• cygnus@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    129
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    If 99 homeless people and Elon Musk are in a room, the average net worth of every person in the room is 2 billion dollars. Why aren’t all 100 happy about that?

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    71
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    2 months ago

    That’s because it is… the economy may be growing on paper but the portion of it most people have access to is constantly shrinking.

    • scaredoftrumpwinning@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      2 months ago

      My company said our benefit change at the start of the year and our yearly living increases would surprise us. I was happy when I saw my pay go up by more than 200. I later found out they weren’t deducting my benefits and my overall pay went down compared to last year. I guess I miss understood surprise.

  • Karyoplasma
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Yeah, people should be grateful everything is expensive as fuck and the planet is burning while the c-suites get more money than ever. A real accomplishment this good economy.

    How does this “economic growth” benefit me? That’s right, it does not.

    • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Except real wages are up the largest percentage for the lowest income brackets and the least for the highest.

  • dhork@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    2 months ago

    That’s because the recovery is very uneven. Not everyone is better off than they were pre-pandemic, but everyone is paying the higher prices.

  • CarbonAlpine@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    ·
    2 months ago

    All I think of when I read titles like this is that older meme that said switch “economy” with billionaires yacht money.

    Despite billionaires yacht money growth, 70% of Americans believe the economy is getting worse.

  • seaQueue@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 months ago

    Despite rich people’s money growth, 70% of Americans believe the economy is getting worse

    Fixed the title for you

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Almost all of our primary economic indicators have been juiced to hell and back so that “the economy” looks great on paper. In reality wages suck, inflation sucks, health care, energy and rent costs suck and the bottom 90% are growing ever poorer. But hey, our economic indicators look great so open some more champagne!

  • Chemical Wonka
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    2 months ago

    The question to make is: For whom?

    The bourgeois goes very well , thanks but for the workers is the opposite.

    • hissing meerkat@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      10s of thousands of nothing. Hundreds of thousands isn’t even enough that “economic growth” at the expense of increased costs and greater inequity would be a net benefit.

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    “The majority of people still say that inflation has caused hardship for their families, so I think that’s really kind of underlying a lot of what we see, even though a lot of the macroeconomic numbers are pretty strong at this point,” Jones told WTOP.

    It’s difficult, if not impossible, to accurately determine the true state of the economy by looking at macroeconomic numbers alone. The modern economy is extremely complex, and that complexity is simply not captured in the GDP numbers, or the inflation figures, or the unemployment rate, etc. Behind each of those numbers are hundreds of millions of people, with different expectations.

    I think this economy is just failing to meet a lot of people’s expectations, despite GDP growing and an unprecedented amount of wealth being created. I mean, maybe the economy will never be good enough, no matter how wealthy we all are. If the only way to be happy is to acquire more than you already have, you’re always going to be unhappy. I think that might explain why so many people are pessimistic about the economy even though the economic numbers are good.

    • owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      Honestly, a better metric would probably be

      median rent / median wage

      or something like that. Still doesn’t show the distribution, but it would be a much better measure than GDP.