6 ms·

The good old days? In many ways, yes

105 points by howard941 8y ago

Mikeb85 8y ago
But whenever people talk about the 'good old days' they're racist, right? /s It amazes me how much people will vote against their own self-interest. Also, something a lot of the SV and educated crowd don't understand, but immigration disproportionately affects uneducated workers by dramatically increasing the supply of labour with workers willing to work for low wages (they are partaking in wage arbitrage vs. their home country). Lots of industries that are dominated by immigrants and illegal migrants today used to offer far better income and living conditions 2 generations ago. If people truly cared about the plight of the uneducated working class, there'd be taxes on wealth, incentives against rentiers, far higher minimum wages (to discourage wage arbitrage by immigrants from poorer countries) and maybe even basic income. Or a limit on the supply of labour (ie. slow down immigration) and tariffs to combat outsourcing. The first is a better outcome IMO, but the second is a perfectly rational reaction. But hey, bringing up actual economic effects of social policy is racist and bigoted, right? That's why the current bourgeoisie doesn't understand movements like Brexit, populism, etc... Edit - for the record, I like left-wing solutions better. I very much admire and agree with economists like Piketty. But most left-wing parties in the west have really dropped the ball. They're beholden to the same rich donors, and gloss over economic policy by championing social justice instead. Edit 2 - some back up for my assertions: https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761
- Spooky23 8y ago
  The manipulation that allowed slavery to exist it pretty similar to the immigrant rhetoric. In the civil war era, “Johnny Reb” was a poor white devalued by slavery. Racial superiority and disdain was the bread and circus that kept the system going. In the north, the Irish and other immigrants were often virulently racist as their labors threatened by it. That’s a big part of why you had riots in New York that escalated to the point of near insurrection.
- senthil_rajasek 8y ago
  "immigration disproportionately affects uneducated workers by dramatically increasing the supply of labour" Can you back these arguments with some evidence? Otherwise they are just empty claims.
  - WillPostForFood 8y ago
    Assuming we are talking low skill illegal immigration: https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pdf https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pd... Highly skilled, educated, legal immigrants are going to be a net positive.
  - pille 8y ago
    Lots of people with litte money are a dramatic increase in the labor supply, pretty much by definition? I’m not sure what other evidence you’d be looking for.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    Here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 Tldr is that immigration can explain 40% of the effects on relative earnings for non-educated workers.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    "Otherwise they are just empty claims." No, it's basic economics actually. All other things equal, if you increase the supply of labour, you're going to see lower prices. Of course, the economy is not 'all things equal' i.e. more bodies means more consumers etc. but the logic is fairly sound. In Northern Alberta, for the Oil sands, the lingo they use to push for more migrants is 'labour input costs': "We're seeing risks due to labour input costs" etc.. It's a slightly extreme case given the isolation up there but it's real. So in the 'long run' things might work better out but the short run economics are pretty straightforward.
    - senthil_rajasek 8y ago
      How are we accommodating growth of the economy in this argument? Or even growth in a particular industry with a high demand for labor?
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Imagine an island with 100 people and let's make a reasonable assumption that everyone's occupation contributes positively. Everybody works and is able to live comfortably by trading their products and services. Now imagine an island with 100 million. On this island, some huge fraction of jobs dont contribute positively, or at least value is not > pay. A lot of this comes from anticompetitive markets or from highly regulated ones. Then imagine on that big island, a central bank prints out a significant portion of that island's GDP in cold hard cash and trades it only with Wall St (they could at least buy healthcare, education, housing or food, but they buy bonds or "toxic assets"). Or maybe they make a sneaky argument and claim to buy housing by buying CMOs, MBSs, etc, as a way to hide the fact that they are paying Wall St. Now are the problems anything but obvious?
  - pesmhey 8y ago
    This island also has a group of privileged and unprivileged people, and one of the privileged ones fucked it up so badly that everyone was like, ok let’s see what this other group has got. They talk about universal healthcare and redistribution of wealth to serve everyone better. But it would mean a lot of the traditionally privileged group would have to accept a lower status on the island. So they give a final Hail Mary in the attempt to prevent this, because ultimately, if you’re entire self-worth is based on your privileged status, it doesn’t matter how healthy you are or how good of an outcome you may have. Social hierarchy is powerful. The article only studied whites, for homogeneity. Maybe the good ole days for some, but the world is drastically better today for most of the people living in it than it was in the 40s, or 60s. It might help the entire situation of pride and social hierarchy if people who wear dickies and work with their hands weren’t getting constantly shit on, for no other reason than they wear dickies and work with their hands. Plenty of people in liberal white-guilt circles too whose entire self-worth is built around race - let’s call these people racists.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  If you have an ever wider empathic perspective, maybe immigration hurts poor Americans but helps poor foreigners even more.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    Or would incentivize investing in said foreign countries with lower labor costs?
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    Should it really be economic policy to fuck part of your own population so that another countries' migrants can make more money? Dunno, when I did my econ degree economic development was still talked about. It seems that everyone has given up on economic development and would rather plunder a nation's workforce to benefit their own capitalist class.
  - NotAnEconomist 8y ago
    > If you have an ever wider empathic perspective, maybe immigration hurts poor Americans but helps poor foreigners even more. This is actually a case of toxic empathy: that view isn't the one that leads to the best outcome, because it destroys your capacity to help for short term improvements, leading to long term negative outcomes and an increased number of victims. Tempering raw empathy with rational evaluation increases your capacity to help and leads to a greatly improved outcome. To use a cliche: during a rescue, don't become a victim. An overabundance of immigration disrupts the host culture, which is the feature of the world that is causing the good outcome -- that the host culture causes more human thriving than the culture being emigrated from. When you draw too much from the resources of healthy cultures to try and fix systemic problems in other cultures, you end up damaging the healthy cultures, not fixing the problem. This simply degrades the situation, whereas a slower rate of change would remain stable, and lead to a genuine improvement in the world. It's a cancerous idea, caused by failing to regulate your emotions: you're not being genuinely empathetic, you're shirking responsibility to get high on good feelings because look at how woke.
    - BurningFrog 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago
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- elmomle 8y ago
