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A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019; Let's talk about how is so

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019; Let's talk about how is social media's fault! Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! The beatings will continue until moral improves.

xyzzyz 7y ago
A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019 Do you have any source to support this? Because real median personal[1] income went up almost 50% since then[2]. [1] — don't confuse it with real median household income, which didn't grow nearly as much, because of a significant rise in single-person households which pushes the median down a lot. [2] – https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N
- crooked-v 7y ago
  For some simple examples, inflation-adjusted home prices have gone up by a factor of 6 and inflation-adjusted education prices have gone up by a factor of 3 over the past few generations [1], while inflation-adjusted average wages have only gone up by $2/hour [2]. That single mom would have had a dramatically easier time providing housing and education for kids even with lower purchasing power for most consumer goods. [1]: 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... [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
  - internet_user 7y ago
    that just means a single mother today working the same job would be able to afford fewer things than 20 years ago. where is the comparison with cubicle drones?
    - crooked-v 7y ago
      If a cubicle drone is making twice as much money in adjusted terms but has to pay three or four times as much for housing, they could well be coming out behind in the equation.
      - TremendousJudge 7y ago
        One thing that I find amazing about Americans is that most of them don't understand inflation at all. It's uncommon to see any mainstream source talk about inflation-adjusted values when referring to past numbers. This becomes clear when for instance box office numbers become a conversation topic -- nobody really stops to consider how comparing films from 20 years ago with films of today is just really a measure of how money loses its value and therefore movies make more money than before
        travisjungroth 7y ago
        The box office thing is a game, and the game isn’t fun when Gone With The Wind will never be defeated.
        selectodude 7y ago
        The new Avengers movie is already #5 (inflation adjusted) and it's only been out for a little over three weeks.
        kaesar14 7y ago
        Three weeks pretty much mean the lions share of the box office take is in already.
        asdff 7y ago
        It's still a fun game when you can double to quadruple your investment
      - challenger22 7y ago
  - schintan 7y ago
    many of the problems in this world can be explained by one thing : too many people.
    - Miner49er 7y ago
      No, GDP per capita has doubled since the 80s. We have more wealth per person then ever in history. The problem is wealth distribution.
    - gizmo686 7y ago
      Except our per capita productivity has gone up, and we are not facing any fundamental shortages.
      - ac29 7y ago
        They're not making any more land in high-demand areas.
        gizmo686 7y ago
        High-demand areas aren't (generally) high demand because of intrinsic qualities. They are in demand because of the people and social structures that are already there. It is not inherently the case that there is a fixed amount of high-demand areas, that is just how we are set up politically at this point in time.
        imtringued 7y ago
        That doesn't mean it is impossible to zone for higher densities.
    - prklmn 7y ago
      I think institutional corruption is a much bigger problem than population size for the US.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    Another thing to note: Real GDP per capita has basically doubled since 1980, but that increase in wealth isn't being seen by the average person, as your data shows.
  - rukittenme 7y ago
    You're not accounting for the higher interest rates of the 1980s. Which home would you prefer to buy: $150,000 at 15% over 30 years. $350,000 at 4% over 30 years. Hint: they both have approximately the same total loan cost and payment. You can do this calculation with your parents. My home cost $350k at 3.8%. My parents bought my childhood home for $88k at 8%. Adjust my parents' home price for inflation and run the result through a mortgage payment calculator. You find that I paid slightly more for my home but my home is much nicer (central heat and air, closer to town, larger, better schools, etc). My parents' home happens to be for sale currently (not by them). If I paid full asking I would pay MORE in raw dollars but LESS in inflation-adjusted-total-loan-cost (which is what actually matters).
    - api 7y ago
      Down payments are the monkey wrench here. The requirement to have a down payment means high prices basically lock people out of homeownership, period. That in turn limits ability to build wealth at all, even at a crappy interest rate.
      - LUmBULtERA 7y ago
        Owning a home is not the only way to build wealth, nor is it necessarily the best way to build wealth.
      - tathougies 7y ago
        Having a mortgage is not a form of wealth.
      - rukittenme 7y ago
        I put $15,000 down or 4.2% of the total loan amount.
      - war1025 7y ago
        The main way that owning a home allows someone to build wealth is that it forces them to put money towards something productive rather than blowing it on stupid things. My experience from buying a house two years ago is that though I suspected it, I never truly realized how many amenities were covered by my rent. I went from paying $30/month in utilities, etc. to ~$400 /month. I also now live 10 miles further away from where I work / hang out. Granted, we live in a house that is ~2x as big as our apartment, plus two car garage. But if you factored out strictly the various recurring expenses I now pay from my previous rent, it is extremely close to breaking even. And that isn't including the increased cost of owning / operating two cars that now drive ~60 more miles a day between the two of them. Our net worth increased much faster while we were renting than now that we have a house.
  - shados 7y ago
