Not long ago, Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed that "For the last 45 years the average American today has not seen a nickel more in real wages than he or she got 45 years ago." More recently, Warren has lamented "a generation of stagnant wages."
Factcheck.org, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, has shown that after falling for about 20 years, wages have been climbing since the mid-1990s.
So forget for one moment the data and think about what today's wages can bring compared to wages in the 1960s and 1970s.
Economist Donald Boudreaux, inspired by work done in 1999 by Michael Cox, then chief economist at the Dallas Federal Reserve, and journalist Richard Alm, has produced a particularly useful method of comparing different eras - how many hours it takes the average worker to buy goods and services.
Boudreaux looked at 400 items from a 1975 Sears catalog and found only a single item that required the buyer to put in more time at work to purchase today than it did four decades earlier - men's work boots.
"For all of the other goods in my sample - including, but not limited to, clothing, household appliances and furniture, recreational equipment, and auto supplies - the amount of time that a typical American worker today must work to earn enough income to buy those goods is less than in 1975, and in most cases it is much less."
Incidentally, paying for that phone, says economist Mark J. Perry, would take "Fewer than 10 hours of work at the average hourly wage today of $20.35," while those 13 products would in 1991 have required "290.4 hours of work" - nearly two months - "At the average hourly wage then of $10.52.".
https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/02/democrats-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/
Factcheck.org, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, has shown that after falling for about 20 years, wages have been climbing since the mid-1990s.
So forget for one moment the data and think about what today's wages can bring compared to wages in the 1960s and 1970s.
Economist Donald Boudreaux, inspired by work done in 1999 by Michael Cox, then chief economist at the Dallas Federal Reserve, and journalist Richard Alm, has produced a particularly useful method of comparing different eras - how many hours it takes the average worker to buy goods and services.
Boudreaux looked at 400 items from a 1975 Sears catalog and found only a single item that required the buyer to put in more time at work to purchase today than it did four decades earlier - men's work boots.
"For all of the other goods in my sample - including, but not limited to, clothing, household appliances and furniture, recreational equipment, and auto supplies - the amount of time that a typical American worker today must work to earn enough income to buy those goods is less than in 1975, and in most cases it is much less."
Incidentally, paying for that phone, says economist Mark J. Perry, would take "Fewer than 10 hours of work at the average hourly wage today of $20.35," while those 13 products would in 1991 have required "290.4 hours of work" - nearly two months - "At the average hourly wage then of $10.52.".
https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/02/democrats-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics/
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