I’m not saying that anything in this is not true or important, but focusing on median wage growth and then using it to paint a picture of neglected ordinary people is highly misleading about what was been happening for the last four years.
Long story short, the Biden administration focused specifically on low-wage income, and managed to raise it up by a pretty hugely significant amount. Way more than the 0.4% that is getting blown up into something of significance by misleading axes. Part of the price of doing that was inflationary policies to keep unemployment low, which meant the median income basically didn’t change, high-wage workers (90th percentile) lost a certain amount of income, and of course the top 1% made out like gangbusters because of massive systemic inequality like they always do.
It’s highly unusual for any American government to do that, which makes it notable. The broader story about how fucked everyone is, is still true, but missing a temporary reversal in the fuckening is a significant oversight.
I’m not saying that anything in this is not true or important, but focusing on median wage growth and then using it to paint a picture of neglected ordinary people is highly misleading about what was been happening for the last four years.
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2023/
Long story short, the Biden administration focused specifically on low-wage income, and managed to raise it up by a pretty hugely significant amount. Way more than the 0.4% that is getting blown up into something of significance by misleading axes. Part of the price of doing that was inflationary policies to keep unemployment low, which meant the median income basically didn’t change, high-wage workers (90th percentile) lost a certain amount of income, and of course the top 1% made out like gangbusters because of massive systemic inequality like they always do.
It’s highly unusual for any American government to do that, which makes it notable. The broader story about how fucked everyone is, is still true, but missing a temporary reversal in the fuckening is a significant oversight.