    Isn't it partly expected though? I never looked at the stats for single income vs dual income families over time, but my instinct tells me that single income was much more common in the 80s, and dual income is much more common today than it was back then. So even if single income had drastically gone up, they'd be "competing" with dual income families on a global level. And sure enough, when you look at house prices in an area, they very much seem priced for dual incomes. All anecdotal and unverified guesses, mind you. But even a highly paid software engineer in SF will have no hope of competing with a DINK family of equally paid software engineers, for example. And there's more and more of those. I assume the market's following.
  - tathougies 7y ago
    Home sizes have also shot up by a significant margin. What's the % change in price per square foot?
    - itronitron 7y ago
      price per sq ft is probably going down as home sizes go up, largely due to location. Most new homes are built where land is available, further out from city centers, and therefore have a lower price per square foot despite being larger.
      - xyzzyz 7y ago
        Yes, but it's always been true. The houses in 1930s, 1950s, and 1990s were also built where land was available, further out from city centers, so this hasn't changed, and doesn't explain why price/sq ft is going down.
        tathougies 7y ago
        Yeah, this is what I'm not getting. It seems like the houses that are like the houses we grew up in, or our parents grew up in cost the same. However, people want more.
        xyzzyz 7y ago
        The reality is that people simply can (or think that they can) afford more these days on the one hand, and the actual building costs are lower on the other due to cheaper material and more effective techniques.
- ranie93 7y ago
  I'm not the OP, and they may be overstating statistics (happy to be shown otherwise). At the same time, wage stagnation is no myth: "From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent. This breakdown of pay growth has been especially evident in the last decade, affecting both college- and non-college-educated workers as well as blue- and white-collar workers. This means that workers have been producing far more than they receive in their paychecks and benefit packages from their employers."[0] "The minimum wage peaked in inflation-adjusted value in 1968, when it was equal to $10.15 in 2018 dollars. [...] As of 2018, the federal minimum wage was worth 28.6 percent less than in 1968" [1] "While the cost of a four-year degree exploded to $104,480 [from $52,892 adjusted for inflation], real median wages only went from $54,042 to $59,039 between 1989 and 2016." [2] Heavy childcare costs [3] "In U.S., wage growth is being wiped out entirely by inflation" [4] [0]https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2024-would-lift-pay-for-nearly-40-million-workers/ https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-... [2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/price-of-college-increasing-almost-8-times-faster-than-wages/#39068b4066c1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/pric... [3]https://data.oecd.org/benwage/net-childcare-costs.htm https://data.oecd.org/benwage/net-childcare-costs.htm [4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/10/america-wage-growth-is-getting-wiped-out-entirely-by-inflation/?utm_term=.46fc10bbb5da https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/10/america-w...
  - ta1234567890 7y ago
    Thank you for putting all of that info together in a very easy way to read and to follow the sources.
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    The productivity and wage decoupling is very hot debate topic in the economic circles. It's not very easy to sum it up, as there are many factors going in. For example, productivity is calculated based on real GDP, which uses GDP deflator, while deflator for real wages that is typically used is CPI. Just the fact that you're using two different deflators already makes a meaningful comparison harder. Looking at minimum wage is not really relevant, as only around 2% of workers earn minimum wage. The degree cost explosion is very unfortunate, not only because it is more expensive now, but also because much fewer people had (or even attempted to obtain) degrees, so not only it was much cheaper for them, but also they simply didn't need to get them as much as people need them now. The push for universal tertiary education has been very detrimental to our society, as people need to spend more, and the only result is degree inflation.
- emddudley 7y ago
  Best I could find... apologies for any mistakes below. Purchasing power in the U.S. has stayed roughly the same since 1964. [0] The median annual income for single women with children in the U.S. in 1985 was $16,431 [1]. Couldn't find information on just waiters/waitresses. I believe these are 1985 dollars? If so, that income is nearly $40,000 in 2018 dollars. The median annual income for waiters/waitresses in the U.S. in 2018 was $21,780. [2] [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us... [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/p23-196.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... [2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/waiters-and-waitresses.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/waiters...
  - xyzzyz 7y ago
    I recommend using FRED data, they aggregate many data sources nicely. For example, you can see that median usual weekly earnings of women went up about 50% since 1980s[1]. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q
- Eleopteryx 7y ago
  My understanding is that real median income is influenced by the sheer total number of hours worked. Real median income can increase by virtue of more people working more often while their wages stay the same.
Kye 7y ago
>> "Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote" There aren't a lot of data points--less than 100--for this, so it might not be statistically significant. Both those presidents are awful, but that could be an anomaly once seen in the context of a more significant sample.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Trump hasn't gotten us into any trillion dollar boondoggles in the middle east (knock on wood) so I think the history books in 100yr are going to consider W "bad" and Trump "mediocre". I'd still rather have W in the white house though. Uncouth comments and geopolitical stupidity get forgotten in the long term. Iraq, the GWOT and the accompanying erosion of our freedoms will be what's in the history books. Obama will be known for the ACA (even if it is subsequently repealed it will be known as the first attempt at a nation wide healthcare solution). Trump will be a footnote. It'll be interesting to see what the next administration brings. Edit: Is this at -2 because I'm wrong or because people lose the capacity for critical thought when the orange man is involved?
