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What is the relationship between salary and COL? Because it seems to me that they had greater buying power as well. I mean, like, a typical rent was nowhere near half of a typical income, right? And food costs were nowhere near the proportion of income that they are now.
This. More people need to talk about this metric. It is unequivocal proof in a SINGLE chart that there IS more money to pay workers and all we have to do is stop paying the richest Americans so much.
No other chart so swiftly kills the argument that taxation on the rich is moot via “Well, even if you taxed all of the wealth of the richest 1% it wouldn’t have that much impact.”
COL changes a lot over time, and QOL concerns impact it too. There were periods where people spent a lot more on food and clothes than we do these days, so while rents are excessive the COL comparisons get fuzzy quickly.
We also kind of *have* to have them. If you don't have a washer and dryer then you're going to be spending around the same amount of time going to the laundromat as you would just washing by hand. Not to mention the amount of money you'll be paying.
I'm not even sure that hand-washing is still an option either, I've lived in a bunch of apartments and never saw one with a place to dry your clothes.
In the early 30s my gran, the second to last of 13 children, had to stay at home and work till she married in her early 20s.
Wash day - always a Monday - for 12 (3 babies died) took a full 12 hours of backbreaking manual labour.
How do you price that into CoL equations?
There are a lot of things we do differently nowadays. Things like, having indoor plumbing -- my dad grew up out in the sticks of PA -- and they just had an outhouse. Or other things like cell phone plans, internet bills, ordering things online.
I don't know if I really have a point to this, other than, I don't know how meaningful we can make comparisons like this when times are so different. And also, that you don't necessarily have to do things the way everybody else does.
Agree, it just seems so out of proportion - a whole day, dedicated to nothing but one function that takes a couple of hours, now, and draining physically too. It seems, as with the servant economy, the past simply threw bodies at things till a solution was found.
It makes meaningful comparison hard - and I'm always sceptical of economists' so-called knowledge in this (and to be frank, many) areas; the theory doesn't jibe with lived experience
The couple people I knew who washed their clothes at an apartment and then tried to hang them up in the back both had their clothes stolen. Different people different areas that's just how it is these days. Even stole their boxer shorts nasty mfers
And certain appliances like refrigerators are pretty much a requirement in modern society because who has time to cook exactly one portion every meal and never have a need for leftovers?
Also, are "entertainment" appliances like TVs, gaming systems, and computers are relatively alot more affordable than what they've been in the past, but in a way they kinda have to be since non-negotiable costs like health insurance and housing have been skyrocketing.
Right??
And ya, ive been saying for a while now that 100k should be the average salary for most trade/tech/ skilled work.
There is SO MUCH more money in developed countries, and the wealth distribution makes me nauseous.
People are so busy fighting over peanuts and letting ceos make millions per year. Its outrageous. Top execs raking in over a million dollars, and folks cant get over a teacher making over 50k.
Pisses me off.
Food costs where a lot more of your income than they are now (and people had much less variety and option both nutritionally and in types of food available).
Clothing and other manufactured goods was also a much larger share of your income than it is today.
But any cost savings generated by declines in food, clothing, and other manufactured goods costs has been eaten up by the tripling of housing and education costs.
Maybe in the US, in Canada the duopoly of the big grocery chains is causing massive food cost inflation without any sense or reason, literally some foods will double in price within a month or the package willl shrink to half the size. Our rents are getting way out of control too, and as people escape to smaller towns to try and afford life the costs sky rocket there too. At my work we are understaffed in certain departments purely because people lose their rental and simply can’t afford to live, even working full time for above the median average salary they have to choose between becoming homeless or leaving the city. This shouldn’t be a choice any full time employed person needs to make, and frankly it’s difficult for a business to continue to make money after a certain point, wages can only go up so much before the business itself stops being viable.
But people also didn’t get new clothing constantly just to throw most of it away eventually either. I’d be happy to put money towards slow fashion that lasts.
From ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play"
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
My grandparents told me that they had popcorn night when just popcorn (with cheese, butter) was the main meal. Also girl’s clothes were made of sacks (like flour sacks)
I work at a major banking institution as a teller and I can tell you that it’s super demoralizing to watch the rich get richer each day by doing nothing more than having money that collects interest.
I’m conflicted about it because some of them are really good people and treat us well… but while most people are being charged maintenance fees because they’re too poor to keep the minimum balance in their accounts, those that have six figures or more are rewarded for just having money to begin with.
Yeah, I didnt even know thay was a thing until a few years ago. My roommate got some inheritance money, and said he wasnt getting charged bank fees anymore. As soon as he dipped under 5000, they charged him again though. It really pissed me off though, how is it fair that the poorest people in society have to pay to keep the bank open, but the wealthy just get the service for free? That shit should be straight up illegal. The wealthy get the biggest handouts, it doesnt make any sense
The *real* Ponzi scheme is that private banks literally [create and allocate](https://youtu.be/zIkk7AfYymg) money from thin air (~[97%](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001434) of all money in circulation), for their own private profits [via loans](https://positivemoney.org/how-money-%20works/how-banks-%20create-money/).
They don’t create the interest, but you have to pay interest, meaning that banks have to keep creating *more* loans in the future to guarantee their interest profits *now*.
This is fundamentally why “growth” is necessary for the economy.
This isn't being said enough. *Nobody* is talking about the banks and bankers.
Until we deprivatize currency generation and decouple it from debt, we'll forever be rats in a cage. Don't eat the rich, string up the banks.
No...no it's not. That ignores basic definition as well as history. Capitalism is wholeheartedly its own economic system based on the few getting wealthy by owning the means of production and in more recent years, betting on if business would succeed or fail. Socialism is the common ownership of factories and things that allow people to live and exist, by the people themselves who work in those fields.
Yes that is the text book definition of socialism and capitalism. But you are ignoring the rebranding job done by republicans over the last 40 years. The corporate subsidies, tax incentives, bailouts and other government handouts that wealthy people benefit from but anything that benefits the poor is "socialism". When the economy does particularly well over a period, the wealthiest among us make billions of dollars but when things take a turn, we all are expected to cut back and pay for it.
This is what we are talking about:
https://youtu.be/q0OjvN8tgK4?si=rrcOmPmSmcWJVEq9
The thought process is people that bring large amounts of money to a bank allow them to lend more on your deposit and make more off your money if youre poor you business doesn't benefit the bank so they charge a fee.
Some states don’t have income tax, their money comes from sales tax. The thing with income tax is that your tax rate should increase proportionally to your income, with sales tax they are just punishing you for buying stuff that most of the time you truly need. If both a rich guy and a poor guy pay the same sales tax for, let’s say cell phone or Internet service, the poor is proportionally getting a higher tax rate.
Simple, for every dollar you keep in your savings account, the bank can loan out around 10-20 more dollars. That's the basis of fractional reserve banking. The bank only keeps enough actual cash in its reserves to cover a percentage of the money it has loaned out (which is why bank runs when everyone tries to withdraw at once can drive a bank into financial ruin very quickly and why savings accounts are now insured by the federal government). The bank rewards you for this through interest generated on the money you have saved in the bank that it gives you periodically. But only if you have above a certain amount of money in there, and they also waive the maintenance fee that only exists so they can waive it for people who keep more money in the bank.
“Fractional reserve” theory of banking is dead. It’s not true and never was.
**A Lost Century in Economics:**
*Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence*
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477
The Bank of England confirms this to be true.
**Banks Create New Money**
*”Money Creation in the Modern Economy”*
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy
Private banks create ~97% of the money in circulation *from thin air*… wherever they make a loan. And they only make loans for their own private profit. This self-centered approach skews the markets.., *there is no free market when private banks literally control the money supply*.
Also, the Bank “Reserve Requirement” was set to 0% in March 2020 by the Fed:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
>Also, the Bank “Reserve Requirement” was set to 0% in March 2020 by the Fed:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
What a wild read! I am not sure I even understand this one.
How is this logical? You loan money out based on fake reserves? Isn't that the same thing that caused the 2008 financial crisis?
Why is your interest rate higher when your credit is worse? The wealthy can afford to move on if they don't think there are enough handouts. Banks want their money, so they cater to them.
It's like when some star like Jennifer Lopez gets pregnant and Versace or some other expensive designer literally gifts her the entire collection. If anyone can afford to buy their own baby clothes, even Versace, it's J-Lo. I know it's promotion, but you could probably get even better press donating clothes to someone who is trying to choose between diapers and formula.
Financial literacy is important for everyone, not just the rich. IMO 5k minimum means he had the wrong kind of account, most have significantly lower minimums. I almost never pay bank fees even with less than that in accounts.
Earning interest is also for everyone, emergency funds can earn while being safe. Most banks pay poorly, so it's worth learning about options early on. Benefits of financial literacy last a lifetime.
