To be fair - it would be good to also call out the major reasons and actual people involved in this demise. For example - until 1994 Democrats held power in congress for decades. They sponsored all Neoliberal policies and globalization that brought over much of the American demise. Obama messed up when he didn't pay attention to main street hurting due to the financial crisis and all we regular people saw was these crooks getting away with thievery. When we called to get some financial help or refinance my mortgage - no help was available. This is actually true story because when I called someone started to do the budgeting for me (wanting to help me budget so I can pay the mortgage and when I realized that I was in awe). Wall Street thief's, gave each other bonuses and too big to fail became bigger. Democrats DID NOT capitalize on the anger of the Occupy Wall street movement, while Republicans (Koch brothers) financed the Tea Party which gave rise to the sentiment that working class is "bye bye" and during that time the American Dream became officially DEAD. Establishment Dems did everything to minimize Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders for decades who were the only fighters for main street while all Dems did in the past 40 years is Obamacare (a republican plan) and don't ask, don't tell, gays in the military, LGBTQ issues, Gay marriages and or Globalization which meant less jobs here. I despise Trump and dislike Republicans - but at least you knew where they stand for while Dems lied of being on our side while they WHERE NOT!!! Until we don't dissect and spread the blame - there is no way to get credibility back from the American people....
This was my first read.. unknown what you are referring to - but write link. On the subject Pelosi, Hillary, Biden (as Senator) among so many others, and of course all Reps as well as Carson, Rush Limbaugh, Koch Bros and all those exterior forces. When Trump coined "the swamp" some should have gone along and pay in kind with examples of that swamp on the right - not dodge and continue the charade that "all is well" like Hillary did in 2015.. things were not good as you are pointing it out.. Things were so wrong for so long.. And I thought that I am doing things wrong because as a barometer - as a young person without family or support and working a FT job (once 3 jobs) was constantly struggling and kept wondering - IF I am struggling while I am alone - how is everyone else doing?. Well, we've been doing with less or worse got in debt!!! Also what happened to AOC - she caved in?
You’re right, it is, “The Biggest Heist in American History.” Has been for generations. Americans don't want to face that they have been bamboozled, lied-to, and manipulated out of the basics of a humane standard of living. It's all in support of the plutocrats, oligarchs, and politicians. They get everything and want more. I didn't serve this country for this shit.
The flaw in your article is that it fails to recognize that the period of US affluence between roughly 1948 and 1975 was unprecedented and unsustainable. The U.S. won a massive war with its industrial capacity unscathed. It became the pre-eminent global superpower. That was a socio-economic bubble.
OF COURSE domestic wealth is declining in relative terms. While the people of America haven’t been well served by our political elites in the past 45 years, we couldn’t possibly remain an island of un equaled wealth and opportunity world-wide forever.
This "post-war bubble" explanation doesn't align with the actual data. The productivity and wealth-creation capacity of the United States didn't decline after 1975 - it continued to grow substantially. What changed was how those productivity gains were distributed.
My research shows that purchasing power peaked in 1950 and then began a steady decline. But during this same period, American GDP per capita grew from $2,484 in 1950 to over $76,398 in 2023 - an enormous increase in our productive capacity. If our declining purchasing power were simply the result of an unsustainable post-war bubble bursting, we would expect to see GDP stagnation or decline as well.
Instead, what the data shows is a growing disconnect between overall economic growth and individual purchasing power. This isn't about America becoming "poorer" in absolute terms - it's about a fundamental shift in how economic gains are distributed.
The Years of Work (YoW) metric demonstrates this clearly. In 1950, it took 5.06 years of median-wage work to afford a basket of essentials. By 2023, it required 13.27 years - despite massive technological advancement and productivity growth that should have made necessities more affordable, not less.
American workers today produce far more value per hour than workers in 1950, yet they must work nearly three times longer to secure the same basic standard of living. This isn't an inevitable correction from a "bubble" - it's the result of specific policy choices about wages, housing, healthcare, education, and how we structure our economy.
The post-war prosperity wasn't just about America's global position - it was also built on domestic policies that ensured productivity gains translated to broad-based purchasing power: progressive taxation, infrastructure investment, affordable education, housing programs, and strong labor protections.
Our diminished purchasing power isn't the natural order reasserting itself - it's the consequence of abandoning policies that once ensured economic growth benefited the majority of Americans. The mathematical reality shown in the data is that we've built an economy that requires three times more years of human labor for the same basics, despite becoming vastly more productive and wealthy as a nation.
