
The majority of Americans say they did not get a pay raise this year - paulpauper
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-majority-of-americans-did-not-get-a-pay-raise-this-year-2018-12-12
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ErikAugust
To state the obvious - when there is any inflation at all, those who didn't
receive a pay raise will be receiving a pay deduction.

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coldtea
In my country we used to have a state mandated "automatic inflation adjustment
compensation" (so, like a mandatory raise to match the inflation index).

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Spooky23
In an institution board that I serve on, healthcare eats the budgetary space
for increased compensation.

There’s also a high degree of uncertainty given the political situation. It’s
difficult to budget.

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ben_jones
I'd love to see an analysis of "incidental" expenditure increases over the
past decade. For example the increase cost of a phone bill with the addition
of a three year payment plan for a $1100 phone. The added cost of student load
payments starting to eat at new graduates. Increasing number of subscription
services like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Amazon Prime, Imperfect Produce. The
addition of "Gig" and event economy expenditures such as Uber, UberEats,
PrimeNow, AirBnB, StubHub, etc.

If I break down my expenses over the past three years I can clearly identify
the lifestyle creep of modern consumerism. Is this the new norm? Is this
what's responsible for articles like this? Or is it just more traditional
inflation?

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Spooky23
For the lazy, they are significant.

My family’s baseline expenditures are down except for food. Cord cutting
reduced expenses significantly and buying phones and shopping plans cut that
cost.

If you’re using Uber and paying $10 for takeout delivery all of the time,
you’re wasting money, full stop.

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patrickthebold
'Wasting money' or just 'paying a premium for the convenience'.

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Spooky23
Depends. I know a lot of people who are hooked to convenience they don’t need
and are having bigger problems elsewhere as a result.

I helped a person that I mentor figure out that they could literally take 7
years off of student loan repayment by ditching Starbucks and picking up their
own pizza (or god forbid picking up the phone and ordering that way).

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mac01021
Don't most people get no raise most years?

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scarface74
I wouldn’t say no raise, but my raises have only been over 3% twice in over 20
years and that was really early in my career.

Job hopping is the only way to get a meaningful raise.

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hyperpape
Doesn’t mention historical data. I’m willing to believe (actually I’d even
bet) it’s worse today than during previous booms, but why oh why can’t we have
better sources on this site?

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awinder
[https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awidevelop.html](https://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/awidevelop.html)

2018 numbers not reported (obviously), and given this being the first year of
the tax overhaul, this year “should” have resulted in a much higher average
increase in salary (if you believe trickle down to work, this would be the
year for it to finally work.)

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cannonedhamster
Based on the average that most people received, it's unlikely that unless you
were making decent money already you received much. The average worker in the
US makes around $45k/year which amounts to a tax break of about $20 a week. So
a single fill up of gas or less per week. I'm not thinking most people are
wowed. Now shareholders got a huge break, companies flat out admitted that
they were going to use the money to make their shareholders wealthier, which
is plainly their right. It was a terrible tax plan that increased the deficit,
did nothing to really help those who needed it, and moved more money to the
already wealthy.

[https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/pf/taxes/paychecks-new-
tax-...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/02/01/pf/taxes/paychecks-new-tax-
law/index.html)

[https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-
information...](https://www.thebalancecareers.com/average-salary-information-
for-us-workers-2060808)

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RickJWagner
According to The Economist, blue collar wages are rising faster than white
collar wages, something that hasn't happened in a long time.

[https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/14/blue-
coll...](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2017/11/14/blue-collar-wages-
are-surging-can-it-last)

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pravda
I assume health insurance has gone up at least a little bit.

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janesvilleseo
On a side note, my employer while at the time of slashing 12.5% of its
workforce ate the heath insurance increase and did not pass it on to its left
over employees.

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reidjs
Do the majority of Americans deserve a raise in the first place? I think a bit
of humility might be a good thing to help us rethink our materialistic
impulses and desires. This is coming from someone who asked for one, but
didn’t receive a raise this year.

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astazangasta
A better question: do a tiny minority of Americans deserve to take all of the
productivity gains that would otherwise be distributed to the majority of
Americans as raises? Maybe the people who claim they deserve billions of
dollars should exercise a bit of humility, instead, eh, and start handing out
the money.

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scarface74
The statistical middle class could easily say the same about most tech people.

While we may look at billionaires as “them”, people with a household income of
60K a year (the median household income), can’t dream of why people who just
sit and type on a keyboard deserve six figure salaries.

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astazangasta
Not "easily", since the difference is one of several orders of magnitude. A
person making 60K has to work three years to make as much someone making 180K.
A person making 200K has to work five hundred years to make as much as someone
making 100M.

No one works hard enough to "deserve" that much money; this is why kings used
to appeal to divine right. Nowadays the justifications are non-existent, we
just pretend otherwise because we are cowards.

While we're speaking of "deserving" our money, what moral framework do we use
to make this calculus? I'm dubious you could identify a credible moral
universe in which one person deserves hundreds of millions, while hundreds of
millions work themselves to the bone and still deserve nothing.

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scarface74
Yes mathematically you are correct. But emotionally, it is just as out of
reach for many people to make six figures as it is for most people to make a
billion.

When people start voting for policies that "tax the rich", the people making
twice as much as they make are going to be lumped in with people making 100x
as much.

As far as moral argument. How can I make the "moral argument" that I deserve
to make five or six times what the custodian makes for just typing on a
keyboard and creating pretty architectural diagrams in Visio?

Also, if both the person bringing home $5000/month and the person bringing
home $15,000/month both have bills totaling $4000/month. The person bringing
home $15K a month can build wealth 11 times faster.

