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Is this surprising given stagnant wages and drastic inflation for the last few years straight?
Don't forget about the absolutely massive wealth transfer that happened: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/16/richest-1percent-amassed-almost-two-thirds-of-new-wealth-created-since-2020-oxfam.html
This isn't inflation. This is greed. Record profits with soul crushing wages. Governments that allow this are complicit. We need heavy windfall taxes
Windfall taxes are reactive and bad policy in general.
What we need is a return to pre-Reagan tax policy. Higher upper tax brackets, corporate taxes, and the closing of loopholes that allow the rich to hide their wealth offshore.
Those are here for the same reason...
People act like inflation is the invisible hand of the market, this is capitalism, companies will charge whatever they want to maximize profits, and that rarely results in a lower price.
Like, if you made thingamajigs, and if you made as many as you could (10 million) and sold as much as you could to saturate the market and end up making 10 million, that's less profit than if you charged $5 a piece and only sold 2 million. Same income, much lower overhead.
So you cut staffing and make 1/5th of what you can because that maximizes profit.
Which is fine until your thingamajig is something that people need like food, water, or shelter. If you're putting profit over production, then people who can't afford it have to go without.
It's literally what's going on with insulin. This is t a hypothetical, this is what's been happening for a long time.
It's just with the same few giant corporations making everything, if just one does, the other 2-4 giant corporations crunch the same numbers and come up with the same plan.
Something that used to be called price fixing is suddenly just "internal analytics"
I could have bought a decent house alone, albeit uncomfortably. But I was happy enough in my condo. Now I have a wife and dual income, and we'd have to really stretch for a shitty house on the outskirts. And neither of our wages have changed much.
The advice in that article is primo out of touch and humorous. They give statistics that people's savings and assets are down X amount, and the first advice is save for an emergency. Running out of savings?! Just save more, five head.
I am reminded of that quote along the lines of “it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.” I did everything right, and had a more than adequate emergency fund.
But then my house vaporized that emergency fund… and only then did COVID happen and I lost my job twice. So that’s roughly three “holy shit thank god we saved for a rainy day” events in three years.
I’m sure I will be in “just save money” mode some day in the future. Lots of shit left to clean up right now though.
and only then did COVID happen and I lost my job twice. So that’s roughly three “holy shit thank god we saved for a rainy day” events in three years.
You just explained the last three years of my life. I have no savings left. Period. If anything happens to the car, or either one of us loses our jobs, we're done. That's it.
If you stop eating Starbucks and drinking avocado toasts, you will be fine
Now ask the CEOs how they’re doing.
Man, some of them have had to delay that second private jet purchase until next year.
Mitch McConnell staring off into space - Good thing Americans had those stimulus checks to live off of for the past 30 months.
Speaking of, where did that money come from?
Did they just print it?
Weird how when it comes to helping the working class, taxing the rich is never an option. But when it comes to helping the ruling class, you can tax the working class and print money.
There is ALWAYS more money available to kill people with. Never so much to help folks with.
I canceled all our streaming services and Amazon prime. I canceled my phone service and opted for a $15/month plan (Mint). I buy a cheap phone, about $70 bucks. I asked my wife to stop buying me snack foods at the grocery store to save ~$50/week. All told I think we are not spending ~$300/month that I can now put towards our cars that are starting to break down. Someone said something about savings but I only cultivate dust and stones there.
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Those 'record corporate profits' seen since 2020 didn't manifest in a vacuum.
I found out my wife was pregnant about a week before shit really hit the fan. We were completely prepared, had money saved up and everything.
The covid hit. We both lost our jobs, and unemployment wasn't nearly enough to cover the bills. I couldn't find another job anywhere.
We lost everything. Both of my cars got repoed, I get eviction notices every single month because rent is behind. We pulled out credit cards for food because we don't qualify for assistance.
Slowly, we both got jobs, I got lucky and jumped right back into my career that I love, and we're still trying to get on our feet. The credit cards are killing us.
Oh, and when our daughter was born, she had to be life flown to another city because she almost passed away (long story). 150k bill. After insurance.
So, is nobody going to mention the picture of two smiling kayakers chosen to accompany this article?
After buying kayaks with their COVID checks, their outdoor gear addiction has spiraled out of control
They are living out of them.
Yes, let's raise rent 40% just as people are financially disadvantaged.. That is sustainable.
Rent price coordinator website says I can get $6,922/month for my shed that's partially submerged, I'll be fair and ask $6,900/month as that's a nicer number!
/s
It was another really good chance for wealth transfers
Increasing the money supply didn't help the poor and instead helped the rich just like every other time we've tried that?! I can't believe it!
It’s rather negligent of the article to ignore inflation on other areas such as basic needs as well such as price gouging for toilet paper, the immediate war with Russia that suddenly caused gas spikes, and the continuing shrinkflation of basic necessities to be considered ‘luxury’. Bread for the fam shouldn’t be considered a luxury.
Meanwhile, comparing 2019 with 2023, Elon Musk had an increase in net worth of about 707%. That's a plus of ca. $157.700.000.000. Yes, that's 157,7 billion.
Not surprising at all.
Corporations made BANK and all the CEOs put it directly into their pockets.
People who had the assets got that money.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/economic-inequality-wealth-gap-pandemic/
Over here in the, "no fucking shit" category of news...
I do want to own a home at some point before death, so I've cut back spending across the board. I wouldn't say I'm financially worse off, just working as many double shifts as possible (I work in healthcare, this is easy to do right now...also not a good thing) and not enjoying life at all for....3 continuous years now.
$115k needs to be your annual salary in USD to buy a home right now, supposedly, I read that somewhere (maybe CNN?) in the past 2 weeks. I make nowhere near that.
Factor in inflation on grocery prices & everything else, an mind you I shop at an Aldi's and a wholesale club, it's not a very easy time out there. Sometimes it feels like I'm saving for something totally unrealistic.
"Gee......you f***ing think?" -Me, single income father of three-
Don't eat the rich. Their greed is too fattening.
Kill the rich instead.
The implication being that covid-19 is a field wealth redistribution program?
It doesn't make that claim. It's just that if you were wealthy between 2020 and now you can more easily navigate the price hikes by refinancing during the housing boom, sellings off assets, and shifting investments around.
But people in lower incomes don't even have assets/savings to fall back on so they just lose harder when the prices hike.
Uh how is it not higher?
Who are these 20%ers?
I think some people, myself included, managed to stay stable, so that's probably a big chunk of it. I got a new job in June 2020 that was enough of a raise to make up for inflation, so while I'm not ahead of where I was 3 years ago, I was at least in the same mediocre position I started in. That said, I've had $3k in dental bills since July because dental insurance is pretty much a scam, soooo I'm now officially fucked, but I was doing ok.
People like me and my wife. Wife is in healthcare and I am in automation. Wife gets as much overtime as she wants and I got several pay raises as suddenly companies found that they couldn't depend on just buying the same things forever and ran out of workers.
Oh don't worry I am sure the boot is ready to crush us both like a bug. Just ignoring us for the time being.