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[P]erhaps the voters are sensible and the economists are obtuse. And perhaps the indicators on which economists rely no longer mean what economists suppose them to mean.
[P]erhaps the voters are sensible and the economists are obtuse. And perhaps the indicators on which economists rely no longer mean what economists suppose them to mean.
I mean what I said.
Wages are a subset of income, and for the rich, not the primary source of income. Saying that the wage disparity has decreased by a single-digit percentage compared against inflation, is not the same as saying that income disparity has decreased, because other income sources than wages (primarily investment income) are where the top-earners have seen most of their wealth growth.
Both of those articles are about wages, not income. Also, your Politico source is from May 2023, and notes:
That did in fact play out over the past year. Also, huge rounds of layoffs across the country at the tail end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 have been forcing people to cut into savings during their ensuing job hunts.
Here’s one from Reuters about wealth inequality still increasing, as of Feb 2024, though this one is especially breaking down the inequality by race:
Here is MSN on wealth disparity increasing, from 11 hours ago:
So while wages saw a 7%-over-inflation growth for the bottom-earners, investment incomes for top-earners propelled their wealth 49% higher.
You specifically said “income inequality”, not “wage inequality”, as the first 2 words of your comment I replied to.
Yes, because inflation is an overall metric that defines the general growth of prices. It’s not uniform. It’s a mean. So if the price of goods in one sector goes down or stays static, it can mask the increased prices of other sectors. That people have more buying power because wage increases (which, keep in mind, is also an average, and doesn’t actually apply to everyone equally) have outpaced overall inflation, is not an assertion that can be made only with those statistics.