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Oh, did your parents have faster internet, bigger TVs, and better cars than you? Richness, wealth, is not money. It's the things we want. My parents never had

• merpnderp 11y ago
  This is a tough one for economists. While a Roman emperor had far more gold than any of us could ever buy, he couldn't get clean water, clean sanitation, a tetanus shot, fly in an airplane, etc etc. Regardless of purchasing power, what we can purchase today is much better and more useful than what could be purchased before. Thank you capitalism.
  • jp555 11y ago
    Yeah we need 80% fewer resources per $ of GDP we create than we did 70 years ago, and there's is no indication this will stop anytime soon. Yes we "need" 2 incomes to buy a house, but that house is nearly TWICE the size of the one our parents had on average, and MUCH fuller with the things we want.
    • wfo 11y ago
      The things we are tricked into 'wanting' by a multi-billion dollar advertising industry that pays top scientists to spend years doing research on how to best manipulate our desires. Nobody needs a house twice as big. It's a pain to clean. Nobody needs all of these things. Both parents working overtime so they can hire a nanny to babysit their child they never seen in an enormous mansion is nobody's idea of progress, or even stagnation. It's far, far worse.
      • jp555 11y ago
        So much bias to unpack in your comment. Nobody needs all of these things? Nobody's idea of progress? According to you? Your strawman example seem awful to me, but I bet there are many many people who would prefer to be workaholics with mansions and nannys to having lots of free time to enjoy their family in a rented apartment. I find it a little contradictory that you seem to simultaneously think we're all brainwashed sheep that really should instead be a bunch of robots that all only value things purely based on utility. How is that different?
        • wfo 11y ago
          If there's so much bias perhaps you could begin by identifying some, much less 'unpacking' any of it. Though it's not clear what you mean by 'bias' -- the way you use it it seems like a generic word for "things you don't like". Nobody claimed we are brainwashed sheep most of all me -- the claim is that quality of life is reduced, and you suggest it's in exchange for an increase in consumer goods that we want. I respond that we don't actually want these goods; our recent ancestors did not want them, the desire has been manufactured by a well-paid hard-working team of expert psychologists. So we are not now meeting a desire that existed; a desire has been manufactured and then met. So when you compare our circumstances to that of the past you must consider the fact that advertisers had not become yet sophisticated enough to force us to want things we do not truly want, so our wants were different; driven by life, not driven by profit. If you'd like to pretend you don't understand the difference between "having a happy life, supporting a family and taking care of yourself and those close to you" and "having expensive toys" then you are free to do so, just don't ask me to indulge your absurdity by pretending it's reasonable.
    • pjc50 11y ago
      that house is nearly TWICE the size of the one our parents had on average This is not true everywhere: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398714/The-incredible-shrinking-houses-British-homes-built-just-HALF-size-1920s.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2398714/The-incredib...
  • i1281159 11y ago
    You should thank technological progress instead of capitalism.
    • jp555 11y ago
      I don't see them as separate, they are very much interconnected. Tech progress is learning. The "economy" is the act of economizing; learning to do more with less. It's a virtuous cycle.
    • merpnderp 11y ago
      In capitalism the idea is to pit people's greed against other people's greed. In alternative methods, people's greed is still there, it just isn't as well checked. Take for instance some of the insane scientific beliefs held in the USSR. Someone in power wanted this to be true, so the scientists made it true-ish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
• jes5199 11y ago
  Faster internet, bigger TVs, better cars, and fancier produce have very little influence on your actual quality of life. Better medical care does, but it's expensive medical interventions that bankrupts middle class families. Also: Real estate - much further out of reach. Education - much deeper in debt. These are the things that really matter. I'll give you cheap air travel, though. That stuff is great. Hooray for cheap jet fuel.
  • jp555 11y ago
    The safety of automobiles (ABS, airbags, auto-collision-avoidance, better tires, crumple zones, etc) have a HUGE influence on the quality of life (as you're defining it) for populations. Diet is by far the most effective way to provide life-long heath, and we've never had better access to food & nutrition info. Medical incentives may be messed up in the US, but most people on the planet who have access to healthcare don't have to worry about it bankrupting them.
• wfo 11y ago
  It depends really on how you measure wealth. For me a bigger TV or better car truly doesn't matter. Could our parents afford to own a home, have children, live comfortably off one income? Can we? I guess we have plenty of fun cheap toys made by slave labor that we can't play with because we're always working so if that's how you measure richness then sure.
  • jp555 11y ago
    > Could our parents afford to own a home, have children, live comfortably off one income? Can we? Yes we can. But it means tradeoffs most people aren't willing to make.
    • wfo 11y ago
      You'll notice one of the requirements above is "live comfortably" -- so your answer then is no.
      • jp555 11y ago
        Are you also not saying "where I want"? There are plenty of low-cost geographies. You may need to retrain as a truck mechanic or fisherman and maybe learn a new language to live there though. But the point it its very possible.
        • wfo 11y ago
          I only wish more people could see this post: your posts higher up in the comment thread almost look reasonable but this one really highlights the descent into madness necessary to accept your view. Things haven't gotten worse; your parents needed to work hard to have a good life. We just need to learn a new language, move to a third world country, give up all of our rights and our home, and pick a new profession.
  • ashark 11y ago
    I've noticed a pattern activities or hobbies that've been around at least a few decades: you ask "which X should I buy?" and the answer is often, "DO NOT buy common 'consumer' stuff—either pay 5 times as much for one that isn't terrible or buy ANY model from the mid-eighties or earlier and refurb it, at a total cost of ~1-2x as much as the new garbage" Part—not all, but part—of the supposed increase in quality of life due to cheaper goods is because entry level quality has dropped, for certain categories of goods.
• cableshaft 11y ago
  Except in the basics, like housing costs, health costs, and tuition, which have been more or less skyrocketing, and job security and pensions have pretty much gone out the window. Sure, we have cooler, cheaper toys and food is easier to get, but the rest of it makes it much harder to get by, in general.