  - Kye 7y ago
    Time will tell, but you might be right. Almost everything I dislike (or fear) about Trump is stuff W was on board with, but it was the status quo then. W wasn't great for LGBTQ+ rights (for example) either, but his views and polices didn't stand out as much. Trump's SCOTUS picks will probably look worse in the 100 year view.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jnbiche 7y ago
    > Is this at -2 because I'm wrong or because people lose the capacity for critical thought when the orange man is involved? I didn't downvote, but I suspect it's at -2 because Trump is chiseling away at our rule of law and societal norms for a president. That's a big net loss for our democratic system of government, which for many of us is what matters most, far more than any D or R after a name.
shanusmagnus 7y ago
This "losing the popular vote" narrative would be a lot more compelling (at least to me) if the elections were less close. It looks bad to win the Presidency and lose the popular vote, but I don't think it actually matters. In a nation of 300 something million, close enough to half want either candidate. The problems lie elsewhere. (The fact that I can say "either candidate" is part of it.) [Edit: I should have said "Close to half the voters in a nation of 300 million want either candidate."]
- crooked-v 7y ago
  First-past-the-post voting makes "either candidate" inevitable. The only real way to fix it is to switch to instant runoff voting, proportional voting with parliamentary coalitions, or other systems that represent voter desires in a proportional or ranked way.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > In a nation of 300 something million, close enough to half want either candidate. Neither of the major candidates ever has support from anything close to half of the 300-something-million population; of the total 324.5 million population, the 2016 election was like 20.03% to 19.26%. Even of the eligible-to-vote population, the vote for the two major party candidates was about 26.84% to 25.68%.
  - noobiemcfoob 7y ago
    Which underlines the parent post's point. Those margins are so slim as to not matter. We're talking about the entire election hanging on the difference of one moderate sized city's population.
- Afforess 7y ago
  So many problems with this. 1. 300 million people are not registered voters. ~50-60 million are. 2. First Past The Post means people are voting for the candidate they hate the least, not the candidate they prefer. 3. The election wasn't very close. 2 million votes more for 1 of the candidates in 2016. 4. The electoral college "matters" in that without it, the Iraq war wouldn't have happened, nor Trump. Saying it's the people's fault is unfounded when the people did not vote for these things.
challenger22 7y ago
If you let sensationalized news stories dominate your worldview, you will give in to apathy. If your strongest moral convictions are about events you cannot influence, redirect those convictions to something that is inside your locus of control. What I urge people is: be conscientious in your day-to-day tasks. If you can see your efforts contributing to people's happiness, the apathy will disappear. Society is built of individuals; if these bricks do not care for the health of the structure, it will sag or collapse.
- Iamhisalt 7y ago
  This post needs to be higher up. We are all connected.
- malka 7y ago
  what if i want it to collapse because i find it disgusting ?
- noxToken 7y ago
  Sometimes it's hard for apathy to completely disappear when you're one emergency away from financial ruin. A 2nd year teacher in the US doesn't make that much, but the amount of youth lives impacted can be a huge net positive. It's hard to not be cynical know how much of your personal time and money you put in while receiving peanuts in return.
9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago
People's homes were much less luxurious, as their lifestyle. A lot of the things we take for granted the people at the time they only dreamed about.
- dgabriel 7y ago
  In the last 6 years, my rent has gone up by about 800/mo. It's the same apartment.
  - jakeogh 7y ago
    Why rent? You are paying that money anyway. Get a FHA loan. You could be on the other side of that equation. Sure it seems bad for you, but in actual fact, the place you are living has gone up in value. That's unambiguously a good thing.
    - SeanAppleby 7y ago
      That is not unambiguously a good thing. That's a bad thing. Think about it. Housing is considered a good investment because it consistently has gone up in cost faster than the rest of the economy. As this continues housing becomes more expensive relative to median purchasing power. Unless housing becomes a bad investment, it will by definition continue to be something that a smaller percentage of people can afford over time. We would be better off if housing became a consumption good/commodity that by default stayed roughly the same price in real dollars forever, since that's the only way housing can stay accessible to average people indefinitely.
    - Buttons840 7y ago
      It's the same apartment. The apartment is increasing in value. I understand the economics of how this can happen, but I'm not becoming any more optimistic while trying to reconcile these two facts.
  - dorgo 7y ago
    Inflation? Afaik, new constructions have to comply with more regulation (noise insulation, materials, environment protection etc) than before, which makes them more expensive. At least where I live.
turk73 7y ago
Would you just quit the butt hurt about the popular vote? It doesn't make any sense to keep bitching about this. The popular vote has NEVER been how the US elects a President and with good reason. The US has been on the downslope since Nixon removed us from the gold standard. They let the central bank rob us blind. Now we are letting foreign nations usurp our internal systems until they fail. The next leg down is going to be really ugly and you're bitching about the very people trying to fix this shit. Also ETA: I got screwed over by Boomers for well over a decade. Nobody would mentor me our help me in my career in any way because I wasn't part of their generation. Find a way to help yourself--quit bitching and get out there and do something about it. That's what I had to do. A friend gave me the best advice years ago: "You're spending all your time framing the problem, when are you going to address it?"