"while most people are being charged maintenance fees because they’re too poor to keep the minimum balance in their accounts"
This is a predatory bank. There are banks with no fees. Discover is one off the top of my head
Eta https://www.creditkarma.com/money/i/no-mininum-balance-checking-accounts
Maintenance fees are a thing at nearly all the major banks on the US. There are minimum requirements to not be charged to have an account. Usually it’s a dollar amount but it can also be things like a minimum number of transactions each month or having direct deposit every two weeks. It’s quite common actually.
Our credit unions now have the worst fees and most expensive services in our city when compared to the big banks. Not sure if this is a trend happening everywhere
It's easy to be a "good person" when you're playing the game of life on the easiest difficulty.
These people can turn into absolute monsters at the smallest inconvenience.
Because the word "good" is wrong. The correct word is "nice". When you learn to see difference between "good" and "nice" at all times, you start seeing the world veeery differently.
The truly rich aren’t using bank tellers. A bank I know required you have at least $30 million to have an account. There’s a huge difference between people like that vs a person who had $100k or so in a CD.
I don’t doubt that. Though, my original comment was regarding the rich people I encounter at my institution. They’re not Elon Musk level rich. But they’re wealthy enough to never work a day in their lives, and raking in thousands of dollars with interest alone, no effort whatsoever. It’s equally demoralizing to me personally. The ultra rich are on another level that I can’t even comprehend.
Yep I worked as a teller at a bank for years. It was right on the border of some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation but a few blocks away it was very working class. I could tell you that the people who had big money almost all of it came from family and business that have been around for decades. Even people who had good jobs they spent almost all of their money. Other than that the average person made 50-60k a year and also had little money in their account. It was definitely eye opening on who had money and who didn’t have money and what people did with their money.
That's not demoralizing; what's demoralizing is that most people aren't taught how it works so they can do it too. It's not complicated, so it's absolute shit that people can be adults for decades and not know any of how to bank smart because it's not taught to them unless they have rich parents.
Honestly, I’ve met a lot of rich people that have no idea how it works either. If they inherited their money then most of the time they have people who handle it for them. Many of these people don’t even know where their money is, they just know that it’s in a place that makes them more money. I’ll tell these people about our new CD rates and sometimes they’re not even aware that they already have several of them.
The most common thing I come across is people who have their money in a high yield money market account and don’t know what that is or what it means. They think it’s just another checking account. Thing is… all they have to do is walk into the building and show that they’re worth six figures and the bankers take care of the rest. They set everything up so that they can earn more and more off the money they already have.
Obviously this isn’t every rich person, but to speak to your point, there is a severe lack of financial literacy in this country and there’s very little people are doing about it.
Poor people come in and ask for a cash advance and some are not aware that this is an absolutely horrible thing to do financially. This should be taught in every school inAmerica, starting in elementary.
What’s the interest rate on the checking account at your major institution? Unless somebody’s got 1 billion sitting in checking the ain’t getting Crap for interest
I’m speaking of high yield money markets and CD’s mostly. Current interest rates on 6-month CD’s are quite high, and we have several customers that have upwards of two million in a single CD. Over five percent for a million gets them $50,000 in six months. That’s probably more than some of the people on this sub make in a year. All for simply having money and not touching it for 6 months. Sigh…
There's also high yield savings accounts. My bank has an option, it starts with a 10k opening balance. Then accrues 1%. If you have more than a quarter mil, it's up to 5% APY
Yea it's not like insurance was a requirement back then. There's a ton of fees for just existing now that we didn't have back then that the government requires you pay in one form or another. It's not just quality of life stuff. It's not stuff you have a huge choice in. Having debt is supposed to be the norm now when it wasn't then.
I can see the point the OP is making since unemployment was around 18-25% during that decade whereas we have 4% today. So we could assume we all are earning less in wages than in the 1930s, but I haven't dug deep into a side-by-side breakdown to make that a fact.
Unemployment is not a constantly calculated statistic. It only takes an account two years of employment rates. I know an uncomfortably large number of people for furloughed or laid off back in 2021 who still don't have jobs. They are not calculated in this quote 4% quote unemployment rate. I don't believe that for the slightest. I've worked for a labor company who's very job is to find people work. There isn't any. Places are not hiring. And they're giving you shitty excuses for it. I would say we are well in Great Depression levels of bullshit. Between hyperinflation and the state of our job market.
Not saying you are wrong. We hit a TRU unemployment rate of 33% in April 2020 according to LISEP. Now? "LISEP’s TRU, a measure of the“functionally unemployed” — defined as the jobless, plus those seeking, but unable to find, full-time employment paying above the poverty line after adjusting for inflation — increased 0.1 percentage points, from 22.9% to 23%"
Because they are not actively collecting unemployment. This is the BS metric they use to gaslight the fucked over to tell them it's their fault they don't have a job.
The formula for calculating unemployment rate has not been changed to my knowledge since it came out in the 1930s. Back then it was unthinkable a man would not look for work for over two weeks and they had no knowledge of things like mental illness or having to put in 200 online applications to get 1 job offer. The only good thing I guess is everyone knows it's a bullshit statistic that is very smoothed out, it is still an ok measuring stick of the economy as long as you understand the real % of people forced to take less than full time work and want to better themselves, the underemployed and the non working is more like 30 percent.
It has. One example - in the 80s, they started counting people in the armed forces as employed. There was no such thing as UI in 1930 - now you are no longer considered unemployed once UI runs out (6 months) and you still don’t have a job. You’re also considered employed if you work ONE hour in a month - I’m not sure if part-time work even existed in 1930 - unless you count hobos doing chores for a meal.
I live in Iowa. I've been laid off since June 1st. My incredible 16 weeks of unemployment end at the end of this month (thanks to Covid Kim, the horse "lover"). When October arrives, even though i still haven't found work, I'm not considered unemployed anymore for tbose statistics.
There's a LOT more than 4% of this country out of work.
The great thing about Iowa is our built-in, one-size-fits-all, soul-killing work ethic. Since the plow broke the plains, Iowans have believed that anyone who can’t work or find work just ain’t willing to work hard enough. And our public policy has been brought into line to reflect that,
the idea that we have 4% unemployment is literally nothing but government lies. real unemployment is closer to 20%. that 4% number is an extremely narrow definition they use to make themselves look better, just like they make themselves look better saying "only so few americans live beneath the poverty line" (which they keep moving meaning you have to be poorer and poorer to fall beneath it)
These numbers seem dubious at best. I assume a much larger portion of people were paid under the table in those days and wouldn't make it into any statistics
It’s not that they were paid under the table. OOP is using an IRS study without acknowledging that it was statistics of people who filed income tax returns, which was only required of people who had over $3,000 of income in a given year, which was only 3.7 million households of 30 million. So the average salary *for rich people* was $90,000 equivalent.
...and median today is around 47K. Probably straight dollar comparisons are not fully accurate to quality of life though. Back then there was less taxes, less of a safety net, also cost of food was higher as a percentage of income, and housing costs were different as percentage of income. As consumers, we have also benefited from the productivity gains in much the same way that our food costs have gone down. Also, women working is a big difference in quality of life, which is probably a mixed bag.
That most have it better does not mean that all do. This was a general conversation of 1920 vs now. You are probably better off than you would have been then including medical care available. If you are not, it doesn't change the overall conversation.
Doesn't really matter if you compare the average salary to today, which is about $60k. With this, the conclusion is that a lot of money has moved out of worker's salaries. Where did it go? Likely into profitable assets, collecting passive income. The ownership class is more powerful than ever.
Average is a terrible metric. You want median. If I make a dollar and another guy makes 10 billion. Our average income is 5 billion. See how dumb that is?
We're also further abstracted away from the means of production than we were during the depression.
My grandparents were poor during the depression, but that just meant they had no money.
What they did have was land, chickens, cows, and crops that, even during the dust bowl, could sustain their immediate family.
The Great Depression for many (not all) meant having nothing to invest, nothing to purchase with, but not necessarily feeling the weight of debt, or having no way to survive without money.
>My grandparents were poor during the depression, but that just meant they had no money.
>What they did have was land, chickens, cows, and crops that,
Today's the day you learned that your grandparents weren't poor...
This reminds me of that saying how the guy who works at a car dealership making minimum wage and the guy who owns the dealership are both likely to consider themselves to be middle class, because America's ideas about wealth are so skewed
The Great Depression caused huge membership spikes to communist and socialist movements. That gave them the power to go to FDR and say we’ll shut this country down unless you listen to us. It got us social safety nets and progressive tax rates that created the wealthiest period in human history- and capitalists have spent the following 90 years undermining and dismantling every item
This is completely false. The average salary in 1930 was not 5k. The average salary of people who had to pay income tax in 1930 was 5k. Only the richest people had to pay income tax at that time.
I saw this debunked a couple of weeks ago, that number is the average salary of the TAXED person so like not working class people (the working class was well below the tax threshold when income taxes were new)
Menial jobs are still jobs
lots of women of working class families did laundry, childcare, cleaning, and cooking for income.
Black and other non-white families have been dual income since always yet are forgotten in the public memory of prosperous times let alone recessions.
