This economic myth needs to go away
www.slowboring.com
Sixty percent of Americans are not struggling to get by
  • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    17 days ago

    There are 2 things that need to be pointed out

    1. The work of the econophysicists (basically modern marxists) shows that wages in any capitalist country or country with private buying and selling of labor will follow a log-normal distribution, and that this distribution will have parameters such that the number of families and individuals suffering from food/fuel insecurity are relatively low.

    2. The American inflation and poverty statistics are completely cooked. The actual purchasing power of dollars in the domestic economy is garbage. 400 dollar emergencies? That is barely anything. I got charged 600 euros for being locked out of my house and calling a locksmith. And I'm in europe, where labor prices are significantly lower than America.

    The inflation calculations are done using a basket of goods, whose composition and weights are constantly being changed, while this can be reasonable (since consumers aren't buying the same thing every year), the government changes the basket of goods to "account" for people buying different things because prices increased. Basically, if prices increase, the government changes the basket to cheaper options, masking the true rise in prices.

    Also the government removes price increase from "the quality of the good being improved", which is as arbitrary as it sounds.

    Thr first fact means that the sentiment provided by the article is true. In a developed capitalist economy, even marxist economics does not predict mass starvation.

    The second fact means that the article misses the idea that Americans are still by and large living in poverty and harmed by recent events. Things have not gotten better for American consumers.