Food prices, rent - true they are high, but there is hope. Average hourly earnings are growing faster than inflation since early 2023.
Home prices - these will fall when interest rates fall, which can only happen when the Fed sees inflation fall a bit more. While employment is high and inflation moderate (like it is now), the Fed is reluctant to cut rates.
Incomes and inflation - didn’t keep pace in 2021 and 2022, but they did in 2023.
Economic inequality - reduced in the last few years, mainly because lower wage workers have seen bigger raises than high wage ones.
This means that we are discussing the right metrics (employment, growth, inflation), because the one you care about are downstream of these. And the right metrics have looked good for about a year.
> Home prices - these will fall when interest rates fall
This is the opposite of what will happen. Homebuyers express their housing budget in the amount they can spend each month. That then translates to a home price. If rates come down, that budget translates to a higher home price. (All things equal, if a buyer has already decided to spend $X, they are not going to spend 0.8 * $X to get a lesser place just because rates have come down.)
When rates come down, houses are going to get still more expensive.
In the short term that's absolutely correct. In the medium term higher home prices and lower interest rates encourage more building. Assuming that NIMBYs don't prevent that construction (big if), that would lead to lower home prices.
But high interest rates isn't making things affordable because first time buyers can't afford a mortgage at those rates.
Food prices, rent - true they are high, but there is hope. Average hourly earnings are growing faster than inflation since early 2023.
Home prices - these will fall when interest rates fall, which can only happen when the Fed sees inflation fall a bit more. While employment is high and inflation moderate (like it is now), the Fed is reluctant to cut rates.
Incomes and inflation - didn’t keep pace in 2021 and 2022, but they did in 2023.
Economic inequality - reduced in the last few years, mainly because lower wage workers have seen bigger raises than high wage ones.
This means that we are discussing the right metrics (employment, growth, inflation), because the one you care about are downstream of these. And the right metrics have looked good for about a year.