Francesco Abbruzzino, The Uncensored Report, LLC

 

People often wonder why I get so upset about inflation.  Well, the truth is that there are many reasons, but one of the big ones is because it destroys the middle class.  This has been true for a long time, but here in 2022 prices are rising at a far faster rate than most of our paychecks are.  That means that our standard of living is steadily going down.  It is taking more out of our incomes to pay for essentials such as housing, food and gasoline, and that is leaving a lot less money for other things.  Of course there are many Americans that are going into tremendous amounts of debt in order to maintain the standard of living that they are currently enjoying.  But going into debt only brings more pain in the long run.

 

As our leaders have absolutely flooded the system with new money, those at the very top of the economic food chain have greatly prospered.

Meanwhile, the colossal gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us just continues to grow.

 

Today, almost 52 million American workers make less than $15 an hour…

 

With an effort by Democrats to boost the national minimum wage stalled, a new report finds that on average one in three U.S. workers is still making less than $15 an hour, while the share of women and people of color earning that amount is even greater.

 

Nearly 52 million U.S. workers — or 32% of the country’s workforce — earn less than $15 an hour, according to a report published Tuesday by Oxfam America. The data help quantify how many Americans could be impacted by the Raise the Wage Act, which would set a $15 federal hourly minimum and has been pending in Congress since January 2021.

 

Once upon a time, $15 an hour was a really good wage.

 

But thanks to inflation, in 2022 you simply cannot live a middle class lifestyle in the United States on less than $15 an hour.

The Social Security Administration compiles extremely detailed information about how much money American workers make each year.  The final numbers for 2021 won’t be out for a number of months, but for 2020 the median yearly wage in the U.S. was just $34,612.04.

 

In other words, half of all American workers made more than $34,612.04 and half of all American workers made less than $34,612.04.

 

If you are making less than $34,612.04 per year, life is certainly not easy.  When you break that down, that is less than $3,000 a month, and that is before taxes are taken out.

 

That isn’t a lot of money.

 

In the old days, the vast majority of U.S. adults could look forward to owning a nice home, but now housing prices are soaring to absolutely absurd levels.  In fact, we just learned that the average price of a new home in the United States just rose above $500,000 for the first time ever…

 

New Home Sales are still down 6.2% YoY (down YoY for the ninth straight month)

 

And the average new home sales price topped $500k for the first time ever.

 

The primary reason why new home prices are spiking so dramatically is due to building costs.

 

Just about everything that goes into the construction of a new home has become insanely expensive, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

 

So buying a brand new home is now out of reach for many formerly middle class Americans, and this has caused the inventory of unsold homes to balloon to a very alarming level…

 

The inventory of new single-family houses for sale rose to 407,000 houses in February (seasonally adjusted), the largest unsold inventory since August 2008, up by 40% from a year ago. This represents 6.3 months of supply at the current rate of sales, according to data from the Census Bureau today.

 

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