Ezra you guys know, since you studied neo classical economics, that in competitive markets businesses are not price setters but price takers. The fact that businesses are setting prices higher because they can reflects that the markets are not accepting new competitors, because there is a vision of profit, and existing businesses in the market have political or otherwise power to set prices. Home insurance market, pharmaceuticals, defense industry, Medical insurance…. The list goes on and on. We have just had 44 years of suppression of the enforcement of Anti Trust Laws.
...This means that people ARE correct to ultimately blame corporate greed and Washington, D.C. for these economic problems, then, right? And from what I've seen it doesn't matter much which party is in power: the corporate greed continues unabated.
Great discussion! As someone who’s spent my career as a teacher, or in similarly poorly paid jobs that require a graduate education, I’ve always economically been somewhere between working poor and lower middle class. When I wanted a home, I bought substandard housing (abandoned for ten years) and worked my weekends to fix up those homes, and built up and sold up till I’m now in a nice home, even though my income is still moderate. We go backpacking on vacations, which costs little, we cut our own hair, don’t eat out or go to movies, I repair our cars, replace our roof, etc., etc. But house insurance costs have quadrupled, food has doubled, electricity has doubled, car insurance has doubled, medical insurance is up, a new car is a pipe dream. Yet wages are barely up. Teachers and carpenters and everyone paid like a teacher or carpenter, has been in an economic recession or depression since 2008. And it is only getting worse.
In my experience (I'm 72) teaching is not poorly paid and a graduate education is not needed at any level under college. I recall a young teacher telling me that she was poorly paid. Then I told her she earned 140% of the average family income in the State. She didn't know that. Maybe she shouldn't have been teaching. The acquisition of yet another degree doesn't mean a lot in terms of performance if it's not functional in the workplace. A welder doesn't need a college degree. We need to better match talent and skills to actual needs.
@@alankwellsmsmba 140% of low is still low & poor .. what state is that ? in many districts your pay is calculated by years and college credits so more school = more pay .. many jobs don't need college so get employers to stop using that as criteria for hiring
@alankwellsmsmba In some states of the U.S.A., the professionalization of the teaching profession requires the teachers to have graduate education in order to obtain a teaching license.
@@alankwellsmsmba, In the United States, all public school systems require teachers to have a bachelor's degree and a teaching license to teach any grade level. Some private schools may allow teachers without a bachelor's degree, but most require one.
Economists and media keep telling us that the economy is fantastic, but we can't afford anything, so then they just tell us we're bad with money. Executives and landlords are cheering them on while raising prices and rent. You don't need a new economic theory to explain this, it's painfully obvious.
Finally an intelligent comment in a sea of delusion. Libs want to gaslight us into thinking everything is fine. Conservatives want us to blame everything on "illegals" and uppity minorities. The reality is that capitalism is working exactly as intended.
When everything across the board goes up in price, it is a result of inflation because of the central bank’s monetary policies and not from executives and landlords price gouging. Inflation is almost always a government made thing. Politicians and media who supports them will say it’s transitory, or call it GREEDflation to deter blame, but use some common sense. If everything across the board has gone up, odds are the landlord’s rent increase is just keeping up with inflation caused by the people you probably voted in.
Taxing the ill gotten money of the wealthy will only legitimize their theft of the money in the first place. We must stop them from taking so much of it before taxes. It isn't their money at all.
Tax receipts as % of gdp have risen from 17 to 20% in past 60 years. Deficits as % of gdp have risen from 0 to 12%. The problems are out of control spending and who is carrying the tax burden
@hereigoagain5050 We foolishly have been allowing entitlements to wither or rot on the vine. We created entitlements underfunded deliberately to finance them on a pay as you go basis. Commercial insurance products are prefunded. Before an insurance company creates an insurance product the insurance company needs to create an investment pool of capital that will assure the insurance company will not go broke in 20 years and leave state governments with millions of sick people who can not afford their healthcare. Commercial insurance companies after creating a capital pool sell insurance whose premiums continously feeds the growth of principle allowing most well run insurance companies to be able to sustainably underwrite insurance so in most years insurance cc companies are able to payout more in policy claims than they sold insurance premiums because of the magic of compounding of interest and dividends on prefunded principle which government entitlements. When government insurance because it is not prefunded, not backed by anything but worthless treasuries put into the Social Security Trust Fund as worthless I Owe You's. With no real value. The actuararies of the Social Security Trust Fund Knew as early as the Kennedy Administration that Social Secuity trust fund was going broke. In 1938 when government started to collect taxes for Social Security 42 people paid into the Social Security Trust for everyone person collecting and the life span of the average American was 59 years of age and the retirement age was 65 so the average American died six years before collecting their Social Security and over decades we have allowed foreign born elderly to immergrate to America after decades of paying taxes in their own country for their nations version of Social Security collecting their former nation"s benefit and than getting on social security and collecting here without paying into the system. Next years retirees Social Security benefit will be cut 13% and in 2030, 6 years from now all entitlements will need to be cut 20%. and only two people will be paying into the system for everyone receiving. The government has not been adequately funding the program from the very beginning. We can still Fund Social Security and other entitlements if we stop taxing people's savings, raise interest rates on peoples savings have government Federal, state and local shrink there payroll by 50% over 25 years through accelerated retirements and put the savings into the Social Security Trust Fund and other entitlements buy stock, corporate bonds, foreign government bonds because US Treasuries are worthless because the United States Treasury can not both sell United States Treasuries and at the same time pay interest on their own treasurues to them selves. Worldwide the savings rate of governments worldwide must rise to 33% of Gross Domestic Product for governments, Business and Households and governments got to stop taxing savings. With a 33% rate of savings, savings would check the growth of government spending federal, state, and local. government . We could increase the growth of of the money supply by the Treasury the parent of the Social Security System by printing 33% more money, buy stock on all the stock exchanges in the world, by corporate debt gold and other commodities and government bonds of other nations cut congress wages otherwise there will be civil wars in more than half the nations and possibly a global market crash worldwide far greater than the great depression. The Federal, State and Local governments must shrink simultaneously through accelerated retirements and slowing of new hires of retiring workers. For decades the federal state and local governments have underfunding the healthcare planes and retirement plans. relative to the lengthening lifespans of government workers. The federal, state and local governments have enough redundancy in tax prepares entitlement workers and environmental protection workers where they can shrink those separate workers in the federal state and local governments and merge the entitlement processors, tax collectors of federal state and local government at the county levels of government where all levels of government have a presence. Instead of building separate office buildings for federal, state and local government we have them share space wherever possible. Entitlement workers for state governments could process both local government entitlements of Medicaid, Food Stamps, Aid to famlies with dependent children, state unemployment benefits and Federal applications for Social Security Medicare SSDI and SSI using one application for entitlement with the appropriate benefits being sort and recorded in separate check off boxes just as is done with College financial aid. We need for governments to replace ever tax dollar to fund government with investment dollars and governments be required to run surpluses in every government agency putting aside a mandatory minimum rate of savings 33% of Gross Domestic Product with 18% going to retirement, 7.5% Medical Savings Accounts to cover insurance deductibles and another general savings also for 7.5% because the single greatest cause of bankruptcy are uncovered insurance deductibles. These funds need to be fungible allowing transfers when needed from general funds to retirement funds and general funds to medical savings accounts to cover insurance deductibles. Personal health insurance, property insurance, and automobile insurance should all be written of people's taxes. Government tax deductions for dependents should be in percentage of income just as taxes are based on percentages of income. That is called inflation adjusted tax deductions.
Saying that "it's not greed, it's what corporations do" is a fucked up form of whitewashing. It is literally greed... the desire to take as much as possible while giving as little as possible.
Is that not the essence of free market capitalism? “Greed” is not an item on the balance sheet. Simply, capitalism is: profit = revenue - cost. A “good” business maximizes profit for its shareholders, damn the consequences. The problem is there have been abundant consequences for consumers and less for business.
This from the same minds that said the Democrats problem is a messaging problem. They are completely out of touch with reality and it's showing more and more everyday.
This always masks certain types of income redistribution. You need to look at relative wage increases. If you make an extra 20% and I make an extra 100% guess who will be buying the desirable house.
@@pcopeland15 opportunity cost also must be factored in. making 20% less over 18 months and then making 25% more going forward, doesn't equal out the cost of inflation. it would take X amount of time to make up the difference, meanwhile inflation is constant and your income increase is less so.
I'm an admin and my pay has definitely not even begun to keep up with the cost of anything. My purchasing power has gone done drastically and I'm not imaging it, trust me. But I see corporations posting records profits every day so they're not having any trouble paying their bills, no matter what they say.
If you have been renting and have bought a new car in the past few years your pay almost definitely didn't keep up. If you owned a house and a car as of ~2020/2021 you have likely seen wages outpace inflation. Two entirely different experiences right now
The economic data that wages have outpaced inflation is misleading -- it is unclear what wage earners were surveyed and who was excluded. Also owning a house and a car has nothing to do with your wages outpacing inflation. House and car are wealth assets; wages and inflation have to do with cash flows. Even if you construct a theoretical basis connecting your assets to your cash flows, inflation is still independent and a measure of the decrease in purchasing power. Inflation is a tax.
Hate for immigrants is weird. Here in Desantis's fascist Florida, even apart from agriculture, life would STOP without the quiet brown guys who build/repair our streets/sewers/bridges, construct our buildings, replace our roofs, etc. The Hispanic females who care for our children, staff our big-box stores, etc.
the brown guys get spicy in new mexico. as a white professional living there, i was regularly threatened by them. we need to keep their balls in a tight vice or else things get bad. just go to new mexico.
Supply and demand. Stop letting people in and the remaining people will have more wage bargaining power. It's why the "Yellow" railway workers were hated centuries ago.
With a drop in cheap illegal immigrant labor, pay would rise in order to fills those positions, US citizens would be more eager to take them. The rich have enjoyed building a nation on cheap illegal labor - But it comes at the cost of good wages for lower skilled Americans, greater spending on social services, and reduced housing availability. The whole model needs to be destroyed so the economy can adjust to serving it's native sons, not the ultra rich Americans and ultra poor foreigners. Close the border to illegal immigration.
I’ll recommend a book that I think sheds light on why economists are often perplexed at people’s negative perceptions of the U.S. economy: The Growth Delusion by David Pilling. He points out that economic statistics (like GDP) are often considered the final word on how well an economy is doing without putting much thought into how those numbers are really calculated and what nuances they might be missing. I think we see this with the current emphasis on the unemployment rate (how low!) and wage growth (it’s outpaced inflation). For the former, yes, it’s easy to get a job, but maybe the unemployment rate doesn’t do a good job at capturing the underemployment of those with lower-paying jobs. For the latter, do wage growth statistics account for the stratification of wages across lower, middle, and higher income segments? Is most of the wage growth going to those already well off? What other nuances in the economic numbers might we be overlooking? There was also a lot of discussion in this interview about how U.S. consumers have not changed their spending habits much. I think this is worth exploring more. I’m curious to know how much more reliant on credit card and installment plan purchases we’ve become.
exactly!! @115atm they give the average salary in the US but wealth inequality is so significant that it skews these statistics wildly. its criminal in my opinion
I agree with you that economists are not getting the full picture with their limited set of statistics. Also I'm not sure the statistics they are using are accurate and free of manipulation and bias (it's an election year with intense politics). Spending habits are changing, maybe the report data is just stale and lagging the trend, and also people will burn through savings and rack up debt before accepting reality -- I think there are indications that the economy is winding up under pressure and could buckle soon.
Unemployment data doesn't cover freelancers and contract workers, which are said to make up a third of the workforce. I freelance and went from working hours of almost 2 full time jobs to almost nothing. And what is out there, the rates are really low for tedious, time-consuming work
A CEO of a hardware supply company said to me we raised prices (and our margins) significantly during the pandemic and we're not backing down. Or as an economist would say, prices are sticky and slow to adjust, meaning they do not respond quickly to changes in supply and demand. Just walk around a Home Depot or Lowes and prices haven't dropped even as the pandemic ended and supply chains recovered.
@@Jumpinsnakes You mean power tools. A top of the line 2x4 and a top of the line nail perform exactly the same as they did 70 years ago, but I can't afford them now.
Since RUclips dislikes aren't visible... Don't waste your time listening to this. Shallow interpretation of flawed unemployment statistics. Blaming consumers for not comparing prices as an explanation for what is price gouging by corporations. Aversion of the term "greedflation". Capitalism has failed the majority in this country who don't have significant participation in the stock market. I'm middle class and am fortunate enough to have savings in the market. That's the only way to prosper in this economy, and that's exactly what the 1% wants.
A box of Kraft macaroni and cheese went up by 150% the past 3 years and there’s less in the box. It matters that Chick-Fil-A costs $15. The cluelessness of the liberal wealthy.
Are you “fortunate” or wise with your money? You probably stayed out of debt, didn’t buy things you couldn’t afford, saved a portion of your wages for long term growth, upgraded your education to get a better paying job, lived below your means…..
My thoughts after the first 3 minutes: Things that don't matter: inflation rate, S&P500, unemployment rate The thing that matters: The answer to this question: "Can I afford my monthly bills?" That's it. We're suffering from past inflation. Even if the inflation rate were zero, we would still be suffering from inflation from the last few years. Causing high inflation is unforgivable, even if you "fix it" later. Fireman to homeowner: Why are you so upset? We put out the fire. Homeowner: My house burned down.
I don't support Trump because he is anti Ukraine, but I like the idea that he wants to dismantle the swamp , get rid of lobbying. Biden did support Ukraine but he gave away far too much free money and caused 1/2 of the inflation which was unnecessary. I am retired on a pretty fixed income and Biden destroyed part of my income. If you are working , you will get an increase in wages but not if you are on a company pension. Biden did all this spending to buy votes. Trump did the spending because of Covid but he wanted to cut off the free money in his last quarter but was forced to by his party and the Dems. I did think the open border was awful and the US can get all the legal immigrants that it needs to fill jobs and the illegals are a big problem that never goes away. They are all queue jumpers. There are billions of people that would immigrate if given a chance, so I have no pity on queue jumpers. They all have other citizenships and countries to go back to. Billions of people have economic hardship , so that is no excuse to enter the US>
Honestly this is elite school journalism and elite US economics. Talk but no deviation from US exceptionalism. Let’s try to model the US government and corporate behavior more like the direction of the up and coming world countries. They brim full of hope.
The Bonfire 🔥 of Trumpery and Winnie the Pooh's 💩 Biowar_2020💀 did us all in. "Fireman" used to mean someone who shovelled coal to *feed the fire* to heat the boiler to make steam to propel his ship 🚢 to outrun a U-boat's torpedo. My Dad was a "fireman" rising eventually to become a "crew chief" in the British Merchant Navy. Boiling water to outrun a torpedo was quite idiotic.
I'm halfway through the podcast, and what has not been talked about is drilling into unemployment more. More specifically, UNDER-employment. Yeah sure unemployment (by the survey's limited qualifiers) is low. But... The quality of jobs has gotten worse. The gig economy and part time job economy is lowering these unemployment numbers, while screwing the workers whose total compensation is terrible (no benefits). Additionally, we have companies going more lean (see tech layoffs) to squeeze profits. We have a white collar job recession. Unemployment may be relatively low, but the quality of jobs is trash.
I agree with this completely. You're only as secure as your current job, and you can't count on keeping it, because you can be laid off at a whim. Corporate management likes to tell you that your career is under your control, but that like most of what corporate America peddles, is a lie.
1. So many essential benefits to live life without debilitating worry, healthcare first among them, need to be separated from your employer. It's way too much power and leverage over an employee for a relationship that already has such a skewed power dynamic. 2. I worry that AI will make the quality of jobs out there even more crap. We dreamed of automation to take care of manual and menial labor so that we could be free to do the creative work that gives us meaning and inspiration. Instead, AI today is taking creative jobs so all that's left is manual and menial labor, stripping our life of meaning, especially when so much of the AI art out there is completely soulless.
