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Hey, somebody's gotta pay for the highest corporate profits in 70 years.

Honestly, same boat. Our power bill has gone up over 20% this past year like it's insane. Our grocery costs have easily doubled in that time, too. Like I'm doing the math and seeing the numbers like I'm making more than I was 3 years ago, but I wasn't living paycheck to paycheck then, and I'm rationing food today.

I also can't count the number of times prices have gone up on common groceries in the last year. Every time I go in I'm spending more than I did the previous time. And the grocery stores around here have started phasing out their cost saving brands. More and more lately what used to be the expensive brand is the only one left, and I'm paying twice as much for half as much compared to what I was getting before. They're not even trying to hide what they're doing.

I had dinner with my mom last night. She told me she made $2.20/hr as a waitress in 1972. Not including tips.

That's the equivalent of over $16/hr now.

The boomers have no idea how lucky they were. And they fucking wasted it.

There's a term for this, HENRY. High Earner, Not Rich Yet. The lie is the "Yet". Millennials and Gen Xers have been struggling to reach the middle class that is kept perpetually out of reach. They have given up on the idea of financial solvency and are going into debt to indulge in luxuries like having children, going on vacations, and living somewhere that isn't a complete shithole. Saving for retirement is as realistic as training to live on Mars, so why bother? Keep digging a financial hole and then lie down and die in it.

I like the implication that economists aren't people

The floor is rising! But, the floor is lava.

Nikki Cimino, a 40-year-old recruiter living in Denver, said she finally saved up enough to buy a condo last year, but missed out on the ultra-low interest rates that had made homeownership more affordable in the early days of the pandemic. Her 5.25% interest rate pushed her monthly payments to $1,650. After a divorce in 2020, she’s shouldering $4,000 in credit card debt.

It's the credit card debt...

Instead of paying that off since 2020, she saved a down payment and bought an expensive condo. She's wasting a shit ton of money on interest because credit cards are all like 20-30%

Credit cards are predatory, if you ever carry a balance to the next month, that needs to be your highest priority.

Do a transfer to get 0% each year if you have to when recovering from emergencies. But paying credit interest for years is insane.

To anyone struggling in the USA and wondering how to possibly get out, just live like Congress and become rich. Then, money problems are way easier to handle. If you have as much money as a Congressman, you will be equally as unconcerned with them as to the state of our union and you will be able to say things are great with a straight face.

Like Dubya said, you should get 2 or 3 more jobs so you can put more food on your family.

I'm in this article and don't like it.

Gary Stevenson explains why this is, and why it's not gonna get better anytime soon.

Her mortgage is $1650/mo, which is incredibly reasonable in Denver. I think this specific person's problems have more to do with her recent divorce. She was used to splitting costs, and probably spent quite a bit on the divorce itself

Consider the possibility that, first and given the political importance they have in the present day, the official numbers that the Economists are using are less than honest.

Also, I know that some countries don't include Housing Inflation - which is huge* - in their Official Inflation. Is that also the case in the US?

Last but not least, there is the whole difference between what is usually reported to us by Politicians, Economists and the Press, which is either country totals (which grow up merelly by the population growing) or the mean average (i.e. adding all values and dividing by the total number of points) which suffers from the "if a man has 10 chickens and 9 others have none, each has in average 1 chicken even though most have none" problem, and the mode (the value around which most cases are found) which is far more representative of most people's experiences: if for example the wealth increases from higher productivity are going entirelly to a few people who just get ever more filthy rich whilst the many have either stagnated or, worse, are getting a bit poorer due to inflation eating up the true value of their pay, the grand total will be growing, as will the average (if the population numbers are steady) but the mode will have stagnated or even be falling, matching the experience of most people - people get to hear about country GDP growing and even GPD-per-capita growing all the while the vast majority see not growth at all, maybe even a falling of their purchasing power (the latter for sure for any who don't already own their house).

A higher quality of living is being gatekept by the wealthy.