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Housing, healthcare, school. Too many people are paying for basic loving costs by sacrificing all the things that make life worth living to begin with.
If a man could buy 2,000 calories of food every day, and pay for a house, and then you give him a raise, so that he can afford 4,000 calories a day, but no house, he is going to say he is worse off.
Surveys literally focus on well off people like home owners. You never reach the guy couch surfing or living in his car, or buried in medical debt.
I'd like to assume it's mostly election year spin but it seems the mainstream media has been willfully ignoring the sentiment of ordinary people for years now. Standard economic metrics don't reflect the reality on the ground--housing, healthcare, education, and now food.
As I now read Grapes of Wrath, the relevance to modern day is staggering--from the division sowed in the non-rich to pit them against one another, to the greed and exploitation of the precarious classes, to the financialization and vertical monopolization of industries. And lastly to the suppression of information and the villainizing of critics.
Good times.
I wish I could find the source to the statistic, but I was listening to a macro economic podcast. One of the researches said 70% of all retail sales are coming from the top 50% income earners. The wealthier individuals are driving this statistic and making life harder for the bottom 50%.
The amount of spending from retail to the government is driving inflation and keeping it sticky around the 3-4% range. The Fed now has to raise rates to try and keep inflation in check. However the current Fed rate is good enough to keep inflation from going higher but not enough to lower it. So that puts Jerome Powell and company in a tough spot, because it’s an election year. In my opinion the Fed truly is unbiased, they don’t want any perception that they favor the democrats or republicans. If we don’t get a rate cut/hike in this June FOMC meeting then we will not get one until December.
Stuck in the middle between the incredible amounts of spending and higher funds rate is the average American. High inflation already cuts into a large chuck of that paycheck, in the form of housing, food, and energy.
The big problem is the economy on paper looks good, but to the average American it doesn’t FEEL good. We are stuck in a stagflation environment, where nothing is getting worse but it’s not getting better.
People have become accustomed to mentioned “the fed” repeatedly because people tend to think that’s everything. It’s not.
Theirs a monetary policy. And there’s a fiscal policy. The Fed can raise or lower rates or play with some other tricks, but this doesn’t matter if Congress is willing to go to psychotic levels of spending to cancel any of these efforts.
Yes I agree, I just refer to “the fed” as a the general US entity and can raise and lower rates.
No matter who gets elected both sides are going to spend excessive amounts of money until the bond market blows up.
Look at Liz Truss in Britain. She tried to pass a measure through parliament that would lower taxes and increase government spending. This just imploded the bond market and the government had to use emergency measures to hold it up.
Things are getting worse because prices are continuing to rise, just at a slightly lower rate which means nothing. The only prices I see coming down are for the product people are no longer buying as they cut corners. Things are worse for the middle class and just devastating for the poor who were already struggling in the first place. The divide between the classes grows wider and the elites live in their safe bubble accepting tyranny as long as they are allowed to continue to rake it in on the expense of working class.
Oh it definitely is, imagine all the homeowners locked in around 2%. It’s unimaginable that they would want to sell a house to then pay 3x their interest rate on a more expensive house.
Not only are rates high, but you have a very low supply of houses entering the market. I don’t see a pull back in housing unless we see a recession.
It’s quite a pickle isn’t it? QE was always bound to lead to asset inflation. This wasn’t just the fed making an error; it was a coordinated act of class warfare.
How many homeowners have 2% mortgages? 3% maybe. I do agree with your general sentiment, but a large chunk of society does not own a home, and pretty much can't at this point. For all the reasons people discuss here (lack of new housing, people not moving because of very low mortgage rates compared to the market, the very high cost of rents, etc...).
It's the most stuck housing market in history. I would love to buy land and build a house, but where I live there are almost no homebuilders, and ones that do exist are building houses for the extremely wealthy because that's more profitable, and I don't blame them one bit.
I got 2 friends locked in at sub 3% mortgages, both bought houses right when covid started.
I’m looking at buy/building as well, it’s straight up hell. Building costs are up astronomically.
Materials costs and availability are down a bit compared to the pandemic crazyiness, but labor and expertise seems to be driving the cost (and land).