  I agree, the base of the Democratic party has pursued a self-congratulatory image of inclusivity and righteousness to the point that many working-class whites think they're an afterthought to the Dems. I remember watching the 2016 DNC, seeing a procession of speakers who represented cities and minority communities, and thinking "if I were a poor white person and I thought the Democratic party had forgotten me, this would play right into that belief." Ironically Democratic policies regarding education, environment, and labor would give a better deal to working-class folk of any background, and Republican posturing about education has more to do with image than with preventing unskilled work from entering the country (after all, business loves Republicans and business loves low wages). But so much of politics is an image game, and once Nixon pioneered (ew) the implicit politicization of race, the Dems never controlled their narrative again. They more or less embraced the role defined for them by their enemy, which is a classic strategic blunder. I'm not sure how they can reclaim the narrative upper hand. And yes, I agree. By sticking too moral principles in the immigration fight, Dems are losing that too. But the alternative is to be logical, which doesn't tend to work with a loosely informed electorate that votes on feelings. Curious if anyone has thoughts on a better strategy there. It almost seems like the left needs an orator who can precisely walk the line between acknowledging and speaking to lower-class white outrage and also acknowledging all peoples' humanity.
  - js2 8y ago
    > It almost seems like the left needs an orator who can precisely walk the line between acknowledging and speaking to lower-class white outrage and also acknowledging all peoples' humanity. I’m going to sound like a broken record on my HN comments and he may end up being completely full of shit, but right now I think that description fits Pete Buttigieg to a tee. You can find plenty of flattering coverage of him if you Google, so I won’t link to any of that. Instead I’ll link to a take down of Buttigieg that you can contrast against the flattering coverage of him. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete
- dash2 8y ago
  I am sympathetic with your broad POV, but in fact there is precious little evidence that immigration has harmed workers wages. For reviews see e.g. Kerr, S.P. and Kerr, W.R., 2011. Economic impacts of immigration: A survey (No. w16736). National Bureau of Economic Research. Dustmann, C., Glitz, A. and Frattini, T., 2008. The labour market impact of immigration. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 24(3), pp.477-494. By contrast, there is plenty of evidence that trade with China harmed US workers' wages, starting with: David, H., Dorn, D. and Hanson, G.H., 2013. The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States. American Economic Review, 103(6), pp.2121-68. I don't say academics are guaranteed to be right, but they have looked pretty hard for labour market effects of migration, and not found them. There may be some specific groups of workers who have suffered a lot - but you don't see broad overall effects.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    > There may be some specific groups of workers who have suffered a lot And that's the point. Obviously plenty of people in the US are very well off, that won't make poor people any happier. Also, outsourcing labour and bringing in migrants have similar effects on wages because in both cases domestic labour is being replaced with lower-cost labour.
    - dash2 8y ago
      You may think that poor people have suffered from migration - but it is very hard to see in the data. That is my point.
      - Mikeb85 8y ago
        https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 No, the data supports it, especially over the time period outlined by the original article.
        dash2 8y ago
        That paper is interesting but it was published in 1991, and it predates the modern use of exogenous shocks to get clear evidence on causality. In particular, it doesn't directly estimate effects on wages - it calculates them from an economic model. Whereas this paper looks directly for wage effects, in the context of a big local labour supply shock, and doesn't find them: Card, D., 1990. The impact of the Mariel boatlift on the Miami labor market. ILR Review, 43(2), pp.245-257. Borjas is an interesting guy and I respect him, but I don't think the overall literature supports his negative view of migration's effects on wages. I stand by my claim, not because I'm a huge expert, but backed up by the two literature reviews mentioned above.
- weberc2 8y ago
  I’m really disappointed that we middle/upper class liberals who used to advocate for free speech and rational debate and compassion/inclusivity (esp of the disenfranchised) find it much easier to demonize and misrepresent this group rather than empathize or engage with their arguments. For all the criticism we levied at conservatives for their hypocrisy, utter lack of self-awareness, and authoritarian instincts, we are determined to outdo them.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago
  > If people truly cared about the plight of the uneducated working class, there'd be taxes on wealth, incentives against rentiers, ... and maybe even basic income. Maybe there would be those things in certain countries now, if the uneducated working class focused intently on voting for parties calling for those things instead of being distracted by political forces that wish to blame immigration for their problems. If I were a lower-income person, I would much rather live on basic income (and have the time to seek training and employment for better prospects) while letting gastarbeiter do all the shit work, than to have to do the shit work myself.
- choochooboogalu 8y ago
  > But whenever people talk about the 'good old days' they're racist, right? /s Why can't we have a more nuanced discussion and acknowledge both: a. that globalism, free trade, and automation have negatively impacted blue collar workers b. that much of blue collar quality of life in good old days did come at the explicitly racist policies, starting with slavery and continuing through federally enforced redlining in which has been the main source of wealth accumulation [1] It's also worth noting that many working class gains in the "good old days" excluded black workers due to historical racial divisions in labor movement and unions explicitly opposed economic liberties for racial and ethnic minorities. [2] MLK was murdered while working to unify the racial and labor struggles. This division continues to be exploited by populist politicians. > If people truly cared about the plight of the uneducated working class, there'd be taxes on wealth, incentives against rentiers, far higher minimum wages FWIW, I agree with these items and grew up on a farm in the white american heartland The GI bill is another good example of economic support for the working class from the "good old days" that like much of the Jim Crow era primarily benefited whites at the expense of other racial groups [3] 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/the-unfulfilled-promise-of-fair-housing/557009/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/the-unf... 2. https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-flagitiosum-etiamsi-nulla https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I....
  - watwut 8y ago
    Blue colar workers did not profited from slavery. The interests of free labor were one of reasons for slavery opposition. Blue colar worker can't compete with slave (or ther slaveholder using slave).
    - rhizome 8y ago
      You're compressing history; "blue collar" didn't exist during slavery.
      - watwut 8y ago
- scarface74 8y ago
  Well, since it seems like you stating that illegal immigration disproportionately hurts the working class comes across as a right wing talking point - and I thought so too for the longest. My mind was changed by NPR of all things.... https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/transcript Companies do in fact discriminate against Americans for low wage workers because they can pay them less and some companies do skirt worker verification requirements when hiring low skilled workers. Of course seeing that I am a minority, I don’t approve of the demonization of foreigners. They are using the same tactics that use to be called the Southern Strategy.
- hopler 8y ago
  An unemployed person wannabe-immigrant on the far side of the border is still suffering. They don't pop into existence when they immigrate.
  - Mikeb85 8y ago
    What about their own country? Unless you're calling it a shithole?
malvosenior 8y ago
