I’d say it’s a fairly valid point. But don’t forget they were also born in or lived through the Great Depression, and fought in WWII and the Korean War, and those wars pretty much directly led to the subsequent economic good times in the US. It wasn’t all peaches and cream.
Its basic fuckenomics. The money flows to the top. Always. The more it flows, the faster it goes.
Productivity has gone up, but wages have not, and now many industries are so consolidated that they can charge near-monopoly prices. The value of our collective productivity accrues almost entirely to the property-owning class, and the concentration of wealth even among that class has increased. With their combined wealth, the twelve richest people in the US could purchase the entire economic output of Japan, a country with 125,000,000 residents, for 6 months
Outsourced manufacturing to countries with poor and thus cheap labor. Now want to bring back “made in the usa” so you need to make the gen pop poorer so they will work for lower wages.
Women joined the workforce and all of a sudden the supply for labor exceeded the demand by a lot and corporate america benefited. Same trend happened with technology replacing labor. Labor costs reduced at the expense of the middle class lifestyle.
There’s a lot going on with this one, and I’m not going to pretend I’ve done the research, but I do work in home sales and repair, so I’ll take a stab at it from the housing side.
First, and this is what the meme is meant to call up, is that wage gains have been disproportionately going to top earners for a long time. You combine that with the two earner household and you’ve got most of your answer.
Now for the less obvious, primarily lifestyle creep. In those days, meals were eaten at home or packed for away. Very frugal households might literally never eat at a restaurant. Average households might eat out a few times a year.
In those days, new homes might be 800 finished SQ ft. 2 beds, 1 bath, no garage or a single detached. No air conditioning. No dishwasher. No sprinkler system. No sod. That’s $20-40k worth of “standard” options in today’s dollars, depending on how you value the garage. 800 SQ ft is much smaller than the typical new starter home, and the quality of finishes are higher today than they were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Children used to share bedrooms, a rarity in middle class households today.
It is largely an issue of economic unfairness, but it’s important that we understand and acknowledge the role that the increased standard of living plays in the whole thing too.
Reaganomics. The failed “trickle down” policy.
Reagan.
People bought into anti-union propaganda and the idea that they don’t need to organize to get a fair share from their employer. It’s horseshit and every generation since has been poorer for it. I’m just thankful that younger folks seem to be figuring it out: Starbucks and Amazon are facing unionization efforts as we speak.
Mom washed the clothes and dishes by hand, made the clothes, built the furniture, nobody had an iPhone or Xbox, there was a radio and a TV with 4 channels, a 200 mile road trip was a holiday, no flights to Cabo.
Capitalism was allowed to continue to run wild and unregulated.
We used to have a 44% corporate tax rate, a 90% tax rate incremental tax rate on the upper tax brackets, strong union membership, caps on political campaign contributions, and it was illegal for corporations to buyback stock. Globalization sent manufacturing abroad and the military industrial complex sucked up what was left domestically. We off-shored a lot of our intellectual work and now AI is displacing what’s left.
But atleast we have Netflix and Amazon
Financialisation of capital – started after the 1970’s oil price shock.
The elites were scared of communism. You were still less than two decades from the great depression. The new deal coalition was fractured but still strong.
It is called inflation, which is nothing but a pretty name for “creating money out of thin air”
The “explanation” is that it is made up. We make more now than we did in the 40s and 50s adjusted for inflation. We live way longer now too, so the “retirement” isn’t what it was and vacations? A vacation in 1940 was driving to the lake.
Poverty in our grandparents time was terrible, and racial inequality was immense. And both of those things were more fatal than they are now.
We are, by almost every measure better off than our grandparents generation.
The Chicago School, the cult of shareholder wealth, and Reagan.
Literally not figuratively, those were the personification of the ultra rich in there day, every statistic in the world will show you in the USA we are richer and more comfortable today on average then every before
At the end of WW2, USA was the last industrial power left standing. We manufactured most of the world’s stuff because everyone else who could was too battered from the war. USA’s labor force was in demand and prospered. In time, other nations developed that ability. We had competition, which forced us to pay power wages to be more competitive ourselves. Along with that, pile on the increasing emphasis on shareholder value that prompted “efficiency” everywhere possible in a company. That meant squeezing the labor force harder. Then, with women’s lib, the labor force expanded. More competition. As people earned more money, demand increased for homes, cars, education, etc. with increased demand, their prices rose.
Then Wall Street discovered globalization as a means of improving shareholder value. With Pax Americana firmly in place, globalization was now a possibility. It wasn’t intended at first to improve our economy or shareholder value; it had more to do with national security. But the effect was the same: more competition for the US labor force.
