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Comment by dexterdog | Hacker News Reader

First, my local stop n shop sells a loaf of white bread for $1.29 and that's not even a sale price. Second the average income has gone up by more than inflation as well so you would expect the cost of staples to go up accordingly.

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is that including the richest folks in the average or not?

my understanding is that other than the top 10% or so, average income is not keeping up with inflation

Median income adjusted for inflation, has been growing, albeit very slowly, for all groups, including the bottom quintile (+6.7%).

https://static.businessinsider.com/image/59bc19b538d20d7f378...

Average income hasn't even kept pace with inflation since the 70's, go take a look at a graph of income inequality over time if you're curious where all those productivity gains went, you prove my point regarding no measurable drop in food prices (incidentally a loaf of bread is closer to $2.00 here), and would anyone care to take a crack at the larger criticism, namely total economic collapse of vast swaths of rural America or is "well, actually" over the price of a fucking loaf of bread the best HN can do?

You're the one that was calling the bread argument invalid and "trivially disprovable." Also, average income has more than kept pace with inflation since the 50s which is the arbitrary starting point that you chose in your first argument, but shifted to the 70s in this counter for some reason. That still doesn't help you as the avg income in 1970 was 10556.03 (39081 in 2017 dollars) and 50321 in 2017. (source https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/AWI.html)

So you prove knieveltech correct, the price of bread has not gone down despite whatever productivity advances may have come about since then.

No because the average person can afford a lot more bread now than they could in 1950. But bread is not the best argument as it’s cheap to make even in the 50s. Go buy a roast chicken and compare that price and you’ll see a difference

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