Try and think of our global system as an engine that's purpose is to make fuel for itself. It needs to keep it's input above the output in order to keep powered on. As soon as the input drops below output the machine starts to slow down and can no longer sustain itself. The engine is not designed to slow down so it very quickly breaks down
Just sort of curious. Due to the wealthy hoarding and consolidating the worlds resources don’t we sort of have to go through a period of deflation for a “reset”? This is a problem 45 years in the making.
And yet an average home cost $450k. CPI didn’t accurately track the spike of housing cost after COVID. People’s wages in reality are hardly keeping up with inflation and for low income earners they are falling behind.
Your sources don't support your argument the way you think they do.
The AdvisorPerspectives article you linked works against you once you read past the headline. The author straight up calls the chart "a stark rebuttal to the trickle-down theory." Top quintile grew 130.9% in real income since 1967, bottom quintile grew 50.2%. Bottom quintile is also still about 1% below its 2019 peak while the top four quintiles are sitting at record highs. So that's not really the gotcha you think it is.
You're right that housing is in CPI, it's actually the biggest single category, about 35% of it. But CPI measures homeownership cost through owners equivalent rent, basically an estimate of what a home would rent for, not what it actually costs to buy or finance one. Mortgage rates spiked and that gap between what CPI shows and what a buyer actually pays got a lot bigger. That's a different claim than "housing isn't counted."
And on low income wages falling behind, that's not a reddit meme, it's what's happening right now. EPI's February 2026 report found low wage workers' real wages actually dropped in 2025, reversing the gains from the years before. The Hill covered the same thing in August 2025, wage compression basically flipped, lowest earners now have the slowest wage growth of any group.
Wages and income can go up on average while things get more uneven underneath. Both are true. Right now the data backs the second one more than "richer than ever."
That's where I'll leave it. Appreciate the debate.
The AdvisorPerspectives article you linked works against you once you read past the headline. The author straight up calls the chart "a stark rebuttal to the trickle-down theory." Top quintile grew 130.9% in real income since 1967, bottom quintile grew 50.2%.
I'm not using weasel words and spin to try to argue-away facts here.
For all the spin, a 50% increase is a 50% increase, not a decrease.
But CPI measures homeownership cost through owners equivalent rent, basically an estimate of what a home would rent for, not what it actually costs to buy or finance one.
That's because most people aren't purchasing their first home THIS YEAR. Someone with a 20 year old mortgage or a paid off home has a much lower housing cost. Again, you only want to consider the very worst outlier.
Wages and income can go up on average while things get more uneven underneath. Both are true.
Sure, but "things are uneven underneath" is a heluva goalpost shift from the very wrong reddit mantra that costs are rising faster than wages/incomes.
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u/thevoidthatjerksback 8h ago
I doubt that anyone could explain this in a way where I would accept deflation as worse