8 ms·

Perpetual Dickensian Poverty? (2021)

47 points by luu 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago
There's also a certain amount of framing going on in the original tweet to avoid facing whatever the actual issues are. What exactly is the issue here that is to be tackled? Going with the USA, apparently something like 98% of people have managed to get work that pays better than the Federal minimum wage. If people on the minimum wage are being failed by society, there needs to be some reflection on what is happening differently with this 2% and how to change that. Legislating people's favourite lucky number with reference to good literature is not the path to good policy. Cratchit had enough money to almost-support a family with a sick son in presumably the absence of any sort of social spending - ie, he earned enough money to support 2-4 people in London with food and shelter depending on how sick Tiny Tim was, and had an office job with no physical risk. It is unclear why the default position is someone should (1) be doing the similar work as Cratchit (2) possibly with less responsibilities and (3) earning more money in real terms. I can see an argument why some 20 year old with no family doing similar work could be paid the same amount and that it would be quite reasonable. Especially since it is so much easier to move to a low cost of living area in this era of fantastic communication and easy travel. In short, I'd question why near-poverty while supporting family is unacceptable as a legal minimum. There are a lot of people who don't have a family.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  - roenxi 5y ago
    My nerves are showing here, but economic-policy-by-literary-allusion is, I kid you not, a bad idea. Policy questions should be decided by cause, effect, evidence and discussion. "You've got sympathies for Ebenezer Scrooge!" is possibly the bottom of the barrel of counters if you seriously want good outcomes.
    - dTal 5y ago
      That's kind of rich, considering you kicked off a discussion about minumum wage with "Bob Cratchit had it pretty good actually". How did you expect people to respond to that?
    - romwell 5y ago
      It's not your nerves that are showing here if you can't figure out that 98% of employees make more than the Federal minimum wage because state/city minimum wage is higher than Federal in many states and cities. That's ignoring a huge number of people making barely above minimum wage in their locality (enough to fall in that percentage, not enough to make a difference in quality of life). I'll take economic policy by allusion to literature over economic policy by ignorance and bad faith any time of the day, thank you.
    - dalbasal 5y ago
      Perhaps, but perhaps not. We think in stories, and economists use the term "story" frequently as a quasi term of art. Well understood cause, effect and evidence are few and far between in social sciences.
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >"You've got sympathies for Ebenezer Scrooge!" is possibly the bottom of the barrel of counters if you seriously want good outcomes. Honestly, I'm not so sure about that. Pointing out that someone is making the same arguments as an archetype of cruelty should be cause for reflection at the very least.
      - roenxi 5y ago
        Scrooge isn't an archetype for cruelty though, he is miserliness. And that also goes to why allusion is a bad approach - interpreting a story isn't that much less political than politics except the topic gets derailed into a literal fantasy hypothetical. Dickens didn't exactly take a statistical sample of the people in London to come up with the story, he had a conclusion and was constructing a situation where it made sense. The fact he did so in an eloquent and entertaining way is not basis for attempting to come up with a policy. Nobody should be using 1850s popular literature as a serious contribution. We've got more than 150 years of policy experiments and records of outcomes when it comes to labour policy since then. Someone who has read up on that should be leading the debate, not the Ghost of Christmas Past.
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    No, Ebenezer eventually saw the humanity in other people and showed empathy.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Your first point seems to be that, since only 2.7% of Americans make the federal minimum wage, there is something wrong with them that can be fixed, or something abnormal about their situation. However, most Americans live in states with a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. In fact, 90% of people making minimum wage are making more than the federal minimum. That means 27%+ of people are making minimum wage. It's not abnormal.
  - eru 5y ago
    > That means 27%+ of people are making minimum wage. It's not abnormal. Though, of course, that doesn't say anything either way about whether minimum wages should be higher or lower, or whether they are a good idea in the first place. (And neither does the somewhat incoherent comment you replied to.)
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      That's true. I'll admit, I didn't even try to respond to the person I was replying to with regard to the level they should be at, because I couldn't even understand their position. That said, I believe in a minimum wage. It probably should be higher. Or, what I would prefer, is instead of raising the minimum wage we raise taxes and provide more government services (e.g. free healthcare for all as opposed to raising the minimum wage.)