And yet you didn't care about this at all when gig workers were mostly mothers and other caregivers who couldn't work a normal 8-5 schedule. Because they lived that reality for decades. You only care about it when suddenly it's happening to a lot of men in tech, so, you know, poo on you.
My greatest concern is how to recover from all these economic and global troubles and stay afloat especially with the political power tussle going on in US.
Inflation can have a significant impact on individuals and their cost of living. As a result, it can cause negative market sentiment. It is important for individuals and businesses to find ways to navigate and potentially mitigate the effects of inflation on their finances. The current economic climate, including underperformance of financial markets due to fear of inflation, has led to a decrease in the value of my portfolio. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to potentially increase returns during this market downturn.
Stocks are pretty unstable at the moment, but if you do the right math, you should be just fine. Bloomberg and other finance media have been recording cases of folks gaining over $250k just in a matter of weeks/couple months, so I think there are a lot of wealth transfer in this downtime if you know where to look.
Such market uncertainties are the reason I don’t base my market judgements and decisions on rumours and here-says, got the best of me 2020 and had me holding worthless position in the market, I had to revamp my entire portfolio through the aid of an advisor, before I started seeing any significant results happens in my portfolio, been using the same advisor and I’ve scaled up $450k within 2 years, whether a bullish or down market, both makes for good profit, it all depends on where you’re looking.
There are a handful of experts in the field. I've experimented with a few over the past years, but I've stuck with Annette Marie Holt for about five years now, and her performance has been consistently impressive. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
The traditional unemployment rate does not capture real unemployment. You do not cite the labor participation rate which is dramatically lower than its peak in the 1990s.
A lot of us were reminded of why we ignore that system and don't show up in the figures. It just doesn't work well enough to be worth the red tape and hoop jumping.
The 1990's was also when they changed how they measure unemployment; It used to be actual people not working; then they changed it, to only reflect the number of people getting unemployment income. When you were no longer eligible for unemployment benefits, you were just assumed to have found a job because you were no longer on the unemployment lists.
It's fascinating to see how journalists can tunnel vision to the point of absurdity and completely fail to see the forest for the trees. She definitely has a few very valid points that contextualize why businesses keep raising prices, how GDP is trending well, how inflation is nearly under control and how not everything is as black and white as the echo bubble would have us believe. Yet, in the search for nuance, these two completely lost track of reality. The level of mental gymnastics displayed in these 91 minutes should be embarrassing to them. Prices have skyrocketed in relation to wages, income distribution is at all-time low, intergenerational elasticity is at an all-time high, an entire generation is priced out of home ownership, the lower middle class is barely capable of affording a restaurant meal, all while corporations are posting record profits across the nation. What the hell, Ezra Klein? Do better.
Thank you. I thought I was losing my mind until I read the comments and everyone is responding with a version of "WTF?" The idea that economic data treated as empirical instead of the result of greed, presented in perfect npr- sounding Ira Glass voice as if corporate greed was just folksy, "this American Life," is the essence of privilege. "Why are American so angry they can't afford anything?" Lets dig deeper 🤦🏽♂️
“Trickle Down Economic Theory” is behind the problems. It’s the macro economic reason we have a billionaire owning the trump. Do you remember a billionaire prior to Reagan and TDET?
The thing that isn’t being mentioned is the effect of capitalism on these costs. For example: recent reporting shows there are 62 empty houses for every homeless person in America. These have been bought up by corporations that invest heavily in property. It is financially better for them to keep these houses off both the rental markets and property markets because this pushes up the prices of all of their properties (and increases the on-paper values of the empty properties) and pushes up the rental prices of the rental properties on their portfolio. In terms of costs like gas prices, food prices and the prices of other consumer goods, we have seen record profits at the same time as record prices, all really notable given the conservative push we have seen for deregulation. But watch people blame the current government that is trying to fix the problem, vote back in the people who created the problem and then wonder why things kerp getting worse.
2 месяца назад
@@aidancampbell5644ur example is pure absurdity.
Voice from the Ground here, my wife and I can't afford our two bedroom apartment let alone a house to start a new family. If our elites can't solve this for us it's time for them to go. You can build all the houses you want If they are all bought buy slum lord companies it won't solve it.
Don't need to listen to 90 minutes of Democrat propaganda when the opening paragraph in the video description tells you all you need to know. Wages have not gone up faster than actual inflation because the inflation #'s put out by the government are intentionally fake. Instead of facing reality, I'm sure this bloated video does everything it can to avoid confronting the facts that exist in actual objective reality.
We need to demand an increase to the min. wage to $35 an hour immediately and then everyone will have enough money to afford the new economy. Anyone telling you that prices will fall is in looney bin town, inflation does NOT go backwards, our wages must go up.
I feel your pain. Median housing price to median income was 3.5 in 1984; now it is 5.5. It is even worse in the popular East & West coast cities. My mid-west state has cheap homes because we don't have good jobs, and educated young people are moving away.
@@hereigoagain5050 You reminded me of great story that went the other way. I knew a couple..total hippies..bought a totally run down shack in toronto....ten years later the city exploded and it was getting offers for a million dollars! They couldn't belive their luck..from total bums to millionaire couple. Can't you Americans buy those run down homes and fix them up!? We don't have those.
Thank you Ezra, for reminding me that I'm not struggling and my hours weren't just cut and I'm actually having an easy time paying my bills. My super subjective dumb American brain thought I was struggling.
It doesn’t matter if everyone’s working if it cost too much to live what’s the point…..how can people be happy and feel good about what’s going on? My homeowners insurance has doubled. My car insurance has tripled in the past two years… How the hell is that good? I don’t have medical insurance anymore since I became an independent contractor besides, when I was in corporate America, the increases in premiums annually for my healthcare superseded my merit increase so I was actually losing money after getting a raise. Throughout my life, I’ve seen what people have done to adjust for the growing gap between wages and prices. Once upon a Time in my life, my father worked and that was it. We had two cars that we replaced every three or four years my siblings went to college. We went on vacation. We belong to the local swim club. If we were sick, we went to our family doctor not through a fucking healthcare corporation that’s raping us. My dad was not rich at all. That was 1970-ish. You wanna tell me the things are good today that we should be happy what I’ve seen in the last 50 years does not jive at all with reality. I am really sick of smoke being blown up my ass when every time we take two steps back and then one step forward and told hey things are good
When I read a post like your, fist I agree with what your saying, and the democrats are your best bet but then when get in and try to enact policies that can help you like better, cheaper healthcare, the GOP is going to fight that tooth and nail. So then we throw the bums out the GOP gets control and they clearly aren't going to help you but they will lie to you and now we're looking a Trump fascim. Until the needs of the majority are put over the needs of now over a 1000 billionaires , I don't know how it gets better. I do know we should all be terrified of being fascists.
You must be like me, a 50 - early 60-ish in age... Corps are laying us off, and only contractor work is available... therefore, transferring the insurance and tax burden to us... Corps profits go up, and we get poorer.
Kenny, just wait to see what would happen if fascist Trump takes over. The layoffs will be much worse with bo safety net and no hope of it getter better.
@@kenny3485 Reaganomics hurt even the upper middle class. And many people still don't understand it. My husband talked to a guy who is a lawyer and this guy complained about taxes. He said he got a case settled and got good money and now he has to pay huge taxes. Well, he has to say thanks to Reagan and his 1986 reform for that. Before that, he could reduce his taxes by averaging the profit over a few years. Now this option is available only for fishermen and farmers. And in a geek economy when almost everyone is a contractor it would be a great option. But, no. Republicans are worried about cutting taxes for big corporations with consistent record profits and tax more everyone else.
It's hard to not think inflation is out of greed when you look at how much grocery store prices have hiked... and then watch the CEO's of said grocery chains constantly brag about their monster increases in profits at the end of every fiscal year!! Then you learn they gave almost half of those record profits to their investors... Inflation always hurts the working class, while the ruling class profit greatly from it.
Grocery Inflation was stated as around 20%, but from 2020-2022 was 166% on most products. While also having shrinkflation, too. Kroger's CEO admitted they had monopolistic price force in Albertson merger hearing...Then PR tried to talk that back quickly.
@chrisdorman-c5r I was talking about here in Canada, but many of our big corporations are the same as in the US... and there's no reason to believe the corruption is different there. The US is at its weakest since its creation. It started with Reagan, who gave more power back to big corporations. This after the working class had fought long and hard to gain better working rights and conditions. Reagan set this motion backwards. Bush gave them even more power back. Trump signed all the deregulation they asked for, and gave them THE biggest money gifts and tax cuts ever... hence why big corporations LOVE him. Remember. Every tax cut a billionaire gets? The tax payers have to cover for. The billionaires don't even pay taxes most of the time, and when they do its NOWHERE near their fair share. Immigrants, be they legal or illegal, are not the problem the Republicans paint them. Billionaires keep getting increasingly wealthy at THE SAME rate that the working class is getting poorer... don't let the wealthy ruling class tell you that "all your problems are because of those (dirt poor) people coming into America". Most of them doing the work Americans don't want to do, like farm work.
America is currently plagued by the hydra-headed evil duo of inflation and recession. The worst part about this recession is that consumers are racking up credit card debt. In April alone, credit card debt went up 20% while rates have doubled in a year. Inflation is so high that consumers are literally taking debt for basic life necessities. Collapse has indeed begun..
Every day we have a new problem. It's the new normal. At first we thought it was a crisis, now we know it's a new normal and we have to adapt. this year will be a year of severe economic pain all over the nation.. what steps can we take to generate more income during quantitative adjustment?I can't afford my hard-earned 180k savings to turn to dust
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Living abroad, you can see why Americans are so angry. This neo-liberal paradigm in conjunction with the privatization of every sector of the economy (oligopolies) puts all the burden on the average citizen. Where I live, we have universal healthcare, outstanding infrastructure (buses, subways, high-speed rail, constant development), no crime, and a focus on education, but in the US......Americans have to pay a deductible just to use their insurance, crumbling infrastructure (dominated by cars), high crime (due to fear and poverty - like a third world country), and no focus on education. If a govt that doesn't provide higher education for its public, it says a lot what this govt really represents.....it's a system for the "haves" but not the "have nots." I'm so happy I live abroad.
41:46 Have either of you had a real job in the last twenty years? I don't think most people are increasing their wages unless they're changing jobs. 43:22 You can't point to a five dollar value menu as progress when a decade ago there were more options available on the value menu that were a single dollar. So if the average Americans wages have doubled in that time, the cost of food for people who are working, i.e.: not being at home and preparing their own meals, quintupled.
We're dealing with the definition of a talking head. These people have been on the payroll of the elite for a long time, as they say, since the Bush Administration and the Uni Party. I think the days of having Republican versus Democrat debates are largely over or should be over. The debates now need to be between the elites and their army of paid Stooges and the rest of us. You can no longer fool us people ! Get a real job
Every year, my Social Security check is increased. Then, my Medicare premiums go up by an amount equal to the increase in my Social Security check. So an extra $100.00 per month comes in, then it goes right back out, then I have to pay income tax on the $100.00. Thus, I end up poorer after getting a raise. Why would anyone be surprised that I am mad?
I assume you are thinking about the increase in Medicare and a wrap around plan. My Medicare will be increasing $10 but my advantage plan is going up $65. My pension is going up $44 so I too am frustrated.
After listening to this couple and their real lack of awareness and cluelessness of the real suffering of struggling Americans to stay afloat is extremely enlightening.
@@KK-pm7ud They're minimizing the real suffering of real people and his wife was laughing when reading some of the statistics about inflation and the unemployment rate. Totally clueless, and out of touch with what's really going on because they have money.
Why are people unhappy with the economy? It’s obvious, right? A lot of places are having layoffs, salaries haven’t kept up with inflation, and prices are out of control. Why is it a surprise that people are unhappy?
I often joke about how the scientific method gets replaced by "The Science TM." Perhaps Economics should just be called "Line go up mean thing get gud."
Salaries are really funny. I checked..same as in the early 00s when I first started working serious 9-5 jobs. Still I like to blame gen-z and call them lazy just to get them angry. :)
The biggest line item on everyones budget (especially younger people) is their rent/mortgage. Housing prices have gone up drastically. So yeah you might have gotten a 7% raise and your 401k is doing OK but big goals like home ownership and starting a family are getting more and more out of reach.
Indeed. And these are some of the main reasons that people aren't having kids, and the birthrate is well below replacement. We'll be looking at a cratering population--just when the worst effects of climate change are hitting us, I think!
When will someone write an article that captures mortgages in 2024? Visual Capitalist took a step in the right direction by comparing median house price to median household income (the ratio by year). That's good for the third of home buyers that buy in cash (probably trading up to a nicer house). They should compare the ratio of lifetime mortgage cost (principle + interest) to median household income. Or, annual new mortgage cost as a share of annual median household income.
@@MrSteeDoo Your home insurance, property taxes, utilities, and maintenance/repair costs are not flat. My house is paid off, but all other costs are going way up every year. God forbid that I need a new air conditioner or roof.
We need universal, single payer healthcare, and we need the people who run insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit hospitals to face some serious and brutal consequences. Nibbling around the edge with tax credits, low interest loans, and incentivised savings accounts is a losing strategy that the Democrats needed to give up 20 years ago.
true but doesn't mean it isn't an issue NOW. Even more so, it needs to include the fiscal dominance in this talk to make sure we all see the holistic view.
@@johnwu7 I said it wasn't a new theory, not an invalid one. The point is even respected news sites engage in clickbait. But, you know what Hearst said.
Americans are always caught between their belief in 'entitlement' for 'cheap goods' and their belief that Business should be deregulated and government should not interfere with Business. This produces an insane economy. 'Cheap goods' come from overseas countries with 'cheap labor' and often no environmental concerns. On the other hand, there is a belief that everything should be privatized to keep government out of our business ... so to speak. And, the business model of Business shifted to profits for shareholders and high CEO salaries and therefore, prices such as medical care, housing, and child-care all become 'for-profit' and not for wellness or affordability and therefore off the wall expensive. When everything is 'privatized' with such a business model, then expect to have your money sucked out and aggregated upwards.
Deregulation had a huge effect on 'who gets the money'. Used to be seven oil companies. now there are TWO Exxon Mobile and Texaco. Those two bought up all the others (even though the others kept their own names, to keep the illusion that there are more companies than there actually are).
@@d.e.b.b5788 Yup. Coca Cola 'owns' over 500 brands. There used to be 5,000 seed companies in the US. There are only a handful. Monstanto owns 70-90% of the global soya and feed corn and is owned by Bayer Meyers. The Global Restructuring gave away capitalism for Corporatism.
I think about how Trump made it big for saying he would tax the shit out of China for all the smog and discount labor. The establishment wouldn't dare say that.
You start with the premise that it's all an illusion then systematically enumerate all the ways things are getting worse and still somehow not reevaluate the conclusion. Jesus.
Inflation is a direct result of income inequality. Simple math, those with extra money buy assets and that raises rents and mortgages. Same with equities (as CEOs raise prices to get the P/E into less crazy territory).... Without tax there is no mechanism to remove money.
income inequality does not increase the total amount of assets bought, but the spread of aqusitions. If you handover 1 billlion $ to 10,000 people rather then giving it all to one person, they will acquire more then him, and not less. Thus the prices will rise more and not less.
What in the world are you talking about? Inflation, by definition, is the direct result of excessive money printing. Every civilization since the beginning of time knew this (which was why "currency debasement" was punishable by death penalty going all the way back to the Roman Republic).
