outfit releases this article 6 months ago - and by that standard this is a pretty political piece.
Tau837
Footballguy
I don’t follow politics much, so I don’t know the “affiliation of the outlet.” I didn’t read it as a “political hit piece.”
the moops
Footballguy
I don't see them blaming the current administration in this piece. Seems as though they are saying the economy was in fact the reason that we had a regime change
It may be too political, but it seems to be the opposite side of what you are saying here
FreeBaGeL
Footballguy
It may be too political, but it seems to be the opposite side of what you are saying here
It is explicitly blaming the last administration. It even uses 2024 numbers.
I mean, it's a terrible article that selectively applies its new recommended context only to last year's numbers and doesn't account for what those numbers would have looked like if the metric was similarly altered for the past (so 2024 likely still would have been much better even in that same metric if it provided that context), but it is very much targeting pre-2025.
The article is like when the dumb FF podcaster a few years ago said "if you removed Melvin Gordon's goaline and short yardage rushing attempts his YPC would actually have been 4.5 which is really good!!" and left out the part where if you removed short yardage carries from everyone else as well 4.5 still would have been at the bottom of the league.
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Desert_Power
Footballguy
Fair that it is political for here. I was too distracted trying to figure out what point it is trying to make/whether it is just an ad for this leech's new book.
The Z Machine
Footballguy
That's a pretty misleading headline IMO. The data wasn't "wrong". It may have shown a disconnect to the perception of people on the ground, but it wasn't incorrect. Perhaps better metrics would do better at capturing this sentiment, sure.
But the underlying situation of the top earners gaining more and more of the wealth while the rest of the populace treads water or goes backwards? That was obvious whatever metric one used over the last 25, maybe 50 years.
- Status
