Comment on Are you better off than you were four years ago? It can be a murky picture for many
verdantbanana@lemmy.world 4 months ago
no and every four years no matter who is voted in the situation get worse and worse
less rights
less pay
less healthcare
Yeah, if only we'd had the Democratic Socialists in charge we might have had a strong NLRB backstopping a bunch of union gains, income equality finally going down for the first time in God knows how long, and blue collar wages growing due to big investments in manufacturing and infrastructure funded by massive tax increases
That would have been fuckin great
Or, wait, hang on for a second
Income inequality going down? Source please lmfao
Yeah, I know. It's so diametrically opposed to the narrative that's in the media that people start acting like you're crazy when you talk about it.
This is a chart of the GINI coefficient, one of the best bottom-line metrics for overall "level of inequality" as a single simple number. It's irritating that it cuts off in the middle of the Covid discontinuity, but everything I can find is that it's still at around 40, i.e. still holding steadily at levels that haven't been seen consistently since the late 1990s.
To get a little more into the details instead of just an abstract number:
The IRA and stronger support for unions led to an absolutely historic increase in wages at the bottom end of the scale, comfortably beating inflation and then some. The level of inflation was absolutely historic, and there wasn't an equal income gain at the high end of the scale (e.g. tech jobs); I suspect that most of that manufacturing-worker gain was totally invisible to the average Lemmy user, so all they see is the inflation, so it feels like things are getting worse overall for the economy, but for the actually vulnerable people, it's going in the right direction for the first time in quite a while. Not anywhere near where it should be, of course, but going in the right direction by a pretty significant tick.
This is one source for all that stuff about wages at different income levels
I know, it's very different from the narrative.
This isn’t true at all.
Just as quick examples, under Democrats, gay people got the right to marry. The Affordable Care Act was passed. And real pay has gone up under Biden.
That’s not mentioning the major climate and infrastructure legislation, dismissal of student debt, rights for DACA holders, etc.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Well, I left America, so yes. I find I am.
Iheartcheese@lemmy.world 4 months ago
When we collapse we’re taking the rest of the fucking world with us
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I know that, you silly billy. The view is just better from afar