Our dear @south_korea_ln recently shared some propaganda from FT on the progress of Spain's economy. In his post, we discussed how it painted a too rosy vision of how the economy is doing.
With Bitcoin, people often bring up the "When in doubt, zoom out" one to remind people to put things in long term perspective. I decided to bring that attitude to the question posed by @south_korea_ln.
Spain was hit hard during the 2008 crisis and, in the opinion of a lot of people, has never truly recovered from it. I decide to crunch some numbers that should hopefully give you some simple facts on how the average Spaniard might have seen life change since then.
I did the simplest, dumbest thing I could do in thirty minutes:
- Grab some historical data on the median yearly salary according to the government.
- Gathered some data on three products you all might relate to:
- An ounce of gold
- A big mac's average price in the EU
- The most basic version of the Seat Ibiza (for those not familiar, Seat is a Spanish car maker and the Ibiza is the iconic entry-level car. Kind of a Spaniard Volkswagen Golf/Toyota Hilux/Ford Escort)
- Then did some basic math and measured the median salary in those items instead of Euros.
You can see all the data in the table below.
Some simple observations from my side:
- Salaries have barely gone up since the crisis, and most of the change has only happened recently since COVID. To put things in perspective, the US median income has roughly gone up 50% in a similar period.
- Gold, our beloved pet rock, showcases the best the decay of the salary. The median salary on 2022 doesn't even buy half of what it used to in 2009.
- Back in 2009, and assuming a humble 10% savings rate and a magical world with no taxes, the median working Spaniard could hope to save up to buy a Seat Ibiza with no financing in 4 years. In 2022, it takes 6 years instead.
- The picture is not so dramatic in Big Macs. But, unlike gold ounces, a Big Mac from 2009 isn't really comparable to one in 2022, is it?. I'll let memory and nightly raids to local McDonald's serve as the source here.
So, going back to the original question in @south_korea_ln post:
Some good news from Europe?
Zooming out, I don't think so.