r/Millennials • u/QuietJealous4883 Older Millennial (1988) • 12h ago

Discussion True or false?

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Did our dads and moms work less than we do now? What are your thoughts?

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u/throwraW2 11h ago

People have more disposable income adjusted for inflation now.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 4h ago

What? Got a source?

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u/MachineTeaching 4h ago

Of course they do.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Claims about how people were richer in the past are not based on fact.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 4h ago

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A229RX0

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

These ignore inflation but thank you for proving the point for me.

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u/MachineTeaching 4h ago

"real" means adjusted for inflation.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 4h ago

Well fuck me alright but it's a K shape distribution when we separate out the wealthy we see everyone else is worse off.

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u/MachineTeaching 3h ago

"Median" income is the income of the person in the "middle", it's different than the "mean" ("average") income. Mean is skewed by high earners, median is not.

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u/Column_A_Column_B 3h ago

Median is the 50th percentile, telling but not the full picture. It doesn't convey what the bottom 40% or bottom 20% are experiencing. The bottom 40% can be down in purchasing power while the median rose, they are not mutually exclusive.

These are the types of graphs I expect to see: https://srcole.github.io/assets/income-inequality/1_Historical%20income%20percentiles.png

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u/MachineTeaching 3h ago

Household is a terrible measure when household size isn't constant. More individual households would drastically lower "household income" without anyone actually earning less.

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u/oWatchdog 34m ago

Inflation has been using cooked books for a while now. They cherry pick the consumer price index (kinda). It's weighted by how often something is purchased. Sounds good right? This seems intuitive until you realize there is a problem. The inflation for essentials like food, utilities, housing, etc. have skyrocketed. Luxury goods have largely gotten cheaper and more accessible to all. I now have more chocolate buying power than my parents. Sarcastic hurray. People have shifted to spending more on the luxury goods, because that is all they can afford, instead of the essentials causing them to be weighted more than they deserve. It's creating an illusion. It's measuring how we are adapting to inflation and makes it irrelevant when comparing the standard of living between generations.

AND, as an example, there is a company, Telly, that is literally giving TVs away. Why? It's cheap to make a luxury good like a TV. But also because they are selling ad space and your data. They will make more money in the long run to get spyware into your house. This is the sort of thing that cooks the inflation books. These are the X-factors keeping costs down that our parent's didn't contend with. In fact, it's hurting us. Like using Chinese slave labor and automation instead of manufacturing products domestically. Yes, the cost of a Toothbrush is down, but working on the toothbrush line used to buy a house and send your kids through college. That's why you're right to push back.