Is this surprising given stagnant wages and drastic inflation for the last few years straight?

The advice in that article is primo out of touch and humorous. They give statistics that people's savings and assets are down X amount, and the first advice is save for an emergency. Running out of savings?! Just save more, five head.

Now ask the CEOs how they’re doing.

Mitch McConnell staring off into space - Good thing Americans had those stimulus checks to live off of for the past 30 months.

I canceled all our streaming services and Amazon prime. I canceled my phone service and opted for a $15/month plan (Mint). I buy a cheap phone, about $70 bucks. I asked my wife to stop buying me snack foods at the grocery store to save ~$50/week. All told I think we are not spending ~$300/month that I can now put towards our cars that are starting to break down. Someone said something about savings but I only cultivate dust and stones there.

Those 'record corporate profits' seen since 2020 didn't manifest in a vacuum.

I found out my wife was pregnant about a week before shit really hit the fan. We were completely prepared, had money saved up and everything.

The covid hit. We both lost our jobs, and unemployment wasn't nearly enough to cover the bills. I couldn't find another job anywhere.

We lost everything. Both of my cars got repoed, I get eviction notices every single month because rent is behind. We pulled out credit cards for food because we don't qualify for assistance.

Slowly, we both got jobs, I got lucky and jumped right back into my career that I love, and we're still trying to get on our feet. The credit cards are killing us.

Oh, and when our daughter was born, she had to be life flown to another city because she almost passed away (long story). 150k bill. After insurance.

So, is nobody going to mention the picture of two smiling kayakers chosen to accompany this article?

Yes, let's raise rent 40% just as people are financially disadvantaged.. That is sustainable.

It was another really good chance for wealth transfers

Not surprising at all.

Corporations made BANK and all the CEOs put it directly into their pockets.

Increasing the money supply didn't help the poor and instead helped the rich just like every other time we've tried that?! I can't believe it!

Meanwhile, comparing 2019 with 2023, Elon Musk had an increase in net worth of about 707%. That's a plus of ca. $157.700.000.000. Yes, that's 157,7 billion.

https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/

It’s rather negligent of the article to ignore inflation on other areas such as basic needs as well such as price gouging for toilet paper, the immediate war with Russia that suddenly caused gas spikes, and the continuing shrinkflation of basic necessities to be considered ‘luxury’. Bread for the fam shouldn’t be considered a luxury.

"Gee......you f***ing think?" -Me, single income father of three-

Don't eat the rich. Their greed is too fattening.

Kill the rich instead.

I do want to own a home at some point before death, so I've cut back spending across the board. I wouldn't say I'm financially worse off, just working as many double shifts as possible (I work in healthcare, this is easy to do right now...also not a good thing) and not enjoying life at all for....3 continuous years now.

$115k needs to be your annual salary in USD to buy a home right now, supposedly, I read that somewhere (maybe CNN?) in the past 2 weeks. I make nowhere near that.

Factor in inflation on grocery prices & everything else, an mind you I shop at an Aldi's and a wholesale club, it's not a very easy time out there. Sometimes it feels like I'm saving for something totally unrealistic.

People who had the assets got that money.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/economic-inequality-wealth-gap-pandemic/

The implication being that covid-19 is a field wealth redistribution program?

That's funny, I thought the fed printed an extra $5 trillion during covid? I wonder where it all could have gone!