Taxes don't actually pay for our economy as much as you think. Most of the money is generated through treasury bonds and it is mainly spent on energy. For treasury bonds, the truth is people aren't sure on where to spend massive amounts of capital in the world right now that will be a sure growth source. China has proven now to be not only a paper tiger society, but an aging and infighting one, as well. India seemed promising, but Modi's politics become increasingly unpredictable with age. Europe seems limited in future growth and America has lost credibility in many regards. With China being the historically largest treasury bond holder until Trump now fading, Japan has picked up the slack, but has to be allowed to be militarily evolved to garner real momentum for growth for the US. Its not as clear cut as it was for the previous decade with China being basically the world's NVDA. As far as energy goes, the Shale revolution of 2014 has blown the entire energy market of the world wide open. With the "grips" of Climate Change perspective loosening, the reasoning for the crackdown ("supply/demand" wise) that held from 1980s-2014 disappeared overnight. Without resource limitation as an excuse, climate and good hearts was the only thing left, and that was never going to last on the world stage. With that 2014 revolution every major energy company started exploring known reserves for additional value and found them in droves all over. Of particular value being Ukraine to the tune of 10's of trillions of dollars of shale energy and supplementary minerals. Hence the war in Ukraine and Putin's real justification to his oligarch backers. With Ukraine battling for the reserves in the north east and Donbas that they was originally contracted to American companies in 2013/4 under Joe Biden's stewardship as VP, With Israel trying to sure up the reserves and pipelines to those reserves off of Gaza, with China trying to ensure the Vietnam reserves are under the dashed line, with Gazprom 2 cutoff offering Norway Atlantic regions, with Cuba reserves being on the table for Russian sale in Central America, with China building infrastructure for Chile's reserves, the energy market is a wild west again. Energy is not surely sourced anywhere in the world right now so people can't surely bet on a loan to an unsure resource. THAT is where inflation is coming from, the money supply being shrank down from lack of capital investment creating a lack of debt creation creating a lack in money creation.
So I was over at John Stewart's channel watching his weekly RUclips where one of the guests was Jane Mayer. The subject was the crisis of Democracy. Mayer brought up that in the last 40 years 50 TRILLION DOLLARS of wealth has been transferred from the bottom of the income bracket to the top 10 percent. I believe that another reason people have to be mad about the economy is seeing their own struggles stay the same or get worse while rich people just get richer and richer and the government caters to them. Voters don't necessarily see the nuance of which party is promoting policies that do MOST of the catering because BOTH parties do the catering - the GOP just does it way more.
Before listening to this podcast, I listened to the "Inside Russia" podcast where an exile Russian talked about what is happening inside Russia right now. Basically, he said that the wealth in Russia was going to the war and to the oligarchs who kept Putin in Power. This left no money for the ordinary citizens. The same thing is happening here just slower and in a less dramatic fashion. There is only so much money, and as the inequality increases -- i.e. the rich get richer, the money has to come from somewhere. Where it comes from is the ordinary citizens who gets poorer.
We live in a college community in Southern California. Housing here is at an all time high. Every time a new affordable home comes on the market an investor buys the home and rents it to students at 1K/ room. The neighborhoods decline and soon the home owners move out to find a better place to live. Investors buying homes to rent them so others can have the American dream is not the American dream
When FDR was around, the working class in the USA was organized and militant. People in the ruling class had good reason to be afraid of being overthrown. Now, working-class organizations are suffering the effects of a 100-year war of attrition, unions have been infiltrated and subverted, our leaders have been locked up or murdered, and we've been Red Scared into fearing what needs to be done.
Greedflation is a huge problem when the goods and services in question are necessary goods. I'm poor enough that I spend all of my money, living paycheck to paycheck. As prices for everything rose, I had to put the excess cost of my life on credit cards. That debt still exists even as things change for the better (not nearly fast enough)
They talked about greedflation but only a tiny bit. It's probably worth additional time in a podcast that's 90 minutes long. I agree that it's only part of the whole picture, actual inflation from actual increased prices accounts for some part of x-flation, but it's hard to tell how much is greedflation and how much is inflation. Plus it's probably different from one product to another.
More and more people might face a tough time in retirement. Low-paying jobs, inflation, and high rents make it hard to save. Now, middle-class Americans find it tough to own a home too, leaving them without a place to retire.
The increasing prices have impacted my plan to retire at 62, work part-time, and save for the future. I'm concerned about whether those who navigated the 2008 financial crisis had an easier time than I am currently experiencing. The combination of stock market volatility and a decrease in income is causing anxiety about whether I'll have sufficient funds for retirement.
This is precisely why I like having a portfolio coach guide my day-to-day market decisions: with their extensive knowledge of going long and short at the same time, using risk for its asymmetrical upside and laying it off as a hedge against the inevitable downward turns, their skillset makes it nearly impossible for them to underperform. I've been utilizing a portfolio coach for more than two years, and I've made over $800,000.
‘’Aileen Gertrude Tippy’’ is her name. She is regarded as a genius in her area and works for Empower Financial Services. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
One of the problems with inflation is that a person's wage increases lag monthly cost increases. At the end of the year, the company owner looks at your paycheck, says, "inflation has been 6% this year, and we'll throw in a 2% raise". Well, for 364 days of the year you've been running your household on last year's wages but prices have gone up 6%. Not only that, your savings account, which last I looked gains less than 1%/year, has lost 5% of its value.
I'm not an economist, but I hope everyone knows that a savings account isn't ideal for long term savings. Even the decades where inflation was 2 - 3% means that your stash in a savings account (or cash under the mattress) is worth less over time. The pandemic really made it easy to see different layers of the economy. Critical workers like grocery store workers, truck drivers, gas station attendants, restaurant workers - they had higher risk of exposure to covid and they worked with no "hazard pay". Meanwhile they're not likely to own a home, not likely to have a 401k, and not likely to have personal stock market investments. My corporate friends during the pandemic got to work from home, spent less money on vehicle maintenace, less money on gas. It's like an extra raise that covers the entire cost of the the commute. If they own a home their house value increased probably 50% since 2020. Their 401k or other market investments might track the S&P 500. (2020 - 2024 avg return was 12.3%) The parts of the economy that are working favor these white collar corporate humans, and I'd say the higher a person's income the more they benefit. Not just in base pay but also from having larger parts of their wealth tracking the stock market - following the growth of the "strongest economy in the world" - but those with minimum wage or median wage of course they're being squeezed.
If you are spending more while your income lags then you are a fool. You can complain all you want but for RIGHT NOW you need to cut spending. Maybe skip getting that sweet new tattoo? How about skipping the daily $7 lattes? How about learning how to make your own sandwich at home instead of eating out? How about giving plasma to build up an emergency fund?
Question is, can democracy survive when people are really pissed off by something so daily as declining purchasing power? We have to vote not only for Biden, but for Congressional majorities who do not absolutely hate ordinary people.
The lack of imagination to solve this problem is more shocking than the problem itself. If we cap prices overall this could correct it but apparently unchecked capitalism is still a thing…listening to the two of you being utterly mystified by how other countries simply offer childcare at a reasonable cost to all via capping the cost and ensuring its subsidized shows why our economic model continues to damage society. It’s not rocket science. You decide what matters and is universal to human society and support it through all its members. It’s called regulation and taxation. Any economy should serve its people, it’s not supposed to dominate us. Just wait another decade-a wave of millions who can’t save and are at the poverty line are about to become too old or too sick to work or be hired and none of them are prepared for living on social security alone. There’s your housing shortage solved as all of them lose their homes and are on the street. No other developed nations does things in such a barbaric way. The idea is to lean toward opportunity not be ripped off. Also you guys sort of stole your title for this one from Bernie and you should have taken a nod toward his recent book “it’s ok to be angry about capitalism”.
@@Jumpinsnakes IN Germany you get something for you money. Are Americans too stupid to see that amount you pay in tuition, childcare and healthcare alone is far more over a lifetime than what you would pay in taxes at German tax rates?
I would second guess about price controls. They often do the opposite of the intention. Check out papers about rent controls or Nixon policies in the 1970's.
Our evolved system has destroyed competition, and we have moved from pure competition to oligopoly to duopoly to monopoly and we are now in a condition of corporate aristocracy where the corporations are the new kings and we are the new peasants.
People said the same in the 1900’s, in the 1930’s, in the 1960’s, in the 1990’s, definitely in 2008, and there is still plenty of creative destruction in the economy. New companies and competitors will rise up. Go start a business; even a small one. That’s the real American dream.
Millennial parents up in here 👍 Childcare expense is why I stopped teaching and changed careers. All under a political regime that is supposed to help civil servants.
Do remember that since 2022, Republicans are half of "supposed to help civil servants". The Senate can only block a filibuster if 60% of the members block it. Having at least a BA, you doubtlessly know this, right? Some things you might be interested in looking at are historic housing prices. Look at cities. In my case, while things have levelled off, my house in Colorado Springs more than doubled in value from 2016 to 2020. Rents have followed suit. Inflation? I suggest you look at historical inflation in France, Germany, England, pick five random first-world countries. Yeah, Biden failed in some areas. Every president fails in some ways. Maybe an autocracy would help? Look at Hungary, Turkey, other places of your choice. Ignore things like Duerted massacring homosexuals and focus on the benefits. Keep in mind the saying, "when the Fed taps on the brakes, someone goes through the windshield". Do some research. Don't just focus on USA.
The Scandinavian Welfare System removes some concerns for people who are low-income and less educated. It is less greedy than the USA and we have simplified some aspects of daily life for the majority of people. You have still the ability to follow your dream but worries about health care, education, child care, and social events are very reduced.
@@Matthew_Loutner It is an area with a certain set of laws and a group of people sharing some common values and with the power to influence others to adhere to those values. At the same time a large group of ignorant passive people not understanding and not caring about what the group with power actually is doing.
@@Matthew_Loutner Sorry I just tried to define the limits of the USA. Greed is more subtle as it is a common human trait and it has different qualities. Efficiency is a form of Greed but should be considered positive as it is balanced with the saving of some unnecessary waste. The negative kind of greed is defined as the attempt to accumulate money value beyond what is necessary for survival and safety and at the same time deprive others of the ability to have a safe life and enough income to live safely and with the potential to improve their quality of life. If a society is made without protection against misfortune and your whole existence is based on an ability to collect wealth on an individual basis to pay for health, education, childcare, and insurance towards social events like sudden inability to earn a living you will have a society where greed is the ultimate driver. Such societies have high inequalities, many social problems, high crime rates, class tensions, and big pressure. So my answer is everybody in such a system has to be greedy and hoard as much money they can because money decides the future for yourself and your kids. In Europe, many countries balance this with the state collecting high taxes and distributing wealth so more people may succeed in life. This is making greed a much less important driver in life.
I'll slow you one stat from my county where I live that's more than makes up for any reduced inflation or even dropping in prices. Home in my county (very poor area in northern NY) went from avg of $78k to just under $200k in 3 years and mortgage rates doubled and housing inventory is down 92%. So that means the average mortgage here went from $330 a month in 2020 to $1,500 a month in 2024 and it's actually worse than that because there's no homes for sale in the market of home I would be looking at buying would would have been in the rage of $225,000 before the pandemic and now it's $600,000 even up here. So the mortgage on a house I would have got would have been about $900 a month now it's about $4,500 a month 😂 and insurance and tax's would be much higher as well. So no the lower of the gain in inflation doesn't do anything compared to that. But anyone that owns assets like a home with a 2.8% mortgage like all my older siblings they all got almost a half million dollars in equity gained in their house some even more in my home state of Massachusetts for doing nothing..
Education, health, housing, and child care are the difficult to globalize sectors. They increased in price relative to everything else because they could not be off-shored to China. In addition to being domestically anchored, they are the traditionally feminized sectors, which are ‘care’ services, requiring emotional ‘work’, and human connection. Until the 20th century, these social needs were met as part of household management, as gendered work. Often this was supplemented by the church delivering services to local communities. In most advanced economies, as religion declined in importance and women joined the workforce, welfare states took over responsibility for those sectors, and transformed them into modern public services.
Accurate. In America, the rearing of healthy, well socialized, educated and emotionally intelligent, emotionally stable children is devalued as are the roles around caregiving and mental health. I would like to see a change. There is too much emphasis on pure economics, not enough on well being and human flourishing.
It's when the cost of diesel goes up, is when everything else goes up, not the price of gas. We got spoiled by "Cheap" money, and stupid people, abused it. Now, the chickens have come home to roost.
We've turned America into a materialistic society. We think that we need more, that we deserve it. People don't remember when water was carried into the house, the toilet was the outhouse, a phone line was a party line, when neighbors gathered around someone's TV, when getting to work meant walking a few miles and taking a trolley, when a car was a luxury, when healthcare meant grandma's tonic, .... Stop putting your money into crap that you don't need, improve yourself so that your value in the workplace increases, start a business, don't choose to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, take responsibility for yourself and don't expect to be taken care of. Buy a cheap bicycle for basic transportation. Teach your children about the world, including money management.
I work for a Fortune Global 500. My plant employs a thousand people. Aside from one guy and some supervisors, I don't know anyone that makes the local living wage. Two college funds drain me dry, my car is ancient, I never eat out, my clothes are shabby... But I'm "employed" right. Yay? It's hard to feel successful when you're "well-employed", but still pinching pennies. It makes life feel like a hamster wheel. You get a raise, the cost of living increases. You get a raise, daycare murders your paycheck. You get promoted, rent goes up ... A lot of us hired on at three bucks below the living wage. Ten years on, you're making only two bucks under a living wage. But profits are soaring.... It's all so depressing.
The idea that greedflation is off the mark because it implies something evil about corporations only holds up if one believes that capitalism is not somewhat evil in and of itself. It might be a necessary evil-I don’t know enough economics to say whether other systems could work adequately at the scale of industrial societies-but capitalism provides considerable incentives for the people and organizations which comprise it to behave in ways that are morally repugnant. That’s why, for example, selling organs for transplant had to be outlawed, and why Medicaid provides free dialysis for people with inadequate kidney function (because otherwise survival to reach the front of the transplant queue would be determined by ability to pay). At least as presently constituted, capitalism doesn’t price in externalities like ‘people dying from circumstances imposed on them by others’, and by default punishes entities that would prefer not to create harmful externalities by making them less competitive. That’s evil, plain and simple.
Also. I will believe that the economy is “good” for ordinary Americans when poor and working-class people in my city don’t commonly live in shantytowns.
Ezra, you should have Matt Stoller on here. He has the best explanation for high prices I've heard: termites. Not literal termites, but economic termites: businesses that worm their way into some small niche of the economy and start slowly devouring it. A lot of this has been made possible by the abandonment of antitrust policy by the Reagan administration. Considering that businesses can now just buy up all their competitors, it's not surprising that prices are stubbornly high.
We have WORSE health outcomes than Europe. We do not have a real budget deficit. We have homelessness, poor health care, etc. because our elected officials in WA knowingly refuse to finance basic needs. We have unused economic resources and we knowingly do not use them. Modern monetary theory tells the story and apparently you guys can't afford the time or energy, despite your jobs, to learn about it.
Why do we let the capitalist class organize the people to serve their economic interests, rather than the people organizing capital to serve their economic interests?
I had no idea that the quality of insulin has remained the same for 100 years. I just assumed that the formula changed, which would make the price rise as a result of continued research and development.
The population in the USA has doubled since 1950. Double the people can't all live in Manhattan without the prices going up. It's impossible for everyone to live where they want to live without supply and demand being a factor.
People don’t measure economic growth the same way as the government does. When the economy grows, a tiny percentage of the population gets richer. There’s not much left to spread around. My own working life is a good example. In the mid 1970’s I spent a few years in the carpenters union. The work was hard. But I was paid about $19 per hour! Some of that was taken from the paycheck for union pension, health insurance and vacation time. And the middle-aged guys talked about the expense (but manageable) of sending the kids to college: He drove an older car but the wife had the nicer car for the kids. We KNEW we were doing okay and we expected that life would continue to get better. Then inflation hit and most people never recovered. Regan's answer was to cut taxes of the wealthy and the Fed over-corrected interest rates that caused a massive recession. In the mid-90’s I was paying non-union carpenters (high end residential - the unions aren’t interested in) $35 an hour and today they’re earning $50 an hour. Now, that’s in NYC - an expensive labor market. The guys leave with fear more than hope. Childcare is a neighbor who stays home and minds three kids. They buy homes much later. They start retirement savings at 50. They can only help the kids with college. And they are very scared of anyone getting sick. McDonald’s used to be a place only high school kids and very recent graduates worked. The assumption was that your waiter at the local restaurant was a college kid. I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture. We worried about money. A lot. But not all the time. It was less about paying this month’s bills and more about how will we get to where we wanted to be. Finally, surgeons and lawyers were buying and renovating Park Ave apartments. Some bankers. There are a whole lot more bankers and very few lawyers or surgeons at those addresses today.
