5 ms·

Maybe it is the opposite of what you're implying. ex: The creation of value is so high that the discrepancies increase, but everyone is reaping the benefits, ju

by htk 7y ago

Maybe it is the opposite of what you're implying. ex: The creation of value is so high that the discrepancies increase, but everyone is reaping the benefits, just in different proportions.

itsaidpens 7y ago
Tell that to someone making 35K/year.
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  Doesn't matter. If you could choose when to be born, but not know your race, sex, gender, sexual preference, general health, or family income.... There is no doubt it's better to be born in 2019 than 1919.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    How about 1999 or 1989?
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      1999 for sure, especially if you don't get to choose where you're born across the world.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        Agreed if we're looking at the whole world, but I thought we were looking at the US specifically.
        Consultant32452 7y ago
        The difference across a decade is somewhat negligible. But just in the last few years we've gotten gay marriage, marijuana is getting legalized, crime reform, HIV treatment is becoming widely available... Humans have a tendency to focus on the one or two things that might be worse for them, but over all life is better in almost every way you can think of. Every year is better than the last.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    It is a good thing that we treat minorities and the poor better than we did in the past. However, that doesn't mean that the middle class are not worse off than they were at that time.
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      If you got to choose between being a middle class white man in 1919 or 2019, 2019 is obviously the better choice. Even ignoring impending ww2 and the dust bowl for the 1919 case.
  - smcg 7y ago
    "better" doesn't mean "good".
    - Consultant32452 7y ago
      Let's be really clear about scales here. Not just "better" but "the best it's ever been in the history of the world." The world we live in is an absolute miracle. For most of human history it was amazing if our children managed to survive the winter. My grandparents faced the very real prospect of dying from food scarcity. I can push a few buttons on my phone and a hot cooked meal will arrive at my doorstep in under an hour. Most of the diseases that were the cause of human death and misery aren't even on our radar, because we've cured them. I can go flip a switch on my wall and the room will be illuminated because literally tens of thousands of people have all worked together in relative harmony to make it possible. Our closest biological relatives, chimps, brutally rip apart their own infants and eat their brains as a matter of course. That's biological reality. That's your starting point. Everything past that is a gift. If we just want to say that we can imagine an even better life than the one we have today and we should work towards that.. I'm right there with you. But how can you look around you and say life isn't good? Not "good" compared to what situation that has ever existed in all of history?
harimau777 7y ago
It's difficult to tell exactly due to changes in technology and culture, but I'm not sure the evidence points to that. My understanding is that both the rates of home ownership and the number of middle class families where only one person works are down. It seems like a college degree is more necessary in order to get a middle class job. So if we equated college with apprenticeship I think college might result in more debt for a similar result. However, I'm not super informed about how apprenticeship worked so I could very well be mistaken.
mikeash 7y ago
Unfortunately, median household income has barely budged in the last twenty years.
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  Let's work with some simple numbers and think about what's happened in history. Imagine median worker income in the 1970s was $100. For a lot of women, they weren't allowed to be workers. Let's increase the population of "workers" by 20% (adding those women), but only pay those women $70 (because patriarchy). What's the median income now? $95. Let's increase the number of "workers" by another 20% by bringing in 30 million immigrants and their descendants. Those immigrants were making $5 in their old country, but they aren't represented in that original $100 median worker salary. But now they're making $60. Better than they were, but worse than white men because racism. What's the median income now? $89. This is the real story behind all the drama about median wage stagnation, median household income, etc. We added a bunch of lower wage people into the calculation. Those people are better off than they were before, but they drag down the one stat we look at with tunnel vision. That doesn't mean I deny any of the real concerns people have about racism/sexism/etc. But everything can literally be better for everyone, and as I demonstrated above we can still decrease the median household income. When you say something like "median household income has barely budged in the last twenty years" that's a very shallow assessment. What's happened to the labor market? What's happened to the housing market? Are there more single people as a percentage of the population? Should we expect single households to have the same income as married households? What has been the historical household income for single moms? Are there more single moms today than 20 years ago? How does that impact median household income?
  - mikeash 7y ago
    Average household size hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years. It’s down by about 4% in that time, so that doesn’t explain it. The percentage of the workforce that consists of women is also pretty much flat over that period, and in any case if we’re talking about households and household size hasn’t changed significantly then more women working would increase, not decrease, the median even if they’re underpaid. Is it all down to underpaid immigrants, then?

by htk 7y ago

Maybe it is the opposite of what you're implying. ex: The creation of value is so high that the discrepancies increase, but everyone is reaping the benefits, just in different proportions.

itsaidpens 7y ago

Tell that to someone making 35K/year.

