Those “Wealth Increases” are only meaningful for people who are already extremely wealthy.
For the rest of us, people touting “the economy” are just background noise; the reality is, housing costs are out of control; people with professional jobs can’t even afford a one bedroom apartment. Food prices have skyrocketed; the other day, I noticed a gallon of milk cost me $7. A sandwich or a burrito costs $15. That’s nearly a half hour wage for me, which is about the same buying power I had when I was making $7.25 in the late nineties.
We need a sea change, and it needs to start with a wholesale replacement of our congressional body.
I’m betting it’s not experienced as “yay we’re free from want!” so much as “oh god I think I can breathe again” after decades of being slowly strangled by our wage enslavers.
So, not great but better than it’s been.
Maybe a good analogy is that we’ve been getting punched hard in the face every day for 40+ years but today it was “only” an open hand slap.
That’s still being too generous. There was some semblance of a welfare state during the pandemic, most of which is gone now. Combined with the fact that inflation has driven bills through the roof, it’s definitely much worse. My household’s monthly grocery bill increased over $200 for the same amount of food and the rest of our bills have also seen increases. Meanwhile, our household income did not increase enough to compensate. We’ve basically lost all of our disposable income and are having to make cuts to stay afloat. This is a worse financial spot than we were in even 5 years ago.
Yup.
My grocery bills skyrocketed two years ago. I was lucky in that my rent situation didn’t change, but that was only because my landlord’s property manager was incompetent and never renewed my lease, so it went month-to-month with the same rate. I’ve since become a homeowner because I didn’t want to get squeezed out of my preferred neighborhood.
Most people are feeling a huge crunch from cost-of-living increases and housing scarcity, and Biden’s going to be blamed for it in the next election.
I don’t know anyone who can “breathe again” so I’m not sure what you’re talking about
Are you independently wealthy or something? That’s the only way I can make your comment about “breathing again” make sense.
My best bet for a wealth increase is gonna be working for a company that treats me poorly enough for collective bargaining, labor rights strikes, or even unionization to occur. And that will not likely happen under Biden, but rather because of his laws but many years later when someone else will take credit.