[discodonkey]

>economic growth hasn’t been occurring in real terms for most people for a long time

This is just not true.

At least in the U.S., people of all income tiers have seen their incomes grow[0] while their working hours shrunk[1].

Inequality is a problem in itself, but equating unequal gains with "transferring money from the poor" seems like bad faith.

[0] - https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/05/31/th...

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-...

[dleeftink]

Two things can be true at once; growing income per working hour has not resulted in less income inequality.[0]

[0]: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/inequality?tab=chart&Da...

[discodonkey]

True. Income inequality increased.

The person I responded to suggested that only the rich saw income growth, and that they were achieving this by taking from the poor, which is wrong.

[renewiltord]

There's no recipe for happiness that primarily involves looking in the other guy's bowl. Even if you have everything to eat, you will still need unhappy if he has more.

No wonder you guys constantly post about unhappiness. You are obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses.

Much more joy if you instead care only about absolute living standards. My life has improved a lot and if Jeff Bezos appears before me and will make me 10x as wealthy if he is 100x I will gladly choose that.

We live as long as kings, with greater variety of food and drink, greater variety of entertainment, and big comfortable houses. I'd take this trade 10/10 times.

[Eric_WVGG]

That first link is not adjusted for inflation.

$1 in 1970 == $7.54 in 2022

That 1970 middle-classer would be making around $450k in 2022 dollars, which sounds insane, but I also know my parents had normal jobs and were able to buy a house shortly after getting out of college.

https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

(yes we all have more luxuries than back then, toys got cheaper, necessities exploded in cost)

[PaulRobinson]

Consider how big the difference is between each segment identified here. Realise that the upper income bracket itself could be broken down into three segments that would show an ever starker difference.

Unequal gains is the problem, and your intuition can help inform why: the 2023 dollar index used is based on what rate of inflation? CPI? RPI? Something else? Why is it that in 1970 a median income household could buy a home on a single income and raise a family (including sending kids to college), on a 2023-dollar income of $66k, but that's mostly not possible on $106k in actual 2023 for most households.

When you adjust for real buying power using a less favourable means of assessing inflation and taking into account housing costs more fully, I sense you'll find that the bottom two brackets are behind their 1970-adjusted counterparts, and the upper income bracket is significantly better off, especially if you then break that upper segment up a little into more categories.

And, without something happening to adjust this, the effect is going to just get worse and worse, and everyone knows it.

[renewiltord]

Well, housing is obvious. It's because most Americans are eager to have community (by which they mean suburban homes) and a short commute and a separation between commercial and residential spaces. This is a process that clearly yields outcomes that are not time-invariant. In the same sense that asking "why did people back then get to put a house down near Golden Gate Park and I don't?" is meaningless. Because eventually all the places near GGP have houses.

As Adam Driver points out in Ferrari, "two objects cannot occupy the same place at the same time". A view some might find counterintuitive.

[discodonkey]

It seems to be using the CPI. The basket of goods & services the CPI is referencing is determined by the extensive Consumer Expenditure Survey, and reflects to a fair degree the actual spending habits of Americans.

Obviously, if you give more weight to housing, you're going to get different results. But it would distort the actual change in expenditure.

[oblio]

1. What are the growth rates per quartile?

2. How have living expenses grown?