Last Friday, the BEA released its Personal Income and Outlays report for August.
Nominal Stats
- Personal Income: +0.2% from July
- Disposable Personal Income: +0.1% since July
- Spending rose 0.8% following a 0.1% decline in July.
Inflation Adjusted Stats
- Real Disposable Personal Income: -0.3% since July
- Real Spending rose 0.4% following a 0.5% decline in July.
Income Flatlines
Three rounds of fiscal stimulus, easily visible in the top line of the chart have kept personal income intact throughout the entire pandemic.
Personal Current Transfer Receipts (PCTR) remains elevated since April of 2020.
PCTR includes food stamps, three rounds of Covid stimulus, federal pandemic unemployment benefits and other social handouts.
Real (inflation adjusted) income and real spending are well below the nominal numbers as inflation takes a toll.
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Mish
It’s the new strategy of Newsweek that they started last
year. They have lost 60% of their readership and are losing a ton of money and
have been ever since general news magazines were killed by the internet. They
are now mimicking the “hate Republicans” sites that are themselves mimicking
the ‘hate Democrats” sites. It’s a wonderful world we live in where hate
sells so well. By the way does your company work with or for any of these media
groups?
I was just commenting on Newsweek’s
strategy. It is to use certain content to attract a certain clientele. On the
Right we see the same thing where sites drag through the internet to pick on
something that will excite their clientele and confirm their opinion of the
opposite side.
Talleyrande said that politics is
the cultivation of hate and here we have the exhibition of cultivating hate.
Nothing is new under the sun. Hate and Fear sell better than anything else. I
remember a time when the fear was that the population would become so sedated
and conformist that civilization would fall from indifference. The opposite
happened. People became passionate about the future. It’s not much fun but I
prefer that to indifference and meaninglessness.