Please stop seeing this as some “unions are hurting us all” lens - this is bigger.
The biggest and most important global economic act was during Covid worldwide governments printed trillions with a T of dollars, euros and yens which ended up in the pockets of those with wealth.
And the end result is that there is trillions more money hanging around trying to buy the same amount of goods / real estate / labour. That’s inflation and it has been mega high - I mean since 2018 UK CPI has been nearly 40% - and I have basically had a 40% pay cut
So has everyone.
And unions are doing the right thing - giving their members a fair share of the increased amount of dollars
Finally MMT suggests of course what governments should do is tax back the increased trillions but without that point of view there is just a lot of pain in the system
>And the end result is that there is trillions more money hanging around trying to buy the same amount of goods / real estate / labour. That’s inflation and it has been mega high - I mean since 2018 UK CPI has been nearly 40% - and I have basically had a 40% pay cut
>So has everyone.
I can't speak to your specific situation, but on average "everyone" did not get a "40% pay cut". If anything, real (ie. inflation adjusted) wages are slightly up since pre-pandemic levels.
I’m sorry - without looking at the Feds graphs, are you saying that most workers, he’ll most HNers have had a pay rise of over 30% in the past five years ?
If more than 1 in 10 of HNers on this thread have had annual pay rises of 5% each year every year since 2019 Inwill eat my hat
Yes, and no. I went from $28/hr in 2019, to $140k in 2022, to $50/hr with no benefits in 2024. It's been a bumpy road for me.
But I get what you're saying. Even in tech a 30% raise is hard unless you're new (and likely underpaid). 30% for the average worker overall in 5 years is basically unheard of.
1. I think this is one of the cases where median isn't as helpful as the full 5 numbers. if the median is good but Q1 is barely above living wage, that's 25% of the country struggling.
2. You own math doesn't check out here. the progression here went from ~900 to ~1100. 22 is a much far cry from 30 than 28. you also seem to have underreported the professional wages (28% compared to 20%)
That money has already gone out to people though. The reason that people's pay has bought less than before is that a large chunk of the economy was shut down and those goods and services were not produced. This means that there is simply no way for people to be able to purchase as much as they did before because it's just not there to buy in the first place. Shutting down the ports makes this worse by preventing US-based factories from getting the inputs to operate and non-US-based factories shipping their products to Americans. This is effectively making the whole country poorer in real terms as leverage to try and get a bigger share of what's left.
The biggest and most important global economic act was during Covid worldwide governments printed trillions with a T of dollars, euros and yens which ended up in the pockets of those with wealth.
And the end result is that there is trillions more money hanging around trying to buy the same amount of goods / real estate / labour. That’s inflation and it has been mega high - I mean since 2018 UK CPI has been nearly 40% - and I have basically had a 40% pay cut
So has everyone.
And unions are doing the right thing - giving their members a fair share of the increased amount of dollars
Finally MMT suggests of course what governments should do is tax back the increased trillions but without that point of view there is just a lot of pain in the system
Edit: clarity