      - eru 5y ago
        Yes, if you want to help poor people, you should give them money. (And also, make sure that the economy runs well.) See https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaib... for why a minimum wage is probably a bad idea.
        HWR_14 5y ago
        There's no connection between your link and an argument that the minimum wage is a bad idea. Also, the article doesn't make an ethical argument. I firmly believe in a minimum wage.
- crooked-v 5y ago
  > Especially since it is so much easier to move to a low cost of living area in this era of fantastic communication and easy travel. How often have you, yourself, had to deal with the time and money costs of moving a family, including finding suitable housing, sustaining employment throughout, and dealing with furniture and appliances? You're using "easier" here to skip straight to implication of "easy", but it's not, especially not for anyone not already living somewhere with plenty of space like the suburbs.
  - eru 5y ago
    I've been through about seven international moves, and a few more moves without crossing borders. I've never lived in the suburbs.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  >It is unclear why the default position is someone should (1) be doing the similar work as Cratchit (2) possibly with less responsibilities and (3) earning more money in real terms. Because if he is barely supporting a family in near poverty with a sick child with not system for social spending it follows that he is not able to put money aside for his eventual retirement / sudden death. Thus if he were run over by a horse and carriage and died from his injuries his family would be definitely in poverty and probably go to the poor house. Also as I recall the story the ghost of Christmas present says that if Tiny Tim does not get treatment he would die, but he is not getting treatment because Cratchit is barely supporting the family as it is. Finally nobody is saying that social policy should be based on stories like this one, because it is hard to legislate supernatural beings showing up to make misers better people. Stories are used to indicate possible problem areas for which solutions should be formed. At the end I would agree that near-poverty while supporting family is acceptable as a societal result for a small part of society, as long as there are social systems in place to help in case of the person doing the supporting not being able to support any more or to help in case of severe health problems which near-poverty cannot solve and as long as there exist non-supernatural or not completely luck based means (like winning lotteries) whereby it might be supposed the person doing the supporting might be able to move that family to a middle class lifestyle.
  - fuzzfactor 5y ago
    >legislate supernatural beings showing up to make misers better people. Sometimes this might be the only type of legislation that would have a chance. Since well before the time of Dickens there have been major organizations controlled by influential elites which have always been dependent on the kind of expolitation that can only be maximized up the chain when there exists at least a certain amount of this type of poverty toward the bottom. Even when there are more than enough resources to go around. Even sometimes when there is no maliciousness involved. The tradition is that deeply ingrained. Employed workers like Cratchit were not suffering as badly from the full prevailing poverty at the time. Their financial disadvantages were great, but not nearly as bad as the vast unemployed had to face in order for their services to be made available to elite ventures when needed at relatively insignificant cost with little notice. The unwashed masses really are masses and sometimes will need to include white-collar professions more than others. When it becomes possible for enough working-class people to rise financially through mere education and/or merit, then adjustments will be made by those whose control did not arise from merit in order to keep the distance and maintain the status quo. This seem to be what Dickens was getting at.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >In short, I'd question why near-poverty while supporting family is unacceptable as a legal minimum. There are a lot of people who don't have a family. Because most people only choose to start a family once they already have the financial stability to support one. If the average 20-something male without a family earned more (or there was a drop in the cost of living), he'd be more likely to start a family, do it earlier and have more (and healthier) children.
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    > Because most people only choose to start a family once they already have the financial stability to support one. US GDP per capita is four times higher than in 1950. People did not have trouble supporting families then. If you want to have a very high standard of living by historical and global[1] standards that is indeed difficult. > If the average 20-something male without a family earned more (or there was a drop in the cost of living), he'd be more likely to start a family, do it earlier and have more (and healthier) children. That might be true if women couldn’t work but with two income families it certainly isn’t now. Greater wealth gets eaten up by positional goods, keeping up with the Jones, good schools as detailed in Warren’s Two Income Trap[2]. Wealthier countries don’t have more children. [1] Only one US state has lower GDP per capita than Germany, Arkansas https://www.stockingblue.com/article/830/per-capita-gdp-by-us-state-second-quarter-2020/ https://www.stockingblue.com/article/830/per-capita-gdp-by-u... [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-trap/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-in...
