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What have we come to america?
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this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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chapotraphouse
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These people complain about inflation when the real problem is low/stagnant real wages.
Wage growth is totally dogshit but that's been true for 30 years. This inflation stuff really is fucking crazy. You can barely walk out of a grocery store for less than $60. Everything has gone up damn near 50% in the last two years between prices going up and pirti9ns of literally everything going down.
Enshitificiation really is in full swing.
Yea, i meant, low real wages. If inflation is 10% and wages increase 20% thats still good. but in this case there is no counter to inflation in form of increase in wages.
I think people in the US have been conditioned to expect low inflation forever, because inflation was concentrated on assets and large expenditures like Health, Education, Housing and so on. It's cultural inertia, really. Down here we are 30 years removed from a hyperinflation crisis, so even media discourse considers wether or not the minimal wage rises above or according to inflation. We also have all the problems you have, like shrinkflation and lowering quality of foodstuffs. And arguably ours are worse. But the discourse of 'what happened, I used to be able to buy a penny' is never done with the implication that inflation itself is simply wrong for existing.
You might be overthinking it. Most people call any increase in price "inflation" and leave it at that.
What I'm saying is that the way americans talk about inflation feels dramatic and sheltered. If I didn't know any better I'd think americans simply have 0 inflation, but I know it's confined to costs of living which the government doesn't subsidize. Ie, anything but cars and gas. It's all very
Homeless population is exploding. I guess in a literal sense, we're accustomed to being sheltered, but I don't see what's dramatic about economic insecurity from stagnant wages and rising prices. "I am genuinely at risk of sleeping under a bridge" seems like a rational fear to me.
I remember growing up and watching a foreign movie from the US and finding it strange that families would do grocery shopping on a weekly basis. That felt like such a waste of gas. It was later that I realized that our own culture of monthly shopping arose after the periods of hyperinflation, especially due to the Volcker Shock in the 80s. There's a lot of small ways in which long term economic prospects shape our culture at large. And unlike what some romantic writers seem to think, American optimism is not inherent to people in the US. It's something that came into being out of historical circumstances.
I don't think american decline or even it's relative decline is written on stone. But if the post 80s libertarian policies aren't reversed, I can see a traumatic situation akin to that of Britain's stagnation. A total cultural shock. As a foreigner that's what I'm seeing. People surprised at shrinkflation, inflation and even older boomers shocked that the baseline welfare state they voted out of existence does not, indeed, exist any more. This isn't a criticism mind you. I think we here at the periphery are so used to rational fears, as you put it, that we normalize these things.