At work about every other month they post a letter in the break room praising all of the employees for record monthly sales. But when you get your review, well 3% is all they can give you, sorry its the budget you know. But hey they bought us pizza on Friday 😂😂. I can think if a couple places id like to stick that pizza 😊 9:53
US employment statistics don't include those who "have not actively looked for work (or been on temporary layoff) in the last 4 weeks." How are they measuring this statistic? The US is just one huge corporation.
@direwolf6234 Convenience. I had no one to cook for me. I find that fast food is about 3 times more expensive than cooking from scratch at home. I do not consider it any more or less unhealthy. We make our sandwiches at home from refined bleached white bread. That is the same thing we get on a fast-food hamburger. To be more precise, I ate breakfast at fast-food and I ate lunch at fast-food. In the evening, I either ate at a traditional restaurant or fast-food, depending.
@@gauloise6442 I don't think that's true, unless you're talking about a house in a rural area, then yeah. Some houses are just a few thousand dollars. If you get lunch at starbucks everyday that's probably $6000, which is like half a house in a rural area.
@@gauloise6442 maybe a better question - do you think if someone spends a $1000 less, they will have $1000 more in their bank account? Or do you think money expires if not spent by the end of the month? Americans spent $136 billion on pets. I know people who are living paycheck to paycheck BECAUSE they spend $5000 on their pets every year. That $5000 spent on an elderly dog could be spent on saving the lives of many children in a "POS country" that you think isn't worthy of your attention and empathy
Trickle down economics and trickle down morality in religion are based on the patron-client relationship, or the divine right of power to control the good fortunes of dependents, jobs from corporations and self-righteousness privilege from God. Neither are based on the natural rights of humanity to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (a good life well lived).
Save yourself 90 minutes and look up a chart of M2 from FRED. Inflation is caused by expansion of the money supply, and prices followed it. M2 peaked in Q2 2022, same as CPI (YoY change). This is 100% caused by the Fed/Treasury printing money and monetizing ~$5T in debt.
Prices of things that are made by a few hundred million poor Chinese factory workers got cheap (plastic trinkets, electronics...), things that can't be outsourced to Asia like medical care, education and child care got more expensive.
We have had a flat birth rate, births equaling deaths, for over 50years. One person dies one kid is born, housing should be opening up as fast as kids reach adult hood. That doesn't happen because immigration increases the demand for housing. Immigration is the only factor that has doubled and stressed the USA population. Resulting in overall infrastructure and housing stress that has lowered the quality of life for all Americans.
Talking about a problem in a circle is a perfect way to not find a solution. To get to a solution you first need to define what the problem actually is. Start with actually defining what inflation actually is and not just keep saying inflation.
My family lives in peoria illinois area. The cost of food is equal to 20-25% of my budget each month. We go out to eat maybe once a week if not at all depending on our budget. We are scraping by financially by picking and choosing which bills are most important at the time. We made 90k last year and it was great we were starting to get ahead, but that was from all of the over time I had that year. This year in 2024 I have had 3 days of overtime instead of 45 days of overtime. So we are feeling it alot more.
i don't want the dumbasses to have any equity. they'll just ruin it anyway. the top 10% are better positioned to handle the majority of all the equity.
it's the instabillty of purchasing power and prices. When prices go up and your wages have to catch up, you know somebody is getting rich and it isn't you. Then you see the taxes increase as your wages increase... I don't think about how bad the economy is as much as I think about how bad it is going to get. Products made offshore are becoming more expensive as their labor ages out and we no longer have the manufacturing footprint to create competition. Services on the other hand, are becoming more competetive on a global scale leading to margin contraction and job cuts. Then there is the big energy crunch looming on the horizon, and a push towards EV's that dramatically increase the cost of personal transportation and take precious time to charge. When you factor everything in, it's a huge squeeze on the cost of living for most people. On top of that, 1.5 million people already struggling and working at a call center will be out of a job soon thanks to AI and outsourcing. Even the 50 million people doing content creation will soon be concerned with all of the above. I don't think either political party will effectively take on these issues; they are milking the malaise ad infinitum ad nauseum. You mentioned construction and farming; Speaking as a born citizen with years of construction and farm labor experience I've stood in temp labor lines for days and watched as I was excluded from jobs because of my lack of color. When I finally got picked up for jobs, the migrant help would often treat me like trash, pick fights, expect me to pick up their slack and joke amongst themselves as I worked twice as hard as they did. The narrative about domestic Americans and hard work isn't true, what's true is that some immigrants can work those jobs with a smile on their face because when they take those dollars back to their country, they get a lot more for it. The exception being the Japanese I have worked with, they have been great to work with, are very skilled, and don't get asymmetric exchange (they also come on Visa and choose to speak fluent English). IF Americans don't want to do hard phyiscal work, then why do we have AmeriCorps, YouthCorps, and community college apprenticeship programs? And yes, the market has been up but the breadth has been very narrow, such that most companies that could use the credit and even have clean balance sheets are down. That is not a healthy market dynamic, it is a lot of speculation. Self-driving cars? Flying cars? CEOs with clown shoes making Billion$ selling the public market on pipe dreams, cashing in on your investment today for promises of tomorrow. Meanwhile in the real world, our "friends" on the Asian continent are achieving the largest buildup of weaponry in history; including naval fleet, aircraft, rocketry, satellites, and nuclear material. What could they possibly want to do with that? The US is sitting on untapped resources that foreign superpowers will need within the next 35 years, and we are pretending at what?
We have not yet come to grips with the elephant in the housing market. Homeowners have both the political power and the financial incentive to restrict supply and drive up prices. Universal homeownership is a chimera, and a particularly destructive one to pursue, because once a majority of people own homes, they can shut down construction for the rest. And that is exactly what has happened. The result has been a massive transfer of wealth from younger generations to the Boomers. There is no way to keep housing affordable in the long run except to limit homeownership to about 1/3 of the population. If 2/3 of people rent, they will demand sufficient construction.
"Falling prices are bad. People stop buying things. Why buy now if you can wait two weeks and the price will be lower?" No pushback. No challenge, because we are so obsessed with the ideology of economic growth. People will buy what they need. If people don't buy things that they don't need until two weeks or two months later, how is that a problem? It's only a problem in a world where natural wealth is not shared. [Not sharing natural wealth means that poor people get EVEN poorer, as the rich get richer due to their heightened ability to maneuver into the most advantageous positions from which to gain more wealth / exploit a free ride on the Commons. (We are not accounting for externalities, so much of the opportunity the economy provides for amassing wealth / making profit is related to instances where environmental costs are foisted onto the larger society, future generations and the larger community of life.)] IF natural wealth were shared, people would be assured of a substantial minimum. There would be less pressure on central banks to 'juice the economy' by boosting the money supply. The system could be dynamically stable without manipulation of interest rates by government, if natural wealth were shared.
Inflation is essential in a debt-based monetary system. No one will loan money if just by holding it, it gains in purchasing power. Fix the money, fix the system
@@andrewhill1251 Maybe you can think of a counterpoint to your claim. As the inflation rate declines, the amount of interest that must be paid to induce someone to lend money declines. This suggests that the reluctance to lend money is small when inflation is low. When inflation is very low, or when prices fall over time, people will tend to postpone purchases for things that they don't need at the moment. This has an overall dampening effect on non-essential industry. Deflation should be a primary aim of climate / environmental activists, for this reason. Maybe a more accurate point that you could make in this context is that, if there is no inflation, or if there is deflation, people will not need inducement of bank interest rates to encourage savings. Simply holding cash is a reasonable financial strategy in that context. (People may be willing to pay a small (or large, depending) fee to someone who borrows their money, if they see that the project that is enabled by the loan improves the world in a way that pleases them, and/or if it eliminates a security challenge related to physically storing the cash.)
I went to a luncheon where Kevin O'Leary was the keynote speaker. At the time, student debt relief was a big political talking point and something the Biden administration was planning as a longer-term stimulus after covid. O'leary said that he hoped student debt relief would be "litigated into the ground." I've listened to a lot of podcasts about economics. I think it's high time for the US political system to stop using the economy as a cudgel politically, and start working together to solve problems that are ultimately going to bite us in a butt in 25 years. Political rhetoric around our economy has really ignited a lot of ugliness online for digital natives. Men feel like they are in a hamster wheel. They see their female peers, hustling and in some cases out earning them in college degrees and real money. The more we convince working age men that subsidizing anything other than the military and multinational corporations is communism or socialism, the more they will vent their spleen online and the more men and women will antagonize each other. The more men will dig their heels in and claim that what really needs to happen is that women need to defer higher education and career in favor of marriage and younger motherhood. The more men will insist that uncompensated labor and caregiving is a woman's vocation and highest calling. The more this happens, the more enmity women will feel toward men their age. The more they will avoid marriage and motherhood. If we don't have a very real national conversation about subsidizing healthcare and higher education? We'll just watch as the birth rate plummets to hell.
I just bought two dinners tonight at a restaurant. Chicken wings with two sides cost $18.99. Pulled pork with two sides costs $17.99. Then there is sales tax on food in restaurants and fifteen percentage tip. So a carryout dinner for two is almost $50.00. What did did this cost ten years ago? $5.99 each. What did this cost five years ago? $8.99 each. And Ms. Lowrey just stated that the inflation rate at its peak was nine percent. Does she not buy things?
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re making here. Is it that her bath doesn’t add up? The inflation rate refers to change over a unit of time, my guess is that most numbers are reported as an estimate of an annual rate. Note how the price differences you cite are over fairly long periods of time.
Ageism is ugly. It's called neoliberal economics mixed with libertarianism and some of the most enthusiastic participants are young people on Wall Street and in Big Tech, so spare us.
OK, so maybe the necessities of living on this planet shouldn't be commodities in the free market? Let's have rent controls, more public housing, national healthcare, childcare, and education, and stop privatizing government services, and functions. It should be obvious to everyone that billionaires won't solve this problem for you, they will just fleece you down to your last penny. These things are not luxury goods in the market, where scarcity is preferred, so billionaires can maximize their profits, these are necessities of life. We have to decide what kind of country we want to be.
Ezra you guys know, since you studied neo classical economics, that in competitive markets businesses are not price setters but price takers. The fact that businesses are setting prices higher because they can reflects that the markets are not accepting new competitors, because there is a vision of profit, and existing businesses in the market have political or otherwise power to set prices. Home insurance market, pharmaceuticals, defense industry, Medical insurance…. The list goes on and on. We have just had 44 years of suppression of the enforcement of Anti Trust Laws.
Bingo!
100%
We're also not talking about the dramatic decrease in the number of players in basically every market.
...This means that people ARE correct to ultimately blame corporate greed and Washington, D.C. for these economic problems, then, right? And from what I've seen it doesn't matter much which party is in power: the corporate greed continues unabated.
@@stephenbonaduce7852yeah this if the Neo liberal regime since Reagan.
Great discussion! As someone who’s spent my career as a teacher, or in similarly poorly paid jobs that require a graduate education, I’ve always economically been somewhere between working poor and lower middle class. When I wanted a home, I bought substandard housing (abandoned for ten years) and worked my weekends to fix up those homes, and built up and sold up till I’m now in a nice home, even though my income is still moderate. We go backpacking on vacations, which costs little, we cut our own hair, don’t eat out or go to movies, I repair our cars, replace our roof, etc., etc. But house insurance costs have quadrupled, food has doubled, electricity has doubled, car insurance has doubled, medical insurance is up, a new car is a pipe dream. Yet wages are barely up. Teachers and carpenters and everyone paid like a teacher or carpenter, has been in an economic recession or depression since 2008. And it is only getting worse.
but an actor or athlete earns 25 million per year ...
In my experience (I'm 72) teaching is not poorly paid and a graduate education is not needed at any level under college. I recall a young teacher telling me that she was poorly paid. Then I told her she earned 140% of the average family income in the State. She didn't know that. Maybe she shouldn't have been teaching. The acquisition of yet another degree doesn't mean a lot in terms of performance if it's not functional in the workplace. A welder doesn't need a college degree. We need to better match talent and skills to actual needs.
@@alankwellsmsmba 140% of low is still low & poor .. what state is that ? in many districts your pay is calculated by years and college credits so more school = more pay .. many jobs don't need college so get employers to stop using that as criteria for hiring
@alankwellsmsmba
In some states of the U.S.A., the professionalization of the teaching profession requires the teachers to have graduate education in order to obtain a teaching license.
@@alankwellsmsmba, In the United States, all public school systems require teachers to have a bachelor's degree and a teaching license to teach any grade level. Some private schools may allow teachers without a bachelor's degree, but most require one.
Economists and media keep telling us that the economy is fantastic, but we can't afford anything, so then they just tell us we're bad with money. Executives and landlords are cheering them on while raising prices and rent. You don't need a new economic theory to explain this, it's painfully obvious.
Finally an intelligent comment in a sea of delusion. Libs want to gaslight us into thinking everything is fine. Conservatives want us to blame everything on "illegals" and uppity minorities. The reality is that capitalism is working exactly as intended.
That is because most economists and media live in mansions and have two Mercedes in the driveway.
Absolutely! Every economist I see on TV sounds like one of the "Just stop buying avocado toast, Starbucks, and Funko Pops" out of touch boomers.
When everything across the board goes up in price, it is a result of inflation because of the central bank’s monetary policies and not from executives and landlords price gouging. Inflation is almost always a government made thing. Politicians and media who supports them will say it’s transitory, or call it GREEDflation to deter blame, but use some common sense. If everything across the board has gone up, odds are the landlord’s rent increase is just keeping up with inflation caused by the people you probably voted in.
@@Aubatron I often talk about how much greedflation would exist if money printer did not brrrr.
Gosh! 40 years of tax cuts for the rich & corporations and 40 years of spending cuts of social programs. What could possibly go wrong?
Taxing the ill gotten money of the wealthy will only legitimize their theft of the money in the first place. We must stop them from taking so much of it before taxes. It isn't their money at all.
Tax receipts as % of gdp have risen from 17 to 20% in past 60 years. Deficits as % of gdp have risen from 0 to 12%. The problems are out of control spending and who is carrying the tax burden
YOUR RIGHT, TRUMP ADDED 7 TRILLON TO THE NATIONAL DEBT, THE MOST OF ANY PRESIDENT IN THE PAST
@hereigoagain5050 We foolishly have been allowing entitlements to wither or rot on the vine. We created entitlements underfunded deliberately to finance them on a pay as you go basis.
Commercial insurance products are prefunded. Before an insurance company creates an insurance product the insurance company needs to create an investment pool of capital that will assure the insurance company will not go broke in 20 years and leave state governments with millions of sick people who can not afford their healthcare.
Commercial insurance companies after creating a capital pool sell insurance whose premiums continously feeds the growth of principle allowing most well run insurance companies to be able to sustainably underwrite insurance so in most years insurance cc companies are able to payout more in policy claims than they sold insurance premiums because of the magic of compounding of interest and dividends on prefunded principle which government entitlements.
When government insurance because it is not prefunded, not backed by anything but worthless treasuries put into the Social Security Trust Fund as worthless I Owe You's. With no real value. The actuararies of the Social Security Trust Fund Knew as early as the Kennedy Administration that Social Secuity trust fund was going broke. In 1938 when government started to collect taxes for Social Security 42 people paid into the Social Security Trust for everyone person collecting and the life span of the average American was 59 years of age and the retirement age was 65 so the average American died six years before collecting their Social Security and over decades we have allowed foreign born elderly to immergrate to America after decades of paying taxes in their own country for their nations version of Social Security collecting their former nation"s benefit and than getting on social security and collecting here without paying into the system.
Next years retirees Social Security benefit will be cut 13% and in 2030, 6 years from now all entitlements will need to be cut 20%. and only two people will be paying into the system for everyone receiving.
