Item — HN Reader

No, it's not grocery bills, it's that post pandemic:

1. Used cars go for 50% more than they did before.

2. New cars are selling at or above MSRP.

3. Housing prices went up 30% or more where people want to buy.

4. Interest rates for loans to buy those overpriced houses are now 2-4 times what they were when those prices went up.

5. Rents have gone up and availability has gone down.

6. And yes, on top of that prices for everything have gone up, including groceries.

And how have salaries kept up with this? That's right, they haven't. The median income in 2019 was 27.7K and in 2021 went up to... wait for it... 28.8k. No inflation adjustment in there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

This isn't rocket science, why is it that financial and economic reporters seem so out of touch with reality? I have read and listened to multiple interviews that have the same theme of "the percent gdp growth is good, people just think things are bad because they're having an emotional reaction". People think things are bad because the average person can't afford basic things.

29K a year is roughly $2,400 a month.

Average rent in the USA is $1,300 https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/average-rent-by-sta...

Average car payment (on a used car) is $530 https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/average-...

That leaves $570 for car insurance, health insurance, food, etc.

The math doesn't add up for most people and it certainly doesn't add up to being able to afford a more expensive things like a home, a new car, a family. People are frustrated because they look at the future and see forever renting, leasing, working low paying jobs, and never being able to live that lives that most before them did.

In the US the congress has largely been stopped for a long time from doing any real checking on these things. Minimum wage could be increased. There’s investigations going into rental price fixing through industry wide software usage. Local, city, regional, up to national governments could but blockades up against corporate ownership of residential properties. But democracy has to work first.

As for cars, there is new manufacturing being added to the industry. Further, prices are slower to fall than to rise. In the real estate market it’s the slow trickle of homes selling due to factors forcing them to sell which will push prices down.

And grocery prices are possibly a combination of corporate power concentration (see above about democracy needing to work) and an invasion destroying one of the world’s most important breadbaskets (Ukraine).

The democracy / government needing to work to fix (or even just improve) things seems like a constraint at the moment, atleast in the USA. I hope things change for the better but it's hard to see a path towards that.

There are elections every year in the US. Even just going to local council meetings and voting out local electives has profound effects. Then there’s the more visible elections for House Representatives, Senators, and POTUS. But people have to do their civic duty first. Also writing your local representatives is a thing-which is also a civic duty. The more they hear the more likely it goes into their career calculations.

Generally these people are reachable via email so I don't want to hear “the work week wont allow it.” If you have time to post to HN or reddit or wherever about what’s pissing you off you can do some civic duty to effect change.