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Apart from anything else, globalisation and financialization aren't the same phenomenon. You can slash tax on the rich and deregulate financial services at the

Apart from anything else, globalisation and financialization aren't the same phenomenon. You can slash tax on the rich and deregulate financial services at the same time as you stick up massive trade barriers and provide corporate welfare to domestic companies. And you can remove barriers to imports whilst regulating banking and m&a more, levying super taxes and expanding the welfare state (The latter bit is more difficult if you're a small developing country, but the US clearly isn't.) Seems as unreasonable to blame the people who assemble your iPhone for Reaganomics as it does to accuse them of making consumer goods substantially worse than the great phones we had in the 1970s!

dd36 5y ago
These defenses based on how technology has improved are weak and hollow. Is the suggestion that technology would not have improved as quickly if quality of life had remained the same? Single worker households, healthcare, education, home prices, etc. being what they were in the 1970s would’ve prevented LED TVs and iPhones? Really?
- notahacker 5y ago
  Pointing out that technology has improved drastically in response to an article making the specific, absurd claims that (i) that improvement can be quantified as $137.13 and (ii) actually that's generous because imported technology made is of significantly lower quality to US-made 1970s tech is not a weak and hollow response, though it wasn't exactly the focus of my response A weak and hollow response would be defending that absurdity by constructing a straw man to attack me with (ignoring what I actually said about welfare policies, which is that they have little to do with globalization).
  - dd36 5y ago
    Are real wages measured by computers and TVs?
    - notahacker 5y ago
      Does this have anything to do with either of the points I'd made in the above posts about the crudeness of conflating financialization and globalization or the author's claims about the superiority of 70s consumer goods? Are you GPT-3?
    - 6510 5y ago
      Lets try, just to be sure? If I earn 1500 euro per month and pay 1100 worth of bills. I need a new computer and a new TV every 5 years or so. I have 400 left for food etc so saving more than 50 per month would be unreasonable. How much money do I have saved up after 5 years? 50125=3000! Should be enough for a modern computer. For comparison, doing the same job in 1985, earnings: 4500 guilders bills: 450. where 1 euro == 2.2 guilders. I set aside 3000 per month for the TV&PC. 3000125=180000 or 81818 euro. Hummm... Lets adjust that by 50% for possible inaccuracies(?) 40 000 vs 3000 seems like it wouldn't bother me if the TV&PC was 2, 3 or 13 times as expensive? I could be wrong of course but it seems to me consumer electronics need to be so cheap because people don't have money.
sdoering 5y ago
I admit I have no first hand experience about the US part, but I read a lot of stories about rural or even city infrastructure in the US and oftentimes can't help but think that in a lot of countries I grew up as being labeled 3rd world/developing countries the infrastructure is of significantly better quality. So sometimes I am not sure how much of the US is (in parts) a developing country in disguise? And from 1st hand experience I can only say that I have to come to that conclusion for parts of Germany (where I am from and living). There are big-ish areas in Germany where you can't call emergency services from a mobile phone as there is not one carrier servicing these areas. If you happen to have an emergency there - good luck. But as only a few people live there it doesn't make economic sense to service these areas and build the necessary infrastructure for the service provider companies. So these areas go unserved.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  To be fair, Germany is Europe's worst offender when it comes to digital infrastructure, which is laughable for Europe's richest country. Even poor Eastern European villages do better sometimes.
  - 6510 5y ago
    Germany 100 mbps 46.92 $ Ukraine 100 mbps 6.19 $ Romania 1 Gbps 8.84 $ Ukraine 1 Gbps 10.11 $ 10 * (46.92 / 8.84) = 53 population Germany vs Romania: 83.24 m / 19.2 m = 4.34 size: 357.386 km2 / 238.397 km2 = 1.5 /* Insert economy of scale joke here */
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      >Insert economy of scale joke here More like German political corruption that guarantees telecoms' monopolies to milk customers with expensive shitty offers, rather than a free market with healthy competition like in Eastern Europe. Also, didn't some German politician say "There's no way to make money with the internet so why bother with infrastructure investments?" LMAO

dd36 5y ago

These defenses based on how technology has improved are weak and hollow. Is the suggestion that technology would not have improved as quickly if quality of life had remained the same? Single worker households, healthcare, education, home prices, etc. being what they were in the 1970s would’ve prevented LED TVs and iPhones? Really?

notahacker 5y ago
Pointing out that technology has improved drastically in response to an article making the specific, absurd claims that (i) that improvement can be quantified as $137.13 and (ii) actually that's generous because imported technology made is of significantly lower quality to US-made 1970s tech is not a weak and hollow response, though it wasn't exactly the focus of my response A weak and hollow response would be defending that absurdity by constructing a straw man to attack me with (ignoring what I actually said about welfare policies, which is that they have little to do with globalization).
- dd36 5y ago
  Are real wages measured by computers and TVs?
  - notahacker 5y ago
    Does this have anything to do with either of the points I'd made in the above posts about the crudeness of conflating financialization and globalization or the author's claims about the superiority of 70s consumer goods? Are you GPT-3?
  - 6510 5y ago
    Lets try, just to be sure? If I earn 1500 euro per month and pay 1100 worth of bills. I need a new computer and a new TV every 5 years or so. I have 400 left for food etc so saving more than 50 per month would be unreasonable. How much money do I have saved up after 5 years? 50125=3000! Should be enough for a modern computer. For comparison, doing the same job in 1985, earnings: 4500 guilders bills: 450. where 1 euro == 2.2 guilders. I set aside 3000 per month for the TV&PC. 3000125=180000 or 81818 euro. Hummm... Lets adjust that by 50% for possible inaccuracies(?) 40 000 vs 3000 seems like it wouldn't bother me if the TV&PC was 2, 3 or 13 times as expensive? I could be wrong of course but it seems to me consumer electronics need to be so cheap because people don't have money.

sdoering 5y ago

I admit I have no first hand experience about the US part, but I read a lot of stories about rural or even city infrastructure in the US and oftentimes can't help but think that in a lot of countries I grew up as being labeled 3rd world/developing countries the infrastructure is of significantly better quality. So sometimes I am not sure how much of the US is (in parts) a developing country in disguise? And from 1st hand experience I can only say that I have to come to that conclusion for parts of Germany (where I am from and living). There are big-ish areas in Germany where you can't call emergency services from a mobile phone as there is not one carrier servicing these areas. If you happen to have an emergency there - good luck. But as only a few people live there it doesn't make economic sense to service these areas and build the necessary infrastructure for the service provider companies. So these areas go unserved.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
To be fair, Germany is Europe's worst offender when it comes to digital infrastructure, which is laughable for Europe's richest country. Even poor Eastern European villages do better sometimes.
- 6510 5y ago
  Germany 100 mbps 46.92 $ Ukraine 100 mbps 6.19 $ Romania 1 Gbps 8.84 $ Ukraine 1 Gbps 10.11 $ 10 * (46.92 / 8.84) = 53 population Germany vs Romania: 83.24 m / 19.2 m = 4.34 size: 357.386 km2 / 238.397 km2 = 1.5 /* Insert economy of scale joke here */
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    >Insert economy of scale joke here More like German political corruption that guarantees telecoms' monopolies to milk customers with expensive shitty offers, rather than a free market with healthy competition like in Eastern Europe. Also, didn't some German politician say "There's no way to make money with the internet so why bother with infrastructure investments?" LMAO