That's not inevitable global rebalancing - it's a choice.
please don't use AI-generated "art". it's not only ugly, but it deprives artists of their livelihoods (while stealing their work for model training). model training is also massively energy-intensive and contributes to significant carbon emissions. such casual disregard for the adverse societal and environmental impacts of AI-generated products undercuts the credibility of "progressive" advocacy. you talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? please do better.
no. i took the time to offer you a serious critique with an opportunity for improvement, and you shot back a thoughtless equivalent of "the ends justify the means". actually, worse than that: "gotta have something" could justify literally anything, including depictions of violence, or CSAM.
no one forced you to use AI-generated images. you could have chosen from a library of free stock images, or from open-source repositories (like the Wikimedia project). if you don't care about the concerns i raised, you can just say so. but the next time you write about environmental collapse, or the economic disenfranchisement of working-class people, i'll remember that you don't take those issues seriously enough to live out the same values that you promote.
But as a small independent free newsletter, the ability to hire someone to produce graphics for social media and thumbnails and the like isn't easy. So, I used some of the tools available to me. One of those tools is AI-generated artwork.
you are creating a false dichotomy: nowhere have i demanded that you either hire a graphics person, or stop publishing. much to the contrary, i contributed to solving the problem by suggesting alternatives. regardless, even if that false dichotomy were true, it wouldn't justify ignoring the consequences of your choices. consider an analogy from America's past: "we are a small and independent plantation, the ability to hire someone to pick our cotton isn't easy. so, we used some of the tools available to us. one of those tools is enslaving Africans." just because you feel your work is important, you can avail yourself of any means to support that work, regardless of its adverse impacts? can you see how that's not a morally defensible justification?
perhaps sometimes "the ends justify the means", for extreme cases where the good of the many is truly in balance against the good of the few. perhaps a guardian who has sworn her life to service, might rightly be commanded to sacrifice that life to avert mass casualties. but is that extreme really true here? is decorating your newsletter with a perfectly apropos thumbnail really more important than fairly compensating artists for their labor, and driving demand for carbon-polluting AI models? those artists are also "small" and "independent", just like you describe yourself. is their dignity as workers less than yours? will your newsletter avert climate disasters accelerated by the fossil fuels it burns to power AI training datacenters? you aren't required to have an ideal thumbnail for your post. Substack will let you publish without checking if your image "feels good enough". even a blank image would have been morally preferable over aggravating the harms wrought by commercialized LLMs.
but again, you always had other choices. maybe you weren't aware. that's okay! every day is an opportunity to learn something new. here are some example searches using Pexels, Unsplash, and Google Images (with licensing filter):
are these as perfectly topical as an image custom-generated by prompting an AI? no. are they adequate? sure. are they morally superior? yes!
please know that i appreciate the challenge you're facing, and i empathize with your struggle to do good work in spite of it. i also understand the critical importance of independent progressive media at this moment in history. and i realize that you and other independent analysts are massively under-resourced versus corporate media firms. i am not here to punish you, provoke shame, or make your life harder for no reason. i simply identified your unintentionally harmful behaviors, asked you to stop them in consideration of their harm, and recommended alternate harm-reducing means to achieve the same goal.
so, please, stop doubling-down. obstinacy towards someone calling you back in to the values you profess, is not a good look for anyone. there is no need to react impulsively to defend your earlier actions. it's okay to be wrong about something. it doesn't mean you're a bad person; it doesn't invalidate your life's work up to that point. and i only became aware of this because i am your subscriber. i am your audience: show me your credibility as a conscientious progressive, worthy of my attention, by taking these critiques in stride (even if you initially doubt them, or feel aversive emotions towards them). please take a beat, reflect on the concerns i've raised, ask a trusted friend about all this, and consider whether maybe — just maybe — there is an opportunity for growth and integrity here. there usually is.
