Petah?

[u/Melodic_Judge_129]

[u/Civil_Act1864]

But when prices go up our labor doesn't?

[u/ellamking → u/Civil_Act1864]

Wages track prices both directions, but the inverse isn't stable. If prices go up and wages lag, company is extra profitable. If prices go down and wages lag, the company goes bankrupt. Negative profits doesn't mean less production, it collapses to 0 production.

[u/notaredditer13 → u/Civil_Act1864]

Wages/incones go up faster than inflation almost all the time:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2025/09/17/u-s-household-incomes-over-50-years-the-great-divide

[u/Civil_Act1864 → u/notaredditer13]

The federal minimum wage has not gone up since 2009

[u/Pristine-Aspect-3086 → u/Civil_Act1864]

the wages people actually earn go up

[u/notaredditer13 → u/Civil_Act1864]

That's meaningless since almost nobody makes the federal minimum wage.  The main impact of not raising it is the number of people making it has cratered.

[u/cpool06 → u/notaredditer13]

Consider yourself lucky to be far enough removed from that life to be able to believe that nobody makes the federal minimum wage. A lot of people definitely do.

[u/KypAstar → u/cpool06]

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2023/home.htm

No, they don't. 1% of the country is on the fed minimum wage. Most states have higher minimum wages, and most companies that pay that don't exist very long.

[u/throwawayforjustyou → u/KypAstar]

1% of the country is three and a half million people. Don't let your vision of the whole obscure the reality of these people. It's bleak.

[u/notaredditer13 → u/throwawayforjustyou]

So, I know your username is telling, but 1% is of workers, not the entire population. It's more like 1.6 million.  And no, that's not a lot as a fraction of population nor does it account for who those people are/what their situation.  

Anyway, you're digging hard for relevance in an extreme outlier, far away from the point I made.

[u/throwawayforjustyou → u/notaredditer13]

You ever hear the old Stalin line "one death is a tragedy, but a million is a statistic"? It describes how the sheer volume of people makes us numb to their suffering. Without a doubt, 1.6m is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall population. Without a doubt, they're outliers.

They're also still people with full and complicated lives. People like the OP you were responding to are more readily able to keep that in mind, but strategically-oriented individuals like yourself can struggle with that. I'm suggesting to check yourself to ensure that doesn't happen.

[u/Limp-Comfortable460 → u/notaredditer13]

You are correct, however, you should look up how many people make less than $15 an hour.

[u/haleboy44 → u/Civil_Act1864]

You think too much.

[u/HonorableMedic → u/haleboy44]

We need to do something about that. Dismantle everything.

[u/KypAstar → u/haleboy44]

No just uninformed. Wages do go up on net faster than inflation. Covid started a period of borderline hyperinflation that rapidly outpaced that trend.

This isn't esoteric or hidden information; it would take 5 seconds of googling to find.

[u/functional_moron → u/Civil_Act1864]

Because what we've experienced recently wasn't actually inflation by the definition that matters. Real inflation is our currency losing value. The "inflation" that happened with covid was all the corporations working together to raise prices across the board on everything but labor. It was just flat out theft. Going in the other direction would actually benefit real people.

[u/Potential_Anxiety_76 → u/Civil_Act1864]

Now you get it!

[u/nalaloveslumpy → u/Civil_Act1864]

Correct. That's called profit and you don't get any. Your labor is a cost and costs must go down.

[u/Manzhah → u/Civil_Act1864]

It should but at some point workers in many countries stoped demanding it.

[u/Ok_Tonight_4597 → u/Civil_Act1864]

lol ya “economist” slop rarely makes sense