The headline inflation numbers are cooling, the stock market is holding its own, and yet, for millions of Americans, the monthly budget feels tighter than ever.
The cost of groceries, housing, and healthcare seems to be in a league of its own, defying the broader economic narrative.
According to a recent analysis, this isn’t just a feeling, it’s the result of a deep-seated structural issue. Economist Mihir Torsekar of the Coalition for a Prosperous America argues that the U.S. doesn’t have a price problem, it has a wage problem, one that has been decades in the making.
For households already stretched thin by that gap, high-interest credit card balances tend to be where the pressure shows up first, and where the cost of doing nothing adds up fastest. Platforms like AmONE match borrowers with multiple lenders in minutes and show personalized loan offers without affecting credit scores, which gives people a real picture of their options before they commit to anything.
The core of the argument is that for the majority of American workers, wages have failed to keep pace with the growth of the economy and corporate profitability. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that real average hourly earnings did increase by 1.4% from February 2025 to February 2026, this modest gain is a drop in the bucket when viewed against the larger economic picture.
Since the year 2000, the American economy has generated immense wealth, but it hasn’t been shared equally. Data from the Federal Reserve shows that after-tax corporate profits have gone from around $800 billion at the turn of the millennium to $3.59 trillion by the third quarter of 2025.
That massive accumulation of wealth at the corporate level stands in stark contrast to …
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