If I’m not mistaken, this is a free post. So give the guy a break. It is valuable information. He is shining a light on one of the biggest problems facing America. And you are lecturing him about ai art.
you are repeating, without contributing any justification, the same ethical fallacy of "the ends justify the means" that i have already addressed. exploitation laundered through a computer, is still exploitation. i haven't demanded that the author stop publishing, nor denigrated the value of their advocacy. i have only asked that they avoid exploiting artists in the process. i even provided alternatives, because i intend to be a part of the solution.
as progressives, we are supposed to represent better morals than right-wing fascists, who purport that the supremacy of their objectives justify every harmful means to obtain them. we are supposed to act with integrity, and actually live out the values that we profess. we don't exonerate people "on our side" just because we generally agree with their political ideology. we are wise enough to understand that good people can accidentally do harm, and we appreciate being called in to growth and progress, because we actually believe in our values.
please engage seriously with the content of my objections, rather than reacting impulsively with aversion to accountability.
We're in a conundrum. This is coup, and will likely lead to a police state as disgruntlement grows. It's a redistribution like we've never seen. And our only solution to this active takeover is, at this time, the Democrat Party. So we go back to the same Party that got us where we are now. If and that's an underscored "If", we are able to go back to that Party. If the midterms actually happen. Think of the chaos if the Dems win the midterms. The alarms need to be going off, but what we hear is milk toast. The word "oligarchy" has lost it punch. Slowly people are beginning to see that this is not what they voted for. And Bernie is rebuilding the populist movement that the Dems destroyed in 2019. I dont have a concrete answer but I, and I know many others have ideas. I hear everybody who rejects the neoliberal solution saying the same thing: we have to build a real populist awakening that will fight for the kind of redistribution that lifts us all up. The atomized left needs to find a linkage. It is too soon to talk about a new party, and the strategy of taking over the Dems seems impossible as long as money is in politics. But I think we are at a moment where "build it and they will come" is our challenge.
This breakdown of America’s economic decline gets one thing absolutely right: the numbers we’ve been fed for decades don’t match lived reality. The “rising wages” story is a statistical mirage, masking the gutting of purchasing power, the financialization of everything, and the relentless upward transfer of wealth.
But let’s be clear—Trump didn’t create this crisis, and he isn’t offering real solutions. He correctly tapped into the anger, but his policies—corporate tax cuts, deregulation of financial markets, and a gutting of public investment—only accelerate the very forces hollowing out the middle class.
The real problem? Our economy was redesigned to reward wealth extraction over wealth creation. Housing shifted from a necessity to a speculative asset. Education became a debt trap instead of a public good. Healthcare became a profit engine rather than a universal right. And wages? They stopped being tied to productivity decades ago because monopolies, financialized markets, and deregulated corporate power killed the bargaining power of workers.
The decline isn’t just economic—it’s political. Both parties have spent decades outsourcing prosperity to Wall Street and telling working people to be grateful for scraps. The problem isn’t just GDP growth—it’s what that growth represents: more debt, more consolidation, more precarity.
The only way out isn’t nostalgia or nationalism—it’s rebuilding an economy that actually works for people. That means reviving antitrust enforcement to break up monopolies, investing in public goods instead of privatizing them, and tying wages back to productivity through stronger worker protections and public sector job guarantees.
Trump exploited the collapse, Democrats ignored it, and official statistics buried it. The only real question left is: Who is going to fight to rebuild an economy where work actually pays, debt isn’t a prerequisite for survival, and prosperity isn’t just an illusion for most Americans?
Don’t forget about taxes. Have to work later to break even for many people.
And my biggest hidden pet peeve, those monthly charges like cell phone plans, steaming services, anti virus software, etc., that we didn’t have 50 or even 25 years ago. Those add it to hundreds of dollars a month and remain very hidden.
All are designed to stealthily drain your bank account.
Your purchasing power calculation seems to leave out two pretty big items, food and clothing. You leave them out because these are tiny items today but they used to be quite big. In 1917, food was 41.1% of the average households budget. In 1950 it was 32.5%. Today it's around 13%.
Clothing was 17% of household budget in 1917. It was 11.6% in 1950. It's 2.6% now.
Housing is certainly more expensive today but your numbers exaggerate that because you calculate raw value, instead of adjusting for interest rates. That means you don't actually show the amount that people are spending in real terms. In 1950, housing was 26% of the average household budget, today it's around 33%. What you also leave out is that the square footage per person has tripled since 1950. No one forced us to buy bigger houses, they built bigger houses and fancier cars because that's what people wanted to buy.
My wife got through college debt free with just a summer job. It's perfectly possible as long as you are frugal and pick the right school. Lots of things have gotten worse, but you've cherry picked the data here to paint an incredibly bleak picture that doesn't match most people's lived experience.
Thanks for engaging with my research, but there are several misunderstandings in your critique that need correction.