B-Con 7y ago
> Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! An untrue claim[0] that's been copy-pasted for a while. It has happened twice recently and three times before that, stop making it sound like it's unprecedented. None happened in the 1900s, so it's very rare (well, an 11% occurrence rate now) but not more than in the rest of history. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
- CodeCube 7y ago
  Sure, that point of OP's post was pedantically incorrect ... but I think the overarching point they were trying to make is that the republicans haven't had a candidate elected by the popular vote since 1989 when GHWB was elected. Since then, both elections in which a republican president won the office, was while losing the popular vote ... that's THIRTY YEARS since the last true win. Looked at from that perspective, yeah that feels pretty depressing that it keeps happening.
  - B-Con 7y ago
    It's not pedantically incorrect, it's simply incorrect as well as partially misleading. It's an 11% occurrence rate now in a system that was designed to have this kind of feature.
    - avmich 7y ago
      It's simply correct if "never" is replaces with "not for a century", which conveys about the same meaning as what was intended.
  - jdoliner 7y ago
    George W Bush won the popular vote in 2004 though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidentia...
john_moscow 7y ago
I'm not sure that working as a waitress at Denny's would be good example, but most of the jobs in 1980s required much more thinking and decision-making from the employees due to fewer automation and much less centralization. That, in turn, gave more bargaining power that translated into more purchasing power. A college-educated cubicle drone could be replaced with another one in a matter of days without any negative business impact at all, so why would the business pay them more?
jdoliner 7y ago
There have been 4 or 5 (one is a bit ambiguous) elections where the winner lost the popular vote. [0] So no, this isn't more than any other time in US history combined. But more importantly, who cares? They lost the popular vote in an election in which the popular vote didn't count for anything. If the popular vote had counted for something in these elections, you would have gotten a different result. The candidates would have campaigned differently, and people would have voted differently. Just look at the difference in turnout between swing-states and safely red or blue states [1]. We wouldn't see this disparity if the popular vote counted for something. Complaining that the winning candidate lost the popular vote is like complaining that the team that won the superbowl had a lower free throw shooting percentage. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elections https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elect...
- psychometry 7y ago
  This might be the dumbest, most unnecessarily pedantic comment I've ever read on HN.
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    Why? The candidates optimize to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. You have no idea what the results would have been if the goal was to win the popular vote.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please follow the site guidelines no matter how dumb or pedantic some other comment is, or you feel it is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Buttons840 7y ago
  I don't think he was complaining about the election as much as he was saying that the election system which selected the minority over the majority is just one reason people are becoming increasingly pessimistic.
baybal2 7y ago
Your voice is of rare quality reasoning these days. It's admirable. I see the West disintegrating now. Genuinely serious issues were snowballing for the last quarter century for it, without any sight of resolution on the horizon. I was asked recently "What the hell has happened to the West?" And the answer I gave for that was "the West has happened... to itself" I have no better words for that: Whatever were the worst traits of the system, once reserved for "territorials", "colonials", and other lesser subject, they are now being turned on the Western society itself. Whatever the West did to "the third world" it now does to itself.
badpun 7y ago
The argument about losing the popular vote is flawed. Gaining the majority’s support does not decide the result of the election, and hence the candidates’ campains just don’t hold it as a goal. It is not impossible that, if the rules were changed, Trump (for example) would still win, as his campain would now aim at gaining majority.
mlcrypto 7y ago
That's exactly how it was intended. This is a democratic republic. Both sides knew the rules of the 2016 election. Hillary knew the goal was the electoral college but she failed to campaign in the battleground mid west states. This is like complaining that the soccer team with the most possession or shots on target still lost the game.
- ryanmcbride 7y ago
  Just because it's "the rules" doesn't mean its something people have to just sit down and accept. Every constitutional amendment has redefined "the rules", and drawing a bunch of lines on a map and ignoring a vote delta of 3 million people is in my opinion, a rule that is directly counter to a democracy, and should be criticized and amended.
  - asdff 7y ago
    Especially when the maps were drawn centuries ago and haven't been updated since. A person in Wyoming's vote is 4x more powerful than someone in California based on how many electoral votes that state gets.
  - fullshark 7y ago
    As you say, democrats have two options: 1. Amend the constitution (never happening) 2. Come up with a platform appealing to a large enough coalition of states Whining about it gets them nowhere and their only real option is 2.
davidsawyer 7y ago
> The beatings will continue until moral improves. And until morale improves, as well!
AlexB138 7y ago
This post is a fantastic example of what the actual problem is. Neither of the points made are factually accurate, but boy is the poster angry about it. "Let's talk about how is social media's fault", indeed. Moral outrage, mostly fabricated, pedaled by every media outlet, spreading like wildfire. It's everywhere, and it seems like almost everyone, myself included, falls for it to some degree.

