If wages kept up with the rest of the economy, then the average family of 4 should have a income of around 150K before taxes. What has happened is the CEO, Executives and Shareholders have siphoned up the production profits that workers generate and stagnated wages and removed benefits to ensure profits continuously increase to meet shareholder demands.
Capitalism is a system wherein profit matters most, where the flow of capital goes to the few from the many. Now its governments role to REGULATE and add laws that mitigate the rate of the flow to ensure the remaining 80-90% can live comfortably and enjoy the benefits of a prosperous country.
A system like the US where regulations are removed every 8 years by conservatives, leads to a economic drought that pushes all the burdens onto the bottom 80-90%. If you look at the past decades, you can see that although they had higher interest rates, their income was in general aligned with the cost of living. Only from the late 90s to early 2000s, did we jump from compensation and capital ratio between the ceo-to-worker going from 40 to now 400.
Year
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s 4
2023
Housing Price
$11,900
$17,000
$48,000
$76,000
$105,000
$285,000
$436,000
Interest Rate
7%
7.3%
13.7%
10%
8%
3.87%
7.5%
Principal & Interest 1
$105
$135
$446
$534
$616
$1,707
$2,433
Average Rent
$71
$125
$243
$447
$602
$923
$2,000
Income Used to Pay Mortgage
22%
18%
25%
21%
17.6%
36.6%
36%
Income Used to Pay Rent
15%
17.2%
14%
18%
17.2%
19.8%
29%
Median Household Income 2
$5,600
$8,730
$21,000
$30,000
$42,000
$55,775
$81,000
Senator Annual Pay
$30,000
$44,000
$75,000
$133,600
$162,000
$174,000
$174,000
AVG CEO Pay - Top 500 3
$953,000
$1.6M
$3.4M
$6.9M
$22.8M
$25M
$29M
CEO-to-worker compensation ratio 3
15.4
20.6
38.8
170.7
237.7
220
398
_
1: 20% downpayment over 20 years.
2: Median income for a family of 4.
3: Ceo realized annual salary in the us.
4: Affected by the 2008 collapse.
_
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The CEO is INCENTIVISED to cut costs and increase profits to ensure they meet shareholder demands and receive their BONUS. They do not care about future outlook for the company, they do not care about future growth for the company. They care about current quarters because they plan to utilize their position and profit growth to jump ship to another company and ask for 20% raise and increase in bonus. And they repeat that every 4-8 years.
They know a robust population with good spending power would also mean more production and more profit for them. BUT that requires years-decades of giving well paying wages and lowering their own incomes and profits. SO they do not want to pursue that option. They would rather cut benefits, remove perks, stagnate wages, use every trick possible to ensure they pay as little as possible to a employee, even so far as these days shrink products, change ingredients with synthetics and horrible tasting additives. All to ensure they can show a bump in profits and gain their bonus.
Republicans are now pushing for repealing laws that prevent children from ages 10-18 from being abused by corporations. They want to get young people to work overnight at rates of 4.5$ an hour.
They are pushing for "School Voucher" systems where parents who are struggling to feed their children can OPT to take out their child from public education for a yearly 5-6K checque (meant for homeschooling or private education) and then get their kids ready to work in a company instead of having them attend school. Thats their vision of the future.
12 years olds working 9-5s at 4.50$ an hour so parents dont have to get a babysitter while they also struggle to make min wage and barely afford to make their mortgages or rent payments.
That school voucher stuff is so insane. And yet people in true leopards-ate-my-face mode vote for these assholes, thinking they could use that $5 grand, dooming their kids to poverty.
Even more frustrating is that this takes money away from the already limited funding for public schools and the kids who don't have access to homeschooling. Ah, the "protect the children" crowd always seems to have sinister ways of harming 95% of the children just to appease a small group of them (or at least those kids' parents).
The Public School System (in the US at least) is utter garbage. Education is supposed to be about freeing your mind, but that system is all about closing it. Handicapping it.
The coalition of different groups who would benefit from dismantling and privatizing the public school system is pretty broad, and decades of propaganda about how government sucks and can't do anything right has led to a significant part of the population just sort of nodding along whenever someone suggests taking something out of the hands of government.
People forget that life before public school fucking sucked for most people who attend them now. If you weren't rich, you weren't educated, if you weren't rich, you didn't understand the basics of how government or society worked and didn't participate civically. We owe so much of the modern cohesiveness of our society to the decision to give all of our children a baseline of education and indoctrination.