The US emerged from World War II the global superpower while much of the rest of the world was literally decimated and turned to ruins. We built an incredible industrial and commercial base to support and profit from the war. This overlapped with (and drove) major leaps forward in technology that the US was uniquely positioned to take advantage of. The "good old days" did exist but they were an extreme anomaly following the largest war in human history. I think people have a hard time realizing this because the mores and culture from that time period were encoded, broadcast and digested by the rest of the world. We still live orbiting around 20th century mass media cultural concepts.
- deogeo 8y ago
  > We built an incredible industrial and commercial base to support and profit from the war. Doesn't this conflict with the teachings of free trade? That other countries growing their industries and rebuilding themselves left the US worse off (if that is the reason)? If you buy that logic, then shouldn't you be very worried about moving production abroad?
  - malvosenior 8y ago
    Yes, globalization would be one of the main reasons the "good old days" are no longer achievable. Lifestyle is being globally normalized. Note I keep putting "good" in quotes as a reference to the term. I'm not making a value judgement.
    - Barrin92 8y ago
      globalisation isn't a zero sum game. Rise of industry in developing nations didn't mean that some static output shifted around. Only a relatively small percentage (about 15% or so according to most research) of job loss is attributable to globalisation, and it isn't the jobs that were responsible for the 'good old times', but rather the very worst, environmentally damaging manufacturing. Gains in productivity and corresponding automation account for the lion's share of job loss. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs...
abhinai 8y ago
Deep welfare losses, along with effects on labor supply, health care spending, and asset accumulation indicate that this large population segment has not enjoyed the fruits of broad economic health. It feels we need to do a better job quantifying this problem before we come up with a solution. For example (1) how much money would it take to fix health care? (2) how much money would it take to fix welfare? (3) what is the impact of low savings rate on people's economic condition. For example appearance of credit cards coincides with the timeline in this article (4) How has immigration impacted unskilled workers? (5) Does UBI work? (6) How is Europe doing it? (7) Is Europe really as successful at dealing with these issues as everyone seems to claim?
- leetcrew 8y ago
  regarding (7), I am very interested in reading a nonpartisan take on the relationship between US defense spending and welfare spending in western europe. if it weren't for the current defensive arrangement with the US, would europe spend more on defense? if so, would it still spend the same on social services? do we americans overestimate our contribution to the defensive posture of the west?
  - throwawayjava 8y ago
    > if it weren't for the current defensive arrangement with the US, would europe spend more on defense? Europe is a lot of countries, the US-Europe alliance is old enough that there have been at least three or four distinct time periods where the answer to this question fluctuates (cold war, post cold war, post-9/11, post Syria) Furthermore, defense is not some sort of measurable good; especially for countries in the EU who are surrounded by non-enemies, how much they choose to spend on defense is in large part a political question. It's really hard to say e.g., whether Germans would have chosen to spend more on defense if the US decreased its defense spending in Europe. And the answer would probably be different in the different time periods I mentioned above. E.g., given the German attitude toward US military presence in Europe over the past 20 years [1], I suspect the answer for that period is "no". But ultimately the answer to this question will be different from country to country and from decade to decade, and a truly nonpartisan answer would be "there's really no way to give a definitive answer for all of Europe across that time period.". > do we americans overestimate our contribution to the defensive posture of the west? Americans underestimate (or often simply don't even know about) their contribution to many of Europe's most pressing security and welfare expenditures. The 15 year war in the middle east is now taking an enormous economic and political toll on Europe. It's not too far-fetched to say that Europe might have been both safer and richer today had the US spent substantially less money on its military over the past 15 years (read: not waged wars in the middle east). [1] https://www.thelocal.de/20180711/almost-half-of-germans-want-us-army-to-leave-the-country https://www.thelocal.de/20180711/almost-half-of-germans-want...
rcdmd 8y ago
> In the abstract, you get this statement: "The drop in wages depressed the labor supply of men and increased that of women, especially in married couples." Seems to get cause and effect backwards. Isn't it more likely that an increase in labor supply (women entering the workforce) had, simply by the laws of supply and demand, decreased wages?[1] [1] https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/NEWSTATS/facts/women_lf.htm#one https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/NEWSTATS/facts/women_lf.htm#one The paper is full of complicated-looking economic models and nice graphs-- but if you don't get the basic assumptions right it's hard to trust the fancy models.
- nixarian 8y ago
  Exactly. More people entering the labor force was only good for the owners and employers, it destroy the bargaining power of the actual workers. Add to that the fact that having two parents at work seriously harms the family, making it more difficult for their children to develop in healthy ways. This is the future we asked for. Given the statistics that say women only want to marry men who make more money than them, it seems to have done even more harm than we might imagine, because there are few women wanting men to stay home and fill the role certain ideologues claimed would be open to them.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  Economists dont need their models to work, they need people to think they are smart. Imagine writing software that never had to work in the real world. I at least have some formal training in economics to feel confident in making this statement.
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  These things are hard to think about. A new worker (or 50 million new female workers) does on one end increase the supply of labor, which should lower the price (wages) of it, but s/he also starts spending an income, which increases general demand in the economy and acts to push up wages. It's not obvious what the net effect is. Economists probably have a (or several :) well thought out and validated answers to this, but my gut feel is that it all evens out.
  - 8y ago
areoform 8y ago
Most people look at economies as an extension of supply-demand curves in a Newtonian-esque model where one ball hits the next, transfers momentum (elastically or otherwise) and so forth. Everything is down to a great chain of causality that creates a nexus of forces. Consequently, "fixing" things in this model means more of Force X over Y. Or, applying Lever A to Spot Z to induce Force P. The force or lever can be regulations, deregulation, taxation, tax cuts, interest rate changes, jailing bankers... And people may come at it from different ideologies, but the Newtonian mental model remains. Everyone repeats ad infinitum if only we quantized and applied X or Y then clearly such and such outcome will occur. And this technique very rarely works out. It might help us stave off a great amount of unrest if we shift this frame of reference. A new perspective and a new way of doing things where we view our economies as ecosystems or networks might clarify why these changes are occurring. For example, we can look at excessive economic inequality and understand why it is bad by looking at natural ecosystems and how they are a closed loop. For e.g. Consumers are like plankton. They are the injection of biomass (money) into the system that ensures money changes hands when they buy goods and services. A single entity, no matter how rich, cannot provide equivalent mass to the greater ecosystem than a large set of consumers. Or, in other words, a billionaire requires only so many pairs of sunglasses and Netflix subscriptions. Ergo, a broad base of wealth where people can afford the