xyzzyz 7y ago

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019 Do you have any source to support this? Because real median personal[1] income went up almost 50% since then[2]. [1] — don't confuse it with real median household income, which didn't grow nearly as much, because of a significant rise in single-person households which pushes the median down a lot. [2] – https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

crooked-v 7y ago
For some simple examples, inflation-adjusted home prices have gone up by a factor of 6 and inflation-adjusted education prices have gone up by a factor of 3 over the past few generations [1], while inflation-adjusted average wages have only gone up by $2/hour [2]. That single mom would have had a dramatically easier time providing housing and education for kids even with lower purchasing power for most consumer goods. [1]: 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... [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
- internet_user 7y ago
  that just means a single mother today working the same job would be able to afford fewer things than 20 years ago. where is the comparison with cubicle drones?
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    If a cubicle drone is making twice as much money in adjusted terms but has to pay three or four times as much for housing, they could well be coming out behind in the equation.
    - TremendousJudge 7y ago
      One thing that I find amazing about Americans is that most of them don't understand inflation at all. It's uncommon to see any mainstream source talk about inflation-adjusted values when referring to past numbers. This becomes clear when for instance box office numbers become a conversation topic -- nobody really stops to consider how comparing films from 20 years ago with films of today is just really a measure of how money loses its value and therefore movies make more money than before
      - travisjungroth 7y ago
        The box office thing is a game, and the game isn’t fun when Gone With The Wind will never be defeated.
        selectodude 7y ago
        The new Avengers movie is already #5 (inflation adjusted) and it's only been out for a little over three weeks.
        kaesar14 7y ago
        Three weeks pretty much mean the lions share of the box office take is in already.
        asdff 7y ago
        It's still a fun game when you can double to quadruple your investment
    - challenger22 7y ago
- schintan 7y ago
  many of the problems in this world can be explained by one thing : too many people.
  - Miner49er 7y ago
    No, GDP per capita has doubled since the 80s. We have more wealth per person then ever in history. The problem is wealth distribution.
  - gizmo686 7y ago
    Except our per capita productivity has gone up, and we are not facing any fundamental shortages.
    - ac29 7y ago
      They're not making any more land in high-demand areas.
      - gizmo686 7y ago
        High-demand areas aren't (generally) high demand because of intrinsic qualities. They are in demand because of the people and social structures that are already there. It is not inherently the case that there is a fixed amount of high-demand areas, that is just how we are set up politically at this point in time.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        That doesn't mean it is impossible to zone for higher densities.
  - prklmn 7y ago
    I think institutional corruption is a much bigger problem than population size for the US.
- Miner49er 7y ago
  Another thing to note: Real GDP per capita has basically doubled since 1980, but that increase in wealth isn't being seen by the average person, as your data shows.
- rukittenme 7y ago
  You're not accounting for the higher interest rates of the 1980s. Which home would you prefer to buy: $150,000 at 15% over 30 years. $350,000 at 4% over 30 years. Hint: they both have approximately the same total loan cost and payment. You can do this calculation with your parents. My home cost $350k at 3.8%. My parents bought my childhood home for $88k at 8%. Adjust my parents' home price for inflation and run the result through a mortgage payment calculator. You find that I paid slightly more for my home but my home is much nicer (central heat and air, closer to town, larger, better schools, etc). My parents' home happens to be for sale currently (not by them). If I paid full asking I would pay MORE in raw dollars but LESS in inflation-adjusted-total-loan-cost (which is what actually matters).
  - api 7y ago
    Down payments are the monkey wrench here. The requirement to have a down payment means high prices basically lock people out of homeownership, period. That in turn limits ability to build wealth at all, even at a crappy interest rate.
    - LUmBULtERA 7y ago
      Owning a home is not the only way to build wealth, nor is it necessarily the best way to build wealth.
    - tathougies 7y ago
      Having a mortgage is not a form of wealth.
    - rukittenme 7y ago
      I put $15,000 down or 4.2% of the total loan amount.
    - war1025 7y ago
      The main way that owning a home allows someone to build wealth is that it forces them to put money towards something productive rather than blowing it on stupid things. My experience from buying a house two years ago is that though I suspected it, I never truly realized how many amenities were covered by my rent. I went from paying $30/month in utilities, etc. to ~$400 /month. I also now live 10 miles further away from where I work / hang out. Granted, we live in a house that is ~2x as big as our apartment, plus two car garage. But if you factored out strictly the various recurring expenses I now pay from my previous rent, it is extremely close to breaking even. And that isn't including the increased cost of owning / operating two cars that now drive ~60 more miles a day between the two of them. Our net worth increased much faster while we were renting than now that we have a house.
- shados 7y ago
  Isn't it partly expected though? I never looked at the stats for single income vs dual income families over time, but my instinct tells me that single income was much more common in the 80s, and dual income is much more common today than it was back then. So even if single income had drastically gone up, they'd be "competing" with dual income families on a global level. And sure enough, when you look at house prices in an area, they very much seem priced for dual incomes. All anecdotal and unverified guesses, mind you. But even a highly paid software engineer in SF will have no hope of competing with a DINK family of equally paid software engineers, for example. And there's more and more of those. I assume the market's following.
- tathougies 7y ago
  Home sizes have also shot up by a significant margin. What's the % change in price per square foot?
  - itronitron 7y ago
    price per sq ft is probably going down as home sizes go up, largely due to location. Most new homes are built where land is available, further out from city centers, and therefore have a lower price per square foot despite being larger.
    - xyzzyz 7y ago
      Yes, but it's always been true. The houses in 1930s, 1950s, and 1990s were also built where land was available, further out from city centers, so this hasn't changed, and doesn't explain why price/sq ft is going down.
      - tathougies 7y ago
        Yeah, this is what I'm not getting. It seems like the houses that are like the houses we grew up in, or our parents grew up in cost the same. However, people want more.
        xyzzyz 7y ago
        The reality is that people simply can (or think that they can) afford more these days on the one hand, and the actual building costs are lower on the other due to cheaper material and more effective techniques.
ranie93 7y ago
I'm not the OP, and they may be overstating statistics (happy to be shown otherwise). At the same time, wage stagnation is no myth: "From 1973 to 2013, hourly compensation of a typical (production/nonsupervisory) worker rose just 9 percent while productivity increased 74 percent. This breakdown of pay growth has been especially evident in the last decade, affecting both college- and non-college-educated workers as well as blue- and white-collar workers. This means that workers have been producing far more than they receive in their paychecks and benefit packages from their employers."[0] "The minimum wage peaked in inflation-adjusted value in 1968, when it was equal to $10.15 in 2018 dollars. [...] As of 2018, the federal minimum wage was worth 28.6 percent less than in 1968" [1] "While the cost of a four-year degree exploded to $104,480 [from $52,892 adjusted for inflation], real median wages only went from $54,042 to $59,039 between 1989 and 2016." [2] Heavy childcare costs [3] "In U.S., wage growth is being wiped out entirely by inflation" [4] [0]https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/ [1] https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-by-2024-would-lift-pay-for-nearly-40-million-workers/ https://www.epi.org/publication/raising-the-federal-minimum-... [2]https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/price-of-college-increasing-almost-8-times-faster-than-wages/#39068b4066c1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/pric... [3]https://data.oecd.org/benwage/net-childcare-costs.htm https://data.oecd.org/benwage/net-childcare-costs.htm [4]https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/10/america-wage-growth-is-getting-wiped-out-entirely-by-inflation/?utm_term=.46fc10bbb5da https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/10/america-w...
- ta1234567890 7y ago
  Thank you for putting all of that info together in a very easy way to read and to follow the sources.
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  The productivity and wage decoupling is very hot debate topic in the economic circles. It's not very easy to sum it up, as there are many factors going in. For example, productivity is calculated based on real GDP, which uses GDP deflator, while deflator for real wages that is typically used is CPI. Just the fact that you're using two different deflators already makes a meaningful comparison harder. Looking at minimum wage is not really relevant, as only around 2% of workers earn minimum wage. The degree cost explosion is very unfortunate, not only because it is more expensive now, but also because much fewer people had (or even attempted to obtain) degrees, so not only it was much cheaper for them, but also they simply didn't need to get them as much as people need them now. The push for universal tertiary education has been very detrimental to our society, as people need to spend more, and the only result is degree inflation.
emddudley 7y ago
Best I could find... apologies for any mistakes below. Purchasing power in the U.S. has stayed roughly the same since 1964. [0] The median annual income for single women with children in the U.S. in 1985 was $16,431 [1]. Couldn't find information on just waiters/waitresses. I believe these are 1985 dollars? If so, that income is nearly $40,000 in 2018 dollars. The median annual income for waiters/waitresses in the U.S. in 2018 was $21,780. [2] [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us... [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/p23-196.html https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p... [2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/waiters-and-waitresses.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/food-preparation-and-serving/waiters...
- xyzzyz 7y ago
  I recommend using FRED data, they aggregate many data sources nicely. For example, you can see that median usual weekly earnings of women went up about 50% since 1980s[1]. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252882800Q
Eleopteryx 7y ago
My understanding is that real median income is influenced by the sheer total number of hours worked. Real median income can increase by virtue of more people working more often while their wages stay the same.