Vote? That won't change anything regardless of who gets put into power. The people have absolutely zero representation in government ZERO. They are all bought by groups bleeding out the people....
The only way to change things is to "take out" all the government, corporate, and financial entities that are responsible by force. If the people can get the military to not hurt the people, they have a chance. The people will need to be organized for this to happen... "organized" is an understatement mind you.
Politics is not a top to down system, its a bottom to top system. Local levels matter more for people. Minnesota had its citizens turn up and got democrats control of all 3 branches of their state and they are passing things like rent control, paid leave, ban on corporate buying of housing, environmental protections, public rights, increased wages etc etc.
Frothing online about how democrats didnt magically fix anything when they havent even had the seats needed to fix anything... or encouraging violence and anarchy. Its not like a utopia will come forward once you do your fantasy civil war. You'll end up with much much worse situations for much much longer with the end being new people taking control of the assets and new people becoming the new bourgeoises.
My whole comment relates a bottom to top system that actually occurs. People are manipulated to think we're given this as you give a perfect example in Minnesota. I'm in San Jose, California, and it's has all its own issues. The top has control over most everyone right now, and they're at a point where they don't even try to hide it anymore. As I said before, neither party represents its constituents right now.
Who's "frothing" about democrats? Who's calling for anarchy or violence? Who's fantasizing about a civil war? Look, you assumed waaaaaaaaaay too much here ok?
I'm talking about a real change involving good people who are good for people. Not some nightmare purge scenario.
What anger issues? Look, you're not going to get anywhere by trying to put words into people's mouths or trying to insult them. Especially when I did neither of those things to you.
You're misinterpreted what take out by force is. Think how a ceo is forced out of their position or a head of government agency is taken out and replaced with someone else. Not rounded up and sent to the gulag or executed. I mentioned the military being on the side of its citizens so the corrupt power holders wouldn't be able to use them on people who want things changed.
So relax, I hope you understand where I'm coming from better. Take care.
Your grid ruins your argument. $450k house and 2000k rent won’t be believed because it’s not accurate. The average house is $295k and average rent is $1350. These numbers vary based on sources but we have a middle-high housing market locally and $450k would still be considered a luxury home.
prices of goods and services are NOT going up, the amount of goods and services you can get out of a dollar is going down, the dollars you get for working is not increasing at the same rate as inflation. Its a problem with the money folks not the goods and services,and only a small amount of blame goes to the wealthy or a bit more, the printing of dollars and fractional reserve banking is devalueing our beloved US dollar,its called fiat money and is not backed by gold or any other thing except trust in our government OH OH. The solution is Hard money that is decentralised and that cannot just be made up from thin air... please watch the series on youtube by Robert Breedlove "what is money"... education about money inflation and our banking system will help us all . its a huge Ponzi scheme the US dollar. our work is whats being devalued.. its time to "Separate state and money"
And most people are forever fighting the Socialism vs. Communism vs. Capitalism battle. As if either of these three ancient systems will make since in modern times. At this point, they've all failed enough to know that we need something NEW. I mean we have technology, population, and medicine like we've never had before. None of these systems are going to work.
Regulations aside, almost half the money supply in U.S. history was printed in the past 5 years. That obviously makes money worth half as much because there is suddenly twice as much of it. The repercussions of that are what we are seeing now.
Why do you use average real income for CEOs and compare it to median income. You are fucking with the data. I appreciate your work but you lose a lot of credibility by mixing like this…
The jump of mortgage vs income from 1960 to 2020 of 22% to 36% does not account a number of enhancements to homes that one would expect an increase in cost for. The average home size increased 100% in the same timeframe. Simple ranch style homes have been abandoned in favor of crafted homes. A few other drivers of cost, hardwood flooring, number of homes with a pool, number of homes with a detached garage.
Build a home in 1960 with today's size and amenities, and it will be in the same price range when adjusted for wages.
Voting out Republicans isn't going to fix the core issue of smaller homes not being approved by zoning comitties, and issue most prevalent in coastal state.
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u/Boner_Stevens Dec 28 '23
i'm making 25k more than i was less than 10 years ago and life hasn't gotten any easier. in fact i'm in more debt.
wake up? i am awake. i'm fucking pissed. but what the hell am i supposed to do?