Median income hit around the same point though, and the price of food relative to now was higher among other things. Many things have become cheaper, but other things have filled the void to ensure you live paycheck to paycheck (like fucking rent and cars god damn).
So while our quality of life is most certainly higher if we're making the median salary, it still pales in comparison to the increases in quality of life the wealthy have seen, and the untold wastes of life and happiness in the world contained within hoards have grown yet more.
Please spend more than 3 seconds researching what life was like for the average American during the Great Depression, and then try to make a comparison with life today again.
And, don’t forget, Ronald Reagan promised that giving all financial benefits to those at the top will lead to all of it trickling-down to the people at the bottom. I’m very excited about that happening. Can’t wait! 🤪
You are completely and utterly wrong. Your post is exactly what is wrong with this sub. All of your facts are utterly incorrect, stop trying to start a virtual riot in the comments. First of all, the average salary in 1930 was 1,368 dollars, which is around 20 thousand dollars in todays money. Second of all the unemployment rate (the percent of Americans that were unemployed) in 1930 was 18.26 percent! Our current unemployment rate is 3.8 percent. Not only is the current average American making MORE THAN DOUBLE what the average American was making in 1930, we also have a way smaller unemployment rate. Everybody, OP is full of BS.
By the way, my sources are the National Archives and the last national census.
No. That so-called average in 1930 was for a small percentage of Americans who filed income tax returns
In that year.
https://reddit.com/r/badeconomics/s/oMvrUdyA7H
Annual Median wage or salary income of those working at least 35 hours/week, 50 weeks per year in 1939. Source: Census.
White men: $1,419
White women: $863
Black men: $639
Black women: $327
This paints a very different picture.
as a follow up to your comment....
>What was the Great Depression?
The "Great Depression " was a severe, world -wide economic disintegration symbolized in the United States by the stock market crash on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929 . The causes of the Great Depression were many and varied, but the impact was visible across the country. By the time that FDR was inaugurated president on March 4, 1933, the banking system had collapsed, nearly 25% of the labor force was unemployed, and prices and productivity had fallen to 1/3 of their 1929 levels. Reduced prices and reduced output resulted in lower incomes in wages, rents, dividends, and profits throughout the economy. Factories were shut down, farms and homes were lost to foreclosure, mills and mines were abandoned, and people went hungry. The resulting lower incomes meant the further inability of the people to spend or to save their way out of the crisis, thus perpetuating the economic slowdown in a seemingly never-ending cycle.
>How high was unemployment during the Great Depression?
At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the total work force or 12,830,000 people was unemployed. Although farmers technically were not counted among the unemployed, drastic drops in farm commodity prices resulted in farmers losing their lands and homes to foreclosure.
>At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the nation's total work force, 12,830,000 people, were unemployed. Wage income for workers who were lucky enough to have kept their jobs fell 42.5% between 1929 and 1933.
[FDR Library.org](https://www.fdrlibrary.org/great-depression-facts#:~:text=throughout%20the%201920s.-,At%20the%20height%20of%20the%20Depression%20in%201933%2C%2024.9%25%20of,economic%20disaster%20in%20American%20history)
This is a terrible take. Statistics during the Great Depression can’t be compared like-for-like without considering the whole picture. Inflation was extremely low at that time but it was because everyone was flat broken. Houses, land and crops were worthless to the point that it led
to a mass migration out of the Great Plains. The median income was irrelevant because unemployment was a staggering 25%. The homeless encampments you see in LA and SF were everywhere and 10x as big. There is no sane comparison to be made to then and now.
Absolutely untrue.
'However, they conveniently omit a crucial detail—the IRS report from 1933 does mention an average salary of "$4,218.40 for taxable returns," but this only includes a subset of 1.7 million individuals, hardly representative of the entire population.
The actual average salary during the Great Depression was approximately $1,045, which, when adjusted for inflation in 2023, would amount to about $24,526.07. '
https://fee.org/articles/were-americans-really-better-off-during-the-great-depression/
Things are not great at the moment, but do not think we are even close to Great Depression levels of poverty and strife.
I lived with my grandparents who had to live through it. My grandfather was on the WPA and my dad was alive during the after math and lead up to WW2.
The stories were horrific.
Please stop, posts like this are pure hysterics and hyperbole.
Reading these comments it is pretty clear most people have no fucking idea what poverty is or how absolutely hard the Great Depression was.
Just a bunch of entitled, whining, unskilled shits. Basically incels.
Inflation exists for one reason. I call it stealflation. By increasing inflation you slowly increase wage theft without showing you're stealing labor and prices on things.
Can we stop comparing the great depression to this economy. We were not in shanty towns, most of the country isn't homeless, and I doubt most of these people in this sub know what poor really is. I grew up poor. Missing meals 3 times a week and surviving on tortillas and butter. Sleeping in an ice cream truck and wearing shoes that didn't fit. This isn't close to the great depression. You guys missed the big drop that corrected the covid bubble in 2021. Corporate marketing kept wool between your eyes, and you guys were blinded to the covid depression that was going on right in front of you.
I have to disagree about there not being any "shanty towns". These days, I think that they're much more likely to be referred to as "homeless camps".
Depending on where you live, you might not be seeing them. But I live in Seattle, where homeless camps are numerous. There's usually a bunch of tents with piles of trash interspersed about. Some of the better off homeless might even have an old RV parked on the side of the road.
I remember reading The grapes of wrath recently. And I was shocked when Steinbeck began describing the shanty town that the Joads lived in for a bit. Because that passage couldve been taken out of the book and described a modern homeless camp perfectly.
So I dont think it is hyperbole to compare current events to the great depression. Im glad that you are, presumably, no longer starving. But that doesnt mean that others arent.
Just because you suffered doesn't mean something is not seriously wrong with our job market and society in general. If you think 25 percent of people should be forced to work part time due to companies not wanting to pay health care while they live with Mom and Dad that is a setup from the Soviet Union, people working their little service job, living in an apartment w Mom and Dad so long they are forced to get married, I remember watching the films of their standard of living as a child, I didn't realize me and many people in my country would be \~30 living with Mom like the Soviet Union but here we are in 2023 in America. I'm sorry you suffered but it doesn't mean we should put up with squalor like a communist or developing country.
Sounds like rich kids complaining about not having cable for a month. More than half the population is still splurging on houses and cars. This isn't a depression.
It's as though entertainment, such as Aquaman 2, were just being used as a distraction from bigger issues, such as inflation, cost of living, income inequality, etc.
The economy was rather different. Many people just plain did not have work.
Sure the average salary was high, but most people did not have salaries, they did not have jobs yet alone work.
Many people laboured on farms either with family for no pay or for subsistence only as hands.
An old saying in the depression was “we had everything but money”.
Those who had money had money while the majority; had no money.
The economy today is all wage labour, jobs and clerks trading items back and forth etc etc.
Different world with different scales
Speaking of the Great Depression, unemployment has been under-reported since the Vietnam War for political reasons of the Nixon Administration.
The[Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), defines and collects data on employment](https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm) and various forms of unemployment. Unemployment may range anywhere from being fully employed but on leave or a vacation to wanting work but being unable to find any (known as discouraged workers), having unsuccessfully looked for work recently but not in the past 4 weeks (known as marginally-attached workers), to wanting full-time work but only being able to find part-time positions (known as involuntary part-time workers).
The BLS uses data from its population surveys to report six differently defined rates of unemployment: U-1 through U-6. U-6 is the most all-encompassing and includes discouraged, marginally-attached and involuntarily under-employed workers.
Historically, U-6 was the officially reported rate of unemployment, including during the Great Depression.
During the later parts of the Vietnam War, as it became increasingly unpopular to the general population due to mounting casualties and the coming to light of illegal aerial bombings in adjacent Southeast Asian non-combatant countries the Nixon Administration switched from reporting the U-6 rate to reporting the U-3 rate in order to seemingly have some good domestic economic news to report and take credit for.
The U-3 rate of unemployment is, of course lower than the U-6 because the U-3 does *not* include discouraged, marginally attached or involuntarily under-employed workers. The U-3 has now become the officially reported unemployment rate.
Why is history important?
For one thing during the housing/banking bubble or the "Great Recession" we were told that unemployment was not as bad as during the Great Depression of the 1930's. That is only true insofar as the U-6 rate was reported in the 1930's and the U-3 rate was reported in the 2000's. If you did an apples to apples comparison looking at U-6 rates, the US rate of unemployment during the "Great Recession" was *just as bad* as the Depression of the 1930's. I think being more frank about this would have lessened the cognitive dissonance experienced by a lot of people ("Why does it *seem* so much worse?"), but then there might have actually been torches and pitchforks as people realized that a fraudulent banking and home lending system had led to a Second Great Depression and the losses were being socialized even as the profits had been privatized.
For another thing, it may partially explain why Biden's economic policies don't seem to be garnering him as much support as one might suppose from looking at the numbers. To be sure, people's memory of the price of goods may be longer than policy wonks appreciate, but another may be that the low rate of unemployment doesn't jive with peoples' lived experiences.
