If your real income goes up 10% and someone else's goes up 20% are you "losing ground?"?

Question

BDZon - "real" means adjusted for inflation. How do you not know that?

Answer 1

In general, a liberal would say yes, and that it's not fair.

Answer 2

I'm amazed that so many here, including Mitchell with a BA in Economics from NYU, did not understand the meaning of "real income."

Real Income is defined as - Income of an individual, organization, or country, after taking into consideration the effects of inflation on purchasing power. also called real wages.

No, you are not losing ground, but the income gap is widening, and providing fodder for the class warriors who demagogue the issue by trying to make you believe the other guy who got 20% somehow kept you down.

Answer 3

I'd faint if my income went up 10%. I get 2 to 3% every 1 1/2 to 2 years which is then eaten up by a raise in the cost of the insurance. In answer to your question, no. How can you base losing ground on someone else's income?

The one exception to that would be the CEO gaining millions of $ that could have been used in intelligent ways to better the company and/or give raises to the people who actually make the company what it is, the employees.

Answer 4

I'm doing fine, but the working class is not.

Inflation adjusted houshold incomes have been dropping ever since Bush Jr became president. Not only that but poverty rates have been increasing.

All this is probably the result of "free-trade" and the outsourcing of formerly well paid blue collar jobs to third world countries. All that is left for these people are service jobs like those at Wal-Mart.

Answer 5

It's more like when most people's income doesn't even keep up with inflation and a few people get 100% increases, then it's a problem. That's actually the reality in this country.

Answer 6

No, if it's only two people involved.

But if everybody else's real income went up 20%, then presumably the cost of living goes up a similar amount and the answer becomes "yes".

In general, though, everybody should consider whether they as individuals are better off or worse off, and whether they're happy with that. It shouldn't be about what others got or didn't get.

Answer 7

I see a BA in Economics from NYU isn't worth squat.

If your income goes up 10% your buying power goes up, minus the amount inflation eats up. If someone else's goes up more than yours maybe it's because he works harder or is a lot brighter than you and earned that increase.
If he got the same increase as you maybe he works harder or is a lot brighter than you but you are both members in the same union.

Answer 8

No, I'm gaining 10%. If I want to gain more, I may look at the hard work and sacrifice the person with a 20% increase.

A more liberal plan would be to complain the person with 20% got it off of the backs of people like me, and vote for a candidate to tax the guy, and hand me the difference.

Answer 9

That depends. If we're making the same money to start with doing the same job for the same company and relatively producing the same output by people, then yes, I'm losing ground.

Answer 10

Yes, you are losing ground.

Because although you have more to spend, you have less "buying power". And more buying leads to inflation because as the income goes up, demand goes up which leads to companies raising prices to capitalize on the increasing demand.

Answer 11

That would depend, first upon why my real income went up 10%, and why the other person's went up 20%. It would also depend upon how much or how little the cost of living has increased. *sm*