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This article is deeply flawed... change in wages != change in standard of living. But that aside, in addition to people wanting to take part in higher standard
by lhh 11y ago
This article is deeply flawed... change in wages != change in standard of living.
But that aside, in addition to people wanting to take part in higher standards of living, I'd hypothesize that another driver is social status. In our culture, wealth seems to translate pretty directly to social status, and I think that's a pretty core human need/desire that most people aren't willing to opt out of competing for.
- majewsky 11y ago> This article is deeply flawed... change in wages != change in standard of living. Measuring "standard of living" is a very hard problem. At least they're being clear about their definition, so I can judge the correlations they find for myself.
- lhh 11y agoSure, maybe coming up with a good rigorous definition is difficult, but I think it's pretty obvious that standard of living is rising drastically. Smart phones are now ubiquitous, for example, whereas they essentially didn't exist a decade ago. You could have had all of the wealth of the planet but no antibiotics less than a century ago. Conflating wages with standard of living is a glaring error.
- vorotato 11y agoI think the biggest complaint is that the improvement in quality of life and agency, is not even slightly evenly distributed. I'm not knowledgeable enough to posit good arguments, so you'll have to research this on your own. I'm sure with a modest bit of effort and investigation you'll come to a more balanced position.