I think that post-war boom was a one-off. Our grandparents were fortunate enough to work during it. What we are experiencing is more typical of a global equilibrium, with the USA still benefiting a lot, but not as much as before. We are still a people who have lost something in the process, and that never feels good or right.
Our government sold us out to the rich. We have been experiencing boiled frog slavery for like 65 years.
Kids did not go to college; Xmas gifts were few and modest or utilitarian; kids played and read. Kids worked from age 10; days off were on a blanket on grass at park ; meals were produced my mom. Eating out was rare.
Reganomics!!
Might be an unpopular take but I think women’s rights might have had an impact on this situation. Let me explain.
Women fought for equal rights. They wanted to vote, they got it. They wanted to work, they got it. They fought for more salary. They wanted to be equal to men.
And for the most part, I believe they got what they fought for. Yay women! So what’s the problem?
As women became more educated, they started entering the work force in droves.
Before, our economy was structured around one breadwinner. But when most families have two breadwinners, our economy scales to match. House prices start to match a two-income salary.
Women’s rights was supposed to give them the option to work. But it actually lost them the option to be a housewife. For lower income women anyway.
A lot more people competing for resources now than there was then.
It’s half an urban legend, property ownership rate was lower 50 years ago, but it correspond to the dominant narrative on reddit ‘boomer bad’. Also you were not buying the same house due to rising construction standards.
Easy answer: inflation ran a marathon, wages took a nap, and housing prices joined the space race.
Wealth distribution is more and more disproportionate. Rich getting richer. My theory is, it’s partly self inflicted. While our politicians are getting paid to pass tax legislation that helps the ultra wealthy, we are also pushing the wealth inequality. We invest in companies through stocks, expect those stocks to perform and make us money. In order for companies to keep doing well, year after year, they need to keep beating profit margins and show profit growth. To do that, they start finding ways to either produce cheaper goods; like through lower wages or charge more for their product. Both of which impact us but keep profits growing for CEOs.
Not enough housing being built but adding millions of immigrants to compete with the demand sure didn’t help.
Reagan
Bideonomics , inflation is transitory, billions wasted , societal degradation
31 comments
Not all grandfathers.
I’d say it’s a fairly valid point. But don’t forget they were also born in or lived through the Great Depression, and fought in WWII and the Korean War, and those wars pretty much directly led to the subsequent economic good times in the US. It wasn’t all peaches and cream.
Its basic fuckenomics. The money flows to the top. Always. The more it flows, the faster it goes.
Productivity has gone up, but wages have not, and now many industries are so consolidated that they can charge near-monopoly prices. The value of our collective productivity accrues almost entirely to the property-owning class, and the concentration of wealth even among that class has increased. With their combined wealth, the twelve richest people in the US could purchase the entire economic output of Japan, a country with 125,000,000 residents, for 6 months
Outsourced manufacturing to countries with poor and thus cheap labor. Now want to bring back “made in the usa” so you need to make the gen pop poorer so they will work for lower wages.
Women joined the workforce and all of a sudden the supply for labor exceeded the demand by a lot and corporate america benefited. Same trend happened with technology replacing labor. Labor costs reduced at the expense of the middle class lifestyle.
There’s a lot going on with this one, and I’m not going to pretend I’ve done the research, but I do work in home sales and repair, so I’ll take a stab at it from the housing side.
First, and this is what the meme is meant to call up, is that wage gains have been disproportionately going to top earners for a long time. You combine that with the two earner household and you’ve got most of your answer.
Now for the less obvious, primarily lifestyle creep. In those days, meals were eaten at home or packed for away. Very frugal households might literally never eat at a restaurant. Average households might eat out a few times a year.
In those days, new homes might be 800 finished SQ ft. 2 beds, 1 bath, no garage or a single detached. No air conditioning. No dishwasher. No sprinkler system. No sod. That’s $20-40k worth of “standard” options in today’s dollars, depending on how you value the garage. 800 SQ ft is much smaller than the typical new starter home, and the quality of finishes are higher today than they were in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Children used to share bedrooms, a rarity in middle class households today.
It is largely an issue of economic unfairness, but it’s important that we understand and acknowledge the role that the increased standard of living plays in the whole thing too.
Reaganomics. The failed “trickle down” policy.
Reagan.
People bought into anti-union propaganda and the idea that they don’t need to organize to get a fair share from their employer. It’s horseshit and every generation since has been poorer for it. I’m just thankful that younger folks seem to be figuring it out: Starbucks and Amazon are facing unionization efforts as we speak.
