7 ms·

America Is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

141 points by monsieurpng 7y ago

ryanmarsh 7y ago
Not one graph in an article about an economic issue which the author claims affects most people? Hrmm.
- username444 7y ago
  I only got 4-5 paragraphs in, but this is pointedly a story, not a piece of documentation.
  - ryanmarsh 7y ago
    My bad, I thought it was journalism not opinion.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - username444 7y ago
      No problem :) There are multiple ways to get a point across. Some people respond well to stories. Some people respond better to data. Some people are helpful. Some people are condescending. It's a wonderfully diverse world.
golemiprague 7y ago
What he ignores is what happened in the 70', the start of mass immigration, legal and illegal from non European countries and the destruction of the blue collar jobs and wages by moving them to china or to illegal immigrants. Not a word about this in this article, I wonder why. Even if you don't think this is the main cause, don't you think it worth a mention at least?
cheschire 7y ago
Title should say 2017
- HenryBemis 7y ago
  Title should also say "Citizens/inhabitants of the United States of America". America is a continent (also Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania - listed in alphabetical order)(not counting the N/S Poles). Americans are the people who live in said continent. I also think we gave the website the HN-kiss-of-death :)
  - asaph 7y ago
    No reasonable person interprets "America" to mean the "continent of America". In fact, there is no continent called "America". There is only "North America" and "South America", which are 2 distinctly different continents. And within North America, which contains the US, Canada and Mexico, neither people in Canada, nor Mexico consider themselves to be "American" or within "America".
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > In fact there is no continent called "America". There is only "North America" and "South America", which are 2 distinctly different continents. ...in English.
      - asaph 7y ago
        Fine. But that's the language of this article and this conversation thread. No reasonable person would assume some other language is relevant in this conversation.
        DanBC 7y ago
        HN has an international audience and the subtleties of naming the country vs the continent can be easy to miss.
rmah 7y ago
Having spent my early youth in a "developing nation", this is laughable.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Yeah, I tend to agree Developing nations don't have a long queue of people trying to get in unless a really hard issue comes along (think Venezuela and Syria level problems)
- yters 7y ago
  Indeed, I grew up in a 'developing nation' that was quite livable. Not starving children in the streets. Even then, no where near the US standard of living. Small island, no running water, ate fish caught from the sea, electricity for 2 hours on Friday, one or two small trucks, transportation was on handmade fishing boats built from the palm trees. I only visited the US a few times in my childhood, and it stood out like a fairytale land in my dreams. Today, the standard of living in the US is even more advanced than when I was a child 30 years ago. The US is still a mythic land of legend for most of the world today.
- fzort 7y ago
  As someone living in a third world country, I can't help chuckling every time I see people discussing "poverty in America".
rayiner 7y ago
> The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. This assertion is completely unsupported, and as it turns out wrong: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-american-lens-western-europes-middle-classes-appear-smaller https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-.... > Overall, regardless of how middle class fortunes are analyzed, the material standard of living in the U.S. is estimated to be better than in most Western European countries examined. The median disposable household income in the US is $60,000, versus $44,000 in France. That’s the median—it’s not skewed up by the very high incomes at the top. (Even that requires some adjustment. The median age in the US is 38, versus say 47 for Germany. The median German is at the top of their lifetime compensation curve, the median American is not there yet.) At least in Maryland, California, etc., at that income level, a family qualifies for ACA subsidies that limit health insurance premiums to 8-10% of income, comparable to the health insurance payroll taxes in many european countries. There is an attempt to popularize the idea that in the US it’s the top breaking away from everyone else, and that doesn’t happen in Europe. If you dig into the data, where the US diverges the most noticeably is actually the bottom 10-20%. And that’s a direct result of the middle 70%. The pay far lower taxes than in Europe, which funds a much less generous welfare state.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
  > The median disposable household income in the US is $60,000, versus $44,000 in France. I don’t think median disposable incomes are very comparable across countries because of what people chose or have to use this money for.
  - dx87 7y ago
    If it's disposable income, it doesn't matter if you put it in a pile and set it on fire, or choose to do home renovations. The fact that it's disposable means that it's left over after all of your necessities are taken care of.
    - komali2 7y ago
      Does it? I wonder if it accounts for how much more middle class Americans have to spend on their healthcare infrastructure than their french counterparts.
deogeo 7y ago
