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>What? More people across the entire world have more access to those things I won't argue for the entire world, but I have some numbers for the US - all adjust

>What? More people across the entire world have more access to those things I won't argue for the entire world, but I have some numbers for the US - all adjusted for inflation: - Housing: real-estate prices have increased 4x since the 40-s. The median age of purchasers jumped up by more than a decade.[1] - Healthcare: per-person spending has increased 9x since the 60's[2] - Education: the higher education cost has increased by at least a factor of 3x[3]; that article doesn't take into account mandatory fees and living expenses. Or that's 2x if you account for increase in salaries[4]. Should I even talk about jobs available to people without college degrees? You could support a family with a high school diploma back in the day. - Transportation: public transportation has been in decline in the US. It is by far less available to people today. Read this article for a bigger picture[5]. In particular, the section titled "Death of interurbans and streetcars". Car prices have remained somewhat stable[6], but that doesn't help people who can't afford one. They are really screwed in a society where car ownership is pretty much expected and public transportation is nonexistent, especially in the suburban areas and small towns. - Income security: it's hard to characterize that with a single number, but long story short - we are worse off now than in the 70's[7][8] --------- To sum it all up: in the past 5 decades, housing, healthcare, education have increased in cost several times, public transportation died, income stability is down the drain. To answer your question: >What? That. The comparison is not to middle ages here. --------- [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/how-much-housing-prices-have-risen-since-1940.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/how-much-housing-prices-have... [2]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-average-american-spends-on-health-care.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/23/heres-how-much-the-average-a... [3]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has-increased-from-1988-to-2018.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/how-much-college-tuition-has... [4]https://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=005532 https://college-education.procon.org/view.resource.php?resou... [5]https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-killed-transit/568825/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/how-america-k... [6]https://wgntv.com/2016/04/25/the-average-car-now-costs-25449-how-much-was-a-car-the-year-you-were-born/ https://wgntv.com/2016/04/25/the-average-car-now-costs-25449... [7]See page 7 of: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/32896/412000-Work-and-Income-Security-from-to--.PDF https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/32896/... [8]https://www.epi.org/publication/bp213/ https://www.epi.org/publication/bp213/

manigandham 8y ago
If you just discount the rest of the world then you're talking about < 4% of the population of the planet, making your post nothing more than random examples that you're stretching into a strange narrative. The people at the bottom aren't living great lives, but they are much better off than the people at the bottom even 50 years ago. Plenty of people are still buying homes (unless you think those prices just rose without any buyers) and higher education is not necessary to fill the 6M blue collar jobs that remain open in the US today. You can't just look at some isolated negatives and yet ignore all the positives of change with the immense amount of opportunity available today.
- romwell 8y ago
  >If you just discount the rest of the world then you're talking about < 4% of the population of the planet Talking about a country with population of ~325M which we both happen to live in far from being merely "random examples" in my opinion. >higher education is not necessary to fill the 6M blue collar jobs 6M jobs in a country of 325M. That's 2 years worth of high school graduates for you. Not exactly inspiring, don't you think? >The people at the bottom [...] are much better off than the people at the bottom even 50 years ago. I made my case above why I can't agree with that statement, with sources. If you have a different metric, please provide it, with sources. Then we can discuss that. >You can't [...] ignore [..] opportunity available today. Sure, there' plenty of opportunity for some people - including you and me, given that we're on HN. Arguably there's less opportunities for vast amounts of others. Less opportunities than there was in the 70's, in particular. You can ignore that, but that's a part how we got Trump. Saying that the lives of poor people are improving doesn't seem to bode well with the said poor people.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    Yes, talking about a fraction of US population, which itself is just a few percent of global population, while billions of lives have been improved is random samples. If you must scope your argument that narrowly, it does not hold. The US also has the greatest opportunity and socioeconomic mobility in the world and this has only improved. Your attempting to piece together a narrative from disparate data while ignoring the world, even though we already track measures for what you're talking about and they all show great improvements.

manigandham 8y ago

If you just discount the rest of the world then you're talking about < 4% of the population of the planet, making your post nothing more than random examples that you're stretching into a strange narrative. The people at the bottom aren't living great lives, but they are much better off than the people at the bottom even 50 years ago. Plenty of people are still buying homes (unless you think those prices just rose without any buyers) and higher education is not necessary to fill the 6M blue collar jobs that remain open in the US today. You can't just look at some isolated negatives and yet ignore all the positives of change with the immense amount of opportunity available today.

romwell 8y ago
>If you just discount the rest of the world then you're talking about < 4% of the population of the planet Talking about a country with population of ~325M which we both happen to live in far from being merely "random examples" in my opinion. >higher education is not necessary to fill the 6M blue collar jobs 6M jobs in a country of 325M. That's 2 years worth of high school graduates for you. Not exactly inspiring, don't you think? >The people at the bottom [...] are much better off than the people at the bottom even 50 years ago. I made my case above why I can't agree with that statement, with sources. If you have a different metric, please provide it, with sources. Then we can discuss that. >You can't [...] ignore [..] opportunity available today. Sure, there' plenty of opportunity for some people - including you and me, given that we're on HN. Arguably there's less opportunities for vast amounts of others. Less opportunities than there was in the 70's, in particular. You can ignore that, but that's a part how we got Trump. Saying that the lives of poor people are improving doesn't seem to bode well with the said poor people.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Yes, talking about a fraction of US population, which itself is just a few percent of global population, while billions of lives have been improved is random samples. If you must scope your argument that narrowly, it does not hold. The US also has the greatest opportunity and socioeconomic mobility in the world and this has only improved. Your attempting to piece together a narrative from disparate data while ignoring the world, even though we already track measures for what you're talking about and they all show great improvements.