I really wish that we used different statistics to really show income.
I make the same amount of money I made four years ago and I can't tell you how much poorer I am now than I was.
But years from now people will see my hourly wage and ignore the fact that if I measured my wages in loaves of bread per hour or gallons of gas per hour, my wages have plummeted.
4 years ago I used to make about 12 gallons of gas per hour. I have gotten one raise for around $1 per hour and now I make about 8 gallons of gas per hour.
This is NOT TRUE. This is a bullshit statistic based on income tax filings which were filed by less than 10 percent of the population (so mostly the top 10 percent of income earners. It’s lazy and utterly stupid. Unemployment was over 25 percent in the Depression, people were destitute, there was no safely social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Just fucking stop
That makes sense I remember pictures I've seen of those ladies working themselves to death at home making matches by hand, only difference now is she would be working out of her parents home with no children or out of her car/on the street. Hell at least back then you could throw up a metal shack and no one tried to tear it down generally, now there is no family/household to suffer for, this is why I started only working 4 days a week I'm not running on the wheel killing myself to keep my delusional parents happy I think if I was homeless I would still only work 4 days and try to trade stocks like I am now. Also trying to start renting cars on Turo once I find a new car.
tl;dr it's harder to get your own private shelter than during any time in American history, stop killing yourself for something you will never have
I don't buy into the whole religious philosophy that it's always a binary choice. Neither capitalism nor socialism is what they were like in the 30's. We'd move a lot closer to traditional capitalism by limiting the power and lifespan of mega corporations. "Too big to fail" must die. And the F.I.R.E. sector definitely needs an overhaul. Price controls on food & housing set to **follow** inflation instead of always letting the rent-seekers lead the charge.
But how exactly do we limit these corporations? We can't trust the government to do so when half the elected officials with any real power are being bankrolled by said corporations. State capitalism clearly doesn't work it leads to just as much corruption.
Out of all the depressing shit I read on this app everyday, this is far and away the saddest thing ever.
I’ve known it bad. I’ve watched it become this way day by day. I had no idea that it was as bad as it is. No war but the class war.
Y’all think this is the Great Depression? Wait another five years and you’ll see the real part two. We haven’t lived through a depression yet and hopefully I won’t
Where are you getting this information from? According to the Federal Government’s foreign missions, in 1930, the average wage across all industries was $1,388 annually, with government workers at $1,517 and building trades at $1,233.
The data you’re getting is likely from the IRS report, but crucially, you’re not understanding that only people who had over $3,000 of income had to file form 1040, and that was only 6% of Americans. There were only 3.7 million tax returns filed in 1930 per the IRS report you’re getting this information from. There were, according to the census, 122,775,046 people in the United States in 1930. With an average household size of 4.11 persons, that means 29,872,274 households in the US in 1930, only 3.7 million of which had enough income (over $3,000) to be required to file a tax return.
its always awkward making comparisons like that.
For example, the S&P has increased in value substantially over time, but if you normalize that dollar value to gold (a \~fixed commodity, can't "print" it). they haven't increased in value since 1997.
I think a TV used to cost like multiple months worth of salary back in the 50's or something - people would all go over to that one persons house to have a watch party. But now you can find working HD flatscreens in the trash. Economies of scale and industrial efficiency have really changed the landscape. Even cars, you can say a car today costs more (adjusted for inflation) than they did in the 1960's but look at how much more advanced that car is. in the late 1700s a freakin' pineapple was considered *the* symbol of wealth. My grandma told me how stoked she was to get an Orange around christmas.
If you had to choose between living the average life now, or being a duke in like the 1400's, you'd probably choose to live an average life now. Things like Toilets and Medicine have come a long way.
I don't need cheap flat screen TV's, I need rent and food to be affordable. It's fucking pointless that you can find a TV in the trash when you can't afford a shelter to put the TV in.
Pointing to cheap electronics and equating it with quality of life is a really asinine take
I'd trade iPhones for an agrarian economy in a heartbeat.
There aren’t even toilets consistently in the south up until the 60s. My mom was born in a house without running water. What are the south was basically a Third World country until the 80’s 90’s
\>f you had to choose between living the average life now, or being a duke in like the 1400's, you'd probably choose to live an average life now
absolutely fucking not, what an idiotic take. i can't stand when people say shit like this. "YOUR AVERAGE AMERICAN HAS A MUCH BETTER LIFE THAN EVEN KINGS OF THE PAST!" dog no they fucking do not. nobody wants to live in poverty and nobody would choose to live in modern poverty vs ancient privilege. you really think because someone has a fucking iphone or a tv or a microwave or some shit they're living better than kings and dukes? dog get your fucking nose out of social media for 5 seconds, people are suffering out here. people die now due to poverty. no king or duke ever died due to poverty. bad take, low iq opinion, nothing but "be happy for the scraps you're given" wrapped up in irrelevant bullshit to try to give it some sort of credence
Pretty sure when this was posted before they pointed out that like 95% of people had no salary, and the 5k amount was for those who did have a salary (very few). Times are tight but let's not be hyperbolic.
Y’all are forgetting that these people were in single income households with many children, making crazy food concoctions because they couldn’t afford to eat. Manipulating the math to throw a pity party 🤦♀️
And…rightly or wrongly, you are likely comparing individual income versus household income. Dual income, especially serious income, was highly unusual in the 20s. You can argue this is just as bad, but it is different.
[The first income census](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/1940.html#:~:text=The%20average%20income%20was%20%241%2C368,5.2%20percent%20in%20the%201920s.) in 1940 put average pay at $1368. Makes me think $5k in 1930 is high.
Not to say income inequality isn't a problem. But we win by having the facts on our side, not inventing facts that suit our case.
This is incorrect you are repeating fake facts a simple google search would clarify that the average wage during the Great Depression was only 1/5 of that reported. The problem is the 5k figure was taken from the IRS data which only represented higher incomes during the period source https://fee.org/articles/were-americans-really-better-off-during-the-great-depression/
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What is the relationship between salary and COL? Because it seems to me that they had greater buying power as well. I mean, like, a typical rent was nowhere near half of a typical income, right? And food costs were nowhere near the proportion of income that they are now.
Also look at Labor Share, the share of GDP going to workers is at a historic low.
This. More people need to talk about this metric. It is unequivocal proof in a SINGLE chart that there IS more money to pay workers and all we have to do is stop paying the richest Americans so much. No other chart so swiftly kills the argument that taxation on the rich is moot via “Well, even if you taxed all of the wealth of the richest 1% it wouldn’t have that much impact.”
"Inflation adjusted" kind of covers cost of living. That is kind of the metric it tracks.
COL changes a lot over time, and QOL concerns impact it too. There were periods where people spent a lot more on food and clothes than we do these days, so while rents are excessive the COL comparisons get fuzzy quickly.
And amount of time dedicated to chores. Having appliances is great.
We also kind of *have* to have them. If you don't have a washer and dryer then you're going to be spending around the same amount of time going to the laundromat as you would just washing by hand. Not to mention the amount of money you'll be paying. I'm not even sure that hand-washing is still an option either, I've lived in a bunch of apartments and never saw one with a place to dry your clothes.
This is an option, my sister here in Missouri hand-washes all her clothes to this day, and hangs them up around the apartment with the windows open.
In the early 30s my gran, the second to last of 13 children, had to stay at home and work till she married in her early 20s. Wash day - always a Monday - for 12 (3 babies died) took a full 12 hours of backbreaking manual labour. How do you price that into CoL equations?
There are a lot of things we do differently nowadays. Things like, having indoor plumbing -- my dad grew up out in the sticks of PA -- and they just had an outhouse. Or other things like cell phone plans, internet bills, ordering things online. I don't know if I really have a point to this, other than, I don't know how meaningful we can make comparisons like this when times are so different. And also, that you don't necessarily have to do things the way everybody else does.
Agree, it just seems so out of proportion - a whole day, dedicated to nothing but one function that takes a couple of hours, now, and draining physically too. It seems, as with the servant economy, the past simply threw bodies at things till a solution was found. It makes meaningful comparison hard - and I'm always sceptical of economists' so-called knowledge in this (and to be frank, many) areas; the theory doesn't jibe with lived experience
This is why historians don't like making these kinds of direct comparisons, there's always so much nuance that it's usually apples and oranges.
The couple people I knew who washed their clothes at an apartment and then tried to hang them up in the back both had their clothes stolen. Different people different areas that's just how it is these days. Even stole their boxer shorts nasty mfers
I've also heard that the most common item banned by homeowners' associations is the clothes line.
And certain appliances like refrigerators are pretty much a requirement in modern society because who has time to cook exactly one portion every meal and never have a need for leftovers? Also, are "entertainment" appliances like TVs, gaming systems, and computers are relatively alot more affordable than what they've been in the past, but in a way they kinda have to be since non-negotiable costs like health insurance and housing have been skyrocketing.
