This does explain much of your misunderstanding. "Real" means inflation-adjusted. Ecriture d'adulte's chart is of real median personal income, i.e. inflation-adjusted median personal income. In nominal terms (i.e. in the actual dollar amount in their paycheck), the median personal income in 1975 was not $25K, but closer to $7600. It's only when you convert that nominal 1975 income of $7600 into its equivalent in 2019 dollars (i.e. "real" income) that it shows up as $25K.

EDIT: ponied.

They really do not try hard to teach finance/econ as of the early 2000s at least. I had 1 semester of econ as an elective but 4 years of English, slogging through The Scarlet Letter etc. So i definitely agree with you on that.

Ok well 8000$ in 1975 into 2019 $ equal around 38 000$ On multiple sites that I try to convert on , shrug .
So it kinda fit to the pew research narrative that income hasn’t really move up for decades ?
Or maybe the Fast converter I try on multiple sites are wrong ....

Most online inflation calculators use CPI-U (Consumer Price Index - Urban Consumers), an older measure of inflation, whereas most researchers, including the Federal Reserve chart ecriture d'adulte posted, use CPI-U-RS. The main difference is that CPI-U-RS uses the current CPI methodology to recalculate prior years CPI changes instead of just using the numbers that were published each year regardless of how CPI was calculated at that time.

According to CPI-U inflation has been a bit higher, so $7600 would be worth more in current dollars by that inflation measure. If you are interested, here is the BLS page about these measures.

No it's about the fact that when you buy something from another economy you give them your wealth. You prop up their entire supply chain and you get one disposable item in return.

The US worker can't compete with countries that employ slave labor or force school children to work in factories like China does. But that's not an issue unless we decide to buy that slavery with our middle class jobs.

Sure, opiates are okay when you need them. It's just building a lifestyle around them that causes predictable problems. Building an economy around a trade deficit will have similar predictable bad outcomes.

And lol at the high paid US jobs that no one else can do. Engineers are the new factory workers. And since they've been trained not to organize they'll be easy to fleece. Hell, I know one or two that will sit there and proudly explain how they don't have good health care or a pension and work 60 hour weeks. lol Dummies.




I mean, you do a good job of putting lipstick on the goat but I'm still not taking her out.

Right. That real income hasn't grown as fast as real aggregate wealth or real earnings is (I think) an argument that can be made. But other developed countries have similar problems and flat real wages is not inconsistent with increased standards of living.. That's specifically about the UK after the great recession, but it shows how multifaceted the issue is. Overall, I think trade is being unfairly scapegoated, especially when according to your own arguments, it causes increases in real wages by providing cheaper goods. Who's to say we wouldn't have had falling real wages if we arbitrarily insisted on no trade deficit?

Nah, what's actually happening is we give them little pieces of paper with pictures of famous Americans on them in exchange for goods. Those pieces of paper are only valuable insofar as they can buy things in the American economy. If other countries or businesses decide they want to hold onto a bunch of American IOUs instead of buying things immediately, fine, go for it. Seems to me more like a sign of confidence in the productivity and stability of the American economy.

Slavery is a bad economic system. To have a rich economy you need innovation, advances in technology, and entrepreneurship. Those come from free markets and free labor. You need to update your economic views past the nineteenth-century.

Similarly with child labor - much better for the economy to invest money in a good education for kids so that when they are adults they are educated enough to work in more productive jobs. Other countries are too poor or otherwise unable to make this investment in education, but the US is not.

You're telling me I need to update my economic views when I remind you of the evils of the Chinese economy ?

Dude, don't shoot the messenger. Or if you're going to try, pull your head out of your ass first so you don't shoot your own nuts off.


Sure, having a world currency is nice. Having an economy that's serving the citizens is nice too. But the Clintons were terrible at doing business deals and needed the US workers to make their fortune. lol The American dream at work.

The CCP's current oppression of the Uyghur's, including using them as forced labor, is deeply wrong and worthy of condemnation. However, that is not the source of Chinese economic growth over the last few decades, which is a great humanitarian triumph in bringing hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

Sure, China has resources and labor. They should have an economy that works for their citizens. They just don't need us to give them our wealth to enrich a few of our politicians.

And of course there is a country that has really come pretty close to implementing this sort of MAGAnomics philosophy:

1. Maintain a trade surplus to avoid shipping job overseas
2. Hold large amounts of foreign debt to take wealth from other countries
3. Restrict immigration to boost domesticate wages

Unfortunately that country is Japan who's seen far worse real wage growth than the US, EU etc.