'I’m making the most money I've ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck'

“There’s this wild disconnect between what people are experiencing and what economists are experiencing,” says Nikki Cimino, a recruiter in Denver.

  • spyd3r@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    6 months ago

    Every year the value of our money goes down because the government keeps printing more of it like its a cocaine addiction (This is on top of prices going up for other reasons as well).

    Unless you’re getting huge raises every year you’re never going to get ahead, and if you’re getting nothing, you’re actually losing money.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      2·
      6 months ago

      Unless you’re getting huge raises every year you’re never going to get ahead, and if you’re getting nothing, you’re actually losing money.

      Also if you’re getting raises below the cost of living increase (which most people are), you’re losing money. If you get laid off, which hundreds of thousands of tech workers are, you’re definitely losing money. It’s not a great time right now.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
      1·
      6 months ago

      It’s way worse than that.

      I suggest you go read the paper entitled “Money making creation in the modern economy” from the Bank Of England, but I’ll summarize it here:

      • In the modern economy money is almost entirelly numbers in computers and most of it is created by banks when they extend loans (they literally create that money right then and there as two entries in two ledgers, one a credit on the account of the lendee an another a debit on a special account of the bank saying that they are missing that much money).

      The “good” old days when all the money was created by governments has been gone since the 90s and the advent of digital account keeping and digital money transfers. A banking license is de facto a license to print money, though within certain conditions, with central banks somewhat limiting that money creation by imposing reserve ratios on banks (i.e. money that they do have to put aside against those outstanding loans) which can be as little as 2% of the outstanding amount.

      Edit: the title of the paper was slightly wrong. Also, here is a link to it.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
      11·
      6 months ago

      This is false and understanding why it’s false is important in order for us to be able to do the right choices which allow us to both keep inflation in check and avoid pointless deep recessions or depressions. You can find a decent overview here. Creating money (multiple ways, check video) is required for a growing economy to keep prices stable (inflation close to 0). This isn’t new either. It was done even in ancient Greece with silver as it is easy to see the need for it once you have all the variables in front of you. The problem isn’t with money creation per se, it’s with the amount but most importantly its distribution. Where does it go. Does it go towards the creation of an additional bag of chip which we have little real constraint to do, or does it go towards a house in an area where there’s bidding wars for houses and no new houses can be built.