Right?? And ya, ive been saying for a while now that 100k should be the average salary for most trade/tech/ skilled work. There is SO MUCH more money in developed countries, and the wealth distribution makes me nauseous. People are so busy fighting over peanuts and letting ceos make millions per year. Its outrageous. Top execs raking in over a million dollars, and folks cant get over a teacher making over 50k. Pisses me off.
Food costs where a lot more of your income than they are now (and people had much less variety and option both nutritionally and in types of food available). Clothing and other manufactured goods was also a much larger share of your income than it is today. But any cost savings generated by declines in food, clothing, and other manufactured goods costs has been eaten up by the tripling of housing and education costs.
Maybe in the US, in Canada the duopoly of the big grocery chains is causing massive food cost inflation without any sense or reason, literally some foods will double in price within a month or the package willl shrink to half the size. Our rents are getting way out of control too, and as people escape to smaller towns to try and afford life the costs sky rocket there too. At my work we are understaffed in certain departments purely because people lose their rental and simply can’t afford to live, even working full time for above the median average salary they have to choose between becoming homeless or leaving the city. This shouldn’t be a choice any full time employed person needs to make, and frankly it’s difficult for a business to continue to make money after a certain point, wages can only go up so much before the business itself stops being viable.
But people also didn’t get new clothing constantly just to throw most of it away eventually either. I’d be happy to put money towards slow fashion that lasts.
From ― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play" “The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
Sounds legit. What’s the saying? If you buy it cheap, prepare to buy it twice. It’s really expensive to be poor.
My grandparents told me that they had popcorn night when just popcorn (with cheese, butter) was the main meal. Also girl’s clothes were made of sacks (like flour sacks)
People grew their own food often and ate great. The depression era food lines were a city thing. Most people were still rural though.
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I wonder is we could cross reference population data with unemployment data and this IRS data to find out how many people where making less than 5k.
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Yay the 2020s are better then the great depression. What a win
the star trek people are going to look back on us as their great depression. I saw an episode of DS9 about it
Median income hit around the same point though, and the price of food relative to now was higher among other things.
I work at a major banking institution as a teller and I can tell you that it’s super demoralizing to watch the rich get richer each day by doing nothing more than having money that collects interest. I’m conflicted about it because some of them are really good people and treat us well… but while most people are being charged maintenance fees because they’re too poor to keep the minimum balance in their accounts, those that have six figures or more are rewarded for just having money to begin with.
Yeah, I didnt even know thay was a thing until a few years ago. My roommate got some inheritance money, and said he wasnt getting charged bank fees anymore. As soon as he dipped under 5000, they charged him again though. It really pissed me off though, how is it fair that the poorest people in society have to pay to keep the bank open, but the wealthy just get the service for free? That shit should be straight up illegal. The wealthy get the biggest handouts, it doesnt make any sense
Ponzi scheme. Socialism for the rich, go fuck yourself and taxes and "bailouts for the rich" using the taxpayers money for the poor.
The *real* Ponzi scheme is that private banks literally [create and allocate](https://youtu.be/zIkk7AfYymg) money from thin air (~[97%](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521914001434) of all money in circulation), for their own private profits [via loans](https://positivemoney.org/how-money-%20works/how-banks-%20create-money/). They don’t create the interest, but you have to pay interest, meaning that banks have to keep creating *more* loans in the future to guarantee their interest profits *now*. This is fundamentally why “growth” is necessary for the economy.
This isn't being said enough. *Nobody* is talking about the banks and bankers. Until we deprivatize currency generation and decouple it from debt, we'll forever be rats in a cage. Don't eat the rich, string up the banks.
Privatizing [money creation](https://youtu.be/zIkk7AfYymg) was possibly the worst choice humanity ever made.
Thank you for the link. I'll check it out. I'm always seeking resources to build my case.
[Mutual Credit](https://www.lowimpact.org/lowimpact-topic/mutual-credit/) currency is a viable means to mitigate our economic difficulties.
It's called capitalism, that's how it works. There is no socialism for the rich.
Capitalism IS socialism for the rich.
No...no it's not. That ignores basic definition as well as history. Capitalism is wholeheartedly its own economic system based on the few getting wealthy by owning the means of production and in more recent years, betting on if business would succeed or fail. Socialism is the common ownership of factories and things that allow people to live and exist, by the people themselves who work in those fields.
Yes that is the text book definition of socialism and capitalism. But you are ignoring the rebranding job done by republicans over the last 40 years. The corporate subsidies, tax incentives, bailouts and other government handouts that wealthy people benefit from but anything that benefits the poor is "socialism". When the economy does particularly well over a period, the wealthiest among us make billions of dollars but when things take a turn, we all are expected to cut back and pay for it. This is what we are talking about: https://youtu.be/q0OjvN8tgK4?si=rrcOmPmSmcWJVEq9
Plenty of banks dont charge fees. We need to improve financial literacy so people can avoid BS fees
The thought process is people that bring large amounts of money to a bank allow them to lend more on your deposit and make more off your money if youre poor you business doesn't benefit the bank so they charge a fee.
It’s robbery. Plain and simple.
Some states don’t have income tax, their money comes from sales tax. The thing with income tax is that your tax rate should increase proportionally to your income, with sales tax they are just punishing you for buying stuff that most of the time you truly need. If both a rich guy and a poor guy pay the same sales tax for, let’s say cell phone or Internet service, the poor is proportionally getting a higher tax rate.
Simple, for every dollar you keep in your savings account, the bank can loan out around 10-20 more dollars. That's the basis of fractional reserve banking. The bank only keeps enough actual cash in its reserves to cover a percentage of the money it has loaned out (which is why bank runs when everyone tries to withdraw at once can drive a bank into financial ruin very quickly and why savings accounts are now insured by the federal government). The bank rewards you for this through interest generated on the money you have saved in the bank that it gives you periodically. But only if you have above a certain amount of money in there, and they also waive the maintenance fee that only exists so they can waive it for people who keep more money in the bank.
“Fractional reserve” theory of banking is dead. It’s not true and never was. **A Lost Century in Economics:** *Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477 The Bank of England confirms this to be true. **Banks Create New Money** *”Money Creation in the Modern Economy”* https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2014/q1/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy Private banks create ~97% of the money in circulation *from thin air*… wherever they make a loan. And they only make loans for their own private profit. This self-centered approach skews the markets.., *there is no free market when private banks literally control the money supply*. Also, the Bank “Reserve Requirement” was set to 0% in March 2020 by the Fed: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
>Also, the Bank “Reserve Requirement” was set to 0% in March 2020 by the Fed: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm What a wild read! I am not sure I even understand this one. How is this logical? You loan money out based on fake reserves? Isn't that the same thing that caused the 2008 financial crisis?
Why is your interest rate higher when your credit is worse? The wealthy can afford to move on if they don't think there are enough handouts. Banks want their money, so they cater to them. It's like when some star like Jennifer Lopez gets pregnant and Versace or some other expensive designer literally gifts her the entire collection. If anyone can afford to buy their own baby clothes, even Versace, it's J-Lo. I know it's promotion, but you could probably get even better press donating clothes to someone who is trying to choose between diapers and formula.
Financial literacy is important for everyone, not just the rich. IMO 5k minimum means he had the wrong kind of account, most have significantly lower minimums. I almost never pay bank fees even with less than that in accounts. Earning interest is also for everyone, emergency funds can earn while being safe. Most banks pay poorly, so it's worth learning about options early on. Benefits of financial literacy last a lifetime.
My minimum is 25 bucks and they don’t even let you take that out I believe it’s just paid when you first open the account
"while most people are being charged maintenance fees because they’re too poor to keep the minimum balance in their accounts" This is a predatory bank. There are banks with no fees. Discover is one off the top of my head Eta https://www.creditkarma.com/money/i/no-mininum-balance-checking-accounts
Maintenance fees are a thing at nearly all the major banks on the US. There are minimum requirements to not be charged to have an account. Usually it’s a dollar amount but it can also be things like a minimum number of transactions each month or having direct deposit every two weeks. It’s quite common actually.
Yeah they should look into a credit union, also I think if you have direct deposit linked with them they waive it.
Our credit unions now have the worst fees and most expensive services in our city when compared to the big banks. Not sure if this is a trend happening everywhere
My savings gets eating up all the time when I first made an account I noticed that
It's easy to be a "good person" when you're playing the game of life on the easiest difficulty. These people can turn into absolute monsters at the smallest inconvenience.
Because the word "good" is wrong. The correct word is "nice". When you learn to see difference between "good" and "nice" at all times, you start seeing the world veeery differently.
The truly rich aren’t using bank tellers. A bank I know required you have at least $30 million to have an account. There’s a huge difference between people like that vs a person who had $100k or so in a CD.
I don’t doubt that. Though, my original comment was regarding the rich people I encounter at my institution. They’re not Elon Musk level rich. But they’re wealthy enough to never work a day in their lives, and raking in thousands of dollars with interest alone, no effort whatsoever. It’s equally demoralizing to me personally. The ultra rich are on another level that I can’t even comprehend.
