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Why wouldn't you expect that to happen? Stuff like food and electronics has dropped in price thanks to a combination of automation, exporting the work to cheape

by makomk 10y ago

Why wouldn't you expect that to happen? Stuff like food and electronics has dropped in price thanks to a combination of automation, exporting the work to cheaper countries, and technology improvements. The same things haven't happened to education and health care. Since people's income has barely grown in line with CPI which has been dragged down by those price drops, of course healthcare and insurance are going to increase in cost percentage compared to income. In some sense, their income has dropped in real terms and that's just disguised by efficiency improvements pushing down the inflation figures.

Nacraile 10y ago
> Stuff like food and electronics has dropped in price thanks to a combination of automation, exporting the work to cheaper countries, and technology improvements. The same things haven't happened to education and health care. This explains why health care, education, etc. have increased in cost relative to consumer goods. It does not explain why those things have increased by an order of magnitude relative to wages, rather than staying constant relative to wages. And obvious explanations for the increase are false: these are all labour-intensive services, yet their cost has increased tenfold without increasing wages to workers, and in the face of increasing productivity of workers. None of the other raw materials required by these services (real estate, energy, tools, consumables) show price increases that explain the magnitude of cost increase. What objective evidence exists indicates that the quality of service has not increased substantially. So where is that extra share of my income going?
- makomk 10y ago
  It's going exactly where you'd expect it to go now that workers are in a much worse negotiating position due to jobs being automated away, efficiency improvements, etc: to the owners of the businesses. This is probably an across-the-board thing, but in areas where increasing automation has pushed down costs heavily that helps to disguise the impact a little on the consumer side. Even there I think workers are getting a much smaller slice of the pie and owners a lot more.

by makomk 10y ago

Nacraile 10y ago

> Stuff like food and electronics has dropped in price thanks to a combination of automation, exporting the work to cheaper countries, and technology improvements. The same things haven't happened to education and health care. This explains why health care, education, etc. have increased in cost relative to consumer goods. It does not explain why those things have increased by an order of magnitude relative to wages, rather than staying constant relative to wages. And obvious explanations for the increase are false: these are all labour-intensive services, yet their cost has increased tenfold without increasing wages to workers, and in the face of increasing productivity of workers. None of the other raw materials required by these services (real estate, energy, tools, consumables) show price increases that explain the magnitude of cost increase. What objective evidence exists indicates that the quality of service has not increased substantially. So where is that extra share of my income going?

makomk 10y ago
It's going exactly where you'd expect it to go now that workers are in a much worse negotiating position due to jobs being automated away, efficiency improvements, etc: to the owners of the businesses. This is probably an across-the-board thing, but in areas where increasing automation has pushed down costs heavily that helps to disguise the impact a little on the consumer side. Even there I think workers are getting a much smaller slice of the pie and owners a lot more.