5 ms·

>After declining for nearly one and a half centuries, the time spend per family on salaried employment post WWII has gone up back to around the level it was at

by yomly 8y ago

>After declining for nearly one and a half centuries, the time spend per family on salaried employment post WWII has gone up back to around the level it was at the end of the 19th century. While per person average 'working' hours are down in large parts of what we call the Western world, woman were brought en mass into salaried employment, raising the time on the company clock for a family significantly. >The cost-of-living has adapted to this situation, and a dual-salary income is now 'required' for many. These two facts often make me ponder whether we are regressing as a society but simply blind to this fact because various quality of life things have become cheaper (e.g. going on holiday and electronics). Meanwhile, we are mostly collectively losing at the wealth game and I am quite convinced we are losing at the wealth game globally - despite many people's attempts to illustrate that global poverty is decreasing (I lack data and drive to prove this point sadly). As such, social mobility also seems to regressing as who your parents are seems to be more important now than it might have been 50-60 years ago - I need only to look to my parent's achievements (and their peers) to be reminded of this fact.

jstanley 8y ago
> I am quite convinced we are losing at the wealth game globally - despite many people's attempts to illustrate that global poverty is decreasing (I lack data and drive to prove this point sadly) So what is it that has convinced you that we're losing, in the face of evidence to the contrary?
- yomly 8y ago
  I apologise for the following unstructured stream of unconsciousness. It would be interesting to know what age group you are in as that could well colour your perspective. For me, my anecdata leads me to believe it is very hard to get on the wealth ladder. I have built this perspective from associating with people ranging from backgrounds of very working class to ultra high net worth people. We live in a world where (thanks to things like QE) it's easy to make money if you have money - equity markets have gone through a sustained bull period and housing prices have seen a sustained period of growth which has only in the past few years cooled down. An easy thing for many people to relate to is house prices (which is often most people's entry into wealth). If you live in a major city like London, good luck buying a house without parental help. The past decade has seen growth which has basically been faster than most people can save at. What's even more crazy is that the gap is small enough to see within (half) a generation - I have an older brother and people in their mid 30s face a very different situation to people in their mid 20s now. If you got on the housing ladder around or before 08 you'd have made widened the gap between those who didn't in a stepwise fashion. Meanwhile, my father was able to buy a house and have a kid when he was 27 after arriving in the UK with nothing on his back - he didn't even have a university degree. Contrast that with today, people who work in classically "elite" jobs live paycheck to paycheck in the city. Do you know any junior doctors in London? Most of them are amongst the most miserable people I know - they work all kinds of crazy shifts (night oncall) then have 1-2 hour commutes home. So if you're in a situation where most people are struggling to move out of home, let alone get on the ladder, while it is known that the rich are getting richer can we say that we live in more equal times?
  - Domenic_S 8y ago
    > most people are struggling to move out of home This smells like selection bias. The people who aren't struggling that badly aren't complaining about it! 32% of americans 18-35 live at home [0], but that isn't an all-time high -- in 1940, for instance, approximately 35 percent of people in that age range lived at home. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/24/479327382/for-first-time-in-130-years-more-young-adults-live-with-parents-than-partners https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/24/479327382...
    - yomly 8y ago
      Forgive my hyperbole, and yes I probably live in a London bubble which biases my personal anecdata set, but the data you've shared is a U shaped* which starts at the 1940s and is on a trajectory for arriving back there. * with the exception of the Black demographic
  - T2_t2 8y ago
    What is your comparison point? Things get better all the time, but it really depends on what apples you compare which oranges to, and which flavour you prefer, how the comparison is viewed. So, is the comparison point Roman London? During the Blitz? When Pea Soup was a common pollution issue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog)? Or is it a period post war until about 1980 when assets hadn't caught up to a booming economy? Some parts of life are more expensive in a few world cities that are more than their local population, places like London, SF, NYC, Paris. In such places, housing is likely prohibitively expensive for almost everyone, as the market size (aka demand) is every person in the world worth north of $USD 10 million in the entire world. That market is a LOT larger than even ten years ago, and has a motivated population (the Chinese) who prefer foreign assets over local ones. On the flipside, supply has not kept up, as most world cities have housing approval procedures that are glacially slow, and held back by NIMBYs. But even then, the London of 1950 wasn't the place it is now, and lots of things like air quality have improved vastly, as has what is available to do - from eating to drinking and general entertainment. Ironically, I think what you parents did is the same way everyone today could make great wealth - move to a city in another country with opportunity. My ex moved to Beijing and made 1st world money while spending like a local - so > $100K with expenses under $1K a month.
PeterStuer 8y ago
Your observations aren't imaginations and are shared by some leading economists[1]. The rebuttals to your feelings will often come under the form of a 'the rising tide lifted all boats' from the'trickle down'[2] ideology, and ignore the extreme increase in wealth polarization we have seen over the last decades. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHT4zJsCdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHT4zJsCdo [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