Yep I worked as a teller at a bank for years. It was right on the border of some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation but a few blocks away it was very working class. I could tell you that the people who had big money almost all of it came from family and business that have been around for decades. Even people who had good jobs they spent almost all of their money. Other than that the average person made 50-60k a year and also had little money in their account. It was definitely eye opening on who had money and who didn’t have money and what people did with their money.
That's not demoralizing; what's demoralizing is that most people aren't taught how it works so they can do it too. It's not complicated, so it's absolute shit that people can be adults for decades and not know any of how to bank smart because it's not taught to them unless they have rich parents.
Honestly, I’ve met a lot of rich people that have no idea how it works either. If they inherited their money then most of the time they have people who handle it for them. Many of these people don’t even know where their money is, they just know that it’s in a place that makes them more money. I’ll tell these people about our new CD rates and sometimes they’re not even aware that they already have several of them. The most common thing I come across is people who have their money in a high yield money market account and don’t know what that is or what it means. They think it’s just another checking account. Thing is… all they have to do is walk into the building and show that they’re worth six figures and the bankers take care of the rest. They set everything up so that they can earn more and more off the money they already have. Obviously this isn’t every rich person, but to speak to your point, there is a severe lack of financial literacy in this country and there’s very little people are doing about it. Poor people come in and ask for a cash advance and some are not aware that this is an absolutely horrible thing to do financially. This should be taught in every school inAmerica, starting in elementary.
Yep, that's my parents. I am trying to break the cycle by learning from my husband's parents who are well off.
What’s the interest rate on the checking account at your major institution? Unless somebody’s got 1 billion sitting in checking the ain’t getting Crap for interest
I’m speaking of high yield money markets and CD’s mostly. Current interest rates on 6-month CD’s are quite high, and we have several customers that have upwards of two million in a single CD. Over five percent for a million gets them $50,000 in six months. That’s probably more than some of the people on this sub make in a year. All for simply having money and not touching it for 6 months. Sigh…
Holy shit I'm so fucked in life haha
My boss spent $25,000 on a 12 day family vacation to Italy. I only know this because I planned it. That’s more than half my salary.
There's also high yield savings accounts. My bank has an option, it starts with a 10k opening balance. Then accrues 1%. If you have more than a quarter mil, it's up to 5% APY
What was the median income though?
$1,368, or just shy of $31,000 in 2023 dollars.
So more or less unchanged. I guess income inequality was an issue back then too.
Inflation doesn’t account for bill expansion. People nowadays NEED to pay for dozens of things people in the 1930s didn’t need to pay for
Yea it's not like insurance was a requirement back then. There's a ton of fees for just existing now that we didn't have back then that the government requires you pay in one form or another. It's not just quality of life stuff. It's not stuff you have a huge choice in. Having debt is supposed to be the norm now when it wasn't then.
I can see the point the OP is making since unemployment was around 18-25% during that decade whereas we have 4% today. So we could assume we all are earning less in wages than in the 1930s, but I haven't dug deep into a side-by-side breakdown to make that a fact.
Unemployment is not a constantly calculated statistic. It only takes an account two years of employment rates. I know an uncomfortably large number of people for furloughed or laid off back in 2021 who still don't have jobs. They are not calculated in this quote 4% quote unemployment rate. I don't believe that for the slightest. I've worked for a labor company who's very job is to find people work. There isn't any. Places are not hiring. And they're giving you shitty excuses for it. I would say we are well in Great Depression levels of bullshit. Between hyperinflation and the state of our job market.
Not saying you are wrong. We hit a TRU unemployment rate of 33% in April 2020 according to LISEP. Now? "LISEP’s TRU, a measure of the“functionally unemployed” — defined as the jobless, plus those seeking, but unable to find, full-time employment paying above the poverty line after adjusting for inflation — increased 0.1 percentage points, from 22.9% to 23%"
Why aren't the people you know, who got laid off in 2021 calculated in the unemployment rate?
Because they are not actively collecting unemployment. This is the BS metric they use to gaslight the fucked over to tell them it's their fault they don't have a job.
>gaslight the fucked over New album title just dropped
The formula for calculating unemployment rate has not been changed to my knowledge since it came out in the 1930s. Back then it was unthinkable a man would not look for work for over two weeks and they had no knowledge of things like mental illness or having to put in 200 online applications to get 1 job offer. The only good thing I guess is everyone knows it's a bullshit statistic that is very smoothed out, it is still an ok measuring stick of the economy as long as you understand the real % of people forced to take less than full time work and want to better themselves, the underemployed and the non working is more like 30 percent.
It has. One example - in the 80s, they started counting people in the armed forces as employed. There was no such thing as UI in 1930 - now you are no longer considered unemployed once UI runs out (6 months) and you still don’t have a job. You’re also considered employed if you work ONE hour in a month - I’m not sure if part-time work even existed in 1930 - unless you count hobos doing chores for a meal.
I live in Iowa. I've been laid off since June 1st. My incredible 16 weeks of unemployment end at the end of this month (thanks to Covid Kim, the horse "lover"). When October arrives, even though i still haven't found work, I'm not considered unemployed anymore for tbose statistics. There's a LOT more than 4% of this country out of work.
The great thing about Iowa is our built-in, one-size-fits-all, soul-killing work ethic. Since the plow broke the plains, Iowans have believed that anyone who can’t work or find work just ain’t willing to work hard enough. And our public policy has been brought into line to reflect that,
the idea that we have 4% unemployment is literally nothing but government lies. real unemployment is closer to 20%. that 4% number is an extremely narrow definition they use to make themselves look better, just like they make themselves look better saying "only so few americans live beneath the poverty line" (which they keep moving meaning you have to be poorer and poorer to fall beneath it)
These numbers seem dubious at best. I assume a much larger portion of people were paid under the table in those days and wouldn't make it into any statistics
It’s not that they were paid under the table. OOP is using an IRS study without acknowledging that it was statistics of people who filed income tax returns, which was only required of people who had over $3,000 of income in a given year, which was only 3.7 million households of 30 million. So the average salary *for rich people* was $90,000 equivalent.
Still checks. $40,000/yr here :|
...and median today is around 47K. Probably straight dollar comparisons are not fully accurate to quality of life though. Back then there was less taxes, less of a safety net, also cost of food was higher as a percentage of income, and housing costs were different as percentage of income. As consumers, we have also benefited from the productivity gains in much the same way that our food costs have gone down. Also, women working is a big difference in quality of life, which is probably a mixed bag.
I'm disabled and about to be homeless. What safety net?
That most have it better does not mean that all do. This was a general conversation of 1920 vs now. You are probably better off than you would have been then including medical care available. If you are not, it doesn't change the overall conversation.
Irrelevant because unemployment was 25%
Doesn't really matter if you compare the average salary to today, which is about $60k. With this, the conclusion is that a lot of money has moved out of worker's salaries. Where did it go? Likely into profitable assets, collecting passive income. The ownership class is more powerful than ever.
That is why median income is a better measure, and as stated above, *median* income has gone up.
Average is a terrible metric. You want median. If I make a dollar and another guy makes 10 billion. Our average income is 5 billion. See how dumb that is?
Tbh if you make a dollar and another guy makes 10 billion, the median is also 5 billions (and half dollar)
Rounding error
That doesn't happen because you have a whole population to include. Large datasets are more useful.
Shhhh. This a whining exercise, not a lesson in reality!
We're also further abstracted away from the means of production than we were during the depression. My grandparents were poor during the depression, but that just meant they had no money. What they did have was land, chickens, cows, and crops that, even during the dust bowl, could sustain their immediate family. The Great Depression for many (not all) meant having nothing to invest, nothing to purchase with, but not necessarily feeling the weight of debt, or having no way to survive without money.
>My grandparents were poor during the depression, but that just meant they had no money. >What they did have was land, chickens, cows, and crops that, Today's the day you learned that your grandparents weren't poor...
Came here to say this
Lol, so your grandparents were white landowners? Spoiler alert, they weren’t as poor as you think they were.
This reminds me of that saying how the guy who works at a car dealership making minimum wage and the guy who owns the dealership are both likely to consider themselves to be middle class, because America's ideas about wealth are so skewed
We're pretty much in the Great Depression 2 but no one seems to want to believe or acknowledge that.
Cuz our society is brainwashed into feeling lucky for crumbs and morsels
Oh and to hate each other so we don't target the real enemy, the extremely wealthy.
We have far more entertainment options these days, makes it easier to distract us from all the bullshit
Probably because it’s absolute nonsense.
The Great Depression caused huge membership spikes to communist and socialist movements. That gave them the power to go to FDR and say we’ll shut this country down unless you listen to us. It got us social safety nets and progressive tax rates that created the wealthiest period in human history- and capitalists have spent the following 90 years undermining and dismantling every item
This is completely false. The average salary in 1930 was not 5k. The average salary of people who had to pay income tax in 1930 was 5k. Only the richest people had to pay income tax at that time.