products around them is essential for a capitalistic ecosystem to function, as these plankton keep feeding entities higher up in the food chain through an accumulation effect. For whatever reason, just like we have decimated our natural environment, we have also decimated our economic ecosystem. The number of entities with high purchasing power is rapidly decreasing, and this signals a significant problem for the future of the ecosystem. And it also suggests how automation can end up eating itself economically unless we institute measures - artificial or otherwise - that inject capital back into the building blocks of the economy. I suspect that as computing gets better, we will eventually create models that will make the current economic debates and models we have obsolete. Our arguments over taxation, immigration, regulation, reform etc. will seem quite quaint to people in the future if we manage to make this transition and if we can help policymakers and thinking individuals see economies in real-time, and simulate outcomes of individual, highly variable, irrational agents at unprecedented scales. But we're not there yet. But we could be. We can fix this. And we will. I am sure of that because brilliant people are working on this problem and eventually, we'll get it right. I hold out hope for a better future no matter how bad this news gets and I remember that we're in a state of flux and things always appear darker in these times.
Animats 8y ago
It just doesn't take that many people to do all the stuff.[1] The automation revolution happened a long time ago.[2] Peak manufacturing employment was in 1979. Agriculture is down to 1.4%. Making stuff (mining, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture) is at 14% and dropping. Those were the classic blue-collar jobs. They're the ones where large numbers of people were employed doing repetitive work under close supervision. Many of those jobs were unionized and paid OK. Even for people with IQ below 100. Not any more. For a while, "services" employed more people. Then came cheap computing and the Internet. No more file clerks. Much less paper-pushing. Fewer retail salespeople. Fewer bank tellers. Both retail and finance are dropping in headcount. That's what happened. [1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
- coldtea 8y ago
  >It just doesn't take that many people to do all the stuff. That's impossible. A couples of times in the past when we evolved major new technologies (e.g. industrial revolution) new jobs were created. This means there will _always_ be new jobs, it's like a contract with history. /s -- but also how many think, taking 2-3 historical cases as some kind of necessary eternal motif.
  - rcdmd 8y ago
    I think you're both right. The commenter above you is just taking the short view and you're taking the long view. Automation is great for long-term productivity and the supply of better, cheaper goods/services, but you can't argue it makes for a happy former file-clerk 5 years away from retirement who now has to find a new gig.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >I think you're both right Well, I think I supplemented the commenter above -- I was arguing with him only ironically. I don't think it's impossible for something that happened in the past to stop happening, because the situation re: automation, robotics, and AI are qualitatively different than past evolutions (plus we're already grasping at non-productive straws to keep people occupied, e.g. the rise of bullshit jobs). (In fact, the fully realized endgame of AI+robotics revolution would be the elimination of the need of a human involved for anything, including even creative endeavors. Why some believe "human jobs" are something that's inevitable to always exist in new forms and always enough for most of the population -- as opposed to e.g. just a 10-20% at some point, if not 0% --, is beyond me).
ajmurmann 8y ago
It has become impossible to me to read articles on this topic that don't make clear if their "stagnant wages" are corrected for the health care benefits eating up all potential increases for workers who are at the bottom end of the compensation range. Ever since this effect was explained on econtalk (https://www.econtalk.org/mark-warshawsky-on-compensation-health-care-costs-and-inequality/ https://www.econtalk.org/mark-warshawsky-on-compensation-hea...) I'm convinced that the US health care system is the #1 problem that needs fixing.
- dash2 8y ago
  From the abstract: Welfare losses, measured as a one-time asset compensation, are 12.5%, 8%, and 7.2% of the present discounted value of earnings for single men, couples, and single women, respectively. Lower wages explain 47-58% of these losses, shorter life expectancies 25-34%, and higher medical expenses account for the rest.
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    I'm still not clear if higher medical expenses refers to expenses that were directly paid by the worker or also accounts for costs the employer paid as part of the total compensation package but that never passed through the hands of the worker.
dhbradshaw 8y ago
"Less-educated Americans born in the 1960s fare much worse than those born 20 years earlier" One interesting thing worth watching for here is selection bias. If the average education level increased during this 20 year period, then we aren't comparing similar cohorts when we select for a particular level of education at the two different times.
- orangecat 8y ago
  Correct: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai...
  - simonsarris 8y ago
    But graduation rates are meaningless because they are easily gamed. Compare average SAT scores from 1970's to today and the trend is downward. Graduation rates are easy to boost: Graduate bad, failing students. SAT scores are not so hard to fake.
jnbiche 8y ago
If they think it's gotten bad from the 1940 cohort to 1960, wait until they look at the 1980 cohort. Anecdotally, among my friends and family without a college degree, the situation is dire indeed.
lkrubner 8y ago
This essay suggests that the peak years for the USA standard of living were in the mid-20th Century, and those born before World War II saw the greatest benefits. There will eventually be political consequences for the erosion of the USA standard of living. The Economist magazine had an article, which was discussed here on Hacker News, with the title “The link between polygamy and war“ to which I responded: "This suggests that political stability depends on young men being able to pursue their romantic dreams. This would apply in any country, not just African countries. In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the ability to get one’s own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to average rent. In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when people were spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was the best year in history to be a young white male in the USA. It was the year when it was easiest for an 18 year old male to get out of high school, get their own apartment, marry their high school sweetheart, and start a family. And of course, young people did this in huge numbers, which is why 1958 remains the peak year for teenage pregnancy in the USA." More here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike-if-they-do-not-have-women http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike...
- malvosenior 8y ago
  That would go along with the article from yesterday saying that fewer young men in the US are having sex than ever before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524642
RickJWagner 8y ago
I'm suspicious. When I see a large chart titled "Life expectancy at age 66" it sets off all kinds of alarm bells. Why 66? Why not 50 or 60 or 70? What was special about 66 that it was chosen, and why wasn't it explained?
- obrisintor 8y ago
  Similarly, mass shootings per year compared by country where mass shooting is defined as 4 people getting shot.
CryptoPunk 8y ago
I believe people in the earlier cohort were more likely to die as children as child mortality was higher in the past. If so, that could apply a selection bias to the age 66 and up subset of this cohort, since those who survive their childhood could tend to have a natural proclivity to be healthier into old-age than those who don't. Moreover, people became more educated over that 20 year timespan, so comparing people of equal absolute educational attainment across the two periods could be a case of comparing a higher socioeconomic group to a lower one.

