Americans can no longer afford a summer vacation
Americans can no longer afford a summer vacation
A significant number of Americans won't be taking a summer vacation this year because they cannot afford it, a recent survey for Newsweek found.
Despite negative perceptions on the state of the economy, inflation is now much lower than its June 2022 peak of 9.1 percent.
I can never get past economic articles that miss the fundamental issue with "but inflation rates are lower!" card.
Like, the price never went down, it just started increasing faster for a while, and is now slowing down. But it's still increasing.
Like imagine if you went from 0-60 in 2 seconds in an Uber, so you say "slow down". So the driver takes 2 more seconds to go from 60-100.
The rate of acceleration slowed down, but the past acceleration doesn't just magically disappear.
133And wages aren't keeping up, either. A friend just told me they got a 1% "raise" this year. After inflation, that's a pay cut.
76High inflation: I'm losing money faster.
Low inflation: I'm losing money slower.
That's how it should be read.
Despite negative perceptions on the state of the economy, people are losing money a lot slower than its June 2022 peak of losing a shit ton of money per quarter.
46Rather than losing money, it's technically more correct to say that we're earning less.
The real trick is converting to purchasing power of individuals and showing the trend overtime.
Like the average/median purchasing power of an American year by year. Not just purchasing power of a dollar, but of the average salary.
Edit:
Are down votes because I didn't mention savings?
Like 50% have less than $500, over a third have less than $100
This functionally isn't a problem for most so I ignored it considering the focus is on poverty and not how I flation effects the wealthiest.
13
They're not missing it at all. In normal circumstances, we've always got some low amount of inflation. If prices fell, we'd have an entirely different and much worse set of issues.
-6If prices fell, we’d have an entirely different and much worse set of issues.
No, it would be a lot worse for the wealthy
Deflation causes people to save money and accumulate wealth.
The wealthy say this is bad because we won't buy products, but now we don't buy products because we have no money. Which is worse than not buying products because we're saving money for a thing like a house or planning to have kids.
Except for the wealthiest who want all the money and can't get what people are saving. They want everyone broke and all the money they don't have already, being in circulation so they can take it.
Like, come on bro, it's not complicated but there is generations of capitalism propaganda repeating that inflation is a good thing, it's just not true for 99.99% of us. If it still doesn't make sense, feel free to ask for clarification.
0
...no longer afford?..man, the last proper vacation i took was in nineteen-ninety-mother-f*cking-eight...
75When you threw Mankind off the top of the cage at Hell in the Cell?
51shitty morph lives!
17
When America was still America...
Country is broken post 2008 and we haven't even arrived to the final destination we are going.
Hope y'all got lube, we are gonna need it. It is getting harder by the day taking all this D
5...i consider 2001 the watershed year after which it well and truly shed its legacy, flawed though it may have been...
5Makes me laugh at the liberals spewing American exceptionalism bullshit in the other comment chain.
Strong union support? Plenty of vacation? 40 hour work weeks???
Genuinely, what fucking insane liberal bubble are those people living in to say this and act like Democrats are the “other side” rooting for the people and putting these in place.
How can you say with a straight face the Dems have strong support for unions. Maybe the fucking police union, sure.
How can you say we should be happy with the 40 hour work week. I work 55 per week and this is common for STEM degrees. In America, salaried workers don’t even get overtime and often make less than the fucking forklift operator outside.
How can you say, unironically, Dems have given us plenty of vacation days. Even the most liberal strongholds use less vacation than developed countries. Y’all know it’s normal for Europeans to fuck off for an entire month every year?
How fucking dare you liberals spit in my face and tell me bold lies and then demand my vote.
The reason the hypocrisy of liberals is so fucking unbelievable is the realization that liberals don’t actually have beliefs or values. They are truly blue MAGA, that’s all it is. They don’t give a shit about making society better or helping the working class.
And I’m so fucking tired of it. Burn it all down at this point if my choice is between continued hell or the literal apocalypse.
5
TL;DR: Only 56% of Americans plan on taking a summer vacation this year.
For comparison:
65So it's higher than almost any time after normalising from a record height but somehow they needed to create a negative headline?
49Yup, pretty much.
13
Half baked survey that likely has no statistical significance...
5Fine, whatever. You do still recognize that America Bad, don't you?
-7
And one side is working decidedly to take away this and every summer vacation of your life - while the other side backs union labor which is the reason you and I even have weekends, a workday capped at 8 hours and vacation time period.
Wake up and smell, old donny dipshit and his ghoulish handlers!
39https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgu4ppsviyqad1.jpeg
Here's a slightly better version that's just things spelled out in the actual project2025.
4
Or worse, I can afford it but still can't go because my wife can't get the time off from work.
She had to get a doctors note to get 2 extra days off around the 4th to recover from surgery(!)
Surgery aside, I would have loved to have packed up this week and spent it someplace fun. My wife would have only had Thursday off. She got Wed, Thur, Fri only because her doctor told her employer to get fucked.
It's not like I can go "Sorry honey! Headed to Vegas! See you in a week!" Well... not if I wanted to STAY married.