First, my analysis tracks individual income against essential costs, not household budget percentages. This distinction matters enormously - when multiple incomes are needed for what one income previously covered, that's not economic progress.
Second, I did include food in my calculations. The data tables in my document clearly show food costs from $116 in 1940 to $7,672 in 2023. The Years of Work (YoW) for food has remained relatively stable (around 0.13-0.18 years), but this doesn't offset the dramatic increases in housing, healthcare, education, and childcare.
Look at the passage: I call this "Years of Work" (YoW)—a direct measure of how much life you trade for necessities. And it tells us more about economic reality than any inflation-adjusted statistic. The study is here, the methodology here, and the data set here. these are links to the data.
Regarding housing size: Yes, houses are larger today, but this isn't solely driven by consumer preference. Builders maximize profits by building larger homes, while zoning laws and development economics have eliminated most affordable starter homes from the market. Many Americans would gladly choose smaller, more affordable options if they existed.
The essential point isn't about percentage of income spent on different categories - it's about how many years of human labor are required to secure basic necessities. By this objective measure:
In 1950, homeownership required 3.73 years of median-wage work
In 2023, it requires 10.16 years - nearly triple the time
For the complete basket of essentials, a median worker in 1950 needed 5.06 years of labor. Today's worker needs 13.27 years for the same necessities. This isn't cherry-picking - it's the mathematical reality of what our labor can purchase.
That's why a worker today earning $42,220 would need to make $102,024 to match what a 1950 worker could buy with $1,971. This is why it now takes three full-time incomes to exceed what one income once provided.
These aren't ideological claims - they're calculations based on median incomes and actual costs of necessities over time. The declining purchasing power of individual labor isn't a theory - it's the mathematical reality driving the economic anxiety so many Americans feel.
To put it another way, the homeownership rate in 1950 was about 55%. Today it is 62%. The percentage of Americans with a college degree was around 7%. It's about 37% today. In 1950 there were 0.28 cars per person, Today there are over 0.78 cars per person.
So if all these things have become less affordable, how do more people own cars, houses, and have college degrees?
I also talk about that in the piece. It's debt. Debt has exploded by 670% in work years per capita since 1950. Consumer debt in the US is more than $18 trillion.
Homeownership increased from 55% to 62%, but look at what happened to mortgage debt. In 1950, one income covered a mortgage that was typically paid off in 20-30 years. Today, it takes two incomes and 30+ years of payments, with households often dedicating 30-50% of their income to housing compared to 15-25% historically.
College degrees increased from 7% to 37%, but we've amassed $1.75 trillion in student loan debt to make that happen. What once took a summer job now takes an average of $37,000 in debt - that's 10.5 months of full-time work at the median wage before even starting your career.
Car ownership went up from 0.28 to 0.78 per person because auto loans expanded from 3-year terms to 5-7 years. The average new car loan is now over $40,000 - nearly a full year's median salary.
What I am measuring is how many years of work at the median nominal wage it takes to purchase a basket of essentials at any point in time. It's straightforward. The data clearly shows Americans now trade 13.27 years of labor for essentials that once required just 5.06 years.
Those higher ownership rates don't contradict my findings - they confirm how we've adapted to declining purchasing power: by working more (dual incomes becoming necessary rather than optional), borrowing massively against our future earnings, and accepting longer commutes and fewer choices.
This isn't prosperity - it's coping with decline by mortgaging more and more of our future.
To be fair - it would be good to also call out the major reasons and actual people involved in this demise. For example - until 1994 Democrats held power in congress for decades. They sponsored all Neoliberal policies and globalization that brought over much of the American demise. Obama messed up when he didn't pay attention to main street hurting due to the financial crisis and all we regular people saw was these crooks getting away with thievery. When we called to get some financial help or refinance my mortgage - no help was available. This is actually true story because when I called someone started to do the budgeting for me (wanting to help me budget so I can pay the mortgage and when I realized that I was in awe). Wall Street thief's, gave each other bonuses and too big to fail became bigger. Democrats DID NOT capitalize on the anger of the Occupy Wall street movement, while Republicans (Koch brothers) financed the Tea Party which gave rise to the sentiment that working class is "bye bye" and during that time the American Dream became officially DEAD. Establishment Dems did everything to minimize Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders for decades who were the only fighters for main street while all Dems did in the past 40 years is Obamacare (a republican plan) and don't ask, don't tell, gays in the military, LGBTQ issues, Gay marriages and or Globalization which meant less jobs here. I despise Trump and dislike Republicans - but at least you knew where they stand for while Dems lied of being on our side while they WHERE NOT!!! Until we don't dissect and spread the blame - there is no way to get credibility back from the American people....
go back a coupe pieces. I name names.
