Decades of (adjusted) wage stagnation is a real problem, though.
By any remotely sound measure, the purchasing power of American wages has been in steep decline for at least two generations. A young (say, 24-35 bracket), educated worker must spend a far greater sum of their income on basic necessities than their parents and the gap to their grandparents is even more vast. While recent inflation trends have been extreme, inflation has been a constant for decades, and wages have not remotely kept place (save in a few narrow sectors during "bubbles"). This trend is approaching the limit of its sustainability. In many US cities, a single-income family can't meet even basic expenses, and there is little sign that that will change without some form of radical change. This is a ticket to not only potential economic collapse but to possible violent unrest (even we distracted, complacent 'Murricans have our limits). The "free" (it isn't) market system will not and probably cannot fix this.
|