
Most Americans’ Wages Have Actually Declined Over the Past Year - pulisse
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/most-americans-wages-have-declined-over-the-past-year.html
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Bucephalus355
I think it would be unusual to see wage gains.

Wage gains at this point would occur when labor pressures / basically
existentially threatens capital, and probably nothing else. We don’t see a lot
of labor pressure; there is no organized labor movement left anymore.

There has been more and more talk about developers unionizing, although less
about money and more about ethics (e.g. the AI stuff with Google).

I say that to suggest we might see other areas unionize, and obviously they
will demand more money, and then wages will rise.

Unfortunately, the catalyst for pressure on capital / resurrection of labor
power might be a “more-severe-than-2008” style depression. Because even if
wages aren’t rising now, things are kind-of-sort-of good / not terrible for a
lot of people. I think most people would be scared to risk it if life is
bearable.

Such a recession (if it occurs) would undoubtedly strip away any of the
defenses of the ruling classes that remained after 2008 (and have slowly been
hammered at ever since), so the ppl with the power will be weak and those with
the demands will be extraordinarily motivated and with nothing to lose.

~~~
arkades
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/13/a-min...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/13/a-minimum-
wage-worker-cant-afford-a-2-bedroom-apartment-anywhere-in-the-u-s/)

Most minimum wage workers can’t afford a 1br apartment in most of the country.
“Kind of sort of not terrible” may actually be a high target to aim for.

~~~
Eridrus
One of the surprising things about poverty statistics is that you find that
most people classified as living in poverty are families, because your
expenses go up drastically.

Many young people - eg those making minimum wage - live with roommates or in
studio apartments and don't really feel significantly disadvantaged by the
fact that they can't afford a 1br apartment.

I say this not to say that everyone is doing fine, but that the details can
matter a lot.

On a different note, for a fixed amount of housing stock, it is a purely
positional good, you can't improve the number of people who can afford a 1br
by simply paying people more, you have to build more, or enforce strict rent
controls which makes it not a problem of income, but one of luck and
inevitably corruption.

~~~
killjoywashere
I recall an interview with E.B White who just, incidentally, as part of a
larger answer, mentioned he roomed with, I want to say three, other guys when
he first graduated college and moved west (to SF if I recall). That he had
roommates at that agr seemed to be stated with nonchalance that he would use
to set the stage, like, to mention he was eating lunch with friends when
something interesting happened.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Is it unusual to have roommates after you graduate university in the USA?

In New Zealand it's considered normal to share a house until you have a long
term partner who you move in with, then you find your own house.

I know people in their 30's who still share a house or apartment. It's a
social thing as much as a financial thing, your roommates are like platonic
partners.

~~~
killjoywashere
I personally spent the following six months with 2 roommates and the next six
months on a ship with 6 roommates in a room slightly larger that my parents'
closet.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Since we're comparing stories, I spent 16 months living in backpacker hostels,
including 12 months in the same one.

People always ask me how I managed to live like that, but they don't realise
that you tend to adapt to your living conditions fairly quickly. If you can
manage a couple of months, you can manage a year.

It's actually weird for me to live in a house with only a couple of other
people now. I got so used to having people to hang out with practically on
tap. There's always somebody to drink with, or watch a movie with, or snuggle
up next to. It's strange for me to come home from work to an empty house.

------
bcheung
> There is essentially no evidence that the president’s tax cuts (his sole
> piece of major economic legislation) did anything to significantly improve
> America’s macroeconomic performance.

This is probably true. But there's also no evidence to support that it hurt
either. It's quite disingenuous and misleading to make such claims when there
hasn't even been a single year of tax filings since the new tax policies have
taken effect. Policies, especially tax policies, have long lag effects.

Also, there are so many variables and other factors to consider that it is
impossible to think so 1-dimensionally.

~~~
decebalus1
> But there's also no evidence to support that it hurt either.

Yes, there is. People seem to forget that a tax cut is actually a government
subsidy. Coupled with increased spending, if the assumption is that if the
macroeconomic performance hasn't been improved that means it hasn't been hurt,
then it remained constant despite the 'cuts' \+ 'increased spending'. Which
means that it could have grown/improved if the tax cuts were not in place.

~~~
ghufran_syed
“a tax cut is actually a government subsidy” - only if you believe that all
money earned by residents of a country is actually the property of the
government, for them to distribute as they see fit.

~~~
ilikehurdles
Government provides services. Services cost money. That may sound like a
complicated and largely unbelievable concept but it’s true.

~~~
refurb
That’s not a coherent rationale to say a tax cut is a subsidy.

Let me guess, cutting welfare payments is stealing?

~~~
decebalus1
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subsidy.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subsidy.asp)

And yes, cutting welfare payments while welfare payouts are constant/growing
will be taking money from other sources to keep the balance. So depending on
one's definition of stealing, it can be.

~~~
bcheung
You mean welfare taxes and welfare payouts?

All of this seems like gross oversimplification and it worries me that it is
so common.

Words have definitions and meanings and when you conflate them you reduce your
ability to understand and reason about the world.