105 points by howard941 8y ago

But whenever people talk about the 'good old days' they're racist, right? /s It amazes me how much people will vote against their own self-interest. Also, something a lot of the SV and educated crowd don't understand, but immigration disproportionately affects uneducated workers by dramatically increasing the supply of labour with workers willing to work for low wages (they are partaking in wage arbitrage vs. their home country). Lots of industries that are dominated by immigrants and illegal migrants today used to offer far better income and living conditions 2 generations ago. If people truly cared about the plight of the uneducated working class, there'd be taxes on wealth, incentives against rentiers, far higher minimum wages (to discourage wage arbitrage by immigrants from poorer countries) and maybe even basic income. Or a limit on the supply of labour (ie. slow down immigration) and tariffs to combat outsourcing. The first is a better outcome IMO, but the second is a perfectly rational reaction. But hey, bringing up actual economic effects of social policy is racist and bigoted, right? That's why the current bourgeoisie doesn't understand movements like Brexit, populism, etc... Edit - for the record, I like left-wing solutions better. I very much admire and agree with economists like Piketty. But most left-wing parties in the west have really dropped the ball. They're beholden to the same rich donors, and gloss over economic policy by championing social justice instead. Edit 2 - some back up for my assertions: https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761

Spooky23 8y ago
The manipulation that allowed slavery to exist it pretty similar to the immigrant rhetoric. In the civil war era, “Johnny Reb” was a poor white devalued by slavery. Racial superiority and disdain was the bread and circus that kept the system going. In the north, the Irish and other immigrants were often virulently racist as their labors threatened by it. That’s a big part of why you had riots in New York that escalated to the point of near insurrection.
senthil_rajasek 8y ago
"immigration disproportionately affects uneducated workers by dramatically increasing the supply of labour" Can you back these arguments with some evidence? Otherwise they are just empty claims.
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Assuming we are talking low skill illegal immigration: https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pdf https://www.usccr.gov/pubs/docs/IllegImmig_10-14-10_430pm.pd... Highly skilled, educated, legal immigrants are going to be a net positive.
- pille 8y ago
  Lots of people with litte money are a dramatic increase in the labor supply, pretty much by definition? I’m not sure what other evidence you’d be looking for.
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  Here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 Tldr is that immigration can explain 40% of the effects on relative earnings for non-educated workers.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  "Otherwise they are just empty claims." No, it's basic economics actually. All other things equal, if you increase the supply of labour, you're going to see lower prices. Of course, the economy is not 'all things equal' i.e. more bodies means more consumers etc. but the logic is fairly sound. In Northern Alberta, for the Oil sands, the lingo they use to push for more migrants is 'labour input costs': "We're seeing risks due to labour input costs" etc.. It's a slightly extreme case given the isolation up there but it's real. So in the 'long run' things might work better out but the short run economics are pretty straightforward.
  - senthil_rajasek 8y ago
    How are we accommodating growth of the economy in this argument? Or even growth in a particular industry with a high demand for labor?
wallace_f 8y ago
Imagine an island with 100 people and let's make a reasonable assumption that everyone's occupation contributes positively. Everybody works and is able to live comfortably by trading their products and services. Now imagine an island with 100 million. On this island, some huge fraction of jobs dont contribute positively, or at least value is not > pay. A lot of this comes from anticompetitive markets or from highly regulated ones. Then imagine on that big island, a central bank prints out a significant portion of that island's GDP in cold hard cash and trades it only with Wall St (they could at least buy healthcare, education, housing or food, but they buy bonds or "toxic assets"). Or maybe they make a sneaky argument and claim to buy housing by buying CMOs, MBSs, etc, as a way to hide the fact that they are paying Wall St. Now are the problems anything but obvious?
- pesmhey 8y ago
  This island also has a group of privileged and unprivileged people, and one of the privileged ones fucked it up so badly that everyone was like, ok let’s see what this other group has got. They talk about universal healthcare and redistribution of wealth to serve everyone better. But it would mean a lot of the traditionally privileged group would have to accept a lower status on the island. So they give a final Hail Mary in the attempt to prevent this, because ultimately, if you’re entire self-worth is based on your privileged status, it doesn’t matter how healthy you are or how good of an outcome you may have. Social hierarchy is powerful. The article only studied whites, for homogeneity. Maybe the good ole days for some, but the world is drastically better today for most of the people living in it than it was in the 40s, or 60s. It might help the entire situation of pride and social hierarchy if people who wear dickies and work with their hands weren’t getting constantly shit on, for no other reason than they wear dickies and work with their hands. Plenty of people in liberal white-guilt circles too whose entire self-worth is built around race - let’s call these people racists.
BurningFrog 8y ago
If you have an ever wider empathic perspective, maybe immigration hurts poor Americans but helps poor foreigners even more.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Or would incentivize investing in said foreign countries with lower labor costs?
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  Should it really be economic policy to fuck part of your own population so that another countries' migrants can make more money? Dunno, when I did my econ degree economic development was still talked about. It seems that everyone has given up on economic development and would rather plunder a nation's workforce to benefit their own capitalist class.
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago
  > If you have an ever wider empathic perspective, maybe immigration hurts poor Americans but helps poor foreigners even more. This is actually a case of toxic empathy: that view isn't the one that leads to the best outcome, because it destroys your capacity to help for short term improvements, leading to long term negative outcomes and an increased number of victims. Tempering raw empathy with rational evaluation increases your capacity to help and leads to a greatly improved outcome. To use a cliche: during a rescue, don't become a victim. An overabundance of immigration disrupts the host culture, which is the feature of the world that is causing the good outcome -- that the host culture causes more human thriving than the culture being emigrated from. When you draw too much from the resources of healthy cultures to try and fix systemic problems in other cultures, you end up damaging the healthy cultures, not fixing the problem. This simply degrades the situation, whereas a slower rate of change would remain stable, and lead to a genuine improvement in the world. It's a cancerous idea, caused by failing to regulate your emotions: you're not being genuinely empathetic, you're shirking responsibility to get high on good feelings because look at how woke.
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
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elmomle 8y ago
