China's Xi Jinping asked 'What’s so bad about deflation?' amid economic slowdown, report says
"Don’t people like it when things are cheaper?" Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly asked his advisers.
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/51182148
Over the long term, that does tend to happen
Not in the US. We haven't seen a real pay increase since the early 1980s.
That became something of a meme post-2008 financial disaster, and it was true then. It's not true anymore. That's what I meant by it not being true in certain time periods. It depends on where you put the start and end dates.
As of now, median wages are significantly better off in real terms than any time in the 1980s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
1982-84 CPI Adjusted Dollar - aka, a measure that eliminates housing, healthcare, and energy costs. Like, the two main drivers for CoL in the US.
And, it's still more than kinda true now. Ever wonder why homelessness is jumping up? Or why healthcare bankruptcies are extremely common? Is it because the wage growth outpaces those costs?
I don't believe so.
Oh, that also only tracks "Full time workers".... Something like 60% of Americans are NOT full time workers. They work 39.5 hrs, just enough to put them under "full time".
So, do you have a more comprehensive set of data? Because when people were posting about this circa 2012, the above link is what they pointed to. Now that it's not showing the same answers, people suddenly don't like it.
Edit: a more robust way to make a similar argument is to point out the disparity between wages and productivity since the 1960s. That's a huge gap, it's only gotten wider, and it'd take a long time to fix without a revolution.
A more comprehensive set of data?
I dunno. Not my job to try and prove capitalism is Good, Actually.
In other words, what do you use to back up your assertion that wages have not matched inflation?
Oh, also, you're wrong that this excludes housing and healthcare:
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm
The CPI represents all goods and services purchased for consumption by the reference population. BLS has classified all expenditure items into more than 200 categories, arranged into eight major groups (food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communication, and other goods and services). Included within these major groups are various government-charged user fees, such as water and sewerage charges, auto registration fees, and vehicle tolls.
Energy is a little more complicated, but it should be included in the graph above:
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/common-misconceptions-about-cpi.htm
Has the BLS removed food or energy prices in its official measure of inflation?
No. The BLS publishes thousands of CPI indexes each month, including the headline All Items CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) and the CPI-U for All Items Less Food and Energy. The latter series, widely referred to as the "core" CPI, is closely watched by many economic analysts and policymakers under the belief that food and energy prices are volatile and are subject to price shocks that cannot be damped through monetary policy. However, all consumer goods and services, including food and energy, are represented in the headline CPI.
