A new Harris poll for The Guardian found that the majority of Americans believe that the U.S. is in a recession.
This is patently untrue.�
The U.S. is experiencing an ...
It seems like you read but didn’t understand what I said.
When you say that the US “didn’t experience the same economic effects as the UK”, I respond with “it doesn’t matter”. It doesn’t matter why the US didn’t experience a worse economy, just that it didn’t. When you say that wages lagged behind inflation for the 50 years prior, I absolutely dispute that conclusion. It seems like you saw someone else talk about it, thought “this sounds true”, and then didn’t look at the data, which is much more mixed:
You think that the “consumer price index” is different from inflation. The consumer price index is a method for measuring inflation, and you being confused by this honestly makes me want to dismiss all remaining credibility you held. This is like if I said “temperature scales measure how hot or cold something is” and you replied, “no, that’s a thermometer”.
I never claimed that wages increase because employers are “nice”. I assert that employers are more willing to give higher wage increases in good economic conditions, because such conditions give workers more bargaining power. Employers in better economic conditions have more money to give to wage increases, so workers are more able to extract that money through wage negotiations. Compare this to bad economic conditions when employers are going to be much less able to give raises or when the labour force is shrinking, causing supply in the labour market to outpace demand (driving down wages). If the economy is growing, there is more demand for labour, and thus suppliers of labour (workers) are able to demand higher prices (wages). Is this really so hard to grasp?
It seems like you read but didn’t understand what I said.
When you say that the US “didn’t experience the same economic effects as the UK”, I respond with “it doesn’t matter”. It doesn’t matter why the US didn’t experience a worse economy, just that it didn’t. When you say that wages lagged behind inflation for the 50 years prior, I absolutely dispute that conclusion. It seems like you saw someone else talk about it, thought “this sounds true”, and then didn’t look at the data, which is much more mixed:
You think that the “consumer price index” is different from inflation. The consumer price index is a method for measuring inflation, and you being confused by this honestly makes me want to dismiss all remaining credibility you held. This is like if I said “temperature scales measure how hot or cold something is” and you replied, “no, that’s a thermometer”.
I never claimed that wages increase because employers are “nice”. I assert that employers are more willing to give higher wage increases in good economic conditions, because such conditions give workers more bargaining power. Employers in better economic conditions have more money to give to wage increases, so workers are more able to extract that money through wage negotiations. Compare this to bad economic conditions when employers are going to be much less able to give raises or when the labour force is shrinking, causing supply in the labour market to outpace demand (driving down wages). If the economy is growing, there is more demand for labour, and thus suppliers of labour (workers) are able to demand higher prices (wages). Is this really so hard to grasp?