    - AussieWog93 5y ago
      >US GDP per capita is four times higher than in 1950. People did not have trouble supporting families then. If you want to have a very high standard of living by historical and global[1] standards that is indeed difficult. I may be somewhat biased, as I'm based in Melbourne AU, but I don't think you've given proper credit the explosion in the cost of Real Estate (both rent and mortgage costs; keeping in mind that you cannot lock in a set interest rate for 10+ years in other countries like you can in the US). >That might be true if women couldn’t work but with two income families it certainly isn’t now. You're not wrong there, but I was specifically looking at male incomes, which (at least when looking at localised populations) are strongly correlated with fertility.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  > Going with the USA, apparently something like 98% of people have managed to get work that pays better than the Federal minimum wage. Others already mentioned state-specific minimum wage, but you are likely neglecting to consider: 1. Prison labor. 2. Unreported labor (in whatever statistic you're relying on). 3. Last but certainly not least: unemployment ("have managed to get work that" - what if you haven't managed to get work?)
- clearwind 5y ago
  > Legislating people's favourite lucky number Woah, horsey. For most HN readers including you and I, it looks like just a “lucky number”, but to the people it matters it is everything. Financial security is for most intents and purposes the first rung of being happy. > There are a lot of people who don't have a family. Social support per child can account for this. It’s a politically vulnerable policy, as it ‘seems intuitive’ for smart people that this would ‘incentivise child-rearing’. But upon leaving the blue sky anyone would realise that a normal person doesn’t calculate their life so coolly in quite that imagined fashion. To pre-empt a counter-narrative about minimum wage - inflationary effects - it’s worth noting that modern countries both seek mild inflation and regularly enact policy which expect some inflationary outcomes. Trickle-up benefits are known to be far more beneficial to all of society, which includes incumbents, than trickle-down policy. This also in time offsets the inflationary effect somewhat on the supply side.
  - eru 5y ago
    Nah, serious economist don't believe minimum wage legislation causes inflation. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Central banks control that. If you are actually looking for non-strawman arguments against minimum wage: First, see https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaib... (Basically, don't punish employers for interacting with poor people, nor reward other folks for successfully avoiding interaction with poor people. If you want to help poor people, give them money.) Second, employers are paid with a whole basket of goods, and money is just one of component. Training, working conditions, flexibility etc are others. A minimum wage makes some of these baskets illegal, even though they might be mutually agreeable to all parties involved. > [...] than trickle-down policy. 'Trickle-down' was only ever used as a strawman.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      Central banks don't control money. People who hold onto money control money since the central bank is forced to make as much money available to be lent out as much as is being saved because savings = investments must hold and allowing savings to go down to the level of investments is frowned upon (negative interest means savings exceed investment).
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  > Especially since it is so much easier to move to a low cost of living area in this era of fantastic communication and easy travel. This is a rather glib comment that leads me to believe you've not experienced poverty.
  - AniseAbyss 5y ago
    Yeah I see this sentiment a lot from people in the IT industry. Not everyone has the profession where you can be a digital nomad.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Only being able to afford meat once a year is inline with North Korea.
antihero 5y ago
One of the commenters suggested that today a $13/hr wage buys you “a lot more house”. I feel that’s very wrong, housing feels like the most it’s ever been.
- lozenge 5y ago
  A suburban house would have been useless in Dickens' time due to the lack of automobiles.
  - eru 5y ago
    Britain already had some railways in 1843. The 1840s were the time of railway mania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania (Compare also the earlier Canal Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Mania ) But, yes, obviously 19th century Britain didn't have anything like the modern American car-commuter suburb.
- CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  $13 per hour where I live, in Florida, won't buy any house.
  - rowanajmarshall 5y ago
    And $13/hour will leave you in a shared rental in a dodgy part of todays London.
    - eru 5y ago
      The inflation adjustment was made for Britain as a whole. You might want to do a cost-of-living-in-London adjustment?
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  https://inflationchart.com/home-in-income/?time=20%20years https://inflationchart.com/home-in-income/?time=20%20years It’s reaching the highest in 20 years. Save up for the inevitable crash.