32That's just an appalling situation for workers in the US. I work in the public sector and get 37 days off a year in vacation time. Admittedly, I work in the public sector and have a generous vacation deal, but it's absolutely insane that workers in the US have a worse deal than many third world nations. My 37 days are working days, meaning I get almost 8 whole weeks of vacation time, on top of all the other regular bank holidays everyone else gets. The people there often seem to cherish your second amendment, but fuck, what tyranny are you guys waiting for. How about using them weapons for something else than suicides and accidental shootings?
17all the other regular bank holidays everyone else gets.
..."everyone else" gets six, if they're fortunate to land a salaried position: new year's day, memorial day, independence day, labor day, thanksgiving day, and christmas day; all those other unobserved holidays are a thing for the public sector and finance only...
5American slave is proud of his chains!
He "earned" them with his "own" hard labour.
2
I really don't get how you guys don't properly unionize - especially with how many companies collaborate with European ones where everyone gets a minimum of 4 weeks of holiday guaranteed by law.
15Not only that, she works for a billion dollar multi-national. I can't tell you who, but you do know who they are. They even have union representation in other areas, just not hers.
13
I haven't had a summer vacation since school lmao
27No longer? Im in my early 30s and have never been able to take a vacation since I've been on my own/with my wife. Between bills and rising prices, and my job combining pto and sick time, i dont have time or money to do anything more than a day trip to someplace not that far away.
26Society is overall in denial about our relationship with corpo komissars
Vast majority of People got no time or money for anything. But we can all pretend that clowns on social media and YouTube living their best lives is normal lol
18I'm in my late 30's in the NYC area. What my wife and I consider a "vacation" is going to Philly and staying in a hotel with a pool, and just putzing around a different city for the weekend.
The idea of taking a week+ off from work and flying somewhere is a foreign concept to me.
There have been a couple of times that we have gone to states far away to stay with family/friends, but it's usually for like a long weekend.
8100% this
2
No longer? I’m almost 60 and have never been able to afford a vacation.
20My family never could. I couldn't myself until I was around 30, single with no kids. I believe it's gotten much worse for families that are in that same socioeconomic class, especially those who have kids to raise.
18Despite negative perceptions on the state of the economy, inflation is now much lower than its June 2022 peak of 9.1 percent.
The writers are irresponsible here. They are implying that the public is unaware of inflation, that this is a perception problem. But the reality is, nobody cares about inflation. We care about the cost of living, and we know exactly how that impacts us when we look at our credit cards and bank accounts.
17I make more than the average by quite a bit and have unlimited time off, my wife works PT to get out of the house and gets paid well also with basically unlimited unpaid time off (there’s the catch). Even we aren’t taking a normal vacation for us this year (flying to see family or exotic getaway), instead staying within the state and doing cheaper things like camping.
13Shit, I have 3 or 4 holidays every year and it still feels like I'm always working. How the hell do you cope without a single holiday??
12Yep. Had to cancel ours. Made just enough money to cover some emergencies, nothing left for fun.
10Lol "summer" vacation... Implying other vacations in other seasons.
71/3 of Americans take multiple vacations a year. Have you tried not being poor? It's worth a shot if you haven't.
5There is only solution to being poor and it works 100% of the time.
Get money
2
Join the club america
6Well this explains why I haven’t been able to afford a summer vacation
6Americans get vacations now?
5I don't know why they won't suck it up and go into debt for a week of vacation like the rest of us responsible adults.
In reality, we'd rather just use our paid time off to relax, and vacations are hardly ever relaxing.
5You can thank the republicans, corporate democrats and first-past-the-post for that.
Edit:fixed word
5Our company forced us all to take vacation in July...a whole lot of vacation. 40hrs.
2The solution is not to increase your income to compensate for the costs of living, but instead to lower your standards. I go off-trail camping every year and never think about the costs because it's fucking cheap. Getting away from civilization is the vacation. See you around the campfire!
EDIT - Downvoting is easy. Haters gonna hate!
-13Oh wow, so I need to get a car, camping supplies, and to take time off from work that I don't have.
This doesn't sound cheap, it just sounds like you have the means.
Be as apathetic about the state of the economy as you want. The rest of us will fight for a better life.
6Get a tent for free on Buy Nothing, strap it to your bike, take a bus to the nearest trail, ride all day, camp next to a river, go home the next day. Easily doable in a 2 day weekend. I did this exact thing 2 weeks ago and it was a great mental reset.
Sounds like you just want an excuse to be miserable instead of finding ways to be happy.
4You sound pretty offended. I was merely offering it as an inexpensive option and I stand by my original statement.
Camping is pretty cheap compared to other vacation types, where most would spend hundreds if not thousands staying at a hotel, dropping plenty on food, entertainment, transportation (planes and car rental) and who knows what other expenses.
I don't spend more than $20-30 a night on all expenses. Initial costs might seem daunting to you, but you can get a tent, a sleeping bag, a cooler with food and a lighter for less than $150. If you can't afford that, you need to reprioritize some things in your life.
3
