I could work two hours a day and still get all my tasks done. I could do that, go to my next job, and do another two hours of work and double my income. But because I have to have my butt in a chair in an office eight hours a day on the off chance my boss thinks of something additional for me to do, I'm stuck being four times more inefficient than I need to be.

This is the answer. For 50 years now wages have remained stagnant while productivity has gone up through the roof. We are being robbed decade after decade, and by now claims of “strongest economy” feel like slaps in the face. Many of us are earning more than ever before, yes, but also have less purchasing power than ever before.

Remember that in the 1950s a high school grad could support a family of 4 with a house and car on a single income. That’s how much has been taken from us by the rich and corporations.

Ding ding ding. I have no idea where they're pulling these numbers from when my grocery bill has doubled since the pandemic. I wish it was only 26% higher.

It's the gaslighting that's pissing people off. "The economy is great!" ... "For who?!"

In fact you'd need about a 35% to 50% pay increase to be feeling the same as you did pre pandemic.

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=100&year1=202001&year2=202402

That's high -- CPI is up 20.29% from January 2020 to February 2024.

Bit mitted about it.

The bubble will burst eventually, it's just a matter of when. Unfortunately it's not next week.

80% higher for me. It went up 29% from November alone

Yea, most of these estimates I've seen are wildly understanding the increased costs of everything.

And now much has pay gone up?

This was at my grocery store the other day in the LA area.

There’s also the disconnect of what is being made by manufacturers versus what many people want. An overpriced and massive luxury SUV has never appealed to me, yet that is basically the primary vehicle being made. I could buy a new car if I wanted to, all 3 of mine are paid off but there isn’t a single new car being made that I want to drive more than my 2017 Ford Focus. If it was totaled tomorrow I would absolutely pay a premium to get it replaced rather than buy something new. When supply is low prices come up and used cars are a commodity that is desirable to many and not available from current manufacturers. 5000 lb EVs just do not appeal to me in any way.

The chip shortage is the auto industry own fault. Historically auto manufactures used older prosses nodes (40nm) as it was cheap and widely available however that node they are on is now outdated to the point where there's not that many fabs manufacturing that size of chips anymore.

To make things worse the silicon industry moved to a larger wafer design which would require the auto industry to invest in new hardware to support the larger wafer and redesign/validate the ICs for the smaller node all of which requires spending money they won't see a return in for a significant amount of time.

Manufacturers also cut production in march of 2020, stating that it was for worker safety. However, I believe it was because they figured sales would plummet if the pandemic was very bad. I assume their projections for death were much higher than in actuality. With COVID mainly affecting older people they did lose a large amount of new vehicle buyers as older people are much more likely to buy a new vehicle. When they shut down production, it had hysteretic effects down the supply chain due to jit (just in time) manufacturing. Without orders, may suppliers also had to cut production of vehicle parts, especially chip manufacturers, which are mainly in China. When vehicle production started back up, suppliers had to also catch up with demand.