Report: Most not seeing real wage gains

I second your second for the truth in the economy and corporate America. Wages in the US have not kept up because of illegal immigration and global competition with millions of service and manufacturing jobs handed off to Asia and India.

However, this is not new news, it's merely Leftest talking points being spread for the Nov 06 election.

In the meantime, as 2banana put it on this thread:

"Wonder if they factored in the ever increasing burden of local, state and federal taxes and fees..."

So therefore any balanced commentary by anyone about the wage issue, cost of living, inflation, etc., must also include those very items 2banana mentioned, otherwise the writer is full of it.

Wow! What a good serf you are! You accept the onus of making more money to replace the loss due to inflation that the government creates, instead of stopping the improper inflation. You say it is not the govs job ot provide extra pay for workers, but it is not extra pay anyone is asking for, but stability of purchasing power. It is not a matter of someone not making enough dough, it is a matter of them making enough dough, and then it becoming not enough dough when government generates inflation. And to suggest the individual is responsible for making up the difference after being robbed by inflation is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. If you were robbed by a mugger, and the police said, hey get another job to make back what they took, that is close to what you are suggesting. You have a property right in what the mugger took, and we all have a property right in the lost purchasing power that we lose between getting paid, and spending the money later, after prices rise. Remember a function of sound money is to store value over time. If ours does that badly, it is not the onus of the individual or worker to make up for it.

Such is life since the currency of the US ceased being "primary money," i.e., gold and silver coin, and was replaced by debt-based fiat currency, proliferating without restraint and in proportion to the size of the debt.

I love you. There are few on FR that I can say that to. Feel privileged.

A customer at my second job (yes, I have to have 2 jobs to support my kids because my IBM salary isn't enough anymore) made an interesting comment when he and I were discussing the impact of the Fed, fiat money, and leaving the gold standard. He indicated that he agreed that leaving the gold standard was indeed a mistake, as is the Fed printing ever more money (whose value is less and less), but also said that going off the gold standard was ok at first because we had financial credibility (credit worthy, I suppose) in the view of foreign investors. He winked as he finished off the last of his beer and slid my tip across the bar, and said "But those days are gone".

I feel gyped. No time to worry about it though. Its another 80+ hour work week. Hi ho.. hi ho.

That, and as long as people keep getting health care that is skyrocketing at 35% a year increases, their REAL "wage gains" are astronomical.

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Seems to me that in your example the only "wage gains" are to the medical industry. If the employer pays more and more for the same medical service or even less coverage the employee is not really any better off he is just more expensive to the employer. I blame the problem on the government but I agree with the statement that most working people are seeing a decline in their actual buying power. I see no reason to believe otherwise.

You would believe otherwise in a second if you wanted a PET scan and they said no. Right now, you get whatever you want, more or less. And that isn't the medical industry---although they certainly get some $$. That's the workers.

The only way to know for sure who is getting the "benefit" of these gains is for the employees to start paying their own medical. Milton Friedman suggested making "bennies" subject to the same taxes as income---then you'd immediately see a re-balancing of wages (which would go up, a lot) and a drastic reduction in "free" or "employer-paid" medical. Shortly thereafter, med prices would come down.

It is my problem for putting myself in a situation where I did not make enough money. People who expect their company to raise their wages automatically have unreal expectations. I should add that I was and am a union worker who occasionally went out on strikes for better wages and/or working conditions. The company was determined to squelch us and eventually did. But in the meantime I did not go out and seek another job until I lost mine. I should have gotten more training. If a person is not satisfied at their present job, it is up to them to change conditions. There are always other better-paying jobs. A person should not sit back and hope things get better. They should make them get better.

You seem like a real honest guy. And a nice one too. I agree with you, on an individual basis, one can often benefit by taking a few classes, getting credentials, changing jobs, and earning more money.

But I don't think this thread was about individual situations. When the title of the thread refers explicitly to "real wages," that is code for inflation adjusted wages.

The whole point of this thread is, there is inflation which is driving prices up. When this happens your real (inflation adjusted) wages go down even though your nominal (numeric) wages stay the same. It is tricky because it creates the illusion that you are making the same amount of money when you are making less.

So to combat this problem, that was caused by the government, and not caused by you, people ask for and often get nominal or numeric wage increases. But the money you get after such an increase has less purchasing power than the prior amount. So people want to ask the question, was this nominal wage increase enough to restore my real wages from before? So they inflation adjust and compare the new wages to the old and either they are enough or they are not.

The subject of this article was that most people who have recently gotten nominal wage gains for the purpose of restoring lost purchasing power due to inflation over the last several years, are not getting enough to restore all their lost purchasing power.

They are right to expect more, and more still, until all their purchasing power is restored, because it was wrong that through no fault of their own, they lost purchasing power in the first place due to the inflationary activities of the government and banks.

Forgive me if I guess wrong, but I am guessing you currently believe that your money is stable in its ability to buy things over time. As if one dollar today is the same as one dollar ten years from now. The government promotes this belief and for those who do not believe the government tries to propagandize that the rate of inflation is less than it actually is. Continually rising prices and increases in the cost of living prove our money is not stable in purchasing power, and simple observation of prices do not match the goverment low inflation rate estimates.

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