I thought that increasing wages for working people was a good thing
Imagine you have a patient with body temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The environment is at -20F. You increase the heat around the hypothermic patient by a massive amount to +50F. Is that good enough? If you stop here and have no further plans, is that good or bad if saving a life is your goal? But it’s a massive movement in the right direction!
Now imagine that all the workers got a 20% raise. All the landlords read the same news as everyone else and raise their rents by 30%. Your wages increased massively but your ability to gain wealth is as bad as it ever was.
In other words, Biden must improve people’s ability to accumulate wealth at the lowest quintile and THEN brag.
Wait so the ability to bring in more money per week doesn’t help people to accumulate more wealth in the bank over time?
Dude I had it so wrong, you got teach me more
Now imagine that all the workers got a 20% raise. All the landlords read the same news as everyone else and raise their rents by 30%.
Yeah, I get what you’re saying here. I think I’m starting to understand. Let’s plug in the actual numbers. So let’s see, cumulative inflation since 2019 is 20% which is really fucking high, like historic, which makes sense because they were digging out from Covid. So yeah that’s gonna hurt a lot. Let’s see now, cumulative wage growth at the 10th percentile is 32%, unadjusted, so… fuck me, yeah, they’re gonna be behind by negative 12%. That’s behind AND negative, it’s like a double whammy. That’s super fuckin rough yeah.
stop here and have no further plans
So this is actually a really good point. Having accomplished these aforementioned economic results after coming in literally mid COVID apocalypse with a big fraction still depending on Covid assistance to live and massive unemployment, Biden’s economic platform for his next term is literally just these 7 words and then 200 blank pages. I’m surprised people don’t talk about it more often because it definitely seems like he should have done something different.
Imagine you have a patient with body temperature at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The environment is at -20F. You increase the heat around the hypothermic patient by a massive amount to +50F. Is that good enough? If you stop here and have no further plans, is that good or bad if saving a life is your goal? But it’s a massive movement in the right direction!
Now imagine that all the workers got a 20% raise. All the landlords read the same news as everyone else and raise their rents by 30%. Your wages increased massively but your ability to gain wealth is as bad as it ever was.
In other words, Biden must improve people’s ability to accumulate wealth at the lowest quintile and THEN brag.
Wait so the ability to bring in more money per week doesn’t help people to accumulate more wealth in the bank over time?
Dude I had it so wrong, you got teach me more
Yeah, I get what you’re saying here. I think I’m starting to understand. Let’s plug in the actual numbers. So let’s see, cumulative inflation since 2019 is 20% which is really fucking high, like historic, which makes sense because they were digging out from Covid. So yeah that’s gonna hurt a lot. Let’s see now, cumulative wage growth at the 10th percentile is 32%, unadjusted, so… fuck me, yeah, they’re gonna be behind by negative 12%. That’s behind AND negative, it’s like a double whammy. That’s super fuckin rough yeah.
So this is actually a really good point. Having accomplished these aforementioned economic results after coming in literally mid COVID apocalypse with a big fraction still depending on Covid assistance to live and massive unemployment, Biden’s economic platform for his next term is literally just these 7 words and then 200 blank pages. I’m surprised people don’t talk about it more often because it definitely seems like he should have done something different.