The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html
Oren Crass:
Financialization has made American businesses less resilient, less innovative and less competitive. It has been a major cause of slow wage growth and rising inequality. It has fueled the loss of manufacturing jobs across the heartland. It has corrupted sectors in which the profit motive was never meant to reign supreme — veterinary practices, funeral parlors, campgrounds, residential treatment services, youth sports, hospitals and nursing homes, even suppliers for volunteer fire departments — consolidating and managing them with ruthless efficiency, squeezing their vulnerable customers and then pointing to the higher cash flow as “value creation.”
How wages compare with inflation since 2020
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/13/how-wages-compare-with-inflation-since-2020.html
After falling behind during the inflation surge, wage
growth has outpaced inflation over the past two years, allowing pay to catch up
by most measures. Even so, over the full period since the pandemic began,
inflation-adjusted wages show little net improvement overall.
Since the first quarter of 2020, wages adjusted for
CPI have been largely flat across several common measures, according to
analysis from the Hamilton Project, a nonpartisan economic research group. Taken together, the data show that inflation-adjusted
wage growth since 2020 has been close to zero.
---
Many U.S. Households Feel Like They Can’t Get Ahead
Financially – and They’re Right
https://crr.bc.edu/many-u-s-households-feel-like-they-cant-get-ahead-financially-and-theyre-right/
A household with $83,730 is at the 50th percentile,
right in the middle of the income distribution.
Those with $175,700 fall at the 80th percentile, putting them in the top
20% of all households. Only those at the
90th percentile and above have incomes in excess of $250,000.