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More and more people are falling out of a middle class existence Um, no. This is wrong. Living standards around the world are improving like they never have in

by harryh 8y ago

More and more people are falling out of a middle class existence Um, no. This is wrong. Living standards around the world are improving like they never have in human history.

dv_dt 8y ago
I think what we are seeing is world wide there is improvement, but our economic system has a non-uniform performance depending on the state of the region. In a relatively undeveloped area, expansion into basically non-serviced markets is efficient and an improvement. In a relatively developed area (e.g. the US and many first world nations), it is failing. In the US for example, life expectancy has dropped three years running. More and more people fall to a median income that doesn't even let them have kids and send them to college, and seems to be falling to where they can't even pay for minor emergencies. That's not improvement.
- harryh 8y ago
  Yes, the opiate addiction is a temporary setback, but improvement is almost never monatomic in every population subset. Worldwide life expectancy continues to rise at a pretty good pace.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    I don't think you can blame opiate addiction alone. (Sorry I was adding to the text while you were replying).
    - harryh 8y ago
      'eh sure. It's just the most obvious culprit when there are surely many causes. Regardless, I stick by my overall point. It's a temporary setback in an otherwise very strongly positive trend. I'd bet money that US life expectancy in 2023 is hither than it was in 2018.
- dpark 8y ago
  > In the US for example, life expectancy has dropped three years running. Largely due to obesity and related diseases. People are dying from overabundance. The percentage of people at "subsistence" levels is quite low. > More and more people fall to a median income that doesn't even let them have kids and send them to college, and seems to be falling to where they can't even pay for minor emergencies. That's not improvement. Is this at all true? Paying for your kids' college simply wasn't something most people did even 30 years ago, because most kids didn't go to college.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Largely due to obesity and related diseases No, the decline is due primarily to drug overdoses, and that mainly from the opioid epidemic. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/28/us-life-expectancy-drops-as-opioid-deaths-and-suicide-rates-rise.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/28/us-life-expectancy-drops-as-...
vkou 8y ago
The three guys that are sleeping rough in a two-block radius around my apartment - they give zero shits that living standards in Kenya, or Shenzhen have improved 300% over the past 20 years. Or that you can store 64 GB of data on a card the size of a bottle cap. What they care about is that rent in this city has gone up ~50% in the last six years, their incomes haven't, and they went from having a home, to wrapping themselves in dirty blankets, and sleeping by the garbage bins in the back alley.
- harryh 8y ago
  Yes, restrictive building codes that prevent construction of sufficient housing in major cities are a real problem (some days I think literally the biggest problem) in the US. We should really fix that.
  - NorthOf33rd 8y ago
    Do you mean code or zoning? Code is about safety, zoning is about... well, historically many things, some good, many bad.
    - harryh 8y ago
      Er ya, zoning. My bad. Thanks for the correction.
  - vkou 8y ago
    My city is going through an unprecedented amount of construction. 'Restrictive building codes' aren't the problem. Vacancy rates are higher then they've been since the recession... Yet rents are climbing 5-15% yoy.
    - harryh 8y ago
      What city? Restrictive zoning is definitely a huge problem when it comes to affordable housing in a great many American cities. I guess I can't say it's universal though.
zjaffee 8y ago
Middle class by definition means that people are able to save and build up assets such that by the end of their career they can comfortably retire and pass down some wealth to their children. i.e. they make money from both capital and labor. Just because peoples standards of living are rising, it's happening in a way that is keeping them a part of the working class who is entirely sustained their whole life by making money from labor and never capital.

by harryh 8y ago

More and more people are falling out of a middle class existence Um, no. This is wrong. Living standards around the world are improving like they never have in human history.

dv_dt 8y ago

I think what we are seeing is world wide there is improvement, but our economic system has a non-uniform performance depending on the state of the region. In a relatively undeveloped area, expansion into basically non-serviced markets is efficient and an improvement. In a relatively developed area (e.g. the US and many first world nations), it is failing. In the US for example, life expectancy has dropped three years running. More and more people fall to a median income that doesn't even let them have kids and send them to college, and seems to be falling to where they can't even pay for minor emergencies. That's not improvement.

harryh 8y ago
Yes, the opiate addiction is a temporary setback, but improvement is almost never monatomic in every population subset. Worldwide life expectancy continues to rise at a pretty good pace.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  I don't think you can blame opiate addiction alone. (Sorry I was adding to the text while you were replying).
  - harryh 8y ago
    'eh sure. It's just the most obvious culprit when there are surely many causes. Regardless, I stick by my overall point. It's a temporary setback in an otherwise very strongly positive trend. I'd bet money that US life expectancy in 2023 is hither than it was in 2018.
dpark 8y ago
> In the US for example, life expectancy has dropped three years running. Largely due to obesity and related diseases. People are dying from overabundance. The percentage of people at "subsistence" levels is quite low. > More and more people fall to a median income that doesn't even let them have kids and send them to college, and seems to be falling to where they can't even pay for minor emergencies. That's not improvement. Is this at all true? Paying for your kids' college simply wasn't something most people did even 30 years ago, because most kids didn't go to college.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Largely due to obesity and related diseases No, the decline is due primarily to drug overdoses, and that mainly from the opioid epidemic. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/28/us-life-expectancy-drops-as-opioid-deaths-and-suicide-rates-rise.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/28/us-life-expectancy-drops-as-...

vkou 8y ago

The three guys that are sleeping rough in a two-block radius around my apartment - they give zero shits that living standards in Kenya, or Shenzhen have improved 300% over the past 20 years. Or that you can store 64 GB of data on a card the size of a bottle cap. What they care about is that rent in this city has gone up ~50% in the last six years, their incomes haven't, and they went from having a home, to wrapping themselves in dirty blankets, and sleeping by the garbage bins in the back alley.

harryh 8y ago
Yes, restrictive building codes that prevent construction of sufficient housing in major cities are a real problem (some days I think literally the biggest problem) in the US. We should really fix that.
- NorthOf33rd 8y ago
  Do you mean code or zoning? Code is about safety, zoning is about... well, historically many things, some good, many bad.
  - harryh 8y ago
    Er ya, zoning. My bad. Thanks for the correction.
- vkou 8y ago
  My city is going through an unprecedented amount of construction. 'Restrictive building codes' aren't the problem. Vacancy rates are higher then they've been since the recession... Yet rents are climbing 5-15% yoy.
  - harryh 8y ago
    What city? Restrictive zoning is definitely a huge problem when it comes to affordable housing in a great many American cities. I guess I can't say it's universal though.

zjaffee 8y ago

Middle class by definition means that people are able to save and build up assets such that by the end of their career they can comfortably retire and pass down some wealth to their children. i.e. they make money from both capital and labor. Just because peoples standards of living are rising, it's happening in a way that is keeping them a part of the working class who is entirely sustained their whole life by making money from labor and never capital.