President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Wages have stagnated over the last 40 years? The median household income 40 years ago was between $9,500 and $10,000 a year. Today it's somewhere between $65K and $70K. Even in real terms (whatever measurement you want to use, PCE, CPI, etc), wages have gone up in inflation-adjusted terms over that time period.

 

I went back 50 years ago. What I was saying still stands. Wages (and real wages, too) are up over the last 40 years. The time frame doesn't matter. Wages aren't stagnating.

The argument people usually make was the second one that @Kato just made about wages not keeping up with productivity gains. FWIW, that depends on how you measure productivity. It's one of those things that can be turned into whatever narrative you want it to be. I think the proof of the pudding is that people's standards of living (whatever their nominal salaries were then or now) have not stagnated over the last 40 years. The majority of the population owns all kinds of stuff that does things that were unimaginable 40 years ago.