This was my first read.. unknown what you are referring to - but write link. On the subject Pelosi, Hillary, Biden (as Senator) among so many others, and of course all Reps as well as Carson, Rush Limbaugh, Koch Bros and all those exterior forces. When Trump coined "the swamp" some should have gone along and pay in kind with examples of that swamp on the right - not dodge and continue the charade that "all is well" like Hillary did in 2015.. things were not good as you are pointing it out.. Things were so wrong for so long.. And I thought that I am doing things wrong because as a barometer - as a young person without family or support and working a FT job (once 3 jobs) was constantly struggling and kept wondering - IF I am struggling while I am alone - how is everyone else doing?. Well, we've been doing with less or worse got in debt!!! Also what happened to AOC - she caved in?
You’re right, it is, “The Biggest Heist in American History.” Has been for generations. Americans don't want to face that they have been bamboozled, lied-to, and manipulated out of the basics of a humane standard of living. It's all in support of the plutocrats, oligarchs, and politicians. They get everything and want more. I didn't serve this country for this shit.
Neither did my husband. He saw this coming glad he didnt live to see it
The flaw in your article is that it fails to recognize that the period of US affluence between roughly 1948 and 1975 was unprecedented and unsustainable. The U.S. won a massive war with its industrial capacity unscathed. It became the pre-eminent global superpower. That was a socio-economic bubble.
OF COURSE domestic wealth is declining in relative terms. While the people of America haven’t been well served by our political elites in the past 45 years, we couldn’t possibly remain an island of un equaled wealth and opportunity world-wide forever.
This "post-war bubble" explanation doesn't align with the actual data. The productivity and wealth-creation capacity of the United States didn't decline after 1975 - it continued to grow substantially. What changed was how those productivity gains were distributed.
My research shows that purchasing power peaked in 1950 and then began a steady decline. But during this same period, American GDP per capita grew from $2,484 in 1950 to over $76,398 in 2023 - an enormous increase in our productive capacity. If our declining purchasing power were simply the result of an unsustainable post-war bubble bursting, we would expect to see GDP stagnation or decline as well.
Instead, what the data shows is a growing disconnect between overall economic growth and individual purchasing power. This isn't about America becoming "poorer" in absolute terms - it's about a fundamental shift in how economic gains are distributed.
The Years of Work (YoW) metric demonstrates this clearly. In 1950, it took 5.06 years of median-wage work to afford a basket of essentials. By 2023, it required 13.27 years - despite massive technological advancement and productivity growth that should have made necessities more affordable, not less.
American workers today produce far more value per hour than workers in 1950, yet they must work nearly three times longer to secure the same basic standard of living. This isn't an inevitable correction from a "bubble" - it's the result of specific policy choices about wages, housing, healthcare, education, and how we structure our economy.
The post-war prosperity wasn't just about America's global position - it was also built on domestic policies that ensured productivity gains translated to broad-based purchasing power: progressive taxation, infrastructure investment, affordable education, housing programs, and strong labor protections.
Our diminished purchasing power isn't the natural order reasserting itself - it's the consequence of abandoning policies that once ensured economic growth benefited the majority of Americans. The mathematical reality shown in the data is that we've built an economy that requires three times more years of human labor for the same basics, despite becoming vastly more productive and wealthy as a nation.
That's not inevitable global rebalancing - it's a choice.
please don't use AI-generated "art". it's not only ugly, but it deprives artists of their livelihoods (while stealing their work for model training). model training is also massively energy-intensive and contributes to significant carbon emissions. such casual disregard for the adverse societal and environmental impacts of AI-generated products undercuts the credibility of "progressive" advocacy. you talk the talk, but can you walk the walk? please do better.
It's a free newsletter. Gotta have something for a thumbnail!
no. i took the time to offer you a serious critique with an opportunity for improvement, and you shot back a thoughtless equivalent of "the ends justify the means". actually, worse than that: "gotta have something" could justify literally anything, including depictions of violence, or CSAM.
no one forced you to use AI-generated images. you could have chosen from a library of free stock images, or from open-source repositories (like the Wikimedia project). if you don't care about the concerns i raised, you can just say so. but the next time you write about environmental collapse, or the economic disenfranchisement of working-class people, i'll remember that you don't take those issues seriously enough to live out the same values that you promote.