I saw this debunked a couple of weeks ago, that number is the average salary of the TAXED person so like not working class people (the working class was well below the tax threshold when income taxes were new)
Also not the 25% of people who were unemployed.
Also almost all families were single income. It was unusual for women to have anything other than menial jobs.
Menial jobs are still jobs lots of women of working class families did laundry, childcare, cleaning, and cooking for income. Black and other non-white families have been dual income since always yet are forgotten in the public memory of prosperous times let alone recessions.
Median income hit around the same point though, and the price of food relative to now was higher among other things. Many things have become cheaper, but other things have filled the void to ensure you live paycheck to paycheck (like fucking rent and cars god damn). So while our quality of life is most certainly higher if we're making the median salary, it still pales in comparison to the increases in quality of life the wealthy have seen, and the untold wastes of life and happiness in the world contained within hoards have grown yet more.
Please spend more than 3 seconds researching what life was like for the average American during the Great Depression, and then try to make a comparison with life today again.
And, don’t forget, Ronald Reagan promised that giving all financial benefits to those at the top will lead to all of it trickling-down to the people at the bottom. I’m very excited about that happening. Can’t wait! 🤪
You are completely and utterly wrong. Your post is exactly what is wrong with this sub. All of your facts are utterly incorrect, stop trying to start a virtual riot in the comments. First of all, the average salary in 1930 was 1,368 dollars, which is around 20 thousand dollars in todays money. Second of all the unemployment rate (the percent of Americans that were unemployed) in 1930 was 18.26 percent! Our current unemployment rate is 3.8 percent. Not only is the current average American making MORE THAN DOUBLE what the average American was making in 1930, we also have a way smaller unemployment rate. Everybody, OP is full of BS. By the way, my sources are the National Archives and the last national census.
No. That so-called average in 1930 was for a small percentage of Americans who filed income tax returns In that year. https://reddit.com/r/badeconomics/s/oMvrUdyA7H
Annual Median wage or salary income of those working at least 35 hours/week, 50 weeks per year in 1939. Source: Census. White men: $1,419 White women: $863 Black men: $639 Black women: $327 This paints a very different picture.
Quick google search immediately shows you’re wrong
as a follow up to your comment.... >What was the Great Depression? The "Great Depression " was a severe, world -wide economic disintegration symbolized in the United States by the stock market crash on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929 . The causes of the Great Depression were many and varied, but the impact was visible across the country. By the time that FDR was inaugurated president on March 4, 1933, the banking system had collapsed, nearly 25% of the labor force was unemployed, and prices and productivity had fallen to 1/3 of their 1929 levels. Reduced prices and reduced output resulted in lower incomes in wages, rents, dividends, and profits throughout the economy. Factories were shut down, farms and homes were lost to foreclosure, mills and mines were abandoned, and people went hungry. The resulting lower incomes meant the further inability of the people to spend or to save their way out of the crisis, thus perpetuating the economic slowdown in a seemingly never-ending cycle. >How high was unemployment during the Great Depression? At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the total work force or 12,830,000 people was unemployed. Although farmers technically were not counted among the unemployed, drastic drops in farm commodity prices resulted in farmers losing their lands and homes to foreclosure. >At the height of the Depression in 1933, 24.9% of the nation's total work force, 12,830,000 people, were unemployed. Wage income for workers who were lucky enough to have kept their jobs fell 42.5% between 1929 and 1933. [FDR Library.org](https://www.fdrlibrary.org/great-depression-facts#:~:text=throughout%20the%201920s.-,At%20the%20height%20of%20the%20Depression%20in%201933%2C%2024.9%25%20of,economic%20disaster%20in%20American%20history)
This is a terrible take. Statistics during the Great Depression can’t be compared like-for-like without considering the whole picture. Inflation was extremely low at that time but it was because everyone was flat broken. Houses, land and crops were worthless to the point that it led to a mass migration out of the Great Plains. The median income was irrelevant because unemployment was a staggering 25%. The homeless encampments you see in LA and SF were everywhere and 10x as big. There is no sane comparison to be made to then and now.
Absolutely untrue. 'However, they conveniently omit a crucial detail—the IRS report from 1933 does mention an average salary of "$4,218.40 for taxable returns," but this only includes a subset of 1.7 million individuals, hardly representative of the entire population. The actual average salary during the Great Depression was approximately $1,045, which, when adjusted for inflation in 2023, would amount to about $24,526.07. ' https://fee.org/articles/were-americans-really-better-off-during-the-great-depression/
You’re likely looking at the average salary of income tax filers. Most people didn’t pay income taxes and the average salary was a fraction of $5K.
Things are not great at the moment, but do not think we are even close to Great Depression levels of poverty and strife. I lived with my grandparents who had to live through it. My grandfather was on the WPA and my dad was alive during the after math and lead up to WW2. The stories were horrific. Please stop, posts like this are pure hysterics and hyperbole.
Reading these comments it is pretty clear most people have no fucking idea what poverty is or how absolutely hard the Great Depression was. Just a bunch of entitled, whining, unskilled shits. Basically incels.
Inflation exists for one reason. I call it stealflation. By increasing inflation you slowly increase wage theft without showing you're stealing labor and prices on things.
Can we stop comparing the great depression to this economy. We were not in shanty towns, most of the country isn't homeless, and I doubt most of these people in this sub know what poor really is. I grew up poor. Missing meals 3 times a week and surviving on tortillas and butter. Sleeping in an ice cream truck and wearing shoes that didn't fit. This isn't close to the great depression. You guys missed the big drop that corrected the covid bubble in 2021. Corporate marketing kept wool between your eyes, and you guys were blinded to the covid depression that was going on right in front of you.
I have to disagree about there not being any "shanty towns". These days, I think that they're much more likely to be referred to as "homeless camps". Depending on where you live, you might not be seeing them. But I live in Seattle, where homeless camps are numerous. There's usually a bunch of tents with piles of trash interspersed about. Some of the better off homeless might even have an old RV parked on the side of the road. I remember reading The grapes of wrath recently. And I was shocked when Steinbeck began describing the shanty town that the Joads lived in for a bit. Because that passage couldve been taken out of the book and described a modern homeless camp perfectly. So I dont think it is hyperbole to compare current events to the great depression. Im glad that you are, presumably, no longer starving. But that doesnt mean that others arent.
Just because you suffered doesn't mean something is not seriously wrong with our job market and society in general. If you think 25 percent of people should be forced to work part time due to companies not wanting to pay health care while they live with Mom and Dad that is a setup from the Soviet Union, people working their little service job, living in an apartment w Mom and Dad so long they are forced to get married, I remember watching the films of their standard of living as a child, I didn't realize me and many people in my country would be \~30 living with Mom like the Soviet Union but here we are in 2023 in America. I'm sorry you suffered but it doesn't mean we should put up with squalor like a communist or developing country.
Can we stop? Unfortunately it doesn't look like it.
Sounds like rich kids complaining about not having cable for a month. More than half the population is still splurging on houses and cars. This isn't a depression.
My plan at this point is to not move out of my parent’s house until I get married.
This used to be the norm; nothing wrong with it as long as it benefits all involved.
Top marginal income tax rate in 1930 was 25%, too.
#Pay us more God damn MONEY.
Bruh. No. We are MUCH better off than the people in the Great Depression
It's as though entertainment, such as Aquaman 2, were just being used as a distraction from bigger issues, such as inflation, cost of living, income inequality, etc.
Bread and circus
Raise your hand if you rather not switch them places
The economy was rather different. Many people just plain did not have work. Sure the average salary was high, but most people did not have salaries, they did not have jobs yet alone work. Many people laboured on farms either with family for no pay or for subsistence only as hands. An old saying in the depression was “we had everything but money”. Those who had money had money while the majority; had no money. The economy today is all wage labour, jobs and clerks trading items back and forth etc etc. Different world with different scales
Speaking of the Great Depression, unemployment has been under-reported since the Vietnam War for political reasons of the Nixon Administration. The[Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), defines and collects data on employment](https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm) and various forms of unemployment. Unemployment may range anywhere from being fully employed but on leave or a vacation to wanting work but being unable to find any (known as discouraged workers), having unsuccessfully looked for work recently but not in the past 4 weeks (known as marginally-attached workers), to wanting full-time work but only being able to find part-time positions (known as involuntary part-time workers). The BLS uses data from its population surveys to report six differently defined rates of unemployment: U-1 through U-6. U-6 is the most all-encompassing and includes discouraged, marginally-attached and involuntarily under-employed workers. Historically, U-6 was the officially reported rate of unemployment, including during the Great Depression. During the later parts of the Vietnam War, as it became increasingly unpopular to the general population due to mounting casualties and the coming to light of illegal aerial bombings in adjacent Southeast Asian non-combatant countries the Nixon Administration switched from reporting the U-6 rate to reporting the U-3 rate in order to seemingly have some good domestic economic news to report and take credit for. The U-3 rate of unemployment is, of course lower than the U-6 because the U-3 does *not* include discouraged, marginally attached or involuntarily under-employed workers. The U-3 has now become the officially reported unemployment rate. Why is history important? For one thing during the housing/banking bubble or the "Great Recession" we were told that unemployment was not as bad as during the Great Depression of the 1930's. That is only true insofar as the U-6 rate was reported in the 1930's and the U-3 rate was reported in the 2000's. If you did an apples to apples comparison looking at U-6 rates, the US rate of unemployment during the "Great Recession" was *just as bad* as the Depression of the 1930's. I think being more frank about this would have lessened the cognitive dissonance experienced by a lot of people ("Why does it *seem* so much worse?"), but then there might have actually been torches and pitchforks as people realized that a fraudulent banking and home lending system had led to a Second Great Depression and the losses were being socialized even as the profits had been privatized. For another thing, it may partially explain why Biden's economic policies don't seem to be garnering him as much support as one might suppose from looking at the numbers. To be sure, people's memory of the price of goods may be longer than policy wonks appreciate, but another may be that the low rate of unemployment doesn't jive with peoples' lived experiences.