I agree, the base of the Democratic party has pursued a self-congratulatory image of inclusivity and righteousness to the point that many working-class whites think they're an afterthought to the Dems. I remember watching the 2016 DNC, seeing a procession of speakers who represented cities and minority communities, and thinking "if I were a poor white person and I thought the Democratic party had forgotten me, this would play right into that belief." Ironically Democratic policies regarding education, environment, and labor would give a better deal to working-class folk of any background, and Republican posturing about education has more to do with image than with preventing unskilled work from entering the country (after all, business loves Republicans and business loves low wages). But so much of politics is an image game, and once Nixon pioneered (ew) the implicit politicization of race, the Dems never controlled their narrative again. They more or less embraced the role defined for them by their enemy, which is a classic strategic blunder. I'm not sure how they can reclaim the narrative upper hand. And yes, I agree. By sticking too moral principles in the immigration fight, Dems are losing that too. But the alternative is to be logical, which doesn't tend to work with a loosely informed electorate that votes on feelings. Curious if anyone has thoughts on a better strategy there. It almost seems like the left needs an orator who can precisely walk the line between acknowledging and speaking to lower-class white outrage and also acknowledging all peoples' humanity.
- js2 8y ago
  > It almost seems like the left needs an orator who can precisely walk the line between acknowledging and speaking to lower-class white outrage and also acknowledging all peoples' humanity. I’m going to sound like a broken record on my HN comments and he may end up being completely full of shit, but right now I think that description fits Pete Buttigieg to a tee. You can find plenty of flattering coverage of him if you Google, so I won’t link to any of that. Instead I’ll link to a take down of Buttigieg that you can contrast against the flattering coverage of him. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/03/all-about-pete
dash2 8y ago
I am sympathetic with your broad POV, but in fact there is precious little evidence that immigration has harmed workers wages. For reviews see e.g. Kerr, S.P. and Kerr, W.R., 2011. Economic impacts of immigration: A survey (No. w16736). National Bureau of Economic Research. Dustmann, C., Glitz, A. and Frattini, T., 2008. The labour market impact of immigration. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 24(3), pp.477-494. By contrast, there is plenty of evidence that trade with China harmed US workers' wages, starting with: David, H., Dorn, D. and Hanson, G.H., 2013. The China syndrome: Local labor market effects of import competition in the United States. American Economic Review, 103(6), pp.2121-68. I don't say academics are guaranteed to be right, but they have looked pretty hard for labour market effects of migration, and not found them. There may be some specific groups of workers who have suffered a lot - but you don't see broad overall effects.
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  > There may be some specific groups of workers who have suffered a lot And that's the point. Obviously plenty of people in the US are very well off, that won't make poor people any happier. Also, outsourcing labour and bringing in migrants have similar effects on wages because in both cases domestic labour is being replaced with lower-cost labour.
  - dash2 8y ago
    You may think that poor people have suffered from migration - but it is very hard to see in the data. That is my point.
    - Mikeb85 8y ago
      https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 https://www.nber.org/papers/w3761 No, the data supports it, especially over the time period outlined by the original article.
      - dash2 8y ago
        That paper is interesting but it was published in 1991, and it predates the modern use of exogenous shocks to get clear evidence on causality. In particular, it doesn't directly estimate effects on wages - it calculates them from an economic model. Whereas this paper looks directly for wage effects, in the context of a big local labour supply shock, and doesn't find them: Card, D., 1990. The impact of the Mariel boatlift on the Miami labor market. ILR Review, 43(2), pp.245-257. Borjas is an interesting guy and I respect him, but I don't think the overall literature supports his negative view of migration's effects on wages. I stand by my claim, not because I'm a huge expert, but backed up by the two literature reviews mentioned above.
weberc2 8y ago
I’m really disappointed that we middle/upper class liberals who used to advocate for free speech and rational debate and compassion/inclusivity (esp of the disenfranchised) find it much easier to demonize and misrepresent this group rather than empathize or engage with their arguments. For all the criticism we levied at conservatives for their hypocrisy, utter lack of self-awareness, and authoritarian instincts, we are determined to outdo them.
Mediterraneo10 8y ago
> If people truly cared about the plight of the uneducated working class, there'd be taxes on wealth, incentives against rentiers, ... and maybe even basic income. Maybe there would be those things in certain countries now, if the uneducated working class focused intently on voting for parties calling for those things instead of being distracted by political forces that wish to blame immigration for their problems. If I were a lower-income person, I would much rather live on basic income (and have the time to seek training and employment for better prospects) while letting gastarbeiter do all the shit work, than to have to do the shit work myself.
choochooboogalu 8y ago
> But whenever people talk about the 'good old days' they're racist, right? /s Why can't we have a more nuanced discussion and acknowledge both: a. that globalism, free trade, and automation have negatively impacted blue collar workers b. that much of blue collar quality of life in good old days did come at the explicitly racist policies, starting with slavery and continuing through federally enforced redlining in which has been the main source of wealth accumulation [1] It's also worth noting that many working class gains in the "good old days" excluded black workers due to historical racial divisions in labor movement and unions explicitly opposed economic liberties for racial and ethnic minorities. [2] MLK was murdered while working to unify the racial and labor struggles. This division continues to be exploited by populist politicians. > If people truly cared about the plight of the uneducated working class, there'd be taxes on wealth, incentives against rentiers, far higher minimum wages FWIW, I agree with these items and grew up on a farm in the white american heartland The GI bill is another good example of economic support for the working class from the "good old days" that like much of the Jim Crow era primarily benefited whites at the expense of other racial groups [3] 1. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/the-unfulfilled-promise-of-fair-housing/557009/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/the-unf... 2. https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-flagitiosum-etiamsi-nulla https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I._Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_and_the_G.I....
- watwut 8y ago
  Blue colar workers did not profited from slavery. The interests of free labor were one of reasons for slavery opposition. Blue colar worker can't compete with slave (or ther slaveholder using slave).
  - rhizome 8y ago
    You're compressing history; "blue collar" didn't exist during slavery.
    - watwut 8y ago
scarface74 8y ago
Well, since it seems like you stating that illegal immigration disproportionately hurts the working class comes across as a right wing talking point - and I thought so too for the longest. My mind was changed by NPR of all things.... https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/632/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/633/transcript Companies do in fact discriminate against Americans for low wage workers because they can pay them less and some companies do skirt worker verification requirements when hiring low skilled workers. Of course seeing that I am a minority, I don’t approve of the demonization of foreigners. They are using the same tactics that use to be called the Southern Strategy.
hopler 8y ago
An unemployed person wannabe-immigrant on the far side of the border is still suffering. They don't pop into existence when they immigrate.
- Mikeb85 8y ago
  What about their own country? Unless you're calling it a shithole?

malvosenior 8y ago

The US emerged from World War II the global superpower while much of the rest of the world was literally decimated and turned to ruins. We built an incredible industrial and commercial base to support and profit from the war. This overlapped with (and drove) major leaps forward in technology that the US was uniquely positioned to take advantage of. The "good old days" did exist but they were an extreme anomaly following the largest war in human history. I think people have a hard time realizing this because the mores and culture from that time period were encoded, broadcast and digested by the rest of the world. We still live orbiting around 20th century mass media cultural concepts.