Ginden 5y ago
I think that inflation isn't exactly comparable over that large periods of time. No amount of money could buy computing power equivalent to smartphone in Dickensian times. Our expectations also rises - no one wants to live in Dickensian standard of living. ;) Also, Cratchit wasn't doing minimum wage job - AFAIR he was accountant or someone like that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

47 points by luu 5y ago

There's also a certain amount of framing going on in the original tweet to avoid facing whatever the actual issues are. What exactly is the issue here that is to be tackled? Going with the USA, apparently something like 98% of people have managed to get work that pays better than the Federal minimum wage. If people on the minimum wage are being failed by society, there needs to be some reflection on what is happening differently with this 2% and how to change that. Legislating people's favourite lucky number with reference to good literature is not the path to good policy. Cratchit had enough money to almost-support a family with a sick son in presumably the absence of any sort of social spending - ie, he earned enough money to support 2-4 people in London with food and shelter depending on how sick Tiny Tim was, and had an office job with no physical risk. It is unclear why the default position is someone should (1) be doing the similar work as Cratchit (2) possibly with less responsibilities and (3) earning more money in real terms. I can see an argument why some 20 year old with no family doing similar work could be paid the same amount and that it would be quite reasonable. Especially since it is so much easier to move to a low cost of living area in this era of fantastic communication and easy travel. In short, I'd question why near-poverty while supporting family is unacceptable as a legal minimum. There are a lot of people who don't have a family.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
- roenxi 5y ago
  My nerves are showing here, but economic-policy-by-literary-allusion is, I kid you not, a bad idea. Policy questions should be decided by cause, effect, evidence and discussion. "You've got sympathies for Ebenezer Scrooge!" is possibly the bottom of the barrel of counters if you seriously want good outcomes.
  - dTal 5y ago
    That's kind of rich, considering you kicked off a discussion about minumum wage with "Bob Cratchit had it pretty good actually". How did you expect people to respond to that?
  - romwell 5y ago
    It's not your nerves that are showing here if you can't figure out that 98% of employees make more than the Federal minimum wage because state/city minimum wage is higher than Federal in many states and cities. That's ignoring a huge number of people making barely above minimum wage in their locality (enough to fall in that percentage, not enough to make a difference in quality of life). I'll take economic policy by allusion to literature over economic policy by ignorance and bad faith any time of the day, thank you.
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    Perhaps, but perhaps not. We think in stories, and economists use the term "story" frequently as a quasi term of art. Well understood cause, effect and evidence are few and far between in social sciences.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >"You've got sympathies for Ebenezer Scrooge!" is possibly the bottom of the barrel of counters if you seriously want good outcomes. Honestly, I'm not so sure about that. Pointing out that someone is making the same arguments as an archetype of cruelty should be cause for reflection at the very least.
    - roenxi 5y ago
      Scrooge isn't an archetype for cruelty though, he is miserliness. And that also goes to why allusion is a bad approach - interpreting a story isn't that much less political than politics except the topic gets derailed into a literal fantasy hypothetical. Dickens didn't exactly take a statistical sample of the people in London to come up with the story, he had a conclusion and was constructing a situation where it made sense. The fact he did so in an eloquent and entertaining way is not basis for attempting to come up with a policy. Nobody should be using 1850s popular literature as a serious contribution. We've got more than 150 years of policy experiments and records of outcomes when it comes to labour policy since then. Someone who has read up on that should be leading the debate, not the Ghost of Christmas Past.
- drewcoo 5y ago
  No, Ebenezer eventually saw the humanity in other people and showed empathy.
HWR_14 5y ago
Your first point seems to be that, since only 2.7% of Americans make the federal minimum wage, there is something wrong with them that can be fixed, or something abnormal about their situation. However, most Americans live in states with a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum wage. In fact, 90% of people making minimum wage are making more than the federal minimum. That means 27%+ of people are making minimum wage. It's not abnormal.
- eru 5y ago
  > That means 27%+ of people are making minimum wage. It's not abnormal. Though, of course, that doesn't say anything either way about whether minimum wages should be higher or lower, or whether they are a good idea in the first place. (And neither does the somewhat incoherent comment you replied to.)
