Massive pandemic-era spending enriched the top quintile while real wages lagged prices

Evidence

Heaping money on America’s misfiring machine—8 trillion under Trump I, another 6 trillion under Biden—combined with proxy wars and reshoring (“a foreign policy for the middle class”), produced a hectic spurt that saw real wages fall far behind prices for food, fuel, and housing, the gains in headline GDP growth going disproportionately to the top 20 percent. Two-thirds of American households reported living paycheck to paycheck, while 57 percent found the higher borrowing costs under Biden especially hard. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 26

Categorization

• QUESTION: Verify the 8T/6T figures and sources for the paycheck-to-paycheck and borrowing-cost statistics.