Kye 7y ago

>> "Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote" There aren't a lot of data points--less than 100--for this, so it might not be statistically significant. Both those presidents are awful, but that could be an anomaly once seen in the context of a more significant sample.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Trump hasn't gotten us into any trillion dollar boondoggles in the middle east (knock on wood) so I think the history books in 100yr are going to consider W "bad" and Trump "mediocre". I'd still rather have W in the white house though. Uncouth comments and geopolitical stupidity get forgotten in the long term. Iraq, the GWOT and the accompanying erosion of our freedoms will be what's in the history books. Obama will be known for the ACA (even if it is subsequently repealed it will be known as the first attempt at a nation wide healthcare solution). Trump will be a footnote. It'll be interesting to see what the next administration brings. Edit: Is this at -2 because I'm wrong or because people lose the capacity for critical thought when the orange man is involved?
- Kye 7y ago
  Time will tell, but you might be right. Almost everything I dislike (or fear) about Trump is stuff W was on board with, but it was the status quo then. W wasn't great for LGBTQ+ rights (for example) either, but his views and polices didn't stand out as much. Trump's SCOTUS picks will probably look worse in the 100 year view.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jnbiche 7y ago
  > Is this at -2 because I'm wrong or because people lose the capacity for critical thought when the orange man is involved? I didn't downvote, but I suspect it's at -2 because Trump is chiseling away at our rule of law and societal norms for a president. That's a big net loss for our democratic system of government, which for many of us is what matters most, far more than any D or R after a name.

