Productivity in The United States peaked in the '70s
I really did want to take your comments in good faith but asking for data and then turning around to say something completely and blatantly false (and easily verifiable) is making that hard.
Yeah sure, there’s more leisure-type purchases available to us than ever before, and technology does make transactions ridiculously easy. However, the current economic situation for young adults is much too dire to attribute entirely to individual factors when clearly this is an issue on a societal scale.
Fair enough. This is a version of the chart I’ve seen and had in mind. I suppose the difference is in relation to minimum wage.
“We have seen that complete divorce between wages and productivity and massively increased inequality with most gains going to people at the top.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minimum-wage-26-dollars-economy-productivity/
“Purchasing power” is the metric I’ve been thinking about.
This decline in purchasing power means low-wage workers have to work longer hours now just to achieve the standard of living that was considered the bare minimum half a century ago.
https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2024-would-lift-pay-for-nearly-40-million-workers/
Here specifically is the web page I’ve kept in mind when referring to productivity (and I admit that off the top of my head “the 70s” was a bit off).
In fact, had the federal minimum wage kept pace with workers’ productivity since 1968 the inflation-adjusted minimum wage would be $24 an hour.
https://aflcio.org/what-unions-do/social-economic-justice/minimum-wage
I concede that “young adults” and “low wage workers” shouldn’t be confused.
I’ve edited my previous comment. Thank you for the point.
I have a hard time understanding how you can present this information (people working harder and longer for less purchasing power than before) and arrive at the conclusion that young adults’ personal spending habits are to blame. The system is clearly engineered to keep the majority poor and enrich a tiny minority.
Want to know where the profits from the increase in productivity went instead of worker’s wages? I suggest looking up CEO wages from the '50s to the present day, and compare with the chart from my previous comment.
the conclusion that young adults’ personal spending habits are to blame.
At what point did I ever suggest anything close to a conclusion or blame? But since you didn’t ask, I blame Reaganomics, consumerism, and the deregulation of Wall Street. I blame the exportation of jobs for pennies and the mistreatment of workers. I blame disinterest and carelessness and I blame our value and reward of ownership over generosity. I blame “The New American Dream”.
Can’t you stop whining about being a victim for a moment and consider the implications of studying the history of economic and personal finance patterns to plan for the future? I am utterly bored of the repetitive copy/paste talking points and the whining with zero proposals for a solution other than “the boomers did it to us” and we’re all out of ideas.
Look at the real historical data. Present hard evidence and propose how the country is doomed for economic turmoil in ten to twenty years. A couple of charts and anecdotal polls aren’t going to push congress to do anything. No one cares if you can’t afford to buy a car when the economy says people are loaded with money right now. I mean, General Motors just had their best year since 2019 so they don’t care if young people aren’t buying cars. So prove them wrong. I want to prove them wrong - why don’t you?
This is what I mean by you can’t fix people’s narratives. You’re blinded by your grief. No one is saying it’s your fault. You, like the boomers before you, are so self-centered that, unless you get your faces out of your screens and fix this shit, you’ll end up being responsible for a country worse than it’s ever been (slavery aside / if it makes it through this election cycle). I’m absolutely terrified for future generations.
I really don’t get it. I don’t get all the stories and anecdotes and complaining yet no one has provided a full story of the reality of personal finance over the decades. Maybe this does exist and I just don’t know it - it’s probably paywalled. But it seems that without it, this “discussion” exists to divide us and generate clicks and ad revenue and political and corporate control. It’s bullshit.