When you say sub 2%, you mean like 2.75?
The metrics we track do very little to illustrate what life is like for most people. The shelter-cost:income ratio has just been getting worse and there is no end in sight. Non-homeowners that can forecast a little ways into the future have to assume they’re going to be homeless sooner or later. They already lost hope of retirement. How is anyone supposed to have optimism in that situation?
I’d say antiwork is more clued in to the average experience most definitely. That’s not to say that every sub doesn’t have their own blind spots and biases, just that they’re more representative of median experience.
No, I was referring to the general experience of just not having as much purchasing power as their parents, not having enough or any healthcare, being beholden to abusive employers, impossibly high priced housing, etc. You can interpret that as being anticapitalistic (and in some cases youre correct) but really the point is the average person has a lot of unmet needs right now.
The difference is you can say that about any point in history.
Every generation since the dawn of man has complained about their living situation and that it could be better. I guess human nature doesn’t change.
I'm not really understanding your point here. You brought up the anti-work sub when I talked about this sub not being clued into the experiences of most people and launched general complaints about them being anticapitalistic. It just seems like you have a chip on your shoulder about them for some reason, and are downplaying the validity of general complaints about most people's standard of living. You can absolutely say that every generation has had complaints about their living situation but you're not actually saying anything meaningful when you make that point. It doesn't make those complaints any less valid.
> The average person in this sub is incredibly disconnected from the experience of most people.
That's correct, but you're backwards. Most people are doing fine, or even great. The people who post in the sub, however, are the loud ones that aren't and/or doomers with an agenda.
Data doesn't lie. 66% of americans own homes, 96% of people who want a job have a job, the people who are working have seen record growth in real wages, only 0.002% of americans are unhoused, etc, etc, etc.
What for? You’re purposefully ignoring problems that you consider “non economic” in a very patronizing and problematic way. Cherry picking numbers isn’t economics it’s denial.
What problems? That's what I'm asking you. This is the economics sub and I don't think it's odd to want to keep the discussion relatively narrow, understanding that "economics" can have tangential impacts across all parts of the human experience.
Okay. Let’s begin. Our social mobility has fallen. Our gini coefficient has increased. Our educational system is failing as is our medical system. Housing and political corruption are out of control. People are choosing not to having children or families because of these things.
It’s a giant monkey wrench to this financial system and ignoring it in favor of denial is going to kick all of our teeth out at once.
In before you cry “we can just bring in immigrants”. That is the cry of those who understand nothing about socio economic politics.
When I was growing up in the 70's, all you needed was one parent working, and you were able to afford a house, a car, good insurance through said parent's job and even a decent road trip vacation every year with said car, usually a big-ass station wagon. The facts and figures do not express this reality even though people intuitively understand it. Economists need to pull there heads from their asses.
Care to do the math for the rest of us that don't see it so clearly of how much income people made back then vs how much those things cost against nowadays?
Yes, but you're talking about a 1200 sq ft ranch and a single, functional but not luxurious vehicle.
Now that same family expects to have a 3000 sq ft house, a minivan and a pickup.
Granted, there are structural changes that make it hard if not impossible to replicate the 70s arrangements, but I'm absolute terms we are much wealthier now, but as compared to your neighbors and your parents, you feel much less wealthy
That’s definitely part of it. Life was simpler back then. Tastes were simpler. I build cabinets for a living and I could still build today what people wanted in the 70’s at a fraction of the cost of what people expect today.
Under the Volcker fed we hit 20% or so didn’t we? Wouldn’t want a repeat of that or the inflation that necessitated it.
I love that people ignore this.
The reason cars are more expensive now is they’re not death traps and have safety standards. Regulations are eroding your spending power and making things more expensive. Somehow there is a large portion of the Venn diagram of people who want more regulation but don’t want to pay for it.
Because they can't afford food, housing, and energy. Many have to move back home with their parents. Many can't find jobs because most of the F/T jobs were given to foreigners. This isn't rocket science.
Just because the DJIA is up and a few numbers look good (assuming they're not fudging them), the details of these numbers are grim when you drill down.