shanusmagnus 7y ago

This "losing the popular vote" narrative would be a lot more compelling (at least to me) if the elections were less close. It looks bad to win the Presidency and lose the popular vote, but I don't think it actually matters. In a nation of 300 something million, close enough to half want either candidate. The problems lie elsewhere. (The fact that I can say "either candidate" is part of it.) [Edit: I should have said "Close to half the voters in a nation of 300 million want either candidate."]

crooked-v 7y ago
First-past-the-post voting makes "either candidate" inevitable. The only real way to fix it is to switch to instant runoff voting, proportional voting with parliamentary coalitions, or other systems that represent voter desires in a proportional or ranked way.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> In a nation of 300 something million, close enough to half want either candidate. Neither of the major candidates ever has support from anything close to half of the 300-something-million population; of the total 324.5 million population, the 2016 election was like 20.03% to 19.26%. Even of the eligible-to-vote population, the vote for the two major party candidates was about 26.84% to 25.68%.
- noobiemcfoob 7y ago
  Which underlines the parent post's point. Those margins are so slim as to not matter. We're talking about the entire election hanging on the difference of one moderate sized city's population.
Afforess 7y ago
So many problems with this. 1. 300 million people are not registered voters. ~50-60 million are. 2. First Past The Post means people are voting for the candidate they hate the least, not the candidate they prefer. 3. The election wasn't very close. 2 million votes more for 1 of the candidates in 2016. 4. The electoral college "matters" in that without it, the Iraq war wouldn't have happened, nor Trump. Saying it's the people's fault is unfounded when the people did not vote for these things.

challenger22 7y ago

If you let sensationalized news stories dominate your worldview, you will give in to apathy. If your strongest moral convictions are about events you cannot influence, redirect those convictions to something that is inside your locus of control. What I urge people is: be conscientious in your day-to-day tasks. If you can see your efforts contributing to people's happiness, the apathy will disappear. Society is built of individuals; if these bricks do not care for the health of the structure, it will sag or collapse.

Iamhisalt 7y ago
This post needs to be higher up. We are all connected.
malka 7y ago
what if i want it to collapse because i find it disgusting ?
noxToken 7y ago
Sometimes it's hard for apathy to completely disappear when you're one emergency away from financial ruin. A 2nd year teacher in the US doesn't make that much, but the amount of youth lives impacted can be a huge net positive. It's hard to not be cynical know how much of your personal time and money you put in while receiving peanuts in return.

9HZZRfNlpR 7y ago

People's homes were much less luxurious, as their lifestyle. A lot of the things we take for granted the people at the time they only dreamed about.

dgabriel 7y ago
In the last 6 years, my rent has gone up by about 800/mo. It's the same apartment.
- jakeogh 7y ago
  Why rent? You are paying that money anyway. Get a FHA loan. You could be on the other side of that equation. Sure it seems bad for you, but in actual fact, the place you are living has gone up in value. That's unambiguously a good thing.
  - SeanAppleby 7y ago
    That is not unambiguously a good thing. That's a bad thing. Think about it. Housing is considered a good investment because it consistently has gone up in cost faster than the rest of the economy. As this continues housing becomes more expensive relative to median purchasing power. Unless housing becomes a bad investment, it will by definition continue to be something that a smaller percentage of people can afford over time. We would be better off if housing became a consumption good/commodity that by default stayed roughly the same price in real dollars forever, since that's the only way housing can stay accessible to average people indefinitely.
  - Buttons840 7y ago
    It's the same apartment. The apartment is increasing in value. I understand the economics of how this can happen, but I'm not becoming any more optimistic while trying to reconcile these two facts.
- dorgo 7y ago
  Inflation? Afaik, new constructions have to comply with more regulation (noise insulation, materials, environment protection etc) than before, which makes them more expensive. At least where I live.

turk73 7y ago

Would you just quit the butt hurt about the popular vote? It doesn't make any sense to keep bitching about this. The popular vote has NEVER been how the US elects a President and with good reason. The US has been on the downslope since Nixon removed us from the gold standard. They let the central bank rob us blind. Now we are letting foreign nations usurp our internal systems until they fail. The next leg down is going to be really ugly and you're bitching about the very people trying to fix this shit. Also ETA: I got screwed over by Boomers for well over a decade. Nobody would mentor me our help me in my career in any way because I wasn't part of their generation. Find a way to help yourself--quit bitching and get out there and do something about it. That's what I had to do. A friend gave me the best advice years ago: "You're spending all your time framing the problem, when are you going to address it?"

