• dream_weasel
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      21 month ago

      Agreed.

      It is, in fact, time to stop being the bigger person and start being the more effective person. I don’t care if we set an example, let’s get some shit done.

      • @kiljoy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        21 month ago

        Doing enough should be dragging price gouging executives through the street. But I guess wagging a finger at them will definitely make my grocery bill go down🤷🏼‍♂️

          • Furthermore, wage growth has been beating inflation for the most recent 12 months.

            Man, the way they calculated this statistic is so misleading, and counter intuitive to the claim it’s ridiculous.

            The only reason for “real wage growth” is shown as outpacing inflation is because they aren’t counting people who lost their job because of COVID as a loss of income, but as someone exiting the job market.

            Basically “wages” increased because the majority of people who lost their jobs were low income earners, leaving more white collar jobs to represent wage earnings.

              • It’s in the article you linked as a source… Did you not read it?

                As the figure shows, average real wages rose sharply at the onset of the pandemic, but that’s because the bottom dropped out of the labor market when millions of lower-wage workers lost their jobs. Average real wages then fell sharply in the pandemic recovery as many of those lower-wage workers returned to work, pulling down the average.

                The problem with economic studies is that they are usually made by people trying to argue one point or another, it’s not the same as scientific study where proving or disproving your hypothesis is an academic benefit either way.

                It makes it easy to quantify, something unlike “wages out pacing inflation”, you just have to redifine some terms, and then something like thousand of lay offs becomes a net positive instead of a bleak reality.

                • Blackbeard
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                  -11 month ago

                  Point taken. Still, though, the commenter I was replying to seemed to be suggesting stagnant wages and minimum wage both need attention. Despite the fact that the post-Covid wage gain boost seems to be an artifact of a labor market distortion, the rest of my sources show very real and very public pushes for measures that could meaningfully address the stagnation if they were passed into law. If effort is what people are clamoring for, there seems to be no shortage of it. It just seems to me that folks don’t like to engage with the actual political realities of our situation, whereby we still need a broad consensus to achieve any legislative movement, and that broad consensus is impossible as long as Republicans share power at the Congressional level. They seem to be blaming Democrats for the fact that Republicans exist and are intransigent.

                  • rest of my sources show very real and very public pushes for measures that could meaningfully address the stagnation if they were passed into law. If effort is what people are clamoring for, there seems to be no shortage of it.

                    I think that’s a fairly subjective interpretation. Is a bill being written and endorsed by part of the party an indication of “real effort”?

                    I think the problem a lot of people hold, myself included, is that the democratic party lacks the leadership that turns “real effort” into law.

                    When republican leadership lays out their political agenda their whips make sure that their members in the Senate and the House (to a lesser extent post Jan 6) toe the line. If you don’t make the party’s position a priority then you lose your committee memberships, or are passed over for funding.

                    I think the problem is that the DNC leadership’s only qualifier is seniority, so the “progressive” party is being helmed by ancient millionaires who were only really progressive by comparison during the regan era.

                    They seem to be blaming Democrats for the fact that Republicans exist and are intransigent.

                    I can see your point, but this also ignores the fact that a lot of powerful Democrats are basically center right on the political compass and have been effectively captured by corporate interests, and have been for decades.

                    You could argue that their commitment to third way politics has caused the current political situation where conservatives feel confident enough to be this intransigent in the first place. I personally feel that democratic leadership would rather have someone like Trump in the Whitehouse than someone like Bernie Sanders.