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    That's true. I'll admit, I didn't even try to respond to the person I was replying to with regard to the level they should be at, because I couldn't even understand their position. That said, I believe in a minimum wage. It probably should be higher. Or, what I would prefer, is instead of raising the minimum wage we raise taxes and provide more government services (e.g. free healthcare for all as opposed to raising the minimum wage.)
    - eru 5y ago
      Yes, if you want to help poor people, you should give them money. (And also, make sure that the economy runs well.) See https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaib... for why a minimum wage is probably a bad idea.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        There's no connection between your link and an argument that the minimum wage is a bad idea. Also, the article doesn't make an ethical argument. I firmly believe in a minimum wage.
crooked-v 5y ago
> Especially since it is so much easier to move to a low cost of living area in this era of fantastic communication and easy travel. How often have you, yourself, had to deal with the time and money costs of moving a family, including finding suitable housing, sustaining employment throughout, and dealing with furniture and appliances? You're using "easier" here to skip straight to implication of "easy", but it's not, especially not for anyone not already living somewhere with plenty of space like the suburbs.
- eru 5y ago
  I've been through about seven international moves, and a few more moves without crossing borders. I've never lived in the suburbs.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>It is unclear why the default position is someone should (1) be doing the similar work as Cratchit (2) possibly with less responsibilities and (3) earning more money in real terms. Because if he is barely supporting a family in near poverty with a sick child with not system for social spending it follows that he is not able to put money aside for his eventual retirement / sudden death. Thus if he were run over by a horse and carriage and died from his injuries his family would be definitely in poverty and probably go to the poor house. Also as I recall the story the ghost of Christmas present says that if Tiny Tim does not get treatment he would die, but he is not getting treatment because Cratchit is barely supporting the family as it is. Finally nobody is saying that social policy should be based on stories like this one, because it is hard to legislate supernatural beings showing up to make misers better people. Stories are used to indicate possible problem areas for which solutions should be formed. At the end I would agree that near-poverty while supporting family is acceptable as a societal result for a small part of society, as long as there are social systems in place to help in case of the person doing the supporting not being able to support any more or to help in case of severe health problems which near-poverty cannot solve and as long as there exist non-supernatural or not completely luck based means (like winning lotteries) whereby it might be supposed the person doing the supporting might be able to move that family to a middle class lifestyle.
- fuzzfactor 5y ago
  >legislate supernatural beings showing up to make misers better people. Sometimes this might be the only type of legislation that would have a chance. Since well before the time of Dickens there have been major organizations controlled by influential elites which have always been dependent on the kind of expolitation that can only be maximized up the chain when there exists at least a certain amount of this type of poverty toward the bottom. Even when there are more than enough resources to go around. Even sometimes when there is no maliciousness involved. The tradition is that deeply ingrained. Employed workers like Cratchit were not suffering as badly from the full prevailing poverty at the time. Their financial disadvantages were great, but not nearly as bad as the vast unemployed had to face in order for their services to be made available to elite ventures when needed at relatively insignificant cost with little notice. The unwashed masses really are masses and sometimes will need to include white-collar professions more than others. When it becomes possible for enough working-class people to rise financially through mere education and/or merit, then adjustments will be made by those whose control did not arise from merit in order to keep the distance and maintain the status quo. This seem to be what Dickens was getting at.
AussieWog93 5y ago
>In short, I'd question why near-poverty while supporting family is unacceptable as a legal minimum. There are a lot of people who don't have a family. Because most people only choose to start a family once they already have the financial stability to support one. If the average 20-something male without a family earned more (or there was a drop in the cost of living), he'd be more likely to start a family, do it earlier and have more (and healthier) children.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  > Because most people only choose to start a family once they already have the financial stability to support one. US GDP per capita is four times higher than in 1950. People did not have trouble supporting families then. If you want to have a very high standard of living by historical and global[1] standards that is indeed difficult. > If the average 20-something male without a family earned more (or there was a drop in the cost of living), he'd be more likely to start a family, do it earlier and have more (and healthier) children. That might be true if women couldn’t work but with two income families it certainly isn’t now. Greater wealth gets eaten up by positional goods, keeping up with the Jones, good schools as detailed in Warren’s Two Income Trap[2]. Wealthier countries don’t have more children. [1] Only one US state has lower GDP per capita than Germany, Arkansas https://www.stockingblue.com/article/830/per-capita-gdp-by-us-state-second-quarter-2020/ https://www.stockingblue.com/article/830/per-capita-gdp-by-u... [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-income-trap/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-in...