Mom washed the clothes and dishes by hand, made the clothes, built the furniture, nobody had an iPhone or Xbox, there was a radio and a TV with 4 channels, a 200 mile road trip was a holiday, no flights to Cabo.
Capitalism was allowed to continue to run wild and unregulated.
We used to have a 44% corporate tax rate, a 90% tax rate incremental tax rate on the upper tax brackets, strong union membership, caps on political campaign contributions, and it was illegal for corporations to buyback stock. Globalization sent manufacturing abroad and the military industrial complex sucked up what was left domestically. We off-shored a lot of our intellectual work and now AI is displacing what’s left.
But atleast we have Netflix and Amazon
Financialisation of capital – started after the 1970’s oil price shock.
The elites were scared of communism. You were still less than two decades from the great depression. The new deal coalition was fractured but still strong.
It is called inflation, which is nothing but a pretty name for “creating money out of thin air”
The “explanation” is that it is made up. We make more now than we did in the 40s and 50s adjusted for inflation. We live way longer now too, so the “retirement” isn’t what it was and vacations? A vacation in 1940 was driving to the lake.
Poverty in our grandparents time was terrible, and racial inequality was immense. And both of those things were more fatal than they are now.
We are, by almost every measure better off than our grandparents generation.
The Chicago School, the cult of shareholder wealth, and Reagan.
Literally not figuratively, those were the personification of the ultra rich in there day, every statistic in the world will show you in the USA we are richer and more comfortable today on average then every before
At the end of WW2, USA was the last industrial power left standing. We manufactured most of the world’s stuff because everyone else who could was too battered from the war. USA’s labor force was in demand and prospered. In time, other nations developed that ability. We had competition, which forced us to pay power wages to be more competitive ourselves. Along with that, pile on the increasing emphasis on shareholder value that prompted “efficiency” everywhere possible in a company. That meant squeezing the labor force harder. Then, with women’s lib, the labor force expanded. More competition. As people earned more money, demand increased for homes, cars, education, etc. with increased demand, their prices rose.
Then Wall Street discovered globalization as a means of improving shareholder value. With Pax Americana firmly in place, globalization was now a possibility. It wasn’t intended at first to improve our economy or shareholder value; it had more to do with national security. But the effect was the same: more competition for the US labor force.
I think that post-war boom was a one-off. Our grandparents were fortunate enough to work during it. What we are experiencing is more typical of a global equilibrium, with the USA still benefiting a lot, but not as much as before. We are still a people who have lost something in the process, and that never feels good or right.
Our government sold us out to the rich. We have been experiencing boiled frog slavery for like 65 years.
Kids did not go to college; Xmas gifts were few and modest or utilitarian; kids played and read. Kids worked from age 10; days off were on a blanket on grass at park ; meals were produced my mom. Eating out was rare.
Reganomics!!
Might be an unpopular take but I think women’s rights might have had an impact on this situation. Let me explain.
Women fought for equal rights. They wanted to vote, they got it. They wanted to work, they got it. They fought for more salary. They wanted to be equal to men.
And for the most part, I believe they got what they fought for. Yay women! So what’s the problem?
As women became more educated, they started entering the work force in droves.
Before, our economy was structured around one breadwinner. But when most families have two breadwinners, our economy scales to match. House prices start to match a two-income salary.
Women’s rights was supposed to give them the option to work. But it actually lost them the option to be a housewife. For lower income women anyway.
A lot more people competing for resources now than there was then.
It’s half an urban legend, property ownership rate was lower 50 years ago, but it correspond to the dominant narrative on reddit ‘boomer bad’. Also you were not buying the same house due to rising construction standards.
Easy answer: inflation ran a marathon, wages took a nap, and housing prices joined the space race.
Wealth distribution is more and more disproportionate. Rich getting richer. My theory is, it’s partly self inflicted. While our politicians are getting paid to pass tax legislation that helps the ultra wealthy, we are also pushing the wealth inequality. We invest in companies through stocks, expect those stocks to perform and make us money. In order for companies to keep doing well, year after year, they need to keep beating profit margins and show profit growth. To do that, they start finding ways to either produce cheaper goods; like through lower wages or charge more for their product. Both of which impact us but keep profits growing for CEOs.
Not enough housing being built but adding millions of immigrants to compete with the demand sure didn’t help.
Reagan
Bideonomics , inflation is transitory, billions wasted , societal degradation
Comments are closed.