I see why people think not doing something is equivalent of its opposite but
this is not the case.

Not taxing someone is not the same things as subsidizing them for the same
reason that not expressing hate is not the same thing as expressing love. Not
attacking someone is not the same as healing them. Hospitals can't heal people
by simply not attacking them.

Police reduce violent crime but it would be inaccurate to say that police are
the same as hospitals because they both reduce personal injury.

Not doing harmful drugs and studying both make you smarter, but not doing
drugs is not the same as studying.

------
Isamu
I was just complaining about articles like this. If you are discussing a
trend, you have to show a time series graph that demonstrates the trend you
are claiming. Anything else is blather.

There are three graphs, none of which are about wages.

Call me crazy, but I would like to see a graph of, you know, "most Americans'
wages" over the last few years if we are talking about the trend in most
Americans' wages.

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jeffbax
The problem with articles like these is that they leave out the fact that non-
wage benefits are consuming more and more of the compensation growth that may
have otherwise gone into wages.

Particularly healthcare costs… largely accelerated since the ACA, which NYMag
supports wholeheartedly and is IMO a glaring omission in an article like this.

~~~
JamesBarney
You'll have to cite evidence the ACA is accelerating it especially when the
majority of health care economists disagree with that.

~~~
dlp211
That and most wage workers are not part of the public insurance pool and are
therefore mostly insulated from the ACA. Any increased costs due to insurance
requirements or regulations should be stabilized by now for employer plans.

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RachelF
There is a feeling among some economists that some key data like inflation,
wages and unemployment are fudged by government departments to make them look
good.

Things like the definition of "unemployment" have changed. If you work 1 hour
a month you are employed. If you have been unemployed for longer than 3
months, you are no longer among the unemployed. The reasons cited by the
officials always sound rational, but their net effect is to make government
statistics look a lot better than they actually are.

There is a discussion of this here
[http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-
chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts) or
here [https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/big-mac-index-suggests-
amer...](https://www.sprottmoney.com/Blog/big-mac-index-suggests-america-in-
decade-long-depression-peter-diekmeyer-30-042018.html)

------
wolfspider
These were labor and manufacturing jobs that were created and actually the
retail jobs took a hit according to this:
[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-new-jobs-were-
crea...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/half-of-new-jobs-were-created-in-
these-5-states-2018-01-26)

If I read that article in combination with the one we're discussing it looks
like there is a race to the bottom whether its temp jobs or contractors. For
instance here in Florida we employ lots of people in the hospitality industry
and in the outskirts of those bigger cities (Tampa Bay for example) average
wages are so low its shocking. Just take a look some time, whether this is
good or bad is up for you to decide. For me I think unless we subsidize
education more and do it fast that will be the new crisis.

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rdiddly
Wishing for a version of this article for those who don't care about Trump or
the debunking thereof.

------
malvosenior
Yikes, what happened to impartial (or at least the apperance of it) reporting?
This thing reads like a straight up hit piece on Trump. It's impossible to
take something like this seriously when it's so obviously slanted. Sad to see
it on the front page of HN.

~~~
Bucephalus355
This article mentions the Koch Brothers, as if they are allied with Donald
Trump. They are not. Donald Trump actually hates the Koch brothers (or at
least his base does), and there is deep hatred for them on the comments
section of Breitbart. Steve Bannon ha basically accused the Koch’s of treason.

One way of viewing Trump’s actions might be in terms of “crisis theory”, or
the idea in the 70’s to destroy the welfare system by overpopulating its sign-
ups, thus forcing the creation of something new.

He pouring gasoline on the economy to ignite and bring about its ruin. If
you’re poor right now, you can probably live in some very creative ways. The
wealthy are not very good at dealing with large declines in income, as
evidenced by the German billionaire who killed him self in 2009 after his net
worth dropped from $8 billion to $5 billion:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-
idUS...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merckle-newsmaker-sb-
idUSTRE5055O820090106)

The opposite goal of this is the elites of the world who want to run a steady,
slow-mo bubble ala Japan of the last 25 years. It definitely would be stable
and work, but it would preserve the status quo and not really offer anything
new to the working class.

~~~
Apocryphon
Sounds like accelerationism, which is a Marxist theory of destroying
capitalism by helping it reach excesses that cause a systemic collapse.
Perhaps the far right and the far left and not so different in matters of
eschatology.

~~~
JackCh
Accelerationism could be advocated by anybody who wants radical change that
the majority of the public are not on board with, under the belief that the
present course will bring more people to agree with them. If it makes sense to
the Marxists, it probably makes sense to the far right as well. Of course if
they miscalculate, they just end up working against their own interests.

------
RickJWagner
Unemployment sinks to record levels, is this celebrated?

Not at this 'news' source. Here the argument is twisted to be about tangential
issues. Odd, there was none of this a few years ago...

~~~
dlp211
Or, and this may just be a crazy thing to think, unemployment is at historic
lows so why aren't real wages rising is a valid question to be asking and
explaining.