B-Con 7y ago

> Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! An untrue claim[0] that's been copy-pasted for a while. It has happened twice recently and three times before that, stop making it sound like it's unprecedented. None happened in the 1900s, so it's very rare (well, an 11% occurrence rate now) but not more than in the rest of history. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

CodeCube 7y ago
Sure, that point of OP's post was pedantically incorrect ... but I think the overarching point they were trying to make is that the republicans haven't had a candidate elected by the popular vote since 1989 when GHWB was elected. Since then, both elections in which a republican president won the office, was while losing the popular vote ... that's THIRTY YEARS since the last true win. Looked at from that perspective, yeah that feels pretty depressing that it keeps happening.
- B-Con 7y ago
  It's not pedantically incorrect, it's simply incorrect as well as partially misleading. It's an 11% occurrence rate now in a system that was designed to have this kind of feature.
  - avmich 7y ago
    It's simply correct if "never" is replaces with "not for a century", which conveys about the same meaning as what was intended.
- jdoliner 7y ago
  George W Bush won the popular vote in 2004 though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidential_election https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_presidentia...

john_moscow 7y ago

I'm not sure that working as a waitress at Denny's would be good example, but most of the jobs in 1980s required much more thinking and decision-making from the employees due to fewer automation and much less centralization. That, in turn, gave more bargaining power that translated into more purchasing power. A college-educated cubicle drone could be replaced with another one in a matter of days without any negative business impact at all, so why would the business pay them more?

jdoliner 7y ago

There have been 4 or 5 (one is a bit ambiguous) elections where the winner lost the popular vote. [0] So no, this isn't more than any other time in US history combined. But more importantly, who cares? They lost the popular vote in an election in which the popular vote didn't count for anything. If the popular vote had counted for something in these elections, you would have gotten a different result. The candidates would have campaigned differently, and people would have voted differently. Just look at the difference in turnout between swing-states and safely red or blue states [1]. We wouldn't see this disparity if the popular vote counted for something. Complaining that the winning candidate lost the popular vote is like complaining that the team that won the superbowl had a lower free throw shooting percentage. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele... [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elections https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elect...

psychometry 7y ago
This might be the dumbest, most unnecessarily pedantic comment I've ever read on HN.
- navigatesol 7y ago
  Why? The candidates optimize to win the electoral college, not the popular vote. You have no idea what the results would have been if the goal was to win the popular vote.
- dang 7y ago
  Please follow the site guidelines no matter how dumb or pedantic some other comment is, or you feel it is. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Buttons840 7y ago
I don't think he was complaining about the election as much as he was saying that the election system which selected the minority over the majority is just one reason people are becoming increasingly pessimistic.

baybal2 7y ago

Your voice is of rare quality reasoning these days. It's admirable. I see the West disintegrating now. Genuinely serious issues were snowballing for the last quarter century for it, without any sight of resolution on the horizon. I was asked recently "What the hell has happened to the West?" And the answer I gave for that was "the West has happened... to itself" I have no better words for that: Whatever were the worst traits of the system, once reserved for "territorials", "colonials", and other lesser subject, they are now being turned on the Western society itself. Whatever the West did to "the third world" it now does to itself.

badpun 7y ago

The argument about losing the popular vote is flawed. Gaining the majority’s support does not decide the result of the election, and hence the candidates’ campains just don’t hold it as a goal. It is not impossible that, if the rules were changed, Trump (for example) would still win, as his campain would now aim at gaining majority.

mlcrypto 7y ago

That's exactly how it was intended. This is a democratic republic. Both sides knew the rules of the 2016 election. Hillary knew the goal was the electoral college but she failed to campaign in the battleground mid west states. This is like complaining that the soccer team with the most possession or shots on target still lost the game.

ryanmcbride 7y ago
Just because it's "the rules" doesn't mean its something people have to just sit down and accept. Every constitutional amendment has redefined "the rules", and drawing a bunch of lines on a map and ignoring a vote delta of 3 million people is in my opinion, a rule that is directly counter to a democracy, and should be criticized and amended.
- asdff 7y ago
  Especially when the maps were drawn centuries ago and haven't been updated since. A person in Wyoming's vote is 4x more powerful than someone in California based on how many electoral votes that state gets.
- fullshark 7y ago
  As you say, democrats have two options: 1. Amend the constitution (never happening) 2. Come up with a platform appealing to a large enough coalition of states Whining about it gets them nowhere and their only real option is 2.

davidsawyer 7y ago

> The beatings will continue until moral improves. And until morale improves, as well!

AlexB138 7y ago

This post is a fantastic example of what the actual problem is. Neither of the points made are factually accurate, but boy is the poster angry about it. "Let's talk about how is social media's fault", indeed. Moral outrage, mostly fabricated, pedaled by every media outlet, spreading like wildfire. It's everywhere, and it seems like almost everyone, myself included, falls for it to some degree.