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >US GDP per capita is four times higher than in 1950. People did not have trouble supporting families then. If you want to have a very high standard of living by historical and global[1] standards that is indeed difficult. I may be somewhat biased, as I'm based in Melbourne AU, but I don't think you've given proper credit the explosion in the cost of Real Estate (both rent and mortgage costs; keeping in mind that you cannot lock in a set interest rate for 10+ years in other countries like you can in the US). >That might be true if women couldn’t work but with two income families it certainly isn’t now. You're not wrong there, but I was specifically looking at male incomes, which (at least when looking at localised populations) are strongly correlated with fertility.
einpoklum 5y ago
> Going with the USA, apparently something like 98% of people have managed to get work that pays better than the Federal minimum wage. Others already mentioned state-specific minimum wage, but you are likely neglecting to consider: 1. Prison labor. 2. Unreported labor (in whatever statistic you're relying on). 3. Last but certainly not least: unemployment ("have managed to get work that" - what if you haven't managed to get work?)
clearwind 5y ago
> Legislating people's favourite lucky number Woah, horsey. For most HN readers including you and I, it looks like just a “lucky number”, but to the people it matters it is everything. Financial security is for most intents and purposes the first rung of being happy. > There are a lot of people who don't have a family. Social support per child can account for this. It’s a politically vulnerable policy, as it ‘seems intuitive’ for smart people that this would ‘incentivise child-rearing’. But upon leaving the blue sky anyone would realise that a normal person doesn’t calculate their life so coolly in quite that imagined fashion. To pre-empt a counter-narrative about minimum wage - inflationary effects - it’s worth noting that modern countries both seek mild inflation and regularly enact policy which expect some inflationary outcomes. Trickle-up benefits are known to be far more beneficial to all of society, which includes incumbents, than trickle-down policy. This also in time offsets the inflationary effect somewhat on the supply side.
- eru 5y ago
  Nah, serious economist don't believe minimum wage legislation causes inflation. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Central banks control that. If you are actually looking for non-strawman arguments against minimum wage: First, see https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220217044208/https://blog.jaib... (Basically, don't punish employers for interacting with poor people, nor reward other folks for successfully avoiding interaction with poor people. If you want to help poor people, give them money.) Second, employers are paid with a whole basket of goods, and money is just one of component. Training, working conditions, flexibility etc are others. A minimum wage makes some of these baskets illegal, even though they might be mutually agreeable to all parties involved. > [...] than trickle-down policy. 'Trickle-down' was only ever used as a strawman.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Central banks don't control money. People who hold onto money control money since the central bank is forced to make as much money available to be lent out as much as is being saved because savings = investments must hold and allowing savings to go down to the level of investments is frowned upon (negative interest means savings exceed investment).
EdwardDiego 5y ago
> Especially since it is so much easier to move to a low cost of living area in this era of fantastic communication and easy travel. This is a rather glib comment that leads me to believe you've not experienced poverty.
- AniseAbyss 5y ago
  Yeah I see this sentiment a lot from people in the IT industry. Not everyone has the profession where you can be a digital nomad.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
Only being able to afford meat once a year is inline with North Korea.

antihero 5y ago

One of the commenters suggested that today a $13/hr wage buys you “a lot more house”. I feel that’s very wrong, housing feels like the most it’s ever been.

lozenge 5y ago
A suburban house would have been useless in Dickens' time due to the lack of automobiles.
- eru 5y ago
  Britain already had some railways in 1843. The 1840s were the time of railway mania. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania (Compare also the earlier Canal Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_Mania ) But, yes, obviously 19th century Britain didn't have anything like the modern American car-commuter suburb.
CapitalistCartr 5y ago
$13 per hour where I live, in Florida, won't buy any house.
- rowanajmarshall 5y ago
  And $13/hour will leave you in a shared rental in a dodgy part of todays London.
  - eru 5y ago
    The inflation adjustment was made for Britain as a whole. You might want to do a cost-of-living-in-London adