"Median income has risen 23%" factoid actualy just statistical error. average income has not risen per year. Billionaire Bob, who lives in a Tesla & steals candy from over 10,000 babies each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted

I was going to say I don't think median income works here, you need like average middle-class. People buying their one and only home incomes. Median is absolutely skewed buy top 1% yanking the middle far far higher than it is.

You’ve got that backwards, Median is not affected by extremes like Average (Mean) is. Median is the exact middle of the dataset, Mean will be shifted hard by billionaires.

🖤

This this this! Outliers fuck up everything, don't we?

Seems sustainable!

Thank our corporate overlords.

TRUMP said on DAY 1 he would lower housing costs, food costs, very cost. They have all gone up in the last 6 MONTHS.

Yeah I’m glad I was able to buy a house before he started getting his fingerprints on the economy.

Me Too!

😳🫤

The road to ‘Making America Great Again’ feels remarkably similar to the road to ‘Making America Poor AF Unless You Have Enough to Buy American’s Debt and Then Reap the Benefits of Foreclosing the Assets of the Entire Middle Class’. Not great for a hat though. ‘MAPAFUYHEBABTRBFAEMC’

bsky.app/profile/patr...

I believe it. We bought our home in late 2019 and its value has increased by 77% in those 5 years.

But the economy is fine!

The entire, the only, purpose of American fiscal and monetary policy is to make asset prices go up.

Unsustainable. Waiting for the Market Crash.

Might have been a bad idea to pump trillions of dollars into the economy, directed to the rich, inflating assets prices. Might be a good idea to tax some of it back with a wealth tax idk

I got a 1.5% raise last year.

Every administration no matter what party will be voted out until housing and rent costs are tackled.

"median wage has risen 23%" okay man I guess you really can just say whatever the fuck you want online 😂

$1002/week in 2020, $1196/week in 2025. I think that comes out to a bit under 20%, so 23% would depend on what exact quarter you're comparing. Why do you think it's wrong? www.bls.gov/opub/ted/202... www.bls.gov/opub/ted/202...

I'll hazard a guess that his personal income has not increased by that amount.

It's also worth noting that inflation has outpaced this growth, so even if we're making more numerically, we can buy less with it than before. data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpic...

I don't think it takes Nostradamus to confidently state that home prices are too high and mortgage rates are also too high. Considering it's virtually assured Trump is going to fire any fed officers that deny him rate cuts too long, it would be pretty stupid to buy property right now.

Rate cuts mean cheaper mortgage payments when price of housing stays static. In practice, rate cuts tend to inflate housing prices (because a buyer with can now pay the same monthly for a higher price tag) It might be stupid to finance property right now, but cash buyers are going to do just fine.

Again, just another transfer of wealth to the already wealthy.

Low rates will obviously lead to higher inflation over time. Trump doesn't care because he's a career real estate holder that lives off asset inflation equity (and more recently our taxes). There will be a sweet spot when the rates drop before the prices skyrocket again. That'll be the time to buy.

Ah yes this person gets it - exactly, an unfortunate percentage of the buyers currently are investment funds with the cash to buy up residential real estate like BlackRock and unfortunately Berkshire Hathaway

... Never mind the unemployment, economic collapse, and desperate house sales that are coming. AND Boomers finally, finally dying off and their estates selling off their multiple properties. Nobody was a brain is buying a house RN

Median income is only rising because these CEOs are paying themselves more than ever.

That raises average income, not the median.

Could it not raise both?

Nope. Half of all households are at or below the median income. Musk earning more doesn’t change that half-way point.

That’s why median is a better measure of income distribution

Interesting. I get why median would be a better measure of distribution, but I had (perhaps mistakenly) thought if c-suite execs across the border were being paid more (they are) that would also raise the median. Thanks! Much more of a words gal. Numbers give me hives. 🙃

An example to keep in your back pocket: patrons in a small bar have an average and median net wealth of $10,000. (Half of them have $10,000 or less). Musk and a Buddhist monk walk into the bar. The average wealth is now in the billions, but the median is still $10,000.

Appreciate ya, Jim!!

At this point, owning a home in the United States is a money racket. Everything about it is designed to extract as much money as possible from people. You don't even own it if you have a mortgage and you'll have to pay taxes, insurance, repairs, and maintenance forever. It's no longer sustainable.

A home is not an asset. It is an expense. People have been convinced that homes are their biggest asset when until you sell it, it is a cost.

And it takes a lot of time just to clean and maintain, especially if there is a yard involved. People literally work all week to pay for something and then spend the majority of their free time and money caring for it. It gets tiresome.

My solution was to convert much of the yard to productive use. We have four gardens, a berry garden, fig tree, and blueberry shrub. Next month we prep an area for the grapes to go in this spring. Now we get something for the effort.

So basically if you weren't in a house before, just give up and get used to renting for the rest of your life.

Beef is $8 per pound, and minimum wage (no tips) is $7.65 -- right now, an American working minimum wage has to work 2 hours to afford one pound of beef. And snap benefits are being cut, along with health care, housing, etc. This is slavery.

I live in the red state of Floriduh and minimum wage is higher than that. Who the hell works for federal min wage anymore???

As of 2025, the five states that have not adopted a state minimum wage & therefore operate under the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour are Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, & Tennessee. Additionally, Georgia, Oklahoma, & Wyoming have state minimum wages below the federal rate.

A lot of people, especially in the service industry, the home-care / nursing home industry, and retail. They are the 30-hour workforce employees who are paid minimum wage, then the govt picks up their health care, housing vouchers and Medicaid. Can't ask WS to pay benefits any longer. $$$

Sounds miserable. Oh well

It's been that way for decades. WalMart, Home Depot, restaurants -- all decided on 30-hour weekly work shifts in order to bypass paying for insurance, vacation, 401K, etc. For decades, our government has been paying for the working poor. The minimum was created to insure NO WORKER was in poverty.

Which is why Kamala’s homebuyers program was a laughable joke when she announced it.

Didn't your pay go up 80% in the 5 years since covid?