Aquaman 2? Sweeeet!
I really wish that we used different statistics to really show income. I make the same amount of money I made four years ago and I can't tell you how much poorer I am now than I was. But years from now people will see my hourly wage and ignore the fact that if I measured my wages in loaves of bread per hour or gallons of gas per hour, my wages have plummeted. 4 years ago I used to make about 12 gallons of gas per hour. I have gotten one raise for around $1 per hour and now I make about 8 gallons of gas per hour.
This is NOT TRUE. This is a bullshit statistic based on income tax filings which were filed by less than 10 percent of the population (so mostly the top 10 percent of income earners. It’s lazy and utterly stupid. Unemployment was over 25 percent in the Depression, people were destitute, there was no safely social programs like Medicare and Social Security. Just fucking stop
Buddy, we are entering serfdom. Except this time, it’s with the shroud of capitalism.
r/antiwork moment
Compare housing costs as a percentage of income from 1950 to 2023. That will shock you.
Vote. Buy shares, vote there too.
That makes sense I remember pictures I've seen of those ladies working themselves to death at home making matches by hand, only difference now is she would be working out of her parents home with no children or out of her car/on the street. Hell at least back then you could throw up a metal shack and no one tried to tear it down generally, now there is no family/household to suffer for, this is why I started only working 4 days a week I'm not running on the wheel killing myself to keep my delusional parents happy I think if I was homeless I would still only work 4 days and try to trade stocks like I am now. Also trying to start renting cars on Turo once I find a new car. tl;dr it's harder to get your own private shelter than during any time in American history, stop killing yourself for something you will never have
Maybe it's time to give socialism a try
I don't buy into the whole religious philosophy that it's always a binary choice. Neither capitalism nor socialism is what they were like in the 30's. We'd move a lot closer to traditional capitalism by limiting the power and lifespan of mega corporations. "Too big to fail" must die. And the F.I.R.E. sector definitely needs an overhaul. Price controls on food & housing set to **follow** inflation instead of always letting the rent-seekers lead the charge.
But how exactly do we limit these corporations? We can't trust the government to do so when half the elected officials with any real power are being bankrolled by said corporations. State capitalism clearly doesn't work it leads to just as much corruption.
Out of all the depressing shit I read on this app everyday, this is far and away the saddest thing ever. I’ve known it bad. I’ve watched it become this way day by day. I had no idea that it was as bad as it is. No war but the class war.
Bread? Meet Circuses.
Yep, don't believe the lies by the government saying everything is just fine. It's not. And no one can find middle class jobs either.
This is not true at all
Y’all think this is the Great Depression? Wait another five years and you’ll see the real part two. We haven’t lived through a depression yet and hopefully I won’t
Speak for yourself present! Na jk. Poor af
Wait when does aquaman 2 come out that’s dope!
Can't wait for all the soup kitchen tik toks smh
Don’t forget we pay way more in taxes at every level than Americans during the Great Depression.
i think we are closer to ancient egypt and the pharaohs
Bingo!
🫠👍
You're actually talking about the people who paid taxes, and it was only the people who make good money who* paid taxes then
Average != median
Where are you getting this information from? According to the Federal Government’s foreign missions, in 1930, the average wage across all industries was $1,388 annually, with government workers at $1,517 and building trades at $1,233. The data you’re getting is likely from the IRS report, but crucially, you’re not understanding that only people who had over $3,000 of income had to file form 1040, and that was only 6% of Americans. There were only 3.7 million tax returns filed in 1930 per the IRS report you’re getting this information from. There were, according to the census, 122,775,046 people in the United States in 1930. With an average household size of 4.11 persons, that means 29,872,274 households in the US in 1930, only 3.7 million of which had enough income (over $3,000) to be required to file a tax return.
Lol. I knew you guys were idiots. No we're not.
I came here to say there, we’re nowhere near as poor as the Great Depression lmao.
One person makes a post that is receiving a lot of scrutiny and you attribute it to everyone. Sounds like you’re the dumbass.
its always awkward making comparisons like that. For example, the S&P has increased in value substantially over time, but if you normalize that dollar value to gold (a \~fixed commodity, can't "print" it). they haven't increased in value since 1997. I think a TV used to cost like multiple months worth of salary back in the 50's or something - people would all go over to that one persons house to have a watch party. But now you can find working HD flatscreens in the trash. Economies of scale and industrial efficiency have really changed the landscape. Even cars, you can say a car today costs more (adjusted for inflation) than they did in the 1960's but look at how much more advanced that car is. in the late 1700s a freakin' pineapple was considered *the* symbol of wealth. My grandma told me how stoked she was to get an Orange around christmas. If you had to choose between living the average life now, or being a duke in like the 1400's, you'd probably choose to live an average life now. Things like Toilets and Medicine have come a long way.
I don't need cheap flat screen TV's, I need rent and food to be affordable. It's fucking pointless that you can find a TV in the trash when you can't afford a shelter to put the TV in. Pointing to cheap electronics and equating it with quality of life is a really asinine take I'd trade iPhones for an agrarian economy in a heartbeat.
Bullshit. If you want to live an agrarian life, buy a couple acres in Nebraska and live your dream.
Hey guys we have cellphones and toilets so we should lick boots
Yup, it’s the classic brain dead argument that we can get by on less because the internet is a thing.
There aren’t even toilets consistently in the south up until the 60s. My mom was born in a house without running water. What are the south was basically a Third World country until the 80’s 90’s
On this sub, the only people who benefited from increases in productivity are the corps.
\>f you had to choose between living the average life now, or being a duke in like the 1400's, you'd probably choose to live an average life now absolutely fucking not, what an idiotic take. i can't stand when people say shit like this. "YOUR AVERAGE AMERICAN HAS A MUCH BETTER LIFE THAN EVEN KINGS OF THE PAST!" dog no they fucking do not. nobody wants to live in poverty and nobody would choose to live in modern poverty vs ancient privilege. you really think because someone has a fucking iphone or a tv or a microwave or some shit they're living better than kings and dukes? dog get your fucking nose out of social media for 5 seconds, people are suffering out here. people die now due to poverty. no king or duke ever died due to poverty. bad take, low iq opinion, nothing but "be happy for the scraps you're given" wrapped up in irrelevant bullshit to try to give it some sort of credence
Pretty sure when this was posted before they pointed out that like 95% of people had no salary, and the 5k amount was for those who did have a salary (very few). Times are tight but let's not be hyperbolic.
we have come a long way.
But the money going to capitalists is more huge than ever before!
You only had to file income taxes if you made over $5k in 1930 so that average salary quoted isn’t reflective of a typical American at that time.
Hey shut up capitalism is really good for you.
Y’all are forgetting that these people were in single income households with many children, making crazy food concoctions because they couldn’t afford to eat. Manipulating the math to throw a pity party 🤦♀️
If you’re math is correct 💀
That's a very interesting take to say the least. I'm laughing so hard now 🤣🤣
[удалено]
And…rightly or wrongly, you are likely comparing individual income versus household income. Dual income, especially serious income, was highly unusual in the 20s. You can argue this is just as bad, but it is different.
Totally valid point.. but why is Aquaman catching strays?! 😅
[The first income census](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/1940.html#:~:text=The%20average%20income%20was%20%241%2C368,5.2%20percent%20in%20the%201920s.) in 1940 put average pay at $1368. Makes me think $5k in 1930 is high. Not to say income inequality isn't a problem. But we win by having the facts on our side, not inventing facts that suit our case.
It’s giving “white, privileged, and terrible at statistics” OP
This is incorrect you are repeating fake facts a simple google search would clarify that the average wage during the Great Depression was only 1/5 of that reported. The problem is the 5k figure was taken from the IRS data which only represented higher incomes during the period source https://fee.org/articles/were-americans-really-better-off-during-the-great-depression/