Consultant32452 7y ago
Doesn't matter. If you could choose when to be born, but not know your race, sex, gender, sexual preference, general health, or family income.... There is no doubt it's better to be born in 2019 than 1919.
- mikeash 7y ago
  How about 1999 or 1989?
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    1999 for sure, especially if you don't get to choose where you're born across the world.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      Agreed if we're looking at the whole world, but I thought we were looking at the US specifically.
      - Consultant32452 7y ago
        The difference across a decade is somewhat negligible. But just in the last few years we've gotten gay marriage, marijuana is getting legalized, crime reform, HIV treatment is becoming widely available... Humans have a tendency to focus on the one or two things that might be worse for them, but over all life is better in almost every way you can think of. Every year is better than the last.
- harimau777 7y ago
  It is a good thing that we treat minorities and the poor better than we did in the past. However, that doesn't mean that the middle class are not worse off than they were at that time.
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    If you got to choose between being a middle class white man in 1919 or 2019, 2019 is obviously the better choice. Even ignoring impending ww2 and the dust bowl for the 1919 case.
- smcg 7y ago
  "better" doesn't mean "good".
  - Consultant32452 7y ago
    Let's be really clear about scales here. Not just "better" but "the best it's ever been in the history of the world." The world we live in is an absolute miracle. For most of human history it was amazing if our children managed to survive the winter. My grandparents faced the very real prospect of dying from food scarcity. I can push a few buttons on my phone and a hot cooked meal will arrive at my doorstep in under an hour. Most of the diseases that were the cause of human death and misery aren't even on our radar, because we've cured them. I can go flip a switch on my wall and the room will be illuminated because literally tens of thousands of people have all worked together in relative harmony to make it possible. Our closest biological relatives, chimps, brutally rip apart their own infants and eat their brains as a matter of course. That's biological reality. That's your starting point. Everything past that is a gift. If we just want to say that we can imagine an even better life than the one we have today and we should work towards that.. I'm right there with you. But how can you look around you and say life isn't good? Not "good" compared to what situation that has ever existed in all of history?

harimau777 7y ago

It's difficult to tell exactly due to changes in technology and culture, but I'm not sure the evidence points to that. My understanding is that both the rates of home ownership and the number of middle class families where only one person works are down. It seems like a college degree is more necessary in order to get a middle class job. So if we equated college with apprenticeship I think college might result in more debt for a similar result. However, I'm not super informed about how apprenticeship worked so I could very well be mistaken.

mikeash 7y ago

Unfortunately, median household income has barely budged in the last twenty years.

Consultant32452 7y ago
Let's work with some simple numbers and think about what's happened in history. Imagine median worker income in the 1970s was $100. For a lot of women, they weren't allowed to be workers. Let's increase the population of "workers" by 20% (adding those women), but only pay those women $70 (because patriarchy). What's the median income now? $95. Let's increase the number of "workers" by another 20% by bringing in 30 million immigrants and their descendants. Those immigrants were making $5 in their old country, but they aren't represented in that original $100 median worker salary. But now they're making $60. Better than they were, but worse than white men because racism. What's the median income now? $89. This is the real story behind all the drama about median wage stagnation, median household income, etc. We added a bunch of lower wage people into the calculation. Those people are better off than they were before, but they drag down the one stat we look at with tunnel vision. That doesn't mean I deny any of the real concerns people have about racism/sexism/etc. But everything can literally be better for everyone, and as I demonstrated above we can still decrease the median household income. When you say something like "median household income has barely budged in the last twenty years" that's a very shallow assessment. What's happened to the labor market? What's happened to the housing market? Are there more single people as a percentage of the population? Should we expect single households to have the same income as married households? What has been the historical household income for single moms? Are there more single moms today than 20 years ago? How does that impact median household income?
- mikeash 7y ago
  Average household size hasn’t changed much in the past 20 years. It’s down by about 4% in that time, so that doesn’t explain it. The percentage of the workforce that consists of women is also pretty much flat over that period, and in any case if we’re talking about households and household size hasn’t changed significantly then more women working would increase, not decrease, the median even if they’re underpaid. Is it all down to underpaid immigrants, then?