But as a small independent free newsletter, the ability to hire someone to produce graphics for social media and thumbnails and the like isn't easy. So, I used some of the tools available to me. One of those tools is AI-generated artwork.
you are creating a false dichotomy: nowhere have i demanded that you either hire a graphics person, or stop publishing. much to the contrary, i contributed to solving the problem by suggesting alternatives. regardless, even if that false dichotomy were true, it wouldn't justify ignoring the consequences of your choices. consider an analogy from America's past: "we are a small and independent plantation, the ability to hire someone to pick our cotton isn't easy. so, we used some of the tools available to us. one of those tools is enslaving Africans." just because you feel your work is important, you can avail yourself of any means to support that work, regardless of its adverse impacts? can you see how that's not a morally defensible justification?
perhaps sometimes "the ends justify the means", for extreme cases where the good of the many is truly in balance against the good of the few. perhaps a guardian who has sworn her life to service, might rightly be commanded to sacrifice that life to avert mass casualties. but is that extreme really true here? is decorating your newsletter with a perfectly apropos thumbnail really more important than fairly compensating artists for their labor, and driving demand for carbon-polluting AI models? those artists are also "small" and "independent", just like you describe yourself. is their dignity as workers less than yours? will your newsletter avert climate disasters accelerated by the fossil fuels it burns to power AI training datacenters? you aren't required to have an ideal thumbnail for your post. Substack will let you publish without checking if your image "feels good enough". even a blank image would have been morally preferable over aggravating the harms wrought by commercialized LLMs.
but again, you always had other choices. maybe you weren't aware. that's okay! every day is an opportunity to learn something new. here are some example searches using Pexels, Unsplash, and Google Images (with licensing filter):
https://www.pexels.com/search/family%20in%20front%20of%20house%20with%20american%20flag/
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/family-in-front-of-house-with-american-flag
https://www.google.com/search?q=family+in+front+of+house+with+american+flag&sca_esv=ecd31d153daa25b3&udm=2&biw=943&bih=472&tbs=sur%3Acl&sclient=img
https://www.pexels.com/search/poor%20american/
https://unsplash.com/s/photos/poor-family
https://www.google.com/search?q=poor+american+family&sca_esv=ecd31d153daa25b3&udm=2&biw=943&bih=472&tbs=sur%3Acl&sclient=img
are these as perfectly topical as an image custom-generated by prompting an AI? no. are they adequate? sure. are they morally superior? yes!
please know that i appreciate the challenge you're facing, and i empathize with your struggle to do good work in spite of it. i also understand the critical importance of independent progressive media at this moment in history. and i realize that you and other independent analysts are massively under-resourced versus corporate media firms. i am not here to punish you, provoke shame, or make your life harder for no reason. i simply identified your unintentionally harmful behaviors, asked you to stop them in consideration of their harm, and recommended alternate harm-reducing means to achieve the same goal.
so, please, stop doubling-down. obstinacy towards someone calling you back in to the values you profess, is not a good look for anyone. there is no need to react impulsively to defend your earlier actions. it's okay to be wrong about something. it doesn't mean you're a bad person; it doesn't invalidate your life's work up to that point. and i only became aware of this because i am your subscriber. i am your audience: show me your credibility as a conscientious progressive, worthy of my attention, by taking these critiques in stride (even if you initially doubt them, or feel aversive emotions towards them). please take a beat, reflect on the concerns i've raised, ask a trusted friend about all this, and consider whether maybe — just maybe — there is an opportunity for growth and integrity here. there usually is.
If I’m not mistaken, this is a free post. So give the guy a break. It is valuable information. He is shining a light on one of the biggest problems facing America. And you are lecturing him about ai art.
Not about art. This is about workers. It's the same thing as hiring a non-union print shop for leaflets, it's turning against ourselves.
you are repeating, without contributing any justification, the same ethical fallacy of "the ends justify the means" that i have already addressed. exploitation laundered through a computer, is still exploitation. i haven't demanded that the author stop publishing, nor denigrated the value of their advocacy. i have only asked that they avoid exploiting artists in the process. i even provided alternatives, because i intend to be a part of the solution.
as progressives, we are supposed to represent better morals than right-wing fascists, who purport that the supremacy of their objectives justify every harmful means to obtain them. we are supposed to act with integrity, and actually live out the values that we profess. we don't exonerate people "on our side" just because we generally agree with their political ideology. we are wise enough to understand that good people can accidentally do harm, and we appreciate being called in to growth and progress, because we actually believe in our values.
please engage seriously with the content of my objections, rather than reacting impulsively with aversion to accountability.
