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>I got to see, up close, what deindustrialization looks like, during the 1980s and 1990s in the US. I don't have the same experience so I can't argue it. > Al

>I got to see, up close, what deindustrialization looks like, during the 1980s and 1990s in the US. I don't have the same experience so I can't argue it. > Allowing the US tech industry to be outsourced would be an identical repeat of the stupidity of what the US intentionally allowed to happen to its industrial empire And yet it seems to me that you're doing rather well as an economy all these years later. Wasn't the capitalist argument that the size of the pie is not fixed or some such?

loopz 5y ago
They keep changing the narrative on that. It depends who benefits and where they can move their money and industry.
adventured 5y ago
> And yet it seems to me that you're doing rather well as an economy all these years later. 1/4 to 1/3 of the country did well, that much is true. If you're in that group, you're among the best off people on the planet, generally. > Wasn't the capitalist argument that the size of the pie is not fixed or some such? The pie does indeed expand, sometimes substantially. Otherwise we couldn't have nearly eight billion people that are better off at the median than at any other time in recorded history. The examples of vast national improvement from around the world the past 30-40 years are prolific. The pertinent question usually is: who is extracting what share of the expanded pie. Where is it going, to how many people, due to what policies/reasons. In the US, the tech boom has produced eight people now worth one trillion dollars collectively. That's equivalent to the bottom 100 million (!) having an additional $10,000. Obviously not a trivial sum, in other words, compacted into just eight people. It has also produced 1.47 million software developers yielding a median salary of $110,000 per year (1.47m is 1/2 of 1% of the US adult population). Tech is particularly potent at concentrating wealth, for various reasons (often rapid growth, global reach and winner-take-most outcomes). The US middle class has not thrived over the last half century. The US, for the better part of a century (post Civil War up to the early to mid 1970s), had an elite middle class outcome. That is no longer true, the US middle class outcome has receded vs many of its peers.

loopz 5y ago

They keep changing the narrative on that. It depends who benefits and where they can move their money and industry.

adventured 5y ago

> And yet it seems to me that you're doing rather well as an economy all these years later. 1/4 to 1/3 of the country did well, that much is true. If you're in that group, you're among the best off people on the planet, generally. > Wasn't the capitalist argument that the size of the pie is not fixed or some such? The pie does indeed expand, sometimes substantially. Otherwise we couldn't have nearly eight billion people that are better off at the median than at any other time in recorded history. The examples of vast national improvement from around the world the past 30-40 years are prolific. The pertinent question usually is: who is extracting what share of the expanded pie. Where is it going, to how many people, due to what policies/reasons. In the US, the tech boom has produced eight people now worth one trillion dollars collectively. That's equivalent to the bottom 100 million (!) having an additional $10,000. Obviously not a trivial sum, in other words, compacted into just eight people. It has also produced 1.47 million software developers yielding a median salary of $110,000 per year (1.47m is 1/2 of 1% of the US adult population). Tech is particularly potent at concentrating wealth, for various reasons (often rapid growth, global reach and winner-take-most outcomes). The US middle class has not thrived over the last half century. The US, for the better part of a century (post Civil War up to the early to mid 1970s), had an elite middle class outcome. That is no longer true, the US middle class outcome has receded vs many of its peers.