Housing (homes and apartments) is either in yet another bubble, or I guess just going to permanently remain absurdly high, slowly filtering more and more people into homelessness and death.

EDIT: (derp i fucked it up, EDIT 2)

Average rent vs median wage, cpi adjusted, and indexed to 1982 = 100.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1raP7

(Basic take away: the average real rent is about 4.2x or 420% what it was in 1982 whereas the median real wage has only risen by about 1.2x or 20%)

Edit 3: I would do median rent vs median wage, but FRED does not appear to track median rent.

Personal debt levels are astoundingly bad EDIT: If you do not own a house. The average US renter credit score is 638, and most places won’t even consider you if it is below 620.

https://www.investopedia.com/do-you-need-credit-to-rent-apartment-8600564

… a study from Rent Cafe found that the average credit score of renters in the U.S. was 638 in 2020 (the most recent data available),…

The medical system remains ruinously expensive and corrupt.

The proportion of those who are not counted as unemployed, but who are not working, climbs higher and higher. is lowering, but still has not recovered to Pre-Covid levels, much less abated its general downward trend since the 90s.

(Labor Force Participation Rate).

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1raRG

College costs climb further and further, offering less and less likelihood of an actual decent paying job.

Wealth inequality is the worst in the known economic history of the world.

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I’m sure there is a different metric that could be reported then, like adjusted buying power.

Gilded age 2.0

Mmm I love sawdust in my food! /s

Inflation is nothing compared to price gouging and price fixing by businesses that no one tries to curtail.

Lina Khan is on the case and making waves.

She’s the single most hated person in the C-Suite across the USA.

I think what people are feeling is what has been often described as enshitification. The definition of that term as given by its creator doesn’t match the context in which I see it increasingly used. However, I think that the phenomenon that people often use it to describe is what is killing consumer confidence.

If the economy is actually serving consumers, then those at the top are making less profits. This is unacceptable. They have to keep making money. They have to keep increasing how much money they make. They have to keep increasing the rate at which they increase the money they make. If they’re not, then they are stagnating according to investors. This is incompatible with the survival of normal people. Growth cannot be infinite.

So the companies consolidate and find corners to cut and we absolutely feel it even if it doesn’t show in the numbers. They find new and creative ways to create “shrinkflation”. They don’t have to literally shrink the product - that’s too obvious. They can instead alter the formula, find cheaper low quality components, squeeze their workers harder or outsource labor, stand behind their products just a little less by updating wording to sound the same but technically promise less, add a little friction to their warranty process, hedge against inevitable future failure with no class action clauses or forced arbitration in their terms…

It feels like every company is doing something like that these days… and if they aren’t, they are being abused or bought by a company that is.

How can confidence then not be down?

Not to mention energy costs, transportation costs, basically all necessary costs have gone up. In the meantime, the cost of electronics and frivolous items have gone down. It almost seems like a goddamn ploy so they can continue to write snide articles about, “oh, you all complain about being poor? Why are you still buying TVs and iPhones?”

How old are you? Genuinely curious.

I’d wager my savings

Well if you’re like most sub 35yr olds, that’s not a big wager at all.

I’d wager my savings that most of those are second and third jobs, because it’s become impossible to live with just one in the United States of America.

I’ve wondered this as well - and wondered if Biden ever really grokked what’s happening. Hopefully others do and they follow through once they win (if they do).

Only getting better for the ultra wealthy. That’s what the system is for and it’s working better than it ever has.

If you think about. When capitalism is less capitalist is when regular people benefit. (Regulation, healthcare, free education)

Socialist American policies were the best.

My salary increased but now my rent ate it all. And worse, house costs multipled.

I had/have such a hard time convincing people that this isn’t traditional inflation as much as it’s corporate price gouging. This is being done to us, not a result of Biden’s economic policies

I work with people that really struggle to grasp this concept. I work rotations and every hitch I find myself spending the first few days explaining that what they call “the economy” I would call the CPI, whereas what capitalists refer to is corporate profits - and never the twain shall meet. But this is yet another complexity that the right benefits from obscuring, and complexity requires thoughtful consideration for understanding. I realize I’m asking a lot from a bunch of blue collar rubes.

Part of it is that when people say the “economy” is up, they’re usually only referring to valuations of public companies which is only part of the picture. The price-to-earnings ratio is so wack right now that many companies are trading at 18x their earnings per share, so while profits may be up, the companies are still wildly overvalued compared to their expected output.

Real wage growth has lagged significantly compared to the historical trend. If the labor market continues to take a beating, consumer spending will tank and bring equities down with it.

You can’t eat gdp.