You are a troll. There is no point responding.
Nope! Artists are workers. Just because we are poor organizations we dont use non-union printers. same, same.
What is with you people. Do you work for Elon Musk? Why are you giving him such a hard time. Go somewhere else and attack MAGA on X
We're in a conundrum. This is coup, and will likely lead to a police state as disgruntlement grows. It's a redistribution like we've never seen. And our only solution to this active takeover is, at this time, the Democrat Party. So we go back to the same Party that got us where we are now. If and that's an underscored "If", we are able to go back to that Party. If the midterms actually happen. Think of the chaos if the Dems win the midterms. The alarms need to be going off, but what we hear is milk toast. The word "oligarchy" has lost it punch. Slowly people are beginning to see that this is not what they voted for. And Bernie is rebuilding the populist movement that the Dems destroyed in 2019. I dont have a concrete answer but I, and I know many others have ideas. I hear everybody who rejects the neoliberal solution saying the same thing: we have to build a real populist awakening that will fight for the kind of redistribution that lifts us all up. The atomized left needs to find a linkage. It is too soon to talk about a new party, and the strategy of taking over the Dems seems impossible as long as money is in politics. But I think we are at a moment where "build it and they will come" is our challenge.
Amen!!
This breakdown of America’s economic decline gets one thing absolutely right: the numbers we’ve been fed for decades don’t match lived reality. The “rising wages” story is a statistical mirage, masking the gutting of purchasing power, the financialization of everything, and the relentless upward transfer of wealth.
But let’s be clear—Trump didn’t create this crisis, and he isn’t offering real solutions. He correctly tapped into the anger, but his policies—corporate tax cuts, deregulation of financial markets, and a gutting of public investment—only accelerate the very forces hollowing out the middle class.
The real problem? Our economy was redesigned to reward wealth extraction over wealth creation. Housing shifted from a necessity to a speculative asset. Education became a debt trap instead of a public good. Healthcare became a profit engine rather than a universal right. And wages? They stopped being tied to productivity decades ago because monopolies, financialized markets, and deregulated corporate power killed the bargaining power of workers.
The decline isn’t just economic—it’s political. Both parties have spent decades outsourcing prosperity to Wall Street and telling working people to be grateful for scraps. The problem isn’t just GDP growth—it’s what that growth represents: more debt, more consolidation, more precarity.
The only way out isn’t nostalgia or nationalism—it’s rebuilding an economy that actually works for people. That means reviving antitrust enforcement to break up monopolies, investing in public goods instead of privatizing them, and tying wages back to productivity through stronger worker protections and public sector job guarantees.
Trump exploited the collapse, Democrats ignored it, and official statistics buried it. The only real question left is: Who is going to fight to rebuild an economy where work actually pays, debt isn’t a prerequisite for survival, and prosperity isn’t just an illusion for most Americans?
The issue is BIGGER more serious, more real, Now; than the real Pay Cut you expose.
A choice Now, between - Pathetic Democrats and Democracy? Or, Repulsive Republicans and Autocracy?
I CHOOSE Democracy; Freedom, Vote, Change, Liberty, Hope
I say NO: to authoritarian greedy billionaires, despair, no vote, no hope.
PS I am Australian, the choice America makes, MATTERS to me, to the Free World.
Hey can you not use AI slop for your article illustration. Looks like shit. Thanks
Don’t forget about taxes. Have to work later to break even for many people.
And my biggest hidden pet peeve, those monthly charges like cell phone plans, steaming services, anti virus software, etc., that we didn’t have 50 or even 25 years ago. Those add it to hundreds of dollars a month and remain very hidden.
All are designed to stealthily drain your bank account.
Senator Warren has been talking about this for years and proposing basic changes in banking policies.
See Robert Reich's "Wealth and Poverty" course. Series free on youtube. No secret how this happened.
Your purchasing power calculation seems to leave out two pretty big items, food and clothing. You leave them out because these are tiny items today but they used to be quite big. In 1917, food was 41.1% of the average households budget. In 1950 it was 32.5%. Today it's around 13%.