> America’s underlying racism has a continuing distorting impact. A majority of the low-wage sector is white, with blacks and Latinos making up the other part, but politicians learned to talk as if the low-wage sector is mostly black because it allowed them to appeal to racial prejudice, which is useful in maintaining support for the structure of the dual economy — and hurting everyone in the low-wage sector. Temin notes that “the desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks has motivated policies against all members of the low-wage sector.” Contrary to what this paragraph implies, this is a misperception that both parties exploit. All too often does the left claim that white privilege lets one go through life on easy-mode [1]. [1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/07/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-wrong-say-when-youre-white-you-dont/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar...
api 7y ago
I've been talking about the decline of the interior for a decade or more, and listening to politicians and academics on both the left and the right (who mostly live on the coasts) deny it. If nothing is done about this we are going to get someone way worse than Trump. Whether it's a right or left totalitarian probably depends on which side can field a compelling demagogue first. Ultimately the politics won't matter much as long as pitchforks are handed out.
adrianN 7y ago
To me, the most important characteristic of a developing nation is widespread corruption down to the lowest levels. I don't mean just politicians being bought by lobbyists, that happens everywhere, but when you have to bribe every public official to get anything done, or have to bribe doctors in hospitals before they even look at you. Is this the case for most people in America? I didn't have that impression when I visited.
bcp2384 7y ago
I agree there's a phenomenon happening here and elsewhere where being "normal" doesn't cut it anymore, meaning if you're just an average person of average intelligence you have it harder now than someone in your shoes 40 years ago to live a good life. OTOH, if you're extraordinary in some way, and smart enough to know how to capitalize on it, you're in a much better position now than someone who was equally extraordinary a few decades ago.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pron 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
threwawasy1228 7y ago
This has sure been my experience. I graduated with a CS degree from a typical state school in May, with a couple internships under my belt, and have only had job offers so far have been less than half what is reported to be the median pay. Most places don't respond at all even to decline, I'm given no indication many times that they read my resume / cover letter. Is this what a 'industry that can't fill its positions' looks like? Is this what unemployment being 'too low!' looks like? All these indicators seem fraudulent, and the facts on the ground seem more akin to what this author is postulating. It is hard to imagine what the economy used to be like at its peak, where one could allegedly find a reasonable job at the median pay-rate for the industry, when you are pretty much qualified, without applying to several hundred places.
- pbourke 7y ago
  There are several on-ramps to higher paying positions in the industry: Location - the tier 1 or 2 metro areas will have more jobs available and they will pay much more than areas with lower demand. Skills - either really hot (today, JS/fullstack I suppose) or really niche (know COBOL?) skills will boost your chances at landing a good high paying job early in your career. Credentials - anything with gatekeeping such as a security clearance or tons of required certs will tend to pay well. There are probably others. Networking is a great way to get past HR goalkeeping and connect with people who are one or two degrees away from a hiring manager. Go to meetups!
- gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
  The SW market is saturated for entry-level positions and geography can change things drastically. I don't doubt your experience because I had a similar one that I managed to progress past. But the US is far from developing nation just based on anecdata from someone having a hard time finding a job in a field.
johnny313 7y ago
The title may be a bit overstated, but I think the separation between low income working class people and those in more high paying professional jobs is pretty real. I grew up in a rural area, paid for college by serving in the military, then hustled my way into tech (like lots of others). Very few of my friends from high school or the military have had similar luck getting a stable job. When I talk to my current tech coworkers about anything that was very normal as a child (hunting, owning guns, working 20-30hrs a week after school, etc) - its like we are from different planets. This was on PBS a while back, I think it gets at some of the differences pretty well: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/do-you-live-in-a-bubble...
- illumin8 7y ago
  Similar background (minus the military), and I agree the differences are staggering, but the nice thing about the US is that a poor kid actually can do this, rise from poverty to upper-middle class in a single generation.
pooya13 7y ago
> The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. I would add a qualifier here, lower taxes for themselves. The Wall Street had no problem taking handouts from big government in 2008 made possible by taxes.
- ryacko 7y ago
  Those weren't from taxes, that money was lent from the central bank, to the central bank, to be further lent to Federal Reserve member banks, and some foreign banks as well.
shrimpx 7y ago
It's true that American infrastructure is terrible. I think the root cause is political incompetence, especially at the state and city levels. Often the money is there but gets squandered by people who cannot plan or are driven by personal vendettas that don't correlate with the needs of the constituency.
Karrot_Kream 7y ago
The site seems to be struggling so I put a mirror on IPFS https://ipfs.io/ipfs/Qmbw1uWRag96q189CESdoz1DGU3QLxovQmXFv7Mvb5A4UN https://ipfs.io/ipfs/Qmbw1uWRag96q189CESdoz1DGU3QLxovQmXFv7M...