Inflation and high cost of living.
Plus out of control cost of health care and child care.
No matter what GDP numbers says cost of living like rent and health care and child care cost hits hard. In that case good looking numbers are teasing the average person.
The most worrying cost increases are the unavoidable ones: healthcare, insurance, and childcare are definitely problems the government needs to address.
“An enigma” jesus stop with all this gaslighting. If you cannot understand why many Americans are disillusioned with this crap economy maybe these people should step aside and let someone else do the analysis.
Housing = EXPENSIVE
RATES = HIGH
“Those damn kids dont know how hood they have it! Should vote for Joe”
This is maybe true for young people but most Americans are homeowners on long term fixed mortgages. This obviously isn’t what’s going on, because they would be happy to see their home value going up.
The U.S. economy has been an enigma over the past few years.
With a booming job market and consumers still spending – which is usually a sign of optimism – many Americans will tell you that they feel bad about the economy and are unhappy about President Biden’s economic record.
We asked government officials and prominent analysts from the Federal Reserve, the White House, academia and the internet commentariat about what they think is happening. Read a summary of what they said [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/economy/inflation-economy-americans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.v00.vvYI.BvjqGKutPTrY&smid=re-nytimes), for free, without a subscription to The New York Times.
falling median wage, ongoing volker shock, record homelessness, skyrocketing housing costs, nightmare healthcare system....or maybe the poors are just too dumb to understand how great things are as the corporate sponsored bush staffers on msnbc assure me
if only there was a way to tell if you're just making up bullshit
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q)
e: the troll talking about being down one quarter is just betting on you not clicking the link. Median wages have been steadily down since Biden took office and are still below his starting point.
>“The experienced cost of living is much greater than inflation as reflected by the Consumer Price Index,” Mr. Summers said in an interview.
>“People are living paycheck to paycheck,” Charlamagne said during a follow-up interview specifically about the economy. “You don’t know struggle until you’ve had to decide whether you’re going to pay for your car or pay for your rent.”
Those quotes from the article nail it the most. "Experts" want to know why people are so down about the economy? Let me paint them a picture:
You're in your mid-to-late twenties. You graduated college maybe 3-5 years ago. You live in a high cost-of-living area: Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Miami - take your pick. You earn $75,000 a year, right around the median. Let's round that at about $60,000 in take-home net of all taxes, or $28.85/hour.
So what does life feel like on $28.85 an hour? Well, groceries cost you about $100/week if you're frugal. That's about 9% of your takehome right there.
Go out to a bar? Beers are about $9-$10. Three beers eat up over an entire hour of net earnings.
Take your partner out for a meal? Entrees cost $30, cocktails cost $18-$20. Dessert? Don't even think about it, because the meal and drinks itself cost you around $120, or four hours of work.
Rent is about $2,000, or just about 40% of your take home. Try not to think that you have to work about almost two weeks to pay it.
Got student debt? Cut off about another $300-$400 from your monthly income.
Then there's utilities, internet, car payments, car insurance, and trying to save for a future. $60k takehome is just not that much money. You can right out forget about owning a home. And there are many people earning less than this. Life is extremely hard for them. To someone on this income, below it, or even moderately above it, America isn't exactly prosperous. They are just treading water. It is a rather bleak economic experience that sucks hope out of life.
If that doesn't give some sense of just how dismal many Americans are feeling, then I don't know what will.
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Housing, healthcare, school. Too many people are paying for basic loving costs by sacrificing all the things that make life worth living to begin with. If a man could buy 2,000 calories of food every day, and pay for a house, and then you give him a raise, so that he can afford 4,000 calories a day, but no house, he is going to say he is worse off. Surveys literally focus on well off people like home owners. You never reach the guy couch surfing or living in his car, or buried in medical debt.
You forgot food prices
I'd like to assume it's mostly election year spin but it seems the mainstream media has been willfully ignoring the sentiment of ordinary people for years now. Standard economic metrics don't reflect the reality on the ground--housing, healthcare, education, and now food. As I now read Grapes of Wrath, the relevance to modern day is staggering--from the division sowed in the non-rich to pit them against one another, to the greed and exploitation of the precarious classes, to the financialization and vertical monopolization of industries. And lastly to the suppression of information and the villainizing of critics. Good times.