Clothing was 17% of household budget in 1917. It was 11.6% in 1950. It's 2.6% now.
Housing is certainly more expensive today but your numbers exaggerate that because you calculate raw value, instead of adjusting for interest rates. That means you don't actually show the amount that people are spending in real terms. In 1950, housing was 26% of the average household budget, today it's around 33%. What you also leave out is that the square footage per person has tripled since 1950. No one forced us to buy bigger houses, they built bigger houses and fancier cars because that's what people wanted to buy.
My wife got through college debt free with just a summer job. It's perfectly possible as long as you are frugal and pick the right school. Lots of things have gotten worse, but you've cherry picked the data here to paint an incredibly bleak picture that doesn't match most people's lived experience.
I explain a lot of this stuff in my post: https://letsberealistic.substack.com/p/american-luxury
Thanks for engaging with my research, but there are several misunderstandings in your critique that need correction.
First, my analysis tracks individual income against essential costs, not household budget percentages. This distinction matters enormously - when multiple incomes are needed for what one income previously covered, that's not economic progress.
Second, I did include food in my calculations. The data tables in my document clearly show food costs from $116 in 1940 to $7,672 in 2023. The Years of Work (YoW) for food has remained relatively stable (around 0.13-0.18 years), but this doesn't offset the dramatic increases in housing, healthcare, education, and childcare.
Look at the passage: I call this "Years of Work" (YoW)—a direct measure of how much life you trade for necessities. And it tells us more about economic reality than any inflation-adjusted statistic. The study is here, the methodology here, and the data set here. these are links to the data.
Regarding housing size: Yes, houses are larger today, but this isn't solely driven by consumer preference. Builders maximize profits by building larger homes, while zoning laws and development economics have eliminated most affordable starter homes from the market. Many Americans would gladly choose smaller, more affordable options if they existed.
The essential point isn't about percentage of income spent on different categories - it's about how many years of human labor are required to secure basic necessities. By this objective measure:
In 1950, homeownership required 3.73 years of median-wage work
In 2023, it requires 10.16 years - nearly triple the time
For the complete basket of essentials, a median worker in 1950 needed 5.06 years of labor. Today's worker needs 13.27 years for the same necessities. This isn't cherry-picking - it's the mathematical reality of what our labor can purchase.
That's why a worker today earning $42,220 would need to make $102,024 to match what a 1950 worker could buy with $1,971. This is why it now takes three full-time incomes to exceed what one income once provided.
These aren't ideological claims - they're calculations based on median incomes and actual costs of necessities over time. The declining purchasing power of individual labor isn't a theory - it's the mathematical reality driving the economic anxiety so many Americans feel.
To put it another way, the homeownership rate in 1950 was about 55%. Today it is 62%. The percentage of Americans with a college degree was around 7%. It's about 37% today. In 1950 there were 0.28 cars per person, Today there are over 0.78 cars per person.
So if all these things have become less affordable, how do more people own cars, houses, and have college degrees?
I also talk about that in the piece. It's debt. Debt has exploded by 670% in work years per capita since 1950. Consumer debt in the US is more than $18 trillion.
Homeownership increased from 55% to 62%, but look at what happened to mortgage debt. In 1950, one income covered a mortgage that was typically paid off in 20-30 years. Today, it takes two incomes and 30+ years of payments, with households often dedicating 30-50% of their income to housing compared to 15-25% historically.
College degrees increased from 7% to 37%, but we've amassed $1.75 trillion in student loan debt to make that happen. What once took a summer job now takes an average of $37,000 in debt - that's 10.5 months of full-time work at the median wage before even starting your career.
Car ownership went up from 0.28 to 0.78 per person because auto loans expanded from 3-year terms to 5-7 years. The average new car loan is now over $40,000 - nearly a full year's median salary.
What I am measuring is how many years of work at the median nominal wage it takes to purchase a basket of essentials at any point in time. It's straightforward. The data clearly shows Americans now trade 13.27 years of labor for essentials that once required just 5.06 years.
Those higher ownership rates don't contradict my findings - they confirm how we've adapted to declining purchasing power: by working more (dual incomes becoming necessary rather than optional), borrowing massively against our future earnings, and accepting longer commutes and fewer choices.
This isn't prosperity - it's coping with decline by mortgaging more and more of our future.