4 ms·

Following your argumentation one should never "complain" that some trend may be a problem (for a group of people), because compared with people living 50/100/30

by sgift 16y ago

Following your argumentation one should never "complain" that some trend may be a problem (for a group of people), because compared with people living 50/100/300/1000 years ago we all have a great life. Theoretically correct, practically I'll side with the complaining people in this case.

sokoloff 16y ago
Do you think that a lot of the gains over the last 50/100/300/1000 years came about because societies didn't stand in the way of progress in the name of full employment, exactly as that full employment was practiced the day before? I do. It happens that I'm on a pretty favorable part of the curve (in terms of ability and inclination to "work with computers"), so take my thoughts with as much salt as you think is appropriate, but I'm glad past societies didn't turn their noses up at farming, beer and bread making, writing, indoor plumbing, domesticating animals, stonework, bronze, iron, steel, water wheels, coal/oil/nat gas, electricity, the steam and internal combustion engines, telephony, interchangeable parts and the moving assembly line, automobiles, modern medicine, transistors, integrated circuits, etc. I'm sure that all of those innovations caused some significant amount of displacement amongst the established practioners of the "old way" of doing things. Had societies past decided that that displacement was too costly, the life of today's 99th percentile priveleged person would almost certainly be significantly worse than the life of today's actual 1st percentile (un) priveleged person.
- sgift 16y ago
  Stopping progress to support the old ways is (IMO - and there we agree) no solution. But ignoring the short-term problems of said progress with the argument "in the long run we will all be better off this way" sounds a bit cynical to me.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
Could you clearly state what the problem is? Is the problem simply this? "Standard of living has dramatically increased for everyone (some more than others), but some people who only received large increases are jealous of the others who received huge increases."
- sgift 16y ago
  "60 years ago some people could afford a middle-class lifestyle, but cannot do the same today." This is completely orthogonal to the fact that a middle-class lifestyle today is better than it was 60 years ago.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Could you define "middle class lifestyle"? Also perhaps explain which people you mean? If you define it in relative terms (i.e., "a middle class lifestyle is the lifestyle of the middle 40%), then by definition it is always affordable to the middle 40%. So this can't be what you mean. Or maybe the problem is that in the race to be in the middle 40%, some professions have overtaken manufacturing, and this lowers the relative (but not absolute) lifestyle/status of manufacturing? (Though it's hard for me to see why that would be a problem, unless you are emotionally attached to some sort of caste-based ordering of jobs.)
    - sgift 16y ago
      For a lack of a better (formal) definition I copy here the one used by the Economist (found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-class): "defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter." This conveys the idea I have for a middle-class lifestyle. Hope it helps. For the explanation of which people I mean I have to ask tomjen3 for help: He used "those people" in his argumentation and I've reused it.
      - yummyfajitas 16y ago
        Interesting - by this definition, 80% of the US is (at least) middle class. After paying for food and shelter, the 20%-40% quintile has 42% of their income left over after paying for food and shelter. So it seems as if the problem you describe is very uncommon. See table 1: http://www.bls.gov/cex/csxann08.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cex/csxann08.pdf (The bottom 20% are a funny case - they consume about 2x the listed income figures. The reason is that income does not include welfare, so we have no way of knowing how large or small income really is for this quintile.)

by sgift 16y ago

sokoloff 16y ago

Do you think that a lot of the gains over the last 50/100/300/1000 years came about because societies didn't stand in the way of progress in the name of full employment, exactly as that full employment was practiced the day before? I do. It happens that I'm on a pretty favorable part of the curve (in terms of ability and inclination to "work with computers"), so take my thoughts with as much salt as you think is appropriate, but I'm glad past societies didn't turn their noses up at farming, beer and bread making, writing, indoor plumbing, domesticating animals, stonework, bronze, iron, steel, water wheels, coal/oil/nat gas, electricity, the steam and internal combustion engines, telephony, interchangeable parts and the moving assembly line, automobiles, modern medicine, transistors, integrated circuits, etc. I'm sure that all of those innovations caused some significant amount of displacement amongst the established practioners of the "old way" of doing things. Had societies past decided that that displacement was too costly, the life of today's 99th percentile priveleged person would almost certainly be significantly worse than the life of today's actual 1st percentile (un) priveleged person.

sgift 16y ago
Stopping progress to support the old ways is (IMO - and there we agree) no solution. But ignoring the short-term problems of said progress with the argument "in the long run we will all be better off this way" sounds a bit cynical to me.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

Could you clearly state what the problem is? Is the problem simply this? "Standard of living has dramatically increased for everyone (some more than others), but some people who only received large increases are jealous of the others who received huge increases."

sgift 16y ago
"60 years ago some people could afford a middle-class lifestyle, but cannot do the same today." This is completely orthogonal to the fact that a middle-class lifestyle today is better than it was 60 years ago.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Could you define "middle class lifestyle"? Also perhaps explain which people you mean? If you define it in relative terms (i.e., "a middle class lifestyle is the lifestyle of the middle 40%), then by definition it is always affordable to the middle 40%. So this can't be what you mean. Or maybe the problem is that in the race to be in the middle 40%, some professions have overtaken manufacturing, and this lowers the relative (but not absolute) lifestyle/status of manufacturing? (Though it's hard for me to see why that would be a problem, unless you are emotionally attached to some sort of caste-based ordering of jobs.)
  - sgift 16y ago
    For a lack of a better (formal) definition I copy here the one used by the Economist (found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-class): "defined it as beginning at the point where people have roughly a third of their income left for discretionary spending after paying for basic food and shelter." This conveys the idea I have for a middle-class lifestyle. Hope it helps. For the explanation of which people I mean I have to ask tomjen3 for help: He used "those people" in his argumentation and I've reused it.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Interesting - by this definition, 80% of the US is (at least) middle class. After paying for food and shelter, the 20%-40% quintile has 42% of their income left over after paying for food and shelter. So it seems as if the problem you describe is very uncommon. See table 1: http://www.bls.gov/cex/csxann08.pdf http://www.bls.gov/cex/csxann08.pdf (The bottom 20% are a funny case - they consume about 2x the listed income figures. The reason is that income does not include welfare, so we have no way of knowing how large or small income really is for this quintile.)