(09-18-2019 01:37 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(09-18-2019 01:27 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  Tanq - where did I ever talk about falling wages?

Look, I get that you're trying to make an issue that doesn't exist, and try and catch me in a gotcha, but it didn't happen. I've been pretty explicit about stagnant wages and rising costs. I then clarified for everyone that I was using real dollars, and already considering inflation into those comparisons. You take that to mean I was contradicting my original statement about stagnant wages and rising costs - but it doesn't, given that the wages and costs I highlighted (education, healthcare, and housing), when taking inflation into consideration, were flat and increasing (respectively). Sorry that you thought I was talking about wages or costs without respect to inflation, I clarified that long ago and have not bounced around at all.

And you can continue to jump onto OO's bandwagon and assign these emotions to my statements, that's your perogarive. It makes for good conversation.

But wages aren't flat, unless you reach back to a time when today's kid's parents were in diapers.

Shorten your horizon a bit - 10 year, 5, 3. In each one, wages are outpacing inflation.

Some things may be more expensive that they were a long time ago. Others are cheaper.

A color TV 45 years was a major and expensive purchase. Nowaways, not so much. But back then, it was not considered a necessity, nor was it in homes designated as poverty stricken.

Health care was expensive, in a way. Because when you saw a doctor, they did not ask for your insurance, they asked for $15 up front - about ten hours wages.

Education is more expensive than it used to - because we have easy financing. Less people going to college, without financing, like it was 45 years ago, and costs will come down.

Housing, probably about the same. I did what I needed to do to buy my first house and pay for it. I did not expect the government to make it cheaper so that everybody could live in my neighborhood cheaply.

But why would we look at such a short horizon? Looking at such a small horizon isn't a good idea because of the recession. The value there is that we're seeing wage growth from a bottom, and we can hope to see that trajectory continue. So sure, there are signs of optimism in that fact.

It's the same issue with looking at unemployment from 2009 - you can talk about the current trend, but not about how employment is holistically - you need to look further back.

100% that some things are cheaper - TVs are a great example of a good that has gotten cheaper in real dollars. But TVs being cheaper doesn't do much to offset the increase, in real costs, of medical care, housing, and education. We can debate how to address those issues, or what has lead to those increases, but I see no value in trying to deny that they happened, or how people coped with those costs in the 50s, 60s, and 70s...