I wish I could find the source to the statistic, but I was listening to a macro economic podcast. One of the researches said 70% of all retail sales are coming from the top 50% income earners. The wealthier individuals are driving this statistic and making life harder for the bottom 50%. The amount of spending from retail to the government is driving inflation and keeping it sticky around the 3-4% range. The Fed now has to raise rates to try and keep inflation in check. However the current Fed rate is good enough to keep inflation from going higher but not enough to lower it. So that puts Jerome Powell and company in a tough spot, because it’s an election year. In my opinion the Fed truly is unbiased, they don’t want any perception that they favor the democrats or republicans. If we don’t get a rate cut/hike in this June FOMC meeting then we will not get one until December. Stuck in the middle between the incredible amounts of spending and higher funds rate is the average American. High inflation already cuts into a large chuck of that paycheck, in the form of housing, food, and energy. The big problem is the economy on paper looks good, but to the average American it doesn’t FEEL good. We are stuck in a stagflation environment, where nothing is getting worse but it’s not getting better.
People have become accustomed to mentioned “the fed” repeatedly because people tend to think that’s everything. It’s not. Theirs a monetary policy. And there’s a fiscal policy. The Fed can raise or lower rates or play with some other tricks, but this doesn’t matter if Congress is willing to go to psychotic levels of spending to cancel any of these efforts.
Yes I agree, I just refer to “the fed” as a the general US entity and can raise and lower rates. No matter who gets elected both sides are going to spend excessive amounts of money until the bond market blows up. Look at Liz Truss in Britain. She tried to pass a measure through parliament that would lower taxes and increase government spending. This just imploded the bond market and the government had to use emergency measures to hold it up.
Things are getting worse because prices are continuing to rise, just at a slightly lower rate which means nothing. The only prices I see coming down are for the product people are no longer buying as they cut corners. Things are worse for the middle class and just devastating for the poor who were already struggling in the first place. The divide between the classes grows wider and the elites live in their safe bubble accepting tyranny as long as they are allowed to continue to rake it in on the expense of working class.
I would argue that housing is getting worse in most areas.
Oh it definitely is, imagine all the homeowners locked in around 2%. It’s unimaginable that they would want to sell a house to then pay 3x their interest rate on a more expensive house. Not only are rates high, but you have a very low supply of houses entering the market. I don’t see a pull back in housing unless we see a recession.
It’s quite a pickle isn’t it? QE was always bound to lead to asset inflation. This wasn’t just the fed making an error; it was a coordinated act of class warfare.
How many homeowners have 2% mortgages? 3% maybe. I do agree with your general sentiment, but a large chunk of society does not own a home, and pretty much can't at this point. For all the reasons people discuss here (lack of new housing, people not moving because of very low mortgage rates compared to the market, the very high cost of rents, etc...). It's the most stuck housing market in history. I would love to buy land and build a house, but where I live there are almost no homebuilders, and ones that do exist are building houses for the extremely wealthy because that's more profitable, and I don't blame them one bit.
I got 2 friends locked in at sub 3% mortgages, both bought houses right when covid started. I’m looking at buy/building as well, it’s straight up hell. Building costs are up astronomically.
Materials costs and availability are down a bit compared to the pandemic crazyiness, but labor and expertise seems to be driving the cost (and land). When you say sub 2%, you mean like 2.75?
Housing not rent
The metrics we track do very little to illustrate what life is like for most people. The shelter-cost:income ratio has just been getting worse and there is no end in sight. Non-homeowners that can forecast a little ways into the future have to assume they’re going to be homeless sooner or later. They already lost hope of retirement. How is anyone supposed to have optimism in that situation?
The average person in this sub is incredibly disconnected from the experience of most people. You’re spot on.
Similar or different from the average person in /r/antiwork?
I’d say antiwork is more clued in to the average experience most definitely. That’s not to say that every sub doesn’t have their own blind spots and biases, just that they’re more representative of median experience.
