• SerLava [he/him]
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    192 years ago

    Wait do bank accounts run out of money when you have to keep spending the money or???

  • D61 [any]
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    1052 years ago

    Last year the bread price went from 2.50 a loaf to 2.75. This year the price of bread ONLY rose from 2.75 to 2.90. See? Things are getting better! very-smart

  • plinky [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    Real average hourly earnings increased 0.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, from October 2022 to October 2023. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.9 percent in the average workweek resulted in no change in real average weekly earnings over this period.

    edgeworth-shrug

      • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
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        792 years ago

        They almost never include necessities in these calculations. To them the real measure of economic activity is the price of 65" TVs dropping 10%, not rent going up 100% or housing prices going up 200-300%, or food prices going up 60%.

        Hey, you can get a smart TV for 85% the adjusted price of one last year and wages have gone up .8% on average meaning you can open another tv! Why are you complaining?

    • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]
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      382 years ago

      This is what these policy wonk nerds do they mire you down in the little details, "um, SIR, ACTUALLY you got 0.8cents of a raise, adjusted for inflation in QE 3 of 2024, ipso facto things are better than 30 years go nerd "

    • D61 [any]
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      32 years ago

      The weasel wording of “rate of hourly earnings” and not “net income per paycheck”.

      If your hourly wages increase but the number of hours you work is less than it was before, then your income has effectively been cut.

      • plinky [he/him]
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        52 years ago

        I should have made clear this is bls data, i don’t know what ft is citing outside of vibes

    • plinky [he/him]
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      352 years ago

      That’s even without jumping into quintiles. If two quintiles got shit on, and two got the bombenomics bonus, you’ll have your half of population mad. Not that ft cares

  • CrimsonSage [she/her]
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    432 years ago

    If you are outside the top decile then things have objectively gotten worse over the past 30 years.

  • quarrk [he/him]
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    442 years ago

    Hilarious tbh. The audacity to publish a poll where you shit talk one segment of the population, not to mention 90%

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
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    862 years ago

    My mistake, I thought everything costs more and rent has fucking tripled since covid. I guess I’m actually not poor despite my lack of money

    • GinAndJuche [comrade/them]
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      752 years ago

      Did you read the basket of goods they use? It includes a tv ffs. Apparently tv prices matter to people who have to choose which meal they skip.

      The wall is too kind for these stains upon humanity

      • Adkml [he/him]
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        162 years ago

        Tv did take a huge dip in price (completely unrelated to the fact the majority of people were watching content on their phones or computer screens I’m sure) so literally every article uses them, the one thing that’s decreased in price, as a comparison point to show stuff isn’t getting more expensive.

        • Orcocracy [comrade/them]
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          152 years ago

          The main reason TVs have dropped in price is because under surveillance capitalism the TV watches you. On a lot of models more money is made from all of the spyware and adtech that comes with TV than from the sale of the TV itself.

          • Tunnelvision [they/them]
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            42 years ago

            🎶 You think you’ve private lives Think nothing of the kind

            There is no true escape I’m watching all the time 🎶

          • @tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            82 years ago

            Interactive TV sets will be watching us, just as we watch them. They will also report back to the beast at computer headquarters. Our telephone conversations will be automatically wire tapped and transcripted by the National Security Agency

            Killah Priest “information”, from Heavy Mental, 1998

      • I for one am purchasing a new TV each month. It’s a staple for our household. We go out and it’s like a nice little tradition we’ve established. Then we put it in the living room, hold hands, and skip around it chanting while we burn the old one at its feet so it knows to behave.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
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        32 years ago

        The fact that I have a very very rich great aunt who never spent a dime on herself (her husband who died before I was born, so must have been when she was in her 40s or so was like one of the earliest investors in AT&T and obviously that paid off big.) is pretty much what’s keeping me able to not be homeless. So…yeah, that is essentially the case.

    • WayeeCool [comrade/them]
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      2 years ago

      The funniest part is no one wants to talk about why roughly 10% to 15% say there is no inflation, they are wealthier than ever, and life is great but the other 90% of the US is screaming that they are living on the edge closer to homelessness and ruin than ever before. Sometimes these same articles will mention that luxury car sales are at an all time high as further evidence that the 90% are just being delusional.

      Which socioeconomic class do your think the authors of all these articles and posts fall into, the 90% or 10%? Same people always try to point out to fellow Americans that by being in the US a person is automatically in the global top 10%, which is an insidious lie. It’s eye opening for most Americans when they learn only the top 15% of US households fall into the global top 10%, that most Americans don’t take home the required $150,000 USD or greater but a few tens of thousand each year and are indebted with zero savings. The sheer number of US adults who only manage to earn roughly $20,000 USD per year is hard for these people to wrap their minds around.

      The US government only tracking “household income” rather than a break down of incomes for individual working aged US adults is also a slight of hand. An unspecified number of individual people living under one roof with multiple incomes being combined to get that household income number, further skewed by millions of functionally homeless (couch surfing, living in cars, living in motels a few days a week) working adults most of which are lower income being just ignored.

  • M68040 [they/them]
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    2 years ago

    Mandatory optimism in all situations at all times is one of my least favorite parts of American culture

    Also, I can say for sure that things were better in some ways 30 years ago because things like the patriot act and No Child Left Behind weren’t a thing yet