deogeo 8y ago
> We built an incredible industrial and commercial base to support and profit from the war. Doesn't this conflict with the teachings of free trade? That other countries growing their industries and rebuilding themselves left the US worse off (if that is the reason)? If you buy that logic, then shouldn't you be very worried about moving production abroad?
- malvosenior 8y ago
  Yes, globalization would be one of the main reasons the "good old days" are no longer achievable. Lifestyle is being globally normalized. Note I keep putting "good" in quotes as a reference to the term. I'm not making a value judgement.
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    globalisation isn't a zero sum game. Rise of industry in developing nations didn't mean that some static output shifted around. Only a relatively small percentage (about 15% or so according to most research) of job loss is attributable to globalisation, and it isn't the jobs that were responsible for the 'good old times', but rather the very worst, environmentally damaging manufacturing. Gains in productivity and corresponding automation account for the lion's share of job loss. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs...

abhinai 8y ago

Deep welfare losses, along with effects on labor supply, health care spending, and asset accumulation indicate that this large population segment has not enjoyed the fruits of broad economic health. It feels we need to do a better job quantifying this problem before we come up with a solution. For example (1) how much money would it take to fix health care? (2) how much money would it take to fix welfare? (3) what is the impact of low savings rate on people's economic condition. For example appearance of credit cards coincides with the timeline in this article (4) How has immigration impacted unskilled workers? (5) Does UBI work? (6) How is Europe doing it? (7) Is Europe really as successful at dealing with these issues as everyone seems to claim?

leetcrew 8y ago
regarding (7), I am very interested in reading a nonpartisan take on the relationship between US defense spending and welfare spending in western europe. if it weren't for the current defensive arrangement with the US, would europe spend more on defense? if so, would it still spend the same on social services? do we americans overestimate our contribution to the defensive posture of the west?
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > if it weren't for the current defensive arrangement with the US, would europe spend more on defense? Europe is a lot of countries, the US-Europe alliance is old enough that there have been at least three or four distinct time periods where the answer to this question fluctuates (cold war, post cold war, post-9/11, post Syria) Furthermore, defense is not some sort of measurable good; especially for countries in the EU who are surrounded by non-enemies, how much they choose to spend on defense is in large part a political question. It's really hard to say e.g., whether Germans would have chosen to spend more on defense if the US decreased its defense spending in Europe. And the answer would probably be different in the different time periods I mentioned above. E.g., given the German attitude toward US military presence in Europe over the past 20 years [1], I suspect the answer for that period is "no". But ultimately the answer to this question will be different from country to country and from decade to decade, and a truly nonpartisan answer would be "there's really no way to give a definitive answer for all of Europe across that time period.". > do we americans overestimate our contribution to the defensive posture of the west? Americans underestimate (or often simply don't even know about) their contribution to many of Europe's most pressing security and welfare expenditures. The 15 year war in the middle east is now taking an enormous economic and political toll on Europe. It's not too far-fetched to say that Europe might have been both safer and richer today had the US spent substantially less money on its military over the past 15 years (read: not waged wars in the middle east). [1] https://www.thelocal.de/20180711/almost-half-of-germans-want-us-army-to-leave-the-country https://www.thelocal.de/20180711/almost-half-of-germans-want...

rcdmd 8y ago

> In the abstract, you get this statement: "The drop in wages depressed the labor supply of men and increased that of women, especially in married couples." Seems to get cause and effect backwards. Isn't it more likely that an increase in labor supply (women entering the workforce) had, simply by the laws of supply and demand, decreased wages?[1] [1] https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/NEWSTATS/facts/women_lf.htm#one https://www.dol.gov/wb/stats/NEWSTATS/facts/women_lf.htm#one The paper is full of complicated-looking economic models and nice graphs-- but if you don't get the basic assumptions right it's hard to trust the fancy models.

nixarian 8y ago
Exactly. More people entering the labor force was only good for the owners and employers, it destroy the bargaining power of the actual workers. Add to that the fact that having two parents at work seriously harms the family, making it more difficult for their children to develop in healthy ways. This is the future we asked for. Given the statistics that say women only want to marry men who make more money than them, it seems to have done even more harm than we might imagine, because there are few women wanting men to stay home and fill the role certain ideologues claimed would be open to them.
wallace_f 8y ago
Economists dont need their models to work, they need people to think they are smart. Imagine writing software that never had to work in the real world. I at least have some formal training in economics to feel confident in making this statement.
BurningFrog 8y ago
These things are hard to think about. A new worker (or 50 million new female workers) does on one end increase the supply of labor, which should lower the price (wages) of it, but s/he also starts spending an income, which increases general demand in the economy and acts to push up wages. It's not obvious what the net effect is. Economists probably have a (or several :) well thought out and validated answers to this, but my gut feel is that it all evens out.
- 8y ago

areoform 8y ago

Most people look at economies as an extension of supply-demand curves in a Newtonian-esque model where one ball hits the next, transfers momentum (elastically or otherwise) and so forth. Everything is down to a great chain of causality that creates a nexus of forces. Consequently, "fixing" things in this model means more of Force X over Y. Or, applying Lever A to Spot Z to induce Force P. The force or lever can be regulations, deregulation, taxation, tax cuts, interest rate changes, jailing bankers... And people may come at it from different ideologies, but the Newtonian mental model remains. Everyone repeats ad infinitum if only we quantized and applied X or Y then clearly such and such outcome will occur. And this technique very rarely works out. It might help us stave off a great amount of unrest if we shift this frame of reference. A new perspective and a new way of doing things where we view our economies as ecosystems or networks might clarify why these changes are occurring. For example, we can look at excessive economic inequality and understand why it is bad by looking at natural ecosystems and how they are a closed loop. For e.g. Consumers are like plankton. They are the injection of biomass (money) into the system that ensures money changes hands when they buy goods and services. A single entity, no matter how rich, cannot provide equivalent mass to the greater ecosystem than a large set of consumers. Or, in other words, a billionaire requires only so many pairs of sunglasses and Netflix subscriptions. Ergo, a broad base of wealth where people can afford the products around them is essential for a capitalistic ecosystem to function, as these plankton keep feeding entities higher up in the food chain through an accumulation effect. For whatever reason, just like we have decimated our natural environment, we have also decimated our economic ecosystem. The number of entities with high purchasing power is rapidly decreasing, and this signals a significant problem for the future of the ecosystem. And it also suggests how automation can end up eating itself economically unless we institute measures - artificial or otherwise - that inject capital back into the building blocks of the economy. I suspect that as computing gets better, we will eventually create models that will make the current economic debates and models we have obsolete. Our arguments over taxation, immigration, regulation, reform etc. will seem quite quaint to people in the future if we manage to make this transition and if we can help policymakers and thinking individuals see economies in real-time, and simulate outcomes of individual, highly variable, irrational agents at unprecedented scales. But we're not there yet. But we could be. We can fix this. And we will. I am sure of that because brilliant people are working on this problem and eventually, we'll get it right. I hold out hope for a better future no matter how bad this news gets and I remember that we're in a state of flux and things always appear darker in these times.

