Is the only chance of reprieve to get paid more?
In: 344
Inflation basically never goes in reverse to become deflation (you wouldn’t want it to anyway), so the sticker prices you see at the store will never go down (long-term). But when you account for inflation, cost of living has fallen before, and could fall again. People don’t notice it much but a lot of day-to-day goods we buy have gotten substantially cheaper over the last 40 years. The amount of a household’s budget that goes to food and clothing has gone down significantly since the mid 20th century. Minor luxuries like furniture and electronics have gotten much cheaper as well. TVs are the most notable example, they’re so cheap now that they’ve become disposable, the whole profession of “TV repairman” disappeared because it’s not even worth paying someone to fix a broken TV, you can just buy a new one for less than $100.
That’s all pretty nice, it’s just that all the savings we got from that was more than canceled out by the colossal rise in the prices of housing, healthcare, and college education.
Latest Answers