The government has not been adequately funding the program from the very beginning. We can still Fund Social Security and other entitlements if we stop taxing people's savings, raise interest rates on peoples savings have government Federal, state and local shrink there payroll by 50% over 25 years through accelerated retirements and put the savings into the Social Security Trust Fund and other entitlements buy stock, corporate bonds, foreign government bonds because US Treasuries are worthless because the United States Treasury can not both sell United States Treasuries and at the same time pay interest on their own treasurues to them selves. Worldwide the savings rate of governments worldwide must rise to 33% of Gross Domestic Product for governments, Business and Households and governments got to stop taxing savings. With a 33% rate of savings, savings would check the growth of government spending federal, state, and local. government .
We could increase the growth of of the money supply by the Treasury the parent of the Social Security System by printing 33% more money, buy stock on all the stock exchanges in the world, by corporate debt gold and other commodities and government bonds of other nations cut congress wages otherwise there will be civil wars in more than half the nations and possibly a global market crash worldwide far greater than the great depression.
The Federal, State and Local governments must shrink simultaneously through accelerated retirements and slowing of new hires of retiring workers.
For decades the federal state and local governments have underfunding the healthcare planes and retirement plans.
relative to the lengthening lifespans of government workers.
The federal, state and local governments have enough redundancy in tax prepares entitlement workers and environmental protection workers where they can shrink those separate workers in the federal state and local governments and merge the entitlement processors, tax collectors of federal state and local government at the county levels of government where all levels of government have a presence.
Instead of building separate office buildings for federal, state and local government we have them share space wherever possible. Entitlement workers for state governments could process both local government entitlements of Medicaid, Food Stamps, Aid to famlies with dependent children, state unemployment benefits and Federal applications for Social Security Medicare SSDI and SSI using one application for entitlement with the appropriate benefits being sort and recorded in separate check off boxes just as is done with College financial aid.
We need for governments to replace ever tax dollar to fund government with investment dollars and governments be required to run surpluses in every government agency putting aside a mandatory minimum rate of savings 33% of Gross Domestic Product with 18% going to retirement, 7.5% Medical Savings Accounts to cover insurance deductibles and another general savings also for 7.5% because the single greatest cause of bankruptcy are uncovered insurance deductibles. These funds need to be fungible allowing transfers when needed from general funds to retirement funds and general funds to medical savings accounts to cover insurance deductibles.
Personal health insurance, property insurance, and automobile insurance should all be written of people's taxes.
Government tax deductions for dependents should be in percentage of income just as taxes are based on percentages of income. That is called inflation adjusted tax deductions.
Social programs primarily benefit the Democrats who run them. They are the ultimate jobs program for Dems with a non-STEM degree. 👀
Saying that "it's not greed, it's what corporations do" is a fucked up form of whitewashing. It is literally greed... the desire to take as much as possible while giving as little as possible.
That stood out to me, too.
Is that not the essence of free market capitalism? “Greed” is not an item on the balance sheet. Simply, capitalism is: profit = revenue - cost. A “good” business maximizes profit for its shareholders, damn the consequences. The problem is there have been abundant consequences for consumers and less for business.
Greed is what corporations do, you're both right, let's move on.
This from the same minds that said the Democrats problem is a messaging problem. They are completely out of touch with reality and it's showing more and more everyday.
Nyt is no more than a mouthpiece. This from the same mind that said the Democrats only problem is a messaging problem...
The idea that we shouldn't call it greed, just because it's the goal or nature of corporations, is such a joke.
It's the old Gordon Gecko line from the movie Wall Street. " Greed is good, greed works."
@andrewsams335 Yes! This was why that speech in the film was so impressive. Gordon Gecko said the quiet part out loud - we all know it to be true.
It's not a cost-of-living crisis. It's an OMG-I-Am-Fucking-Poor crisis.
It's actually a the Fed stole most of the value of our money crisis...
"you're making more money"
"the money is worth less"
"it's weird how you're complaining about making more money"
My income doubled. My spouses too. Her friends did too
This always masks certain types of income redistribution. You need to look at relative wage increases. If you make an extra 20% and I make an extra 100% guess who will be buying the desirable house.
@@pcopeland15 opportunity cost also must be factored in. making 20% less over 18 months and then making 25% more going forward, doesn't equal out the cost of inflation. it would take X amount of time to make up the difference, meanwhile inflation is constant and your income increase is less so.
If you are not investing your money to make more money you are fundamentally losing in the market.
@@TheRedBeanPodcast such is the case in a debt based economy
I'm an admin and my pay has definitely not even begun to keep up with the cost of anything. My purchasing power has gone done drastically and I'm not imaging it, trust me. But I see corporations posting records profits every day so they're not having any trouble paying their bills, no matter what they say.
If you have been renting and have bought a new car in the past few years your pay almost definitely didn't keep up. If you owned a house and a car as of ~2020/2021 you have likely seen wages outpace inflation.
Two entirely different experiences right now
Why do you think, Americans are so resistant to 'regulations' to prevent what you have explained?
everybody who's not dumb is doing better than before that's the point. you just suck.
@@austinduke8876 Home ownership has also risen substantially since 2016.
Part of it is the social media doom spiral.
The economic data that wages have outpaced inflation is misleading -- it is unclear what wage earners were surveyed and who was excluded. Also owning a house and a car has nothing to do with your wages outpacing inflation. House and car are wealth assets; wages and inflation have to do with cash flows. Even if you construct a theoretical basis connecting your assets to your cash flows, inflation is still independent and a measure of the decrease in purchasing power. Inflation is a tax.
Hate for immigrants is weird. Here in Desantis's fascist Florida, even apart from agriculture, life would STOP without the quiet brown guys who build/repair our streets/sewers/bridges, construct our buildings, replace our roofs, etc. The Hispanic females who care for our children, staff our big-box stores, etc.
the brown guys get spicy in new mexico. as a white professional living there, i was regularly threatened by them. we need to keep their balls in a tight vice or else things get bad. just go to new mexico.
The backbone of the economy !
Supply and demand. Stop letting people in and the remaining people will have more wage bargaining power. It's why the "Yellow" railway workers were hated centuries ago.
I cant stand cowards like you.
With a drop in cheap illegal immigrant labor, pay would rise in order to fills those positions, US citizens would be more eager to take them.
The rich have enjoyed building a nation on cheap illegal labor - But it comes at the cost of good wages for lower skilled Americans, greater spending on social services, and reduced housing availability.
The whole model needs to be destroyed so the economy can adjust to serving it's native sons, not the ultra rich Americans and ultra poor foreigners.
Close the border to illegal immigration.
I’ll recommend a book that I think sheds light on why economists are often perplexed at people’s negative perceptions of the U.S. economy: The Growth Delusion by David Pilling. He points out that economic statistics (like GDP) are often considered the final word on how well an economy is doing without putting much thought into how those numbers are really calculated and what nuances they might be missing. I think we see this with the current emphasis on the unemployment rate (how low!) and wage growth (it’s outpaced inflation). For the former, yes, it’s easy to get a job, but maybe the unemployment rate doesn’t do a good job at capturing the underemployment of those with lower-paying jobs. For the latter, do wage growth statistics account for the stratification of wages across lower, middle, and higher income segments? Is most of the wage growth going to those already well off? What other nuances in the economic numbers might we be overlooking?
There was also a lot of discussion in this interview about how U.S. consumers have not changed their spending habits much. I think this is worth exploring more. I’m curious to know how much more reliant on credit card and installment plan purchases we’ve become.
My book recommendation i "Road to Serfdom."
@@WW3_Historian the Rpad to Serfdom is how got in this economy.
exactly!! @115atm they give the average salary in the US but wealth inequality is so significant that it skews these statistics wildly. its criminal in my opinion
@@WW3_Historian My book recommendation i "Road to Feudalism"
I agree with you that economists are not getting the full picture with their limited set of statistics. Also I'm not sure the statistics they are using are accurate and free of manipulation and bias (it's an election year with intense politics). Spending habits are changing, maybe the report data is just stale and lagging the trend, and also people will burn through savings and rack up debt before accepting reality -- I think there are indications that the economy is winding up under pressure and could buckle soon.
Unemployment data doesn't cover freelancers and contract workers, which are said to make up a third of the workforce. I freelance and went from working hours of almost 2 full time jobs to almost nothing. And what is out there, the rates are really low for tedious, time-consuming work
yep. GenX is really feeling this.
A CEO of a hardware supply company said to me we raised prices (and our margins) significantly during the pandemic and we're not backing down. Or as an economist would say, prices are sticky and slow to adjust, meaning they do not respond quickly to changes in supply and demand. Just walk around a Home Depot or Lowes and prices haven't dropped even as the pandemic ended and supply chains recovered.
Yeah but the top of line hardware even 4 years ago is dirt cheap now and more than capable of handling a lot of use cases.
He'll back down when customers refuse to pay and look for better deals. Ultimately consumers fighting back is the only way to solve this problem.
lumber prices make me cry now. plywood is like $80 for what was $20 in 2019.
@@Jumpinsnakes You mean power tools. A top of the line 2x4 and a top of the line nail perform exactly the same as they did 70 years ago, but I can't afford them now.
@@rickr530 I'm talking about commercial electronic hardware, chips, servers etc. Lol construction has it rough.
Mortgages have gone up 80% in the last 3 years. That alone should be enough for people to be mad.
Property appraisals have gone up and on top of the mortgage with high interest rates going up, property taxes and insurance have sky rocketed.
Since RUclips dislikes aren't visible... Don't waste your time listening to this. Shallow interpretation of flawed unemployment statistics. Blaming consumers for not comparing prices as an explanation for what is price gouging by corporations. Aversion of the term "greedflation". Capitalism has failed the majority in this country who don't have significant participation in the stock market. I'm middle class and am fortunate enough to have savings in the market. That's the only way to prosper in this economy, and that's exactly what the 1% wants.
-criticizes someone for a shallow analysis
-entire analysis can be summed up by just saying “greed” 😂
A box of Kraft macaroni and cheese went up by 150% the past 3 years and there’s less in the box. It matters that Chick-Fil-A costs $15. The cluelessness of the liberal wealthy.
ok major dumbass. i've told the troops to ignore this article. awaiting next instruction.
Are you “fortunate” or wise with your money? You probably stayed out of debt, didn’t buy things you couldn’t afford, saved a portion of your wages for long term growth, upgraded your education to get a better paying job, lived below your means…..
There are browser extensions that show dislikes again. Right now it's 1.1K likes vs 2.6K dislikes.
My thoughts after the first 3 minutes:
Things that don't matter: inflation rate, S&P500, unemployment rate
The thing that matters: The answer to this question: "Can I afford my monthly bills?" That's it.
We're suffering from past inflation. Even if the inflation rate were zero, we would still be suffering from inflation from the last few years. Causing high inflation is unforgivable, even if you "fix it" later.
Fireman to homeowner: Why are you so upset? We put out the fire.
Homeowner: My house burned down.
I don't support Trump because he is anti Ukraine, but I like the idea that he wants to dismantle the swamp , get rid of lobbying. Biden did support Ukraine but he gave away far too much free money and caused 1/2 of the inflation which was unnecessary. I am retired on a pretty fixed income and Biden destroyed part of my income. If you are working , you will get an increase in wages but not if you are on a company pension. Biden did all this spending to buy votes. Trump did the spending because of Covid but he wanted to cut off the free money in his last quarter but was forced to by his party and the Dems.
I did think the open border was awful and the US can get all the legal immigrants that it needs to fill jobs and the illegals are a big problem that never goes away. They are all queue jumpers. There are billions of people that would immigrate if given a chance, so I have no pity on queue jumpers. They all have other citizenships and countries to go back to. Billions of people have economic hardship , so that is no excuse to enter the US>
Honestly this is elite school journalism and elite US economics. Talk but no deviation from US exceptionalism. Let’s try to model the US government and corporate behavior more like the direction of the up and coming world countries. They brim full of hope.
💯💯💯 nailed it!
@@carrywolf9714 A few of those up and coming economies are corrupt.
The Bonfire 🔥 of Trumpery and Winnie the Pooh's 💩 Biowar_2020💀 did us all in.
"Fireman" used to mean someone who shovelled coal to *feed the fire* to heat the boiler to make steam to propel his ship 🚢 to outrun a U-boat's torpedo. My Dad was a "fireman" rising eventually to become a "crew chief" in the British Merchant Navy. Boiling water to outrun a torpedo was quite idiotic.
I'm halfway through the podcast, and what has not been talked about is drilling into unemployment more. More specifically, UNDER-employment. Yeah sure unemployment (by the survey's limited qualifiers) is low. But... The quality of jobs has gotten worse. The gig economy and part time job economy is lowering these unemployment numbers, while screwing the workers whose total compensation is terrible (no benefits). Additionally, we have companies going more lean (see tech layoffs) to squeeze profits. We have a white collar job recession. Unemployment may be relatively low, but the quality of jobs is trash.
I agree with this completely. You're only as secure as your current job, and you can't count on keeping it, because you can be laid off at a whim. Corporate management likes to tell you that your career is under your control, but that like most of what corporate America peddles, is a lie.
That is a separate measurement and is not moving anywhere
Yeah, it's impossible to find a job now. Only ghost postings and infinite recruitment processes.
1. So many essential benefits to live life without debilitating worry, healthcare first among them, need to be separated from your employer. It's way too much power and leverage over an employee for a relationship that already has such a skewed power dynamic.
2. I worry that AI will make the quality of jobs out there even more crap. We dreamed of automation to take care of manual and menial labor so that we could be free to do the creative work that gives us meaning and inspiration. Instead, AI today is taking creative jobs so all that's left is manual and menial labor, stripping our life of meaning, especially when so much of the AI art out there is completely soulless.
And yet you didn't care about this at all when gig workers were mostly mothers and other caregivers who couldn't work a normal 8-5 schedule. Because they lived that reality for decades. You only care about it when suddenly it's happening to a lot of men in tech, so, you know, poo on you.
My greatest concern is how to recover from all these economic and global troubles and stay afloat especially with the political power tussle going on in US.
Inflation can have a significant impact on individuals and their cost of living. As a result, it can cause negative market sentiment. It is important for individuals and businesses to find ways to navigate and potentially mitigate the effects of inflation on their finances. The current economic climate, including underperformance of financial markets due to fear of inflation, has led to a decrease in the value of my portfolio. I would appreciate any recommendations on how to potentially increase returns during this market downturn.
Stocks are pretty unstable at the moment, but if you do the right math, you should be just fine. Bloomberg and other finance media have been recording cases of folks gaining over $250k just in a matter of weeks/couple months, so I think there are a lot of wealth transfer in this downtime if you know where to look.
Such market uncertainties are the reason I don’t base my market judgements and decisions on rumours and here-says, got the best of me 2020 and had me holding worthless position in the market, I had to revamp my entire portfolio through the aid of an advisor, before I started seeing any significant results happens in my portfolio, been using the same advisor and I’ve scaled up $450k within 2 years, whether a bullish or down market, both makes for good profit, it all depends on where you’re looking.
@@BernardFrederick-tk7un Impressive can you share more info?
There are a handful of experts in the field. I've experimented with a few over the past years, but I've stuck with Annette Marie Holt for about five years now, and her performance has been consistently impressive. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
The traditional unemployment rate does not capture real unemployment. You do not cite the labor participation rate which is dramatically lower than its peak in the 1990s.
A lot of us were reminded of why we ignore that system and don't show up in the figures. It just doesn't work well enough to be worth the red tape and hoop jumping.
www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/labor-force-participation-what-has-happened-since-the-peak.htm
The labor force participation rate is declining mainly because the Baby Boom is retiring.
The 1990's was also when they changed how they measure unemployment; It used to be actual people not working; then they changed it, to only reflect the number of people getting unemployment income. When you were no longer eligible for unemployment benefits, you were just assumed to have found a job because you were no longer on the unemployment lists.
Labor participation in the '90s was between 79% and 82%; today it is 81%.