Animats 8y ago

It just doesn't take that many people to do all the stuff.[1] The automation revolution happened a long time ago.[2] Peak manufacturing employment was in 1979. Agriculture is down to 1.4%. Making stuff (mining, construction, manufacturing, and agriculture) is at 14% and dropping. Those were the classic blue-collar jobs. They're the ones where large numbers of people were employed doing repetitive work under close supervision. Many of those jobs were unionized and paid OK. Even for people with IQ below 100. Not any more. For a while, "services" employed more people. Then came cheap computing and the Internet. No more file clerks. Much less paper-pushing. Fewer retail salespeople. Fewer bank tellers. Both retail and finance are dropping in headcount. That's what happened. [1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-sector.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-... [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP

coldtea 8y ago
>It just doesn't take that many people to do all the stuff. That's impossible. A couples of times in the past when we evolved major new technologies (e.g. industrial revolution) new jobs were created. This means there will _always_ be new jobs, it's like a contract with history. /s -- but also how many think, taking 2-3 historical cases as some kind of necessary eternal motif.
- rcdmd 8y ago
  I think you're both right. The commenter above you is just taking the short view and you're taking the long view. Automation is great for long-term productivity and the supply of better, cheaper goods/services, but you can't argue it makes for a happy former file-clerk 5 years away from retirement who now has to find a new gig.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >I think you're both right Well, I think I supplemented the commenter above -- I was arguing with him only ironically. I don't think it's impossible for something that happened in the past to stop happening, because the situation re: automation, robotics, and AI are qualitatively different than past evolutions (plus we're already grasping at non-productive straws to keep people occupied, e.g. the rise of bullshit jobs). (In fact, the fully realized endgame of AI+robotics revolution would be the elimination of the need of a human involved for anything, including even creative endeavors. Why some believe "human jobs" are something that's inevitable to always exist in new forms and always enough for most of the population -- as opposed to e.g. just a 10-20% at some point, if not 0% --, is beyond me).

ajmurmann 8y ago

It has become impossible to me to read articles on this topic that don't make clear if their "stagnant wages" are corrected for the health care benefits eating up all potential increases for workers who are at the bottom end of the compensation range. Ever since this effect was explained on econtalk (https://www.econtalk.org/mark-warshawsky-on-compensation-health-care-costs-and-inequality/ https://www.econtalk.org/mark-warshawsky-on-compensation-hea...) I'm convinced that the US health care system is the #1 problem that needs fixing.

dash2 8y ago
From the abstract: Welfare losses, measured as a one-time asset compensation, are 12.5%, 8%, and 7.2% of the present discounted value of earnings for single men, couples, and single women, respectively. Lower wages explain 47-58% of these losses, shorter life expectancies 25-34%, and higher medical expenses account for the rest.
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  I'm still not clear if higher medical expenses refers to expenses that were directly paid by the worker or also accounts for costs the employer paid as part of the total compensation package but that never passed through the hands of the worker.

dhbradshaw 8y ago

"Less-educated Americans born in the 1960s fare much worse than those born 20 years earlier" One interesting thing worth watching for here is selection bias. If the average education level increased during this 20 year period, then we aren't comparing similar cohorts when we select for a particular level of education at the two different times.

orangecat 8y ago
Correct: https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attai...
- simonsarris 8y ago
  But graduation rates are meaningless because they are easily gamed. Compare average SAT scores from 1970's to today and the trend is downward. Graduation rates are easy to boost: Graduate bad, failing students. SAT scores are not so hard to fake.

jnbiche 8y ago

If they think it's gotten bad from the 1940 cohort to 1960, wait until they look at the 1980 cohort. Anecdotally, among my friends and family without a college degree, the situation is dire indeed.

lkrubner 8y ago

This essay suggests that the peak years for the USA standard of living were in the mid-20th Century, and those born before World War II saw the greatest benefits. There will eventually be political consequences for the erosion of the USA standard of living. The Economist magazine had an article, which was discussed here on Hacker News, with the title “The link between polygamy and war“ to which I responded: "This suggests that political stability depends on young men being able to pursue their romantic dreams. This would apply in any country, not just African countries. In nations in the West, an important limiting factor is the ability to get one’s own apartment. That is, the ratio of average male wage to average rent. In the USA, the happiest year for this ratio was 1958, when people were spending 22% of their income on rent, on average. Not by coincidence, this was the peak year of the Baby Boom. In some sense, it was the best year in history to be a young white male in the USA. It was the year when it was easiest for an 18 year old male to get out of high school, get their own apartment, marry their high school sweetheart, and start a family. And of course, young people did this in huge numbers, which is why 1958 remains the peak year for teenage pregnancy in the USA." More here: http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike-if-they-do-not-have-women http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/do-men-become-warlike...

malvosenior 8y ago
That would go along with the article from yesterday saying that fewer young men in the US are having sex than ever before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19524642

RickJWagner 8y ago

I'm suspicious. When I see a large chart titled "Life expectancy at age 66" it sets off all kinds of alarm bells. Why 66? Why not 50 or 60 or 70? What was special about 66 that it was chosen, and why wasn't it explained?

obrisintor 8y ago
Similarly, mass shootings per year compared by country where mass shooting is defined as 4 people getting shot.

CryptoPunk 8y ago

I believe people in the earlier cohort were more likely to die as children as child mortality was higher in the past. If so, that could apply a selection bias to the age 66 and up subset of this cohort, since those who survive their childhood could tend to have a natural proclivity to be healthier into old-age than those who don't. Moreover, people became more educated over that 20 year timespan, so comparing people of equal absolute educational attainment across the two periods could be a case of comparing a higher socioeconomic group to a lower one.