141 points by monsieurpng 7y ago

ryanmarsh 7y ago

Not one graph in an article about an economic issue which the author claims affects most people? Hrmm.

username444 7y ago
I only got 4-5 paragraphs in, but this is pointedly a story, not a piece of documentation.
- ryanmarsh 7y ago
  My bad, I thought it was journalism not opinion.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - username444 7y ago
    No problem :) There are multiple ways to get a point across. Some people respond well to stories. Some people respond better to data. Some people are helpful. Some people are condescending. It's a wonderfully diverse world.

golemiprague 7y ago

What he ignores is what happened in the 70', the start of mass immigration, legal and illegal from non European countries and the destruction of the blue collar jobs and wages by moving them to china or to illegal immigrants. Not a word about this in this article, I wonder why. Even if you don't think this is the main cause, don't you think it worth a mention at least?

cheschire 7y ago

Title should say 2017

HenryBemis 7y ago
Title should also say "Citizens/inhabitants of the United States of America". America is a continent (also Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania - listed in alphabetical order)(not counting the N/S Poles). Americans are the people who live in said continent. I also think we gave the website the HN-kiss-of-death :)
- asaph 7y ago
  No reasonable person interprets "America" to mean the "continent of America". In fact, there is no continent called "America". There is only "North America" and "South America", which are 2 distinctly different continents. And within North America, which contains the US, Canada and Mexico, neither people in Canada, nor Mexico consider themselves to be "American" or within "America".
  - DanBC 7y ago
    > In fact there is no continent called "America". There is only "North America" and "South America", which are 2 distinctly different continents. ...in English.
    - asaph 7y ago
      Fine. But that's the language of this article and this conversation thread. No reasonable person would assume some other language is relevant in this conversation.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        HN has an international audience and the subtleties of naming the country vs the continent can be easy to miss.

rmah 7y ago

Having spent my early youth in a "developing nation", this is laughable.

raverbashing 7y ago
Yeah, I tend to agree Developing nations don't have a long queue of people trying to get in unless a really hard issue comes along (think Venezuela and Syria level problems)
yters 7y ago
Indeed, I grew up in a 'developing nation' that was quite livable. Not starving children in the streets. Even then, no where near the US standard of living. Small island, no running water, ate fish caught from the sea, electricity for 2 hours on Friday, one or two small trucks, transportation was on handmade fishing boats built from the palm trees. I only visited the US a few times in my childhood, and it stood out like a fairytale land in my dreams. Today, the standard of living in the US is even more advanced than when I was a child 30 years ago. The US is still a mythic land of legend for most of the world today.
fzort 7y ago
As someone living in a third world country, I can't help chuckling every time I see people discussing "poverty in America".

rayiner 7y ago

> The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. This assertion is completely unsupported, and as it turns out wrong: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-american-lens-western-europes-middle-classes-appear-smaller https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/05/through-an-.... > Overall, regardless of how middle class fortunes are analyzed, the material standard of living in the U.S. is estimated to be better than in most Western European countries examined. The median disposable household income in the US is $60,000, versus $44,000 in France. That’s the median—it’s not skewed up by the very high incomes at the top. (Even that requires some adjustment. The median age in the US is 38, versus say 47 for Germany. The median German is at the top of their lifetime compensation curve, the median American is not there yet.) At least in Maryland, California, etc., at that income level, a family qualifies for ACA subsidies that limit health insurance premiums to 8-10% of income, comparable to the health insurance payroll taxes in many european countries. There is an attempt to popularize the idea that in the US it’s the top breaking away from everyone else, and that doesn’t happen in Europe. If you dig into the data, where the US diverges the most noticeably is actually the bottom 10-20%. And that’s a direct result of the middle 70%. The pay far lower taxes than in Europe, which funds a much less generous welfare state.

the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
> The median disposable household income in the US is $60,000, versus $44,000 in France. I don’t think median disposable incomes are very comparable across countries because of what people chose or have to use this money for.
- dx87 7y ago
  If it's disposable income, it doesn't matter if you put it in a pile and set it on fire, or choose to do home renovations. The fact that it's disposable means that it's left over after all of your necessities are taken care of.
  - komali2 7y ago
    Does it? I wonder if it accounts for how much more middle class Americans have to spend on their healthcare infrastructure than their french counterparts.