It's fascinating to see how journalists can tunnel vision to the point of absurdity and completely fail to see the forest for the trees. She definitely has a few very valid points that contextualize why businesses keep raising prices, how GDP is trending well, how inflation is nearly under control and how not everything is as black and white as the echo bubble would have us believe. Yet, in the search for nuance, these two completely lost track of reality. The level of mental gymnastics displayed in these 91 minutes should be embarrassing to them. Prices have skyrocketed in relation to wages, income distribution is at all-time low, intergenerational elasticity is at an all-time high, an entire generation is priced out of home ownership, the lower middle class is barely capable of affording a restaurant meal, all while corporations are posting record profits across the nation. What the hell, Ezra Klein? Do better.
Thank you. I thought I was losing my mind until I read the comments and everyone is responding with a version of "WTF?" The idea that economic data treated as empirical instead of the result of greed, presented in perfect npr- sounding Ira Glass voice as if corporate greed was just folksy, "this American Life," is the essence of privilege. "Why are American so angry they can't afford anything?" Lets dig deeper 🤦🏽♂️
“Trickle Down Economic Theory” is behind the problems. It’s the macro economic reason we have a billionaire owning the trump. Do you remember a billionaire prior to Reagan and TDET?
The thing that isn’t being mentioned is the effect of capitalism on these costs.
For example: recent reporting shows there are 62 empty houses for every homeless person in America. These have been bought up by corporations that invest heavily in property. It is financially better for them to keep these houses off both the rental markets and property markets because this pushes up the prices of all of their properties (and increases the on-paper values of the empty properties) and pushes up the rental prices of the rental properties on their portfolio.
In terms of costs like gas prices, food prices and the prices of other consumer goods, we have seen record profits at the same time as record prices, all really notable given the conservative push we have seen for deregulation.
But watch people blame the current government that is trying to fix the problem, vote back in the people who created the problem and then wonder why things kerp getting worse.
@@aidancampbell5644ur example is pure absurdity.
What do you not understand?
Voice from the Ground here, my wife and I can't afford our two bedroom apartment let alone a house to start a new family. If our elites can't solve this for us it's time for them to go. You can build all the houses you want If they are all bought buy slum lord companies it won't solve it.
Don't need to listen to 90 minutes of Democrat propaganda when the opening paragraph in the video description tells you all you need to know. Wages have not gone up faster than actual inflation because the inflation #'s put out by the government are intentionally fake. Instead of facing reality, I'm sure this bloated video does everything it can to avoid confronting the facts that exist in actual objective reality.
Right. The slum lord corporations build the houses, then keep the rent high so rent or buy, they control the prices.
We need to demand an increase to the min. wage to $35 an hour immediately and then everyone will have enough money to afford the new economy. Anyone telling you that prices will fall is in looney bin town, inflation does NOT go backwards, our wages must go up.
I feel your pain. Median housing price to median income was 3.5 in 1984; now it is 5.5. It is even worse in the popular East & West coast cities. My mid-west state has cheap homes because we don't have good jobs, and educated young people are moving away.
@@hereigoagain5050 You reminded me of great story that went the other way. I knew a couple..total hippies..bought a totally run down shack in toronto....ten years later the city exploded and it was getting offers for a million dollars! They couldn't belive their luck..from total bums to millionaire couple. Can't you Americans buy those run down homes and fix them up!? We don't have those.
Thank you Ezra, for reminding me that I'm not struggling and my hours weren't just cut and I'm actually having an easy time paying my bills. My super subjective dumb American brain thought I was struggling.
😂 based
@@thatwasprettyneat you aren't dumb, you just aren't falling for the corporate media gaslight.
But that's not all he said.
Did you *not* listen to the *entire* pod-cast?
If that's your takeaway from this podcast then you're lucky to get minimum wage.,
He's a typical trust baby frat boy type.
It doesn’t matter if everyone’s working if it cost too much to live what’s the point…..how can people be happy and feel good about what’s going on?
My homeowners insurance has doubled. My car insurance has tripled in the past two years… How the hell is that good?
I don’t have medical insurance anymore since I became an independent contractor besides, when I was in corporate America, the increases in premiums annually for my healthcare superseded my merit increase so I was actually losing money after getting a raise.
Throughout my life, I’ve seen what people have done to adjust for the growing gap between wages and prices. Once upon a Time in my life, my father worked and that was it. We had two cars that we replaced every three or four years my siblings went to college. We went on vacation. We belong to the local swim club. If we were sick, we went to our family doctor not through a fucking healthcare corporation that’s raping us.
My dad was not rich at all. That was 1970-ish. You wanna tell me the things are good today that we should be happy what I’ve seen in the last 50 years does not jive at all with reality.
I am really sick of smoke being blown up my ass when every time we take two steps back and then one step forward and told hey things are good
Mine didn't. Actually, my insurance is lower. I think you are not honest with us.
When I read a post like your, fist I agree with what your saying, and the democrats are your best bet but then when get in and try to enact policies that can help you like better, cheaper healthcare, the GOP is going to fight that tooth and nail. So then we throw the bums out the GOP gets control and they clearly aren't going to help you but they will lie to you and now we're looking a Trump fascim. Until the needs of the majority are put over the needs of now over a 1000 billionaires , I don't know how it gets better. I do know we should all be terrified of being fascists.
You must be like me, a 50 - early 60-ish in age... Corps are laying us off, and only contractor work is available... therefore, transferring the insurance and tax burden to us... Corps profits go up, and we get poorer.
Kenny, just wait to see what would happen if fascist Trump takes over. The layoffs will be much worse with bo safety net and no hope of it getter better.
@@kenny3485 Reaganomics hurt even the upper middle class. And many people still don't understand it. My husband talked to a guy who is a lawyer and this guy complained about taxes. He said he got a case settled and got good money and now he has to pay huge taxes. Well, he has to say thanks to Reagan and his 1986 reform for that. Before that, he could reduce his taxes by averaging the profit over a few years. Now this option is available only for fishermen and farmers. And in a geek economy when almost everyone is a contractor it would be a great option. But, no. Republicans are worried about cutting taxes for big corporations with consistent record profits and tax more everyone else.
It's hard to not think inflation is out of greed when you look at how much grocery store prices have hiked... and then watch the CEO's of said grocery chains constantly brag about their monster increases in profits at the end of every fiscal year!! Then you learn they gave almost half of those record profits to their investors...
Inflation always hurts the working class, while the ruling class profit greatly from it.
YES, THEIR INVESTORS DEMAND HIGH PROFITS, SAME AS THE OIL COMPANIES WHICH MADE THE HIGHEST PROFITS EVER THE LAST 4 YEARS
Grocery Inflation was stated as around 20%, but from 2020-2022 was 166% on most products. While also having shrinkflation, too. Kroger's CEO admitted they had monopolistic price force in Albertson merger hearing...Then PR tried to talk that back quickly.
@chrisdorman-c5r I was talking about here in Canada, but many of our big corporations are the same as in the US... and there's no reason to believe the corruption is different there.
The US is at its weakest since its creation. It started with Reagan, who gave more power back to big corporations. This after the working class had fought long and hard to gain better working rights and conditions. Reagan set this motion backwards. Bush gave them even more power back. Trump signed all the deregulation they asked for, and gave them THE biggest money gifts and tax cuts ever... hence why big corporations LOVE him.
Remember. Every tax cut a billionaire gets? The tax payers have to cover for. The billionaires don't even pay taxes most of the time, and when they do its NOWHERE near their fair share.
Immigrants, be they legal or illegal, are not the problem the Republicans paint them. Billionaires keep getting increasingly wealthy at THE SAME rate that the working class is getting poorer... don't let the wealthy ruling class tell you that "all your problems are because of those (dirt poor) people coming into America". Most of them doing the work Americans don't want to do, like farm work.
@@kated3165 given to do farm work, you'd have to live in shanties in mass numbers...They do it so their kid's kids will have a chance at the DREAM.
This is not true, at least re grocery stores. They have, on average, a 1.5-2.0% profit margin. One of the lowest in any sector.
Problem...
It's NOT Cost Control
It's Profit Control 🤑
America is currently plagued by the hydra-headed evil duo of inflation and recession. The worst part about this recession is that consumers are racking up credit card debt. In April alone, credit card debt went up 20% while rates have doubled in a year. Inflation is so high that consumers are literally taking debt for basic life necessities. Collapse has indeed begun..
Every day we have a new problem. It's the new normal. At first we thought it was a crisis, now we know it's a new normal and we have to adapt. this year will be a year of severe economic pain all over the nation.. what steps can we take to generate more income during quantitative adjustment?I can't afford my hard-earned 180k savings to turn to dust
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It isn't complex. The news media is awful. Housing costs, Health care, education costs, cast a pall over otherwise good numbers.
and not reflected in the calculations ...
Living abroad, you can see why Americans are so angry. This neo-liberal paradigm in conjunction with the privatization of every sector of the economy (oligopolies) puts all the burden on the average citizen. Where I live, we have universal healthcare, outstanding infrastructure (buses, subways, high-speed rail, constant development), no crime, and a focus on education, but in the US......Americans have to pay a deductible just to use their insurance, crumbling infrastructure (dominated by cars), high crime (due to fear and poverty - like a third world country), and no focus on education. If a govt that doesn't provide higher education for its public, it says a lot what this govt really represents.....it's a system for the "haves" but not the "have nots." I'm so happy I live abroad.
41:46 Have either of you had a real job in the last twenty years?
I don't think most people are increasing their wages unless they're changing jobs.
43:22 You can't point to a five dollar value menu as progress when a decade ago there were more options available on the value menu that were a single dollar. So if the average Americans wages have doubled in that time, the cost of food for people who are working, i.e.: not being at home and preparing their own meals, quintupled.
The fact that people have to resort to toxic fast food dollar menus for nourishment is a problem in and of itself
Agree... these podcasters are out of touch and reliant on selected biased data without real world experience.
It’s not just that they’re out of touch (though they are).
They’re just regime apologists.
100%. It's like, go back to sleep, it's just a bad dream, the economy is fine.
We're dealing with the definition of a talking head. These people have been on the payroll of the elite for a long time, as they say, since the Bush Administration and the Uni Party. I think the days of having Republican versus Democrat debates are largely over or should be over. The debates now need to be between the elites and their army of paid Stooges and the rest of us. You can no longer fool us people ! Get a real job
I thought I was struggling financially, but, thanks to you, I now understand that I suddenly just became angry for no reason.
Every year, my Social Security check is increased. Then, my Medicare premiums go up by an amount equal to the increase in my Social Security check. So an extra $100.00 per month comes in, then it goes right back out, then I have to pay income tax on the $100.00. Thus, I end up poorer after getting a raise.
Why would anyone be surprised that I am mad?
Socialism security
they jerk you around. even in retirement. that's funny. no?
reminder .. in 1984 reagan began the taxing of social security benefits ...
I assume you are thinking about the increase in Medicare and a wrap around plan. My Medicare will be increasing $10 but my advantage plan is going up $65. My pension is going up $44 so I too am frustrated.
After listening to this couple and their real lack of awareness and cluelessness of the real suffering of struggling Americans to stay afloat is extremely enlightening.
What are you saying?
@@KK-pm7ud They're minimizing the real suffering of real people and his wife was laughing when reading some of the statistics about inflation and the unemployment rate. Totally clueless, and out of touch with what's really going on because they have money.
@@TomSnyder-j2p Let them eat cake
top tier couple with top tier jobs ..
THEY ARE ONLY TRYING TO EXPLANE THE CURRENT SITUATION
It isn't that hard i have kept receits for the past 4 years i can clearly see my expenses have skyrocketed buying same things .
Why are people unhappy with the economy? It’s obvious, right? A lot of places are having layoffs, salaries haven’t kept up with inflation, and prices are out of control. Why is it a surprise that people are unhappy?
I often joke about how the scientific method gets replaced by "The Science TM." Perhaps Economics should just be called "Line go up mean thing get gud."
Salaries are really funny. I checked..same as in the early 00s when I first started working serious 9-5 jobs. Still I like to blame gen-z and call them lazy just to get them angry. :)
@@luckyfox5627 we pledge allegiance to the top 10% ....
I know multiple people who have doubled their income over 4 years. Things are good
@@Username_CC_ yes the cartels and hedge funds are raking it in ...
The biggest line item on everyones budget (especially younger people) is their rent/mortgage. Housing prices have gone up drastically. So yeah you might have gotten a 7% raise and your 401k is doing OK but big goals like home ownership and starting a family are getting more and more out of reach.
Indeed. And these are some of the main reasons that people aren't having kids, and the birthrate is well below replacement. We'll be looking at a cratering population--just when the worst effects of climate change are hitting us, I think!
When will someone write an article that captures mortgages in 2024? Visual Capitalist took a step in the right direction by comparing median house price to median household income (the ratio by year). That's good for the third of home buyers that buy in cash (probably trading up to a nicer house).
They should compare the ratio of lifetime mortgage cost (principle + interest) to median household income. Or, annual new mortgage cost as a share of annual median household income.
and then there are tens of millions with a fixed rate mortgage like me who's housing costs remain flat.
@@MrSteeDoo Fair point.
It is also fair to say expensive housing impedes workforce mobility and makes it tough for first time homebuyers like couples.
@@MrSteeDoo Your home insurance, property taxes, utilities, and maintenance/repair costs are not flat. My house is paid off, but all other costs are going way up every year. God forbid that I need a new air conditioner or roof.
We need universal, single payer healthcare, and we need the people who run insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit hospitals to face some serious and brutal consequences. Nibbling around the edge with tax credits, low interest loans, and incentivised savings accounts is a losing strategy that the Democrats needed to give up 20 years ago.
The widening wealth equity gap is not a new theory.
true but doesn't mean it isn't an issue NOW. Even more so, it needs to include the fiscal dominance in this talk to make sure we all see the holistic view.
No, but everybody is wise to it now vs the old "boot straps" ideology
@@johnwu7 I said it wasn't a new theory, not an invalid one. The point is even respected news sites engage in clickbait. But, you know what Hearst said.
Yes, but very interesting to non-snob me.
@@JR-pr8jb That's a very snobbish response.
Americans are always caught between their belief in 'entitlement' for 'cheap goods' and their belief that Business should be deregulated and government should not interfere with Business. This produces an insane economy. 'Cheap goods' come from overseas countries with 'cheap labor' and often no environmental concerns. On the other hand, there is a belief that everything should be privatized to keep government out of our business ... so to speak. And, the business model of Business shifted to profits for shareholders and high CEO salaries and therefore, prices such as medical care, housing, and child-care all become 'for-profit' and not for wellness or affordability and therefore off the wall expensive. When everything is 'privatized' with such a business model, then expect to have your money sucked out and aggregated upwards.
Deregulation had a huge effect on 'who gets the money'. Used to be seven oil companies. now there are TWO Exxon Mobile and Texaco. Those two bought up all the others (even though the others kept their own names, to keep the illusion that there are more companies than there actually are).
@@d.e.b.b5788 Yup. Coca Cola 'owns' over 500 brands. There used to be 5,000 seed companies in the US. There are only a handful. Monstanto owns 70-90% of the global soya and feed corn and is owned by Bayer Meyers. The Global Restructuring gave away capitalism for Corporatism.
I think about how Trump made it big for saying he would tax the shit out of China for all the smog and discount labor. The establishment wouldn't dare say that.
we avoided inflation for 40+ years so this is uncharted for most people ...
@@direwolf6234 We had inflation ever since money printer went brrrrr.
You start with the premise that it's all an illusion then systematically enumerate all the ways things are getting worse and still somehow not reevaluate the conclusion. Jesus.
Inflation is a direct result of income inequality. Simple math, those with extra money buy assets and that raises rents and mortgages. Same with equities (as CEOs raise prices to get the P/E into less crazy territory).... Without tax there is no mechanism to remove money.
Dumbest thing ive ever heard.. NY TIMES is like listening to dumb and dumber... marxist garbage...
income inequality does not increase the total amount of assets bought, but the spread of aqusitions.
If you handover 1 billlion $ to 10,000 people rather then giving it all to one person, they will acquire more then him, and not less. Thus the prices will rise more and not less.
never assert "simple math." Your comment will be dismissed as shallow.
