Quote:
Originally Posted by crazy_eoj
Your assertion is absolutely false by any metric, but especially the most important ones; life expectancy, average earnings, etc. Wealth may be concentrating at the top, but pretending that the entire globe hasn't seen (and continues to see) massive increases in wealth under capitalism is a bizarre statement.
|
The cost of living has also increased dramatically, particularly in NA. Cost of housing, essential services, internet, phones, personal computers, cars, food, school, etc.. have all increased in price.
The cost of something like a personal computer may have decreased since laptops and such were actually becoming part of our everyday lives, but the fact that you basically need one means it's an added expense that wasn't necessarily there even a few years ago.
So while the number of dollars on people's pay cheques may have increased, their purchasing power over and above their essentials, has decreased IMO (IMO because I don't really have time to go through and compare all these things right now. Having school project flashbacks going through StatsCan). The thing that's tough about showing this is we can't necessarily use averages across the board. Of course as anyone brings in more wealth, whether at the top or the bottom, it will bring the average up. So while we may have seen average household income increase, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is getting a share of that average increase. And so even if the average HH income rate is above inflation or the CPI, that doesn't necessarily mean that people who are at the bottom end of that are better off. In fact, they are falling behind. Again, don't have time to peruse the data, but here is a quote from an MIT professor of Economic Geography and Regional Planning:
Quote:
An analysis of the living wage, compiling geographically specific expenditure data for food, childcare, health care, housing, transportation, and other basic necessities, finds that:
The minimum wage does not provide a living wage for most American families. A typical family of four (two working adults, two children) needs to work nearly two full-time minimum wage jobs each (a 77-hour work week per working adult) to earn a living wage. A single parent with two children needs to work the equivalent of three and one half full-time jobs (139 hours per work week), more hours than there are in five days, to earn the living wage on a minimum wage income.
|
http://livingwage.mit.edu/articles/1...ily-live-on-it