deogeo 7y ago

> America’s underlying racism has a continuing distorting impact. A majority of the low-wage sector is white, with blacks and Latinos making up the other part, but politicians learned to talk as if the low-wage sector is mostly black because it allowed them to appeal to racial prejudice, which is useful in maintaining support for the structure of the dual economy — and hurting everyone in the low-wage sector. Temin notes that “the desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks has motivated policies against all members of the low-wage sector.” Contrary to what this paragraph implies, this is a misperception that both parties exploit. All too often does the left claim that white privilege lets one go through life on easy-mode [1]. [1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/07/bernie-sanders/bernie-sanders-wrong-say-when-youre-white-you-dont/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar...

api 7y ago

I've been talking about the decline of the interior for a decade or more, and listening to politicians and academics on both the left and the right (who mostly live on the coasts) deny it. If nothing is done about this we are going to get someone way worse than Trump. Whether it's a right or left totalitarian probably depends on which side can field a compelling demagogue first. Ultimately the politics won't matter much as long as pitchforks are handed out.

adrianN 7y ago

To me, the most important characteristic of a developing nation is widespread corruption down to the lowest levels. I don't mean just politicians being bought by lobbyists, that happens everywhere, but when you have to bribe every public official to get anything done, or have to bribe doctors in hospitals before they even look at you. Is this the case for most people in America? I didn't have that impression when I visited.

bcp2384 7y ago

I agree there's a phenomenon happening here and elsewhere where being "normal" doesn't cut it anymore, meaning if you're just an average person of average intelligence you have it harder now than someone in your shoes 40 years ago to live a good life. OTOH, if you're extraordinary in some way, and smart enough to know how to capitalize on it, you're in a much better position now than someone who was equally extraordinary a few decades ago.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pron 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance

threwawasy1228 7y ago

This has sure been my experience. I graduated with a CS degree from a typical state school in May, with a couple internships under my belt, and have only had job offers so far have been less than half what is reported to be the median pay. Most places don't respond at all even to decline, I'm given no indication many times that they read my resume / cover letter. Is this what a 'industry that can't fill its positions' looks like? Is this what unemployment being 'too low!' looks like? All these indicators seem fraudulent, and the facts on the ground seem more akin to what this author is postulating. It is hard to imagine what the economy used to be like at its peak, where one could allegedly find a reasonable job at the median pay-rate for the industry, when you are pretty much qualified, without applying to several hundred places.

pbourke 7y ago
There are several on-ramps to higher paying positions in the industry: Location - the tier 1 or 2 metro areas will have more jobs available and they will pay much more than areas with lower demand. Skills - either really hot (today, JS/fullstack I suppose) or really niche (know COBOL?) skills will boost your chances at landing a good high paying job early in your career. Credentials - anything with gatekeeping such as a security clearance or tons of required certs will tend to pay well. There are probably others. Networking is a great way to get past HR goalkeeping and connect with people who are one or two degrees away from a hiring manager. Go to meetups!
gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
The SW market is saturated for entry-level positions and geography can change things drastically. I don't doubt your experience because I had a similar one that I managed to progress past. But the US is far from developing nation just based on anecdata from someone having a hard time finding a job in a field.

johnny313 7y ago

The title may be a bit overstated, but I think the separation between low income working class people and those in more high paying professional jobs is pretty real. I grew up in a rural area, paid for college by serving in the military, then hustled my way into tech (like lots of others). Very few of my friends from high school or the military have had similar luck getting a stable job. When I talk to my current tech coworkers about anything that was very normal as a child (hunting, owning guns, working 20-30hrs a week after school, etc) - its like we are from different planets. This was on PBS a while back, I think it gets at some of the differences pretty well: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/do-you-live-in-a-bubble-a-quiz-2 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/do-you-live-in-a-bubble...

illumin8 7y ago
Similar background (minus the military), and I agree the differences are staggering, but the nice thing about the US is that a poor kid actually can do this, rise from poverty to upper-middle class in a single generation.

pooya13 7y ago

> The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. I would add a qualifier here, lower taxes for themselves. The Wall Street had no problem taking handouts from big government in 2008 made possible by taxes.

ryacko 7y ago
Those weren't from taxes, that money was lent from the central bank, to the central bank, to be further lent to Federal Reserve member banks, and some foreign banks as well.

shrimpx 7y ago

It's true that American infrastructure is terrible. I think the root cause is political incompetence, especially at the state and city levels. Often the money is there but gets squandered by people who cannot plan or are driven by personal vendettas that don't correlate with the needs of the constituency.

Karrot_Kream 7y ago

The site seems to be struggling so I put a mirror on IPFS https://ipfs.io/ipfs/Qmbw1uWRag96q189CESdoz1DGU3QLxovQmXFv7Mvb5A4UN https://ipfs.io/ipfs/Qmbw1uWRag96q189CESdoz1DGU3QLxovQmXFv7M...