What in the world are you talking about? Inflation, by definition, is the direct result of excessive money printing. Every civilization since the beginning of time knew this (which was why "currency debasement" was punishable by death penalty going all the way back to the Roman Republic).
Taxes don't actually pay for our economy as much as you think. Most of the money is generated through treasury bonds and it is mainly spent on energy.
For treasury bonds, the truth is people aren't sure on where to spend massive amounts of capital in the world right now that will be a sure growth source. China has proven now to be not only a paper tiger society, but an aging and infighting one, as well. India seemed promising, but Modi's politics become increasingly unpredictable with age. Europe seems limited in future growth and America has lost credibility in many regards. With China being the historically largest treasury bond holder until Trump now fading, Japan has picked up the slack, but has to be allowed to be militarily evolved to garner real momentum for growth for the US. Its not as clear cut as it was for the previous decade with China being basically the world's NVDA.
As far as energy goes, the Shale revolution of 2014 has blown the entire energy market of the world wide open. With the "grips" of Climate Change perspective loosening, the reasoning for the crackdown ("supply/demand" wise) that held from 1980s-2014 disappeared overnight. Without resource limitation as an excuse, climate and good hearts was the only thing left, and that was never going to last on the world stage. With that 2014 revolution every major energy company started exploring known reserves for additional value and found them in droves all over. Of particular value being Ukraine to the tune of 10's of trillions of dollars of shale energy and supplementary minerals. Hence the war in Ukraine and Putin's real justification to his oligarch backers.
With Ukraine battling for the reserves in the north east and Donbas that they was originally contracted to American companies in 2013/4 under Joe Biden's stewardship as VP, With Israel trying to sure up the reserves and pipelines to those reserves off of Gaza, with China trying to ensure the Vietnam reserves are under the dashed line, with Gazprom 2 cutoff offering Norway Atlantic regions, with Cuba reserves being on the table for Russian sale in Central America, with China building infrastructure for Chile's reserves, the energy market is a wild west again. Energy is not surely sourced anywhere in the world right now so people can't surely bet on a loan to an unsure resource.
THAT is where inflation is coming from, the money supply being shrank down from lack of capital investment creating a lack of debt creation creating a lack in money creation.
So I was over at John Stewart's channel watching his weekly RUclips where one of the guests was Jane Mayer. The subject was the crisis of Democracy. Mayer brought up that in the last 40 years 50 TRILLION DOLLARS of wealth has been transferred from the bottom of the income bracket to the top 10 percent. I believe that another reason people have to be mad about the economy is seeing their own struggles stay the same or get worse while rich people just get richer and richer and the government caters to them. Voters don't necessarily see the nuance of which party is promoting policies that do MOST of the catering because BOTH parties do the catering - the GOP just does it way more.
Before listening to this podcast, I listened to the "Inside Russia" podcast where an exile Russian talked about what is happening inside Russia right now. Basically, he said that the wealth in Russia was going to the war and to the oligarchs who kept Putin in Power. This left no money for the ordinary citizens. The same thing is happening here just slower and in a less dramatic fashion. There is only so much money, and as the inequality increases -- i.e. the rich get richer, the money has to come from somewhere. Where it comes from is the ordinary citizens who gets poorer.
Good info.
the top 10% .. the 1% + 9% control 80% pf the wealth .. the atlantic told me so ....
You have a big uncontrollable imagination. I too listen to Inside Russia - we are NOTHING like that Gulag country. Grow up
We live in a college community in Southern California. Housing here is at an all time high. Every time a new affordable home comes on the market an investor buys the home and rents it to students at 1K/ room. The neighborhoods decline and soon the home owners move out to find a better place to live. Investors buying homes to rent them so others can have the American dream is not the American dream
FDR understood these problems when I was born in 1943 and Ezra Klein, the NYT, and The Atlantic apparently don't understand them in 2024. Why?
Journamism went from digging deep and taking risks to answer questions to generating clickbait.
they cater to their class .. the top 10% ...
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
Make America great again by bringing back progressive tax rates between 1945-1980.
When FDR was around, the working class in the USA was organized and militant. People in the ruling class had good reason to be afraid of being overthrown. Now, working-class organizations are suffering the effects of a 100-year war of attrition, unions have been infiltrated and subverted, our leaders have been locked up or murdered, and we've been Red Scared into fearing what needs to be done.
Greedflation is a huge problem when the goods and services in question are necessary goods. I'm poor enough that I spend all of my money, living paycheck to paycheck. As prices for everything rose, I had to put the excess cost of my life on credit cards. That debt still exists even as things change for the better (not nearly fast enough)
They talked about greedflation but only a tiny bit. It's probably worth additional time in a podcast that's 90 minutes long. I agree that it's only part of the whole picture, actual inflation from actual increased prices accounts for some part of x-flation, but it's hard to tell how much is greedflation and how much is inflation. Plus it's probably different from one product to another.
More and more people might face a tough time in retirement. Low-paying jobs, inflation, and high rents make it hard to save. Now, middle-class Americans find it tough to own a home too, leaving them without a place to retire.
The increasing prices have impacted my plan to retire at 62, work part-time, and save for the future. I'm concerned about whether those who navigated the 2008 financial crisis had an easier time than I am currently experiencing. The combination of stock market volatility and a decrease in income is causing anxiety about whether I'll have sufficient funds for retirement.
This is precisely why I like having a portfolio coach guide my day-to-day market decisions: with their extensive knowledge of going long and short at the same time, using risk for its asymmetrical upside and laying it off as a hedge against the inevitable downward turns, their skillset makes it nearly impossible for them to underperform. I've been utilizing a portfolio coach for more than two years, and I've made over $800,000.
How can I reach this person?
‘’Aileen Gertrude Tippy’’ is her name. She is regarded as a genius in her area and works for Empower Financial Services. She’s quite known in her field, look-her up.
I checked Aileen up out of curiosity and i must say i am impressed by her Credentials. i emailed her already, waiting on her response.
One of the problems with inflation is that a person's wage increases lag monthly cost increases. At the end of the year, the company owner looks at your paycheck, says, "inflation has been 6% this year, and we'll throw in a 2% raise". Well, for 364 days of the year you've been running your household on last year's wages but prices have gone up 6%. Not only that, your savings account, which last I looked gains less than 1%/year, has lost 5% of its value.
I'm not an economist, but I hope everyone knows that a savings account isn't ideal for long term savings. Even the decades where inflation was 2 - 3% means that your stash in a savings account (or cash under the mattress) is worth less over time.
The pandemic really made it easy to see different layers of the economy. Critical workers like grocery store workers, truck drivers, gas station attendants, restaurant workers - they had higher risk of exposure to covid and they worked with no "hazard pay". Meanwhile they're not likely to own a home, not likely to have a 401k, and not likely to have personal stock market investments.
My corporate friends during the pandemic got to work from home, spent less money on vehicle maintenace, less money on gas. It's like an extra raise that covers the entire cost of the the commute. If they own a home their house value increased probably 50% since 2020. Their 401k or other market investments might track the S&P 500. (2020 - 2024 avg return was 12.3%)
The parts of the economy that are working favor these white collar corporate humans, and I'd say the higher a person's income the more they benefit. Not just in base pay but also from having larger parts of their wealth tracking the stock market - following the growth of the "strongest economy in the world" - but those with minimum wage or median wage of course they're being squeezed.
If you are spending more while your income lags then you are a fool.
You can complain all you want but for RIGHT NOW you need to cut spending. Maybe skip getting that sweet new tattoo? How about skipping the daily $7 lattes? How about learning how to make your own sandwich at home instead of eating out? How about giving plasma to build up an emergency fund?
@@MrSteeDoo Do those boots taste good when you lick them?
What's helping me is money market accounts and high-yield savings accounts. I'm getting a yield above the rate of inflation, and I'm not an outlier.
Question is, can democracy survive when people are really pissed off by something so daily as declining purchasing power? We have to vote not only for Biden, but for Congressional majorities who do not absolutely hate ordinary people.
when most of congress are very wealthy and born on 3rd base they won't change ...
The lack of imagination to solve this problem is more shocking than the problem itself. If we cap prices overall this could correct it but apparently unchecked capitalism is still a thing…listening to the two of you being utterly mystified by how other countries simply offer childcare at a reasonable cost to all via capping the cost and ensuring its subsidized shows why our economic model continues to damage society. It’s not rocket science. You decide what matters and is universal to human society and support it through all its members. It’s called regulation and taxation. Any economy should serve its people, it’s not supposed to dominate us. Just wait another decade-a wave of millions who can’t save and are at the poverty line are about to become too old or too sick to work or be hired and none of them are prepared for living on social security alone. There’s your housing shortage solved as all of them lose their homes and are on the street. No other developed nations does things in such a barbaric way. The idea is to lean toward opportunity not be ripped off. Also you guys sort of stole your title for this one from Bernie and you should have taken a nod toward his recent book “it’s ok to be angry about capitalism”.
And you think there is political appetite from all Americans for German tax rates?? Come on you know better
@@Jumpinsnakes IN Germany you get something for you money. Are Americans too stupid to see that amount you pay in tuition, childcare and healthcare alone is far more over a lifetime than what you would pay in taxes at German tax rates?
I would second guess about price controls. They often do the opposite of the intention. Check out papers about rent controls or Nixon policies in the 1970's.
what matters: air water food home health education jobs safety security ...
@@Jumpinsnakes germans get 5 weeks paid vacation /year ...
Yeah, being lectured by these two is a bit much.
and the others at the atlantic are no better ...
Our evolved system has destroyed competition, and we have moved from pure competition to oligopoly to duopoly to monopoly and we are now in a condition of corporate aristocracy where the corporations are the new kings and we are the new peasants.
People said the same in the 1900’s, in the 1930’s, in the 1960’s, in the 1990’s, definitely in 2008, and there is still plenty of creative destruction in the economy. New companies and competitors will rise up.
Go start a business; even a small one. That’s the real American dream.
who remembers 'rollerball' ... ??
@CrabbyE8 it's called the American dream because you would have to be asleep to believe it
Nobody talks about how medical bills no longer effect your credit scores. That’s huge for mortgages, loans..ect
Which nobody can afford 😂
Probably because it hasn't been in effect long enough to affect anyone.
What is there that needs to be talked about?
Millennial parents up in here 👍 Childcare expense is why I stopped teaching and changed careers. All under a political regime that is supposed to help civil servants.
Do remember that since 2022, Republicans are half of "supposed to help civil servants". The Senate can only block a filibuster if 60% of the members block it.
Having at least a BA, you doubtlessly know this, right?
Some things you might be interested in looking at are historic housing prices. Look at cities. In my case, while things have levelled off, my house in Colorado Springs more than doubled in value from 2016 to 2020. Rents have followed suit. Inflation? I suggest you look at historical inflation in France, Germany, England, pick five random first-world countries.
Yeah, Biden failed in some areas. Every president fails in some ways. Maybe an autocracy would help? Look at Hungary, Turkey, other places of your choice. Ignore things like Duerted massacring homosexuals and focus on the benefits.
Keep in mind the saying, "when the Fed taps on the brakes, someone goes through the windshield". Do some research. Don't just focus on USA.
Would things be better for teachers under Trump or Biden, in your opinion? My mom was a teacher.
The Scandinavian Welfare System removes some concerns for people who are low-income and less educated. It is less greedy than the USA and we have simplified some aspects of daily life for the majority of people. You have still the ability to follow your dream but worries about health care, education, child care, and social events are very reduced.
So the USA is "greedy" ?
What, exactly, is the USA?
@@Matthew_Loutner It is an area with a certain set of laws and a group of people sharing some common values and with the power to influence others to adhere to those values. At the same time a large group of ignorant passive people not understanding and not caring about what the group with power actually is doing.
@@bjrnhjortshjandersen1286 Your definition fails to clarify how or what part of it is greedy. Or the whole thing? . . . or what?
@@Matthew_Loutner Sorry I just tried to define the limits of the USA. Greed is more subtle as it is a common human trait and it has different qualities. Efficiency is a form of Greed but should be considered positive as it is balanced with the saving of some unnecessary waste. The negative kind of greed is defined as the attempt to accumulate money value beyond what is necessary for survival and safety and at the same time deprive others of the ability to have a safe life and enough income to live safely and with the potential to improve their quality of life. If a society is made without protection against misfortune and your whole existence is based on an ability to collect wealth on an individual basis to pay for health, education, childcare, and insurance towards social events like sudden inability to earn a living you will have a society where greed is the ultimate driver. Such societies have high inequalities, many social problems, high crime rates, class tensions, and big pressure. So my answer is everybody in such a system has to be greedy and hoard as much money they can because money decides the future for yourself and your kids. In Europe, many countries balance this with the state collecting high taxes and distributing wealth so more people may succeed in life. This is making greed a much less important driver in life.
Where did you take your figures? Did the data included the homeless and the low economic class? It sounds unreliable, all that bla bla!
Lets see here...bla bla bla...$15 per bla.. you owe us $45. Welcome to the new economy!! :)
The Nordic countries have been focusing on this for 60 years. Finally the US is begining to notice what is important
ROTFL... I'm not holding my breath..
I'll slow you one stat from my county where I live that's more than makes up for any reduced inflation or even dropping in prices. Home in my county (very poor area in northern NY) went from avg of $78k to just under $200k in 3 years and mortgage rates doubled and housing inventory is down 92%. So that means the average mortgage here went from $330 a month in 2020 to $1,500 a month in 2024 and it's actually worse than that because there's no homes for sale in the market of home I would be looking at buying would would have been in the rage of $225,000 before the pandemic and now it's $600,000 even up here. So the mortgage on a house I would have got would have been about $900 a month now it's about $4,500 a month 😂 and insurance and tax's would be much higher as well. So no the lower of the gain in inflation doesn't do anything compared to that. But anyone that owns assets like a home with a 2.8% mortgage like all my older siblings they all got almost a half million dollars in equity gained in their house some even more in my home state of Massachusetts for doing nothing..
Is there a link to its transcript for this?
I love the content but the upspeak is tough to listen to.
Education, health, housing, and child care are the difficult to globalize sectors. They increased in price relative to everything else because they could not be off-shored to China. In addition to being domestically anchored, they are the traditionally feminized sectors, which are ‘care’ services, requiring emotional ‘work’, and human connection. Until the 20th century, these social needs were met as part of household management, as gendered work. Often this was supplemented by the church delivering services to local communities. In most advanced economies, as religion declined in importance and women joined the workforce, welfare states took over responsibility for those sectors, and transformed them into modern public services.
Accurate. In America, the rearing of healthy, well socialized, educated and emotionally intelligent, emotionally stable children is devalued as are the roles around caregiving and mental health. I would like to see a change. There is too much emphasis on pure economics, not enough on well being and human flourishing.
@@arxsynchange is the only constant
Wonderful comment.
It's when the cost of diesel goes up, is when everything else goes up, not the price of gas. We got spoiled by "Cheap" money, and stupid people, abused it. Now, the chickens have come home to roost.
Did anyone else notice that Ezra and his wife speak exactly the same way? Like same tone, pauses, delivery. 😅
old proverb .. when people share the same pillow .. soon they share the same head ...
upward inflection?
Merely a symptom of our impending doom, not a cause.
We've turned America into a materialistic society. We think that we need more, that we deserve it. People don't remember when water was carried into the house, the toilet was the outhouse, a phone line was a party line, when neighbors gathered around someone's TV, when getting to work meant walking a few miles and taking a trolley, when a car was a luxury, when healthcare meant grandma's tonic, .... Stop putting your money into crap that you don't need, improve yourself so that your value in the workplace increases, start a business, don't choose to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, take responsibility for yourself and don't expect to be taken care of. Buy a cheap bicycle for basic transportation. Teach your children about the world, including money management.
I work for a Fortune Global 500. My plant employs a thousand people. Aside from one guy and some supervisors, I don't know anyone that makes the local living wage. Two college funds drain me dry, my car is ancient, I never eat out, my clothes are shabby... But I'm "employed" right. Yay? It's hard to feel successful when you're "well-employed", but still pinching pennies. It makes life feel like a hamster wheel. You get a raise, the cost of living increases. You get a raise, daycare murders your paycheck. You get promoted, rent goes up ... A lot of us hired on at three bucks below the living wage. Ten years on, you're making only two bucks under a living wage. But profits are soaring.... It's all so depressing.
