I know that, you silly billy. The view is just better from afar

Yeah, I know. It’s so diametrically opposed to the narrative that’s in the media that people start acting like you’re crazy when you talk about it.

This is a chart of the GINI coefficient, one of the best bottom-line metrics for overall “level of inequality” as a single simple number. It’s irritating that it cuts off in the middle of the Covid discontinuity, but everything I can find is that it’s still at around 40, i.e. still holding steadily at levels that haven’t been seen consistently since the late 1990s.

To get a little more into the details instead of just an abstract number:

The IRA and stronger support for unions led to an absolutely historic increase in wages at the bottom end of the scale, comfortably beating inflation and then some. The level of inflation was absolutely historic, and there wasn’t an equal income gain at the high end of the scale (e.g. tech jobs); I suspect that most of that manufacturing-worker gain was totally invisible to the average Lemmy user, so all they see is the inflation, so it feels like things are getting worse overall for the economy, but for the actually vulnerable people, it’s going in the right direction for the first time in quite a while. Not anywhere near where it should be, of course, but going in the right direction by a pretty significant tick.

• Wages at the 10th percentile (and, for that matter, in the average) are up (12% above inflation for the 10th percentile)
• Wages at the median are steady (big wage gains eaten up by big inflation, no real change in real wages)
• Wages at the top actually are falling (losing ground to inflation that is)

This is one source for all that stuff about wages at different income levels

I know, it’s very different from the narrative.

I don’t think most people feel their buying power has caught up with the greedflation we saw over the last few years.

I think you are right about the perception (what most people feel) part of it. 20% cumulative inflation is going to hurt when you go to the grocery store however you slice it. On the other hand, the country’s most vulnerable people are making 32% more (un inflation adjusted), i.e. beating inflation by quite a bit. So I think you are right about the feeling (particularly for someone who’s closer to the top end, where wages have kept pace or fallen behind inflation.)

There’s actually an important caveat even to the perception side of it – if you poll people about how the country’s economy is doing, they say it is terrible. But if you poll them about how their state is doing, they say it’s beating the average by quite a bit, doing not too bad.

This, combined with any which way you measure the economy in terms of actual dollars showing that things are actually moving in the right direction, makes me lay the blame at the feet of the media more than anything. I don’t think the media gives a shit about autoworkers’ unions or manufacturing jobs; like I say high-end wages actually haven’t kept up with inflation, which I think is most of where media people and the people important to them sit.

Statistics can be made to say anything.

So can anecdotes

I am constantly seeing news about the crunch that the lower economic classes are feeling

I believe you on the news part yes

We are inundated with evidence that younger generations can’t afford housing, can’t afford groceries, etc.

Yeah, it’s still bad. Me saying things have ticked up by 12% isn’t anywhere near enough to say that things are okay yet.

The economy may be booming per statistics, but who is it benefiting, people who need the benefit, or no?

The answer is low wage workers, i.e. exactly the people who most badly need the benefit, who unfortunately aren’t in charge of the news networks that shape most people’s perceptions

That’s the real question and I think the dissatisfaction a lot of people feel is a marker that it’s not as simple as what the numbers might show.

John Stewart did I think a fairly compelling illustration, pertaining to crime statistics, of why this type of argument isn’t a good reason for rejecting quantitative analysis of what’s going on. I mean the statistics can always be misleading in any one of a number of ways but I don’t really agree with the idea “we can’t ever look at the numbers to see what’s working, because I want to stick with just asserting that everything’s bad without doing any big attempt to see beyond a vague impression based on what I see in the media.”

Not saying you’re doing that (or by any means that things are “done” and in good shape for the average working person) – I’m just saying that the impression you may have gotten from the media about how things are changing for the really vulnerable people in society may not be a fully accurate view of it. Of course things are still bad. My thing is just that it’s important to be honest about what is and isn’t working, to identify the stuff that works and be able to do more of it, instead of just going with feelings and the media presentation.