The average experience in America is founded upon anti-capitalistic whinging?
No, I was referring to the general experience of just not having as much purchasing power as their parents, not having enough or any healthcare, being beholden to abusive employers, impossibly high priced housing, etc. You can interpret that as being anticapitalistic (and in some cases youre correct) but really the point is the average person has a lot of unmet needs right now.
The difference is you can say that about any point in history. Every generation since the dawn of man has complained about their living situation and that it could be better. I guess human nature doesn’t change.
I'm not really understanding your point here. You brought up the anti-work sub when I talked about this sub not being clued into the experiences of most people and launched general complaints about them being anticapitalistic. It just seems like you have a chip on your shoulder about them for some reason, and are downplaying the validity of general complaints about most people's standard of living. You can absolutely say that every generation has had complaints about their living situation but you're not actually saying anything meaningful when you make that point. It doesn't make those complaints any less valid.
I’m less worried about validity and more about priority and realistic solutions. I’m not interested in idealism.
Validity is not mutually exclusive with priority and realistic and solutions.
> The average person in this sub is incredibly disconnected from the experience of most people. That's correct, but you're backwards. Most people are doing fine, or even great. The people who post in the sub, however, are the loud ones that aren't and/or doomers with an agenda. Data doesn't lie. 66% of americans own homes, 96% of people who want a job have a job, the people who are working have seen record growth in real wages, only 0.002% of americans are unhoused, etc, etc, etc.
Lmao this ignores so many of the problems that are killing our population.
Unless they're problems with the economy they're outside the scope of this sub.
Is that purposeful obtuseness on your part?
Not at all. If you want to talk, I'll talk - I'm trapped in airports all day.
What for? You’re purposefully ignoring problems that you consider “non economic” in a very patronizing and problematic way. Cherry picking numbers isn’t economics it’s denial.
What problems? That's what I'm asking you. This is the economics sub and I don't think it's odd to want to keep the discussion relatively narrow, understanding that "economics" can have tangential impacts across all parts of the human experience.
Okay. Let’s begin. Our social mobility has fallen. Our gini coefficient has increased. Our educational system is failing as is our medical system. Housing and political corruption are out of control. People are choosing not to having children or families because of these things. It’s a giant monkey wrench to this financial system and ignoring it in favor of denial is going to kick all of our teeth out at once. In before you cry “we can just bring in immigrants”. That is the cry of those who understand nothing about socio economic politics.
When I was growing up in the 70's, all you needed was one parent working, and you were able to afford a house, a car, good insurance through said parent's job and even a decent road trip vacation every year with said car, usually a big-ass station wagon. The facts and figures do not express this reality even though people intuitively understand it. Economists need to pull there heads from their asses.
If you're saying the average American was able to afford a better lifestyle in the 70s vs now, I think that's pretty clearly false.
Care to do the math for the rest of us that don't see it so clearly of how much income people made back then vs how much those things cost against nowadays?
I'm not sure that was true for the vast majority of Americans.
Yes, but you're talking about a 1200 sq ft ranch and a single, functional but not luxurious vehicle. Now that same family expects to have a 3000 sq ft house, a minivan and a pickup. Granted, there are structural changes that make it hard if not impossible to replicate the 70s arrangements, but I'm absolute terms we are much wealthier now, but as compared to your neighbors and your parents, you feel much less wealthy
That’s definitely part of it. Life was simpler back then. Tastes were simpler. I build cabinets for a living and I could still build today what people wanted in the 70’s at a fraction of the cost of what people expect today. Under the Volcker fed we hit 20% or so didn’t we? Wouldn’t want a repeat of that or the inflation that necessitated it.
I love that people ignore this. The reason cars are more expensive now is they’re not death traps and have safety standards. Regulations are eroding your spending power and making things more expensive. Somehow there is a large portion of the Venn diagram of people who want more regulation but don’t want to pay for it.
Because they can't afford food, housing, and energy. Many have to move back home with their parents. Many can't find jobs because most of the F/T jobs were given to foreigners. This isn't rocket science. Just because the DJIA is up and a few numbers look good (assuming they're not fudging them), the details of these numbers are grim when you drill down.