The idea that greedflation is off the mark because it implies something evil about corporations only holds up if one believes that capitalism is not somewhat evil in and of itself. It might be a necessary evil-I don’t know enough economics to say whether other systems could work adequately at the scale of industrial societies-but capitalism provides considerable incentives for the people and organizations which comprise it to behave in ways that are morally repugnant. That’s why, for example, selling organs for transplant had to be outlawed, and why Medicaid provides free dialysis for people with inadequate kidney function (because otherwise survival to reach the front of the transplant queue would be determined by ability to pay). At least as presently constituted, capitalism doesn’t price in externalities like ‘people dying from circumstances imposed on them by others’, and by default punishes entities that would prefer not to create harmful externalities by making them less competitive. That’s evil, plain and simple.
Also. I will believe that the economy is “good” for ordinary Americans when poor and working-class people in my city don’t commonly live in shantytowns.
Possibly the most disgusting part of this podcast.
Ezra, you should have Matt Stoller on here. He has the best explanation for high prices I've heard: termites. Not literal termites, but economic termites: businesses that worm their way into some small niche of the economy and start slowly devouring it. A lot of this has been made possible by the abandonment of antitrust policy by the Reagan administration. Considering that businesses can now just buy up all their competitors, it's not surprising that prices are stubbornly high.
they infested the residential housing market ....
We have WORSE health outcomes than Europe. We do not have a real budget deficit. We have homelessness, poor health care, etc. because our elected officials in WA knowingly refuse to finance basic needs. We have unused economic resources and we knowingly do not use them. Modern monetary theory tells the story and apparently you guys can't afford the time or energy, despite your jobs, to learn about it.
Here's a theory: Shit is too expensive.
If you're a Harvard grad the economy is great 😃👍
Are Harvard grads the only people that take these polls?
@boringstuff1542 the numbers don't lie but liars use numbers 🤓 🖕
She is Harvard grad
They don't get it, because they ARE the elites who never lived in paycheck to paycheck life.
plus yale princeton columbia & stanford ...
Keep telling people they're doing okay when they feel like they're not, that's a losing narrative.
Why do we let the capitalist class organize the people to serve their economic interests, rather than the people organizing capital to serve their economic interests?
Because we live in a capitalist society, not a socialist one
I had no idea that the quality of insulin has remained the same for 100 years. I just assumed that the formula changed, which would make the price rise as a result of continued research and development.
The population in the USA has doubled since 1950. Double the people can't all live in Manhattan without the prices going up. It's impossible for everyone to live where they want to live without supply and demand being a factor.
Precisely.
People don’t measure economic growth the same way as the government does. When the economy grows, a tiny percentage of the population gets richer. There’s not much left to spread around. My own working life is a good example. In the mid 1970’s I spent a few years in the carpenters union. The work was hard. But I was paid about $19 per hour! Some of that was taken from the paycheck for union pension, health insurance and vacation time. And the middle-aged guys talked about the expense (but manageable) of sending the kids to college: He drove an older car but the wife had the nicer car for the kids. We KNEW we were doing okay and we expected that life would continue to get better. Then inflation hit and most people never recovered. Regan's answer was to cut taxes of the wealthy and the Fed over-corrected interest rates that caused a massive recession. In the mid-90’s I was paying non-union carpenters (high end residential - the unions aren’t interested in) $35 an hour and today they’re earning $50 an hour. Now, that’s in NYC - an expensive labor market. The guys leave with fear more than hope. Childcare is a neighbor who stays home and minds three kids. They buy homes much later. They start retirement savings at 50. They can only help the kids with college. And they are very scared of anyone getting sick. McDonald’s used to be a place only high school kids and very recent graduates worked. The assumption was that your waiter at the local restaurant was a college kid. I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture. We worried about money. A lot. But not all the time. It was less about paying this month’s bills and more about how will we get to where we wanted to be. Finally, surgeons and lawyers were buying and renovating Park Ave apartments. Some bankers. There are a whole lot more bankers and very few lawyers or surgeons at those addresses today.
At work about every other month they post a letter in the break room praising all of the employees for record monthly sales. But when you get your review, well 3% is all they can give you, sorry its the budget you know. But hey they bought us pizza on Friday 😂😂. I can think if a couple places id like to stick that pizza 😊 9:53
US employment statistics don't include those who "have not actively looked for work (or been on temporary layoff) in the last 4 weeks." How are they measuring this statistic? The US is just one huge corporation.
One in 3 Americans eat fast-food every day, 2 in 3 once a week? That seems an overestimation, but gives one pause.
where is the source ??
When I was working, I ate fast food for lunch every day. If I had been married, I would have taken a sack lunch.
@@Matthew_Loutner why ? cheaper or healthier ...
@direwolf6234 Convenience. I had no one to cook for me.
I find that fast food is about 3 times more expensive than cooking from scratch at home.
I do not consider it any more or less unhealthy. We make our sandwiches at home from refined bleached white bread. That is the same thing we get on a fast-food hamburger.
To be more precise, I ate breakfast at fast-food and I ate lunch at fast-food. In the evening, I either ate at a traditional restaurant or fast-food, depending.
The issue is income inequality and the lack of unions.
Around an hour and 11 minutes in it was said the public feels like they're being gaslighted. That is the only thing they got correct.
Is it because the public has unrealistic expectations about how much they can consume? Households are spending record amounts on non-essentials.
@@user-qo4kb4dr1i If only these Millennials would stop buying their Starbucks they could buy a house....
@@gauloise6442 I don't think that's true, unless you're talking about a house in a rural area, then yeah. Some houses are just a few thousand dollars. If you get lunch at starbucks everyday that's probably $6000, which is like half a house in a rural area.
@@gauloise6442 maybe a better question - do you think if someone spends a $1000 less, they will have $1000 more in their bank account? Or do you think money expires if not spent by the end of the month? Americans spent $136 billion on pets. I know people who are living paycheck to paycheck BECAUSE they spend $5000 on their pets every year. That $5000 spent on an elderly dog could be spent on saving the lives of many children in a "POS country" that you think isn't worthy of your attention and empathy
Food is not cheap Ezra. Do you buy food at a grocery store?? Hello
Trickle down economics and trickle down morality in religion are based on the patron-client relationship, or the divine right of power to control the good fortunes of dependents, jobs from corporations and self-righteousness privilege from God. Neither are based on the natural rights of humanity to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (a good life well lived).
The only thing that ever trickles down is some rich jerk's piss.
In the United States of America 🇺🇲 our rights are bestowed upon us by our Creator. Natural law is considered secondary to that first event.
Save yourself 90 minutes and look up a chart of M2 from FRED. Inflation is caused by expansion of the money supply, and prices followed it. M2 peaked in Q2 2022, same as CPI (YoY change). This is 100% caused by the Fed/Treasury printing money and monetizing ~$5T in debt.
Cheapness of food? Ezra leave the NYC bubble once in a while 😂
It very cheap now that I eat 1/3 what I used to. :)
Many people’s beliefs about the economy are purposely ignorant. They’d rather whine and complain.
Prices of things that are made by a few hundred million poor Chinese factory workers got cheap (plastic trinkets, electronics...), things that can't be outsourced to Asia like medical care, education and child care got more expensive.
We have had a flat birth rate, births equaling deaths, for over 50years. One person dies one kid is born, housing should be opening up as fast as kids reach adult hood. That doesn't happen because immigration increases the demand for housing. Immigration is the only factor that has doubled and stressed the USA population. Resulting in overall infrastructure and housing stress that has lowered the quality of life for all Americans.
Quality of life decline.
Shitty propagandists can't admit this. NYT is a paid propagandist outlet
Talking about a problem in a circle is a perfect way to not find a solution. To get to a solution you first need to define what the problem actually is. Start with actually defining what inflation actually is and not just keep saying inflation.
The elephant in the room: Economic anger may lead to fascism under Trump, which would result in even worse economic anger.
My family lives in peoria illinois area. The cost of food is equal to 20-25% of my budget each month. We go out to eat maybe once a week if not at all depending on our budget. We are scraping by financially by picking and choosing which bills are most important at the time.
We made 90k last year and it was great we were starting to get ahead, but that was from all of the over time I had that year. This year in 2024 I have had 3 days of overtime instead of 45 days of overtime. So we are feeling it alot more.
For sanity’s sake, social equity, equity, equity, equity, equity…………………….. Why would anyone commit to a socially illegitimate society
i don't want the dumbasses to have any equity. they'll just ruin it anyway. the top 10% are better positioned to handle the majority of all the equity.
it's the instabillty of purchasing power and prices. When prices go up and your wages have to catch up, you know somebody is getting rich and it isn't you. Then you see the taxes increase as your wages increase... I don't think about how bad the economy is as much as I think about how bad it is going to get. Products made offshore are becoming more expensive as their labor ages out and we no longer have the manufacturing footprint to create competition. Services on the other hand, are becoming more competetive on a global scale leading to margin contraction and job cuts. Then there is the big energy crunch looming on the horizon, and a push towards EV's that dramatically increase the cost of personal transportation and take precious time to charge. When you factor everything in, it's a huge squeeze on the cost of living for most people. On top of that, 1.5 million people already struggling and working at a call center will be out of a job soon thanks to AI and outsourcing. Even the 50 million people doing content creation will soon be concerned with all of the above. I don't think either political party will effectively take on these issues; they are milking the malaise ad infinitum ad nauseum. You mentioned construction and farming; Speaking as a born citizen with years of construction and farm labor experience I've stood in temp labor lines for days and watched as I was excluded from jobs because of my lack of color. When I finally got picked up for jobs, the migrant help would often treat me like trash, pick fights, expect me to pick up their slack and joke amongst themselves as I worked twice as hard as they did. The narrative about domestic Americans and hard work isn't true, what's true is that some immigrants can work those jobs with a smile on their face because when they take those dollars back to their country, they get a lot more for it. The exception being the Japanese I have worked with, they have been great to work with, are very skilled, and don't get asymmetric exchange (they also come on Visa and choose to speak fluent English). IF Americans don't want to do hard phyiscal work, then why do we have AmeriCorps, YouthCorps, and community college apprenticeship programs? And yes, the market has been up but the breadth has been very narrow, such that most companies that could use the credit and even have clean balance sheets are down. That is not a healthy market dynamic, it is a lot of speculation. Self-driving cars? Flying cars? CEOs with clown shoes making Billion$ selling the public market on pipe dreams, cashing in on your investment today for promises of tomorrow. Meanwhile in the real world, our "friends" on the Asian continent are achieving the largest buildup of weaponry in history; including naval fleet, aircraft, rocketry, satellites, and nuclear material. What could they possibly want to do with that? The US is sitting on untapped resources that foreign superpowers will need within the next 35 years, and we are pretending at what?
We have not yet come to grips with the elephant in the housing market.
Homeowners have both the political power and the financial incentive to restrict supply and drive up prices. Universal homeownership is a chimera, and a particularly destructive one to pursue, because once a majority of people own homes, they can shut down construction for the rest. And that is exactly what has happened. The result has been a massive transfer of wealth from younger generations to the Boomers.
There is no way to keep housing affordable in the long run except to limit homeownership to about 1/3 of the population. If 2/3 of people rent, they will demand sufficient construction.
what about the hedge funds taking over entire communities outbidding regular people ....
Ironic her reading about French Revolution while she says those things.
I guess she think some other rich person's head rolls. Say the right thing and maybe it won't happen to you.
"Falling prices are bad. People stop buying things. Why buy now if you can wait two weeks and the price will be lower?" No pushback. No challenge, because we are so obsessed with the ideology of economic growth.
People will buy what they need. If people don't buy things that they don't need until two weeks or two months later, how is that a problem? It's only a problem in a world where natural wealth is not shared. [Not sharing natural wealth means that poor people get EVEN poorer, as the rich get richer due to their heightened ability to maneuver into the most advantageous positions from which to gain more wealth / exploit a free ride on the Commons. (We are not accounting for externalities, so much of the opportunity the economy provides for amassing wealth / making profit is related to instances where environmental costs are foisted onto the larger society, future generations and the larger community of life.)]
IF natural wealth were shared, people would be assured of a substantial minimum. There would be less pressure on central banks to 'juice the economy' by boosting the money supply. The system could be dynamically stable without manipulation of interest rates by government, if natural wealth were shared.
Inflation is essential in a debt-based monetary system. No one will loan money if just by holding it, it gains in purchasing power. Fix the money, fix the system
@@andrewhill1251 Maybe you can think of a counterpoint to your claim. As the inflation rate declines, the amount of interest that must be paid to induce someone to lend money declines. This suggests that the reluctance to lend money is small when inflation is low.
When inflation is very low, or when prices fall over time, people will tend to postpone purchases for things that they don't need at the moment. This has an overall dampening effect on non-essential industry. Deflation should be a primary aim of climate / environmental activists, for this reason.
Maybe a more accurate point that you could make in this context is that, if there is no inflation, or if there is deflation, people will not need inducement of bank interest rates to encourage savings. Simply holding cash is a reasonable financial strategy in that context. (People may be willing to pay a small (or large, depending) fee to someone who borrows their money, if they see that the project that is enabled by the loan improves the world in a way that pleases them, and/or if it eliminates a security challenge related to physically storing the cash.)
I went to a luncheon where Kevin O'Leary was the keynote speaker.
At the time, student debt relief was a big political talking point and something the Biden administration was planning as a longer-term stimulus after covid.
O'leary said that he hoped student debt relief would be "litigated into the ground."
I've listened to a lot of podcasts about economics. I think it's high time for the US political system to stop using the economy as a cudgel politically, and start working together to solve problems that are ultimately going to bite us in a butt in 25 years.
Political rhetoric around our economy has really ignited a lot of ugliness online for digital natives. Men feel like they are in a hamster wheel. They see their female peers, hustling and in some cases out earning them in college degrees and real money.
The more we convince working age men that subsidizing anything other than the military and multinational corporations is communism or socialism, the more they will vent their spleen online and the more men and women will antagonize each other. The more men will dig their heels in and claim that what really needs to happen is that women need to defer higher education and career in favor of marriage and younger motherhood. The more men will insist that uncompensated labor and caregiving is a woman's vocation and highest calling.
The more this happens, the more enmity women will feel toward men their age. The more they will avoid marriage and motherhood.
If we don't have a very real national conversation about subsidizing healthcare and higher education? We'll just watch as the birth rate plummets to hell.
The missing parameter is level of Trust the public has in its rulers and institutions.
Trust no one
I just bought two dinners tonight at a restaurant. Chicken wings with two sides cost $18.99. Pulled pork with two sides costs $17.99. Then there is sales tax on food in restaurants and fifteen percentage tip. So a carryout dinner for two is almost $50.00. What did did this cost ten years ago? $5.99 each. What did this cost five years ago? $8.99 each. And Ms. Lowrey just stated that the inflation rate at its peak was nine percent. Does she not buy things?
I’m not sure exactly what point you’re making here. Is it that her bath doesn’t add up? The inflation rate refers to change over a unit of time, my guess is that most numbers are reported as an estimate of an annual rate. Note how the price differences you cite are over fairly long periods of time.
My rent went from 1300 to 1900 in two years. I can't afford the Elite Boomer Economy.😊😊😊
Ageism is ugly. It's called neoliberal economics mixed with libertarianism and some of the most enthusiastic participants are young people on Wall Street and in Big Tech, so spare us.
OK, so maybe the necessities of living on this planet shouldn't be commodities in the free market?
Let's have rent controls, more public housing, national healthcare, childcare, and education, and stop privatizing government services, and functions.
It should be obvious to everyone that billionaires won't solve this problem for you, they will just fleece you down to your last penny.
These things are not luxury goods in the market, where scarcity is preferred, so billionaires can maximize their profits, these are necessities of life. We have to decide what kind of country we want to be.