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New data show much faster growth in wages and incomes.
Wages and salary figures have been going up faster than previously estimated, with the year-over-year increase revised from 3.6% to 5.5%. Even after adjusting for inflation, that is 4.1%.
Overall personal income is up, transfer receipts (welfare) are down, and savings is up. Americans are relying less on the government and saving more of what they earn. Personal savings is 8.1%, not the 6.1% that had been estimated. Consumer spending is up despite the increase in savings. The fact that spending isn't accompanied by a household debt increase makes the economic expansion more durable.
The numbers for the first quarter of 2019 look particularly good for reducing income inequality. Corporate profits declined while wages grew at an annualized rate of 10.1%.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 02 2019, @08:38PM (7 children)
Maybe when viewed on a percentage gain scale...
I worked for $3.35 an hour back in 1983-7, today those same jobs pay $8.46 per hour.
When I got my degree in 1988, I started out at $30K per year and my Senior boss made $60K, today those same jobs pay $65K and $125K respectively, so, yeah, the bottom rung is rising faster.
Meanwhile, that house I bought in 1992 for $76K now sells for $225K, and the car I bought for $14K starts around $30K. Lunch that used to cost $3.50 is now $7-12, etc. etc. So, in real terms, inflation has been outpacing wages, for 4 decades now.
Boomers don't notice too much, because their jobs came with 401(k) and similar plans that have been rising with the stock market, slightly faster than inflation. Fresh outs: lucky to get out of mom & dad's basement at any salary.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 02 2019, @09:59PM (5 children)
How else would you like to view it other than percentage-wise? Any other way is going to be chosen strictly because the person doing the choosing is looking to lie without lying. They're full of shit. They know they're full of shit. And they'll consciously use a dollar amount rather than a percentage because they don't want to admit they're full of shit.
Inflation is another matter entirely. Take that up with the Fed. Politicians can only weakly influence the Fed at best.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 03 2019, @03:35AM (4 children)
How about viewing it in terms of disposable income? Income not needed for food, shelter and costs associated with employment.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:20AM (3 children)
Go for it if you like. The perceived increases would be even more heavily weighted toward the low end though because of the way math works. How about we just tell the truth instead of trying to make it look any particular way?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 03 2019, @11:23AM (2 children)
Impossible, humans in the data gathering loop from the ground up, it's biases on top of biases with several layers of opinion in the middle.
Honestly, trying to gather unbiased information about anything on a national scale (when the nation has hundreds of millions of data points) is literally impossible.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:22PM (1 child)
Nope. Stats in general and wages in particular are extremely easy to report in an unbiased manner. You just have to tell the truth. Which means you have to be able to admit the truth to yourself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 03 2019, @03:32PM
Not me, not you, hundreds of thousands of representative reporters have to tell this truth.
Glassdoor.com reports that my company pays my position X to 2X depending on experience. I make 2.5X and I know people who make 3X in my position and this is on W2 reporting positions.
Fully 30% of the jobs I have worked under-reported, and in rare cases over-reported income on their federal W2s, and I've worked for a lot of mainstream type of places.
Do you think, for a minute, that the distortion of the truth gets any less as you go up the scale? Do you think, for a minute, that our sitting president's tax returns come close to reflecting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
It is possible to know your own truth, even though many people do not. It is impossible to know even your closest friends' and neighbors' truths - in the world as it is organized today, and that's O.K. - but you're lying to yourself if you think you know the whole story. When you expand the scope of the reporting to millions of people you don't know who live thousands of miles away with several degrees of separation between you and the target source data, you're delusional if you think you've got anything other than statistics based on warped reporting of half truths.
Sometimes the "wisdom of the crowd" works for statistical estimation of truth, but not when there's a consistent bias in it, and that bias has been present since the first person calling himself "tax collector" showed up to take some of what you've got, or else.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 02 2019, @10:51PM
That was previous decades. Wages were kept down by outsourcing and immigration and low tariffs. Inflation was up partly due to costly regulation.
As the summary says though: "Even after adjusting for inflation, that is 4.1%." (and that is in the article, verbosely)
The really inexplicable thing that that some people want to resist. They don't want America great again. WTF. They might be under the influence of Chinese or Mexican propaganda.