Quote:
Originally Posted by Chick Webb
This being a BMW forum you can be forgiven for maybe being a little out of touch, but literally 1/2 of the households in this country live paycheck-to-paycheck and have almost zero savings for emergencies. COVID changed that through a combination of (for some) reduced expenses and plenty of free gub'mint cash, but alas that has proved to be ephemeral, whether because of inflation, poor spending choices, or both. The extra money is long gone at this point.
Those households live on a shoestring and, in fact, the price of groceries (which was also temporarily heavily subsidized during COVID through expanded SNAP benefits), is a huge issue. Food prices across the board are up quite a lot. Many are having to choose between buying groceries for their families or paying the utility bill. Pile on the other inflated costs that they face, many of which are essentials like rent, car insurance, gas, etc., and they are truly hurting in a way that hasn't been seen in a couple of generations.
Inflation may annoy those of us with 2.5% mortgages and healthy stock portfolios, but it crushes the lower income demographics.
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I think people have a real hard time remembering median US household income is 77K... this is no longer a home owner but rather a life long renter at the mercy of landlords... all of their expenses going up up and up is crushing these folks... car payments are at an all time high and as was mentioned insurance and hyperinflation just continue to further the blow...
the govt continues to gaslight nonsense about things being well...
let me tell you - if you are sitting heavy on assets at low rates, make over 6 figures and have consistent cash flow, this doesn't affect you much...
so either there is a TON of these so called well doers... or there is lying all around because the statistics don't align with reality
the absolute best thing that can happen right now is a reset to pre covid... which would necessitate a 30% blow to real estate, the stock market and unemployment would go up...it would also necessitate a reset to old margins... but at least we'd back to a normal environment and rates would slowly fall into a more manageable 5 or so %... think that will happen? it wont... because the govt wont let it happen... in other words, median income earners are screwed and stagflation will continue