this link http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-59643405.html states
"Last year, wages and salaries adjusted for inflation increased by 2.2 percent in private industry. The 1998 increase marked the sixth year in a row that inflation-adjusted wages and salaries rose.
Since its inception in the mid-1970s, the Employment Cost Index (ECI) for wages and salaries in private industry adjusted for inflation has increased in 14 years and has fallen in 9. The largest in crease in the constant-dollar ECI for wages and salaries occurred in 1982, when it rose by 2.4 percent. ."
is this a lie? or a bogus index?
when "There was economic growth, but it was not spectacular after 1973, when real wages grew stagnant for two decades..." http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north555.html
or "During the 23 years from 1947 to 1970, the median income of American families increased by an average of 2.8% per year. But from 1970 to 1998, the median income grew by only 0.4% per year."
http://www.harrybrowne.org/GLO/FreeTrade.htm
when the above excerpt mentions 0.4 percent income growth in constant (1999) dollars....if say in 1998 the cpi stated a 2.5 percent increase were prices outpacing wages by around 2.1 percent? or is there an element in the price to wage increase ratio that i am missing?
In constant dollars means it is already adjusted.
The number is an outright lie. It deals with adjusted hourhly wages. It does not deal with people who lost wages, nor does it deal with those losing benefits.
ok...i am having some trouble understanding these numbers...from another post i made here is:
the bls website ( http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet ) showing average hourly wages for the year of 1999 says
to me this would mean that if a wage was 5.00/hr at the beginnign of 1999 then at the end of 1999 the wage would increase about .5 percent...about a nickel over an entire year? can anyone confirm that??
the bls website showing the cpi for 1999 says
0.2 jan thru december....
a total increase of about 2.2 percent for the entire year?
first...is this data true??? are these legitimate bls websites.
if others believe this info to be true....wouldnt that indicate that the cpi for 1999 increased at a faster rate than the average hourly wage??? a 2.00 box of crayons in jan would be about 2.05 in dec?
over 3 times as much???
would that info be at odds with this excerpt form a mises blog post
"when prices are adjusted for inflation, Americans today spend '40% less on clothes, 20% less on food, more than 50% less on appliances, about 25% less on owning and maintaining a car'than they did during the early 1970s. "
am i misreading the numbers in the bls charts?? are they fake numbers??
Bogart: The number is an outright lie. It deals with adjusted hourhly wages. It does not deal with people who lost wages, nor does it deal with those losing benefits.
Can you explain that a bit more?
from the monthly numbers...the bls pages show cpi increasing about 3 times as much as hourly wages over a years time.
is there some calculation or data left out of the charts that would mean wages are ahead of cpi or is cpi vastly outpacing wages??
Hourly wages:
Jan
the bls website showing the cpi for 1999 says:
do the wage rate increases from bls page chart, if true, include the cpi increases, iow? is a 0.03 increase in hourly wages above the 0.3 increase in the cpi??