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When wealth is transferred from the creators to the manipulators the overall standard of living decreases. I remember having much lower wages but greater prosperity in 1980 than 2010.
The data seems to concur with your feelings.
From 1950 to 1980, the average income of the bottom 90 percent grew tremendously.
From 1950 - 1980 a 74.6% wage increase from $17,719 to $30,941
Since then 1980 - 2008...$30,941 - $31,244 or a 1% increase in wages of $303.00 total over a 28 year period.
The dow jones is at the same place it was in 2000.
I don't get this argument.
There are a hundred different 11 year periods in the history of the DJIA and the overwhelming majority would show fairly solid gains, so how is selecting this particular one with a starting point at the peak of a bull proof of expected rates of return versus other investments?
It is analogous to someone in 2000 saying look at the DJIA over the past ten years as proof that one can expect to quadruple their money.
If you made 25% more than last year you might just about be breaking even with last year considering food and gas prices have skyrocketed.
What percentage of that poster's budget do you think went to food and gas?
Bottom line = the overall cost of living hasn't gone up anywhere near 25% in the last year, so yeah the 25% raise came out pretty far ahead as a net gain.
Like many of the "end the fed" goldbug types you've probably been predicting hyperinflation for so long that you see it where it doesn't even exist.
When my sister and I were little we had a live in nanny and my mother was a stay at home mom. We went to private country day schools, (like the ones today that cost $30k per year tuition). We had 3 homes (granted two of those were in our extended family). I spent summers in an ocean front summer home. Every spring we went on a tropical vacation (and we didn't have to get to the airport hours before the flight took off either nor did we have to take our shoes off and be poked and prodded or nuked and treated like a terrorist).
You realize this was atypical right? You can't possibly the average family in the 50s and 60s had three houses, went on annual tropical vacations, etc. Using this obviously exceptional standard to declare standard of living today as worse than your childhood makes no sense.
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Food cost a tiny fraction of what it costs today.
Complete and utter bull****. The percentage of family budgets that go to food is far smaller than what is was in your childhood. It isn't even close.
taratova-good luck to you....FL has a minor infrastructure that is decimated each year by corps wanting to get cheaper employees. You may well own a 600k house, but wont be able to sell it for 150k next year. JMO
First I don't intend to sell it.. I am keeping it to live in it.It is a great house for the money I bought it for.. I will pass it on to my kids. I don't have a $600 thousand dollar house.. a real $600 thousand dollar house is 6000 sq ft with many upgrades. I made some upgrades already and really don't want it to be worth 600 thousand because my taxes will go up.
It is a modest home in today's standards. The grass was dead and all the landscaping was dead too from sitting for two years while it went into foreclosure. It now looks much better after I worked putting bushes and palms in.. lucky it has a sprinkler system.
I don't live on easy street.
I am retired and saved every dollar I could. I am not patting myself on the back. I am saying if one saves , one can do well on a middle class income.
I saw a fellow on tv who lived on @44 thousand a year and had a family and I believe had four kids who had enough money to invest. He bought an income property too. I am saying if one makes the right moves one can come out better than the over spender who lives on credit cards who makes much more money.
Life is a chess game and one has to think of every financial move they make.. .. I had to.. I didn't make easy money.. so I looked at all the scenarios that could go wrong with each move I contemplated on.
For the ones who bought homes to sell in a few years were paying high over inflated prices already.
When the market dropped it killed them financially. They looked at it as their ticket to making money. Many flippers were building homes to make easy money and many did for a few years. It was a gamble and many did win.. in the end the ones still playing the game lost.. The builders , the flippers , they all made good easy money in the housing boom. Some lost big in the end.
People buying foreclosures are taking advantage of others misfortunes that happened as a result of the banksters taking advantage via the blessings of the Federal Government ie Bill Clinton and Barney Frank... and all of that was CAUSED by the Federal Reserve artificially trying to manage the market.
Take the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government out of the equation, and the interest rates and housing prices would settle where they are supposed to be by Free Market forces and the market would THRIVE like it did 100 years ago before they established the Federal Reserve.
I didn't kick any family out.. It was a financial venture of a flipper. He bought it to take advantage of someone when he sold it, to add another 100 thousand to the price!
That would be deflation which would increase the value of a dollar. There would be less dollars in the hands of the people.
Correct, and less money in circulation to buy goods. If you take 22 trillion out of the economy it is like playing monopoly with no money.
No buying power is killing the economy and the tax base is shrinking too because of so many people unemployed and not paying taxes on that paycheck. Instead they are draining the system pushing the debt higher with the cost of unemployment , welfare and food stamps.
When many illegal people work here and send their money out of the country , it hurts the businesses and workers would be laid off..
Plus there is an added drain on the loss of money in circulation.. >>>>the savers are not getting any interest on their money to spend.
If money stops growing because interest rates are down to zero, that money stays small. If that same money grows with interest it brings more money into the economy to buy goods and services.. our government has the interest rates too low, pushing housing prices higher and it created the largest housing bubble ever.
Remember the stimulus checks that were sent out.. there was a lack of money in circulation.. all the money for years went into overpriced housing, leaving less spending power to the buyers of these homes and less dollars in circulation.... or to Mexico.. > 22 trillion is a lot of money to leave the country .
That's credit inflation. Not something you're particularly having problems with right this second as Americans. Four years ago, not so much.
Inflation is Inflation whether it is caused by credit or money printing -- same difference.
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