by yomly 8y ago

jstanley 8y ago

> I am quite convinced we are losing at the wealth game globally - despite many people's attempts to illustrate that global poverty is decreasing (I lack data and drive to prove this point sadly) So what is it that has convinced you that we're losing, in the face of evidence to the contrary?

yomly 8y ago
I apologise for the following unstructured stream of unconsciousness. It would be interesting to know what age group you are in as that could well colour your perspective. For me, my anecdata leads me to believe it is very hard to get on the wealth ladder. I have built this perspective from associating with people ranging from backgrounds of very working class to ultra high net worth people. We live in a world where (thanks to things like QE) it's easy to make money if you have money - equity markets have gone through a sustained bull period and housing prices have seen a sustained period of growth which has only in the past few years cooled down. An easy thing for many people to relate to is house prices (which is often most people's entry into wealth). If you live in a major city like London, good luck buying a house without parental help. The past decade has seen growth which has basically been faster than most people can save at. What's even more crazy is that the gap is small enough to see within (half) a generation - I have an older brother and people in their mid 30s face a very different situation to people in their mid 20s now. If you got on the housing ladder around or before 08 you'd have made widened the gap between those who didn't in a stepwise fashion. Meanwhile, my father was able to buy a house and have a kid when he was 27 after arriving in the UK with nothing on his back - he didn't even have a university degree. Contrast that with today, people who work in classically "elite" jobs live paycheck to paycheck in the city. Do you know any junior doctors in London? Most of them are amongst the most miserable people I know - they work all kinds of crazy shifts (night oncall) then have 1-2 hour commutes home. So if you're in a situation where most people are struggling to move out of home, let alone get on the ladder, while it is known that the rich are getting richer can we say that we live in more equal times?
- Domenic_S 8y ago
  > most people are struggling to move out of home This smells like selection bias. The people who aren't struggling that badly aren't complaining about it! 32% of americans 18-35 live at home [0], but that isn't an all-time high -- in 1940, for instance, approximately 35 percent of people in that age range lived at home. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/24/479327382/for-first-time-in-130-years-more-young-adults-live-with-parents-than-partners https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/24/479327382...
  - yomly 8y ago
    Forgive my hyperbole, and yes I probably live in a London bubble which biases my personal anecdata set, but the data you've shared is a U shaped* which starts at the 1940s and is on a trajectory for arriving back there. * with the exception of the Black demographic
- T2_t2 8y ago
  What is your comparison point? Things get better all the time, but it really depends on what apples you compare which oranges to, and which flavour you prefer, how the comparison is viewed. So, is the comparison point Roman London? During the Blitz? When Pea Soup was a common pollution issue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog)? Or is it a period post war until about 1980 when assets hadn't caught up to a booming economy? Some parts of life are more expensive in a few world cities that are more than their local population, places like London, SF, NYC, Paris. In such places, housing is likely prohibitively expensive for almost everyone, as the market size (aka demand) is every person in the world worth north of $USD 10 million in the entire world. That market is a LOT larger than even ten years ago, and has a motivated population (the Chinese) who prefer foreign assets over local ones. On the flipside, supply has not kept up, as most world cities have housing approval procedures that are glacially slow, and held back by NIMBYs. But even then, the London of 1950 wasn't the place it is now, and lots of things like air quality have improved vastly, as has what is available to do - from eating to drinking and general entertainment. Ironically, I think what you parents did is the same way everyone today could make great wealth - move to a city in another country with opportunity. My ex moved to Beijing and made 1st world money while spending like a local - so > $100K with expenses under $1K a month.

PeterStuer 8y ago

Your observations aren't imaginations and are shared by some leading economists[1]. The rebuttals to your feelings will often come under the form of a 'the rising tide lifted all boats' from the'trickle down'[2] ideology, and ignore the extreme increase in wealth polarization we have seen over the last decades. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHT4zJsCdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHT4zJsCdo [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics