Even as inflation continues to cool into the second half of 2024, many Americans say they’re still struggling to make ends meet.
Roughly one-third of U.S. workers say they’re living paycheck to paycheck and have nearly no money for savings after paying their monthly bills, according to a survey from personal finance website Bankrate.
Solutions to inflation:
#1) Wage growth. How do you make more money? Get a new job and move! Problem: Everyone has these golden handcuff mortgages. 2% to 7%. Moving would actually cost people more per month that the extra wages
#2) Wage growth through WFH. This path is currently so crowded that few have a chance. Hopefully once a few office mortgages are done and boomers with office fetishes die, more jobs will move this way
#3) Deflation. Makes economist immediately shout “But people will hold off purchasing things until later, making the economy worse!” The average car age is at a record high. Everyone is holding off on housing. There is word of groceries payment plans on installments. People already are holding off for later.
I say we try 3 until 2 becomes viable.
I thought inflation wasn’t that bad to begin with. Isn’t that what they told us? Sigh…
The rate of inflation is slower but prices are never going back down.
On top of that companies used inflation as an excuse to raise prices higher than they should have.
While refusing to provide any pay increase for current employees. You have to get another job to get a proper wage after two years at the same job.
I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for twenty years now.
There’s another way?
I’m just happy I got out of the payday loan to pay off payday loans trap two years ago.
Because I’ve always lived paycheck to paycheck. Even my parents did when I was a kid. My rent is 70% of my paycheck. What else ya want me to fucking do?
Just earn more money. (/s)
They are going after people up the income ladder tbh.
Post 2008, we prolly already had half the population at break even point. Now it got tonbe pushing 60-70%.
It stopped raining but grass is still wet
It’s still raining, but it’s not raining as hard as it was a while ago. Grass is still wet.
FTFY
Nah, because it’s actually getting better as wages are outpacing inflation. There was just a lot of rain and it’s going to take a long ass time to dry.
I Agree. Like that better.
And to be fair, the paycheck to paycheck thing has been going on for generations. It’s fucked up.
Isn’t it funny how inflation always effects every price except the price of labor first?
Because the fed chose to solve inflation by putting downward pressure on wages. This was the only way it could ever happen.
Unless we actually tried to fix the problem in other ways than rate hikes. But since the federal government is completely dysfunctional, the only thing they could agree on was doing nothing and leaving the job to the Fed’s hammer. And we were the nails.
Corpo komissars are firing people and refusing to do wage increases while price gouging the pessants… But pretty normal by historical standards interest rates are shit wages over last 40 years lol
I’ve been living my whole life pay check to pay check despite being highly qualified in multiple fields, no fucking shit CBS.
Inflation is cooling because Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
Inflation was never going to come down until people ran out of money. Basic economics unfortunately. When people are tight on money and cut down on spending, demand drops. And with demand dropping inflation goes down.
i thought this is what americans were always doing
Yeah you know why people are still living paycheck to paycheck? Because it doesn’t matter if inflation slows down; it never goes backwards.
It does go backwards but then you’ll have negative inflation. That means people buy less, prices have to go down. Negative effect is that businesses go bankrupt, people lose their job and they don’t have a paycheck to live to.
Inflation can cool down all it wants, it’s reported year on year so prices are still much higher than 5 years ago while wages haven’t increased, deflation or huge wage increases would be necessary to make it so people would have their purchasing power back.
Wages are outpacing inflation, there’s just a lot of catching up to do.
https://www.epi.org/blog/average-wages-have-surpassed-inflation-for-12-straight-months/
% change is a pretty wild metric. It becomes unwieldy at longer time spans, and does a pretty poor job at comparisons.
Can we get like wages vs cost of living, or rent/mortgage as a percentage of income?
No because that wouldn’t make things look good
What I linked was wage growth vs inflation, especially among generally lower paid workers (hourly).
The root cause of this is housing costs and interest rates which affect car prices as well. Until we at least reduce housing costs, this will continue to be a problem.