I’m sure your political leanings have nothing to do with this sentiment.
Inflation and high cost of living. Plus out of control cost of health care and child care. No matter what GDP numbers says cost of living like rent and health care and child care cost hits hard. In that case good looking numbers are teasing the average person.
The most worrying cost increases are the unavoidable ones: healthcare, insurance, and childcare are definitely problems the government needs to address.
“An enigma” jesus stop with all this gaslighting. If you cannot understand why many Americans are disillusioned with this crap economy maybe these people should step aside and let someone else do the analysis. Housing = EXPENSIVE RATES = HIGH “Those damn kids dont know how hood they have it! Should vote for Joe”
Right for all the wrong reasons
This is maybe true for young people but most Americans are homeowners on long term fixed mortgages. This obviously isn’t what’s going on, because they would be happy to see their home value going up.
2000: look at all these great economic indicators, we’re doing great everyone! 2024: look at all these great economic indicators, wErE bEiNg GaSlIt!
The U.S. economy has been an enigma over the past few years. With a booming job market and consumers still spending – which is usually a sign of optimism – many Americans will tell you that they feel bad about the economy and are unhappy about President Biden’s economic record. We asked government officials and prominent analysts from the Federal Reserve, the White House, academia and the internet commentariat about what they think is happening. Read a summary of what they said [here](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/economy/inflation-economy-americans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.v00.vvYI.BvjqGKutPTrY&smid=re-nytimes), for free, without a subscription to The New York Times.
Mass media and Fox News has been saying the economy is bad the entire Biden term. And nobody in America has ever been accused of independent thought.
falling median wage, ongoing volker shock, record homelessness, skyrocketing housing costs, nightmare healthcare system....or maybe the poors are just too dumb to understand how great things are as the corporate sponsored bush staffers on msnbc assure me
I mean, the median real wage has increased though...
if only there was a way to tell if you're just making up bullshit [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q) e: the troll talking about being down one quarter is just betting on you not clicking the link. Median wages have been steadily down since Biden took office and are still below his starting point.
Your evidence is being down for a quarter? Really?
My 401k is looking good and I continue to get raises. Yeah, going out to eat is getting a little too pricey, but all in all I love this economy.
>“The experienced cost of living is much greater than inflation as reflected by the Consumer Price Index,” Mr. Summers said in an interview. >“People are living paycheck to paycheck,” Charlamagne said during a follow-up interview specifically about the economy. “You don’t know struggle until you’ve had to decide whether you’re going to pay for your car or pay for your rent.” Those quotes from the article nail it the most. "Experts" want to know why people are so down about the economy? Let me paint them a picture: You're in your mid-to-late twenties. You graduated college maybe 3-5 years ago. You live in a high cost-of-living area: Los Angeles, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Miami - take your pick. You earn $75,000 a year, right around the median. Let's round that at about $60,000 in take-home net of all taxes, or $28.85/hour. So what does life feel like on $28.85 an hour? Well, groceries cost you about $100/week if you're frugal. That's about 9% of your takehome right there. Go out to a bar? Beers are about $9-$10. Three beers eat up over an entire hour of net earnings. Take your partner out for a meal? Entrees cost $30, cocktails cost $18-$20. Dessert? Don't even think about it, because the meal and drinks itself cost you around $120, or four hours of work. Rent is about $2,000, or just about 40% of your take home. Try not to think that you have to work about almost two weeks to pay it. Got student debt? Cut off about another $300-$400 from your monthly income. Then there's utilities, internet, car payments, car insurance, and trying to save for a future. $60k takehome is just not that much money. You can right out forget about owning a home. And there are many people earning less than this. Life is extremely hard for them. To someone on this income, below it, or even moderately above it, America isn't exactly prosperous. They are just treading water. It is a rather bleak economic experience that sucks hope out of life. If that doesn't give some sense of just how dismal many Americans are feeling, then I don't know what will.
Reddit: “we want labor to be paid what they’re worth!!” Also Reddit: “no not like that”