X-Perts and Non-X-Perts Battle on Real Wages
Social media’s numbers guys are trading barbs over the path of compensation growth under President Biden — the debate misses much of the nuance.
Photographer: Sebastien Bozon/AFP/Getty Images
The armchair epidemiologists who roamed Twitter with Covid-19 hot takes in 2020 have now apparently mastered macroeconomics as well. This week, social media has been overflowing with “expert” opinions about inflation-adjusted (or “real”) wages. Are Americans better off now than they were before the pandemic? And if so, why do they give the economy such poor marks in polls? These are important questions, but you won’t easily find the answers in the sea of testosterone-fueled grandstanding that is Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).
Earlier in the week, the sports and elections statistician Nate Silver espoused on X the belief that real wages had “significantly declined” during President Joe Biden’s presidency and argued that was “why voters are mad about the economy.” That’s misleading, but the argument got more nuanced as more internet numbers guys — including a few economists — weighed in with charts. Now, Silver’s position seems to have coalesced around a story of wage, income and wealth stagnation during the Biden tenure.