I joined the workforce in 2009 and it looks like recession number three is on the way.
I thought bust was supposed to be followed by boom?
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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Joined the workforce in 2010.
Boom have to least somewhat sustainable. Massive speculation due to ultra-low rates does not benefit the average person.
But it was. You've been part of one of the longest bull runs in history. If you'll look, the next day after this news was posted, the Nikkei rebounded almost as much as it fell, ending with a net loss of 2%-ish. We've had a crazy run this year in the US (>20% even with the recent pullback).
The biggest concern is unemployment, which is still fine, but rising. The Fed will likely cut rates next month, which should slow that a bit, but it'll be bumpy through the election. I don't think we're looking at a recession, but that really depends on how the job market responds to a rate cut, and how much the Fed will cut rates.
Have those bull runs helped the average man in anyway? Stock prices are really irrelevant unless they translate to a tangible improvement in people's lives.
The standard of living has been in decline for a long time and it seems that will continue as the inequality gap continues to widen.
As a working man, I've only ever known the socialisation of losses and the privatisation of profits, I'm looking forward to being proven wrong though!
The standard of living has been in decline for a long time
Citation?
Median real weekly earnings have risen over the last 40-ish years, meaning the average person makes more today after taking inflation into account, than they would have 40 years ago (or almost any point in between) for the same job at the same point in their lives. It's also pretty consistent across racial demographics. We're down from a peak in early 2020, but that peak was during an unprecedented change in labor where a lot of people left the workforce to receive increased unemployment instead. If you cut out Q1 2020 - Q4 2021 (the main part of the lockdowns), you get a pretty steady increase in real wages.
Poverty rate is steady or declining, and real GDP per capita is also increasing. By all metrics I can see, things are getting better for the average worker pretty consistently, and have for at least the last 40 years.
News sites focus on the negatives and average people complain about what they don't have, but that doesn't change the stats. The average person seems to be better off today than at almost any time in the past 40 years.
What is true is the income gap is widening, but that's not the rich getting richer at the expense of the poor, it's everyone getting richer, but the rich are getting richer faster. But that doesn't mean the average person is worse off.