40-year-old homeowner says economy doesn’t add up: ‘I’m making the most money I’ve ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck’ - eviltoast
'I’m making the most money I've ever made, and I’m still living paycheck to paycheck'

“There’s this wild disconnect between what people are experiencing and what economists are experiencing,” says Nikki Cimino, a recruiter in Denver.

  • kibiz0r@midwest.socialEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    The funny thing is: You’re not wrong, you’re just talking about it at the wrong level.

    Individually, if you don’t save and invest, you’re gonna be screwed due to unpredictable expenses, inflation, and lack of runway for retirement.

    But if you zoom out and look at a whole population, it’s also true that tons of people are in such severe financial conditions that they can’t save and invest, so your advice is something like “buy a life jacket” to someone who’s already 10 feet underwater.

    And if you zoom out even further, there’s no way that we’re going to solve severe wealth inequality through individual action. And especially not through investing, which helps you as an individual relative to other individuals, but also provides more options to the wealthy recipients/managers of the funds to extract wealth at a rate higher than your ROI, which accelerates the concentration of assets in the hands of people who already own a disproportionate amount of them.