bUt ThE GDp gREw 5.2% EVeryOnE! 🍆💦
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Andrew Yang was right when he was calling out the GDP as being a crap metric to monitor the health of our economy. The GDP is meaningless to the average person.
Andrew Yang was just another fucking loser trying to market his way to power who just happened to be stating the obvious if he said that.
The analysis, from Republican members of the U.S. Senate Joint Economic Committee
Just FYI
The Republicans know that the world is unlivable, they like it that way, they just can't be happy unless they see someone suffering
When pay significantly lags the cost of basics you're gonna have a bad time.
And inflation was more than 3% last month? Still adding insult to injury.
Just a note - that 3% is anualized. That means at the current rate, 12 months adds up to 3%. Still, point is valid.
Inflation was 3.2% from October 2022-October 2023. When it's reported like that it's an annualized rate. So it would be more accurate to say inflation was 3.2% over the last year. Inflation from September 2023-October 2023 was unchanged (0%).
Wage growth has also been ahead of inflation since January 2023. Inflation was outpacing wage growth from May 2021-Dec 2022
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1351276/wage-growth-vs-inflation-us/
It makes my 6 percent raise drop to basically 2.8 percent. However, I'm thankful for getting a raise in the first place.
Unemployment is at historic lows and labor remains in high demand. This is the time to be bargaining with your employer for raises or entertaining competing job offers if you can. Also unions, more unions please.
I work in tech and we have had thousands of layoffs all year long. It's not as easy to find a better paying job. I have been trying since March.
I'm actually more than happy with my pay, but I hate the work, and the team I am on isn't exactly organized, so everything is a hot mess.
I wish tech would unionize. That would be amazing.
Totally understandable. All this data are averages across the entire economy, and people in different industries or situations or locations aren't all going to be experiencing the same thing.
You're also right about the tech industry, the tech industry is newer and lags other industries in unionizing efforts.
If you're interested in unions, the best place to start is by contacting existing unions for assistance. It's not always in the name, for instance united steel workers has been active in unionizing efforts in tech.
A campaign by the united communications workers of America has also been active and formed 25 bargaining units in the tech industry so far. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CODE-CWA
It's also going to depend on what state you're in. If you look at a percentage of union workers by state, it's almost a direct red state blue state correlation, with so called "right to work" laws in red states heavily discouraging union formation.
Even if people aren't in a union, they benefit from unions in their industries as other employers have to compete with union benefits and pay. Sorry for the ramble, I just really like unions.
Working in tech amidst a hot mess seems to be the default position.
Haha, basically.
Eat the rich!
Promises Promises
Eat the Fed!
Huh?
I mean if you're gonna criticize the whole capitalist system sure. Within the confines of the current system and the inflation problem though they did a pretty good job. Not like there's a good model of "how to deal with rapid inflation as economies reboot after a global pandemic" to follow. In hindsight maybe they should have started to raise interest rates sooner. But we were just starting a huge recovery and still trying to get everyone employed again. Even after inflation was starting the fear was raising interest rates would have to plunge the whole economy into recession and cause mass unemployment before inflation would get under control. It's kind of remarkable that this was avoided.
Just look what happened in the 1970s and 1980s, when 30 year mortgages got up to 18%, real wages (your wages considering inflation) plummeted for a decade and didn't really start recovering until the 2000s. In our current situation the real wages compensated for inflation have recovered as of this fall already when compared to 2019. And we did it all better than the majority of other countries worldwide who were experiencing the same problems as their economies rebooted. Anyways, point is, probably as good of a job on the feds part with this current situation as anyone could have done.
Do eat the rich though, by all means.
I mean if you’re gonna criticize the whole capitalist system sure.
- The Federal Reserve purchases assets and thereby increasing bank reserves.
- The banks expand credit and consequently the money supply.
- All prices are raised, and the rate of interest is artificially lowered.
- Misleading signals to businessmen starts to emerge, causing them to make malinvestments.
- Businesses overinvest in capital goods and underinvest in consumer goods.
- As the "time preference" of the public have not really got lower, consuming is preferred over saving.
- There is a lack of enough saving-and-investment to buy all the new capital goods.
- Then, "depression" originates in order to reestablish the consumer's old time-preference proportions.
- The banks return to their natural and desired course of credit expansion...
FIAT money is independent of capitalism. Its coercive existence leads to distortions of relative prices and the production system, as government and its central bank will always tend to be inflationary.
Exactly. I just meant for the context of the posted article about inflation and our existing economic system, fed did a decent job at bringing it down without crashing the economy, unlike the last time they gave this a go. I included the disclaimer at the start of the comment because I didn't want to imply I was in support of grow at all costs eat the entire earth capitalism though. Not sure how long that paradigm is gonna be able to continue. It all comes back to eat the rich in the end.
But I'm sure the fact that we haven't raised the minimum wage a single time since 2009 has absolutely nothing to do with this
on god
I gave the methodology a read, and it's a real head scratcher. I haven't sat down and done the math myself, but if I were going to, I would first investigate all the assumptions they had to make, such as:
- using the Personal Consuption Expenditures PCE measure of spending instead of the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) , since one includes military and government spending on behalf of households and the other doesn't
- Using 2019/2020 aggregate spending estimates at the census division level as part of a formula to estimate Jan 2021 spending data. (2020 was not a normal year for spending)
- Using a Gross CE/PCE ratio at the census division level to estimate consumer spending in each census division's constituent states
- using the PCE growth nationally (remember what it includes) as a substitute for statewide , statewise expenditure growths.
- Again, using census division aggregate data to estimate state level consumer units per household
- providing no validation that their methodology for transforming PCE values into CE values works (it should have been as simple as calculating it for other years, say 2015,2016, and checking the accuracy)
- using Census division CPI instead of state data.
Anyway, this is where I would start picking this mess apart. If I were so inclined.
From this little bit, I'd be concerned about the analysis using suppressed spending in 2020 as the starting point in 2021, as well as including spending from outside the CPI basket and non household entities in CPI estimates. I'd be concerned about over generalizing the states by estimating using their census units. Basically, I'd consider this report skeptically at best if no additional validation can be provided.
really? sure, things are more expensive, sure but I havent been spending an extra $11.5k. if I did that i'd have probably zero savings. dunno where they get these numbers from
Idk my wife and I are very secure financially so we don't worry about most things but I am still in awe of the increase in grocery prices. We're in the states, and for our basic non perishable items I order from Walmart. For meat and produce I typically buy from local grocery stores due to quality. Sometimes I'll forget or have to buy things from the grocery store that I'd normally buy at Walmart, and those things are AT LEAST 50% more. In some cases I have seen 100% increase in prices, and an overall increase of at least 25 % from the previous year, which is insane. I have no idea how families on a strict budget are managing groceries, let alone other living expenses. $11.5k does seem slightly exaggerated, but not by much.
I wouldn't say it went up that much but I'm definitely seeing it in my grocery runs. Haven't changed habits that much but it's easily $15-17 more per trip than it used to be.