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> In case you think this is academic, look at the occupations for those who lived in today’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Today Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and other super zips are exclusively $500k incomes and up. In the 1960 census records you will find these good neighborhoods occupied with plumbers, painters and other blue collar workers. How much is this related to inflation compared to the complete refusal of the Silicon Valley suburbs to building new housing? If rich people want to move somewhere, and people living in that area dont build houses for them to move into, its going to drive the prices up, because the wealthy people will go there no matter what. Also your whole bit about the past being so much better is insane. Hard to tell what is you exaggerating and what is a serious argument. My partner and I make ~100k + 40k combined a year, and we rent an apartment in one of the nicest SF neighborhoods, save for retirement, go out and do (paid) things every weekend, and still save a good chunk of money every month. We also have gym memberships, own cars, buy nice groceries, etc. Inflation does suck, and the sticker shock is bad, but the high inflation also stems from policies that have let us have insanely good unemployment levels. Post 2008 we saw less inflation, but unemployment stayed high for almost a decade. Unemployment is already down to super low levels post 2020, which is better for everyone. Average and lower wage workers have also seen large growths in what they make. |
95% + of the recent employment rates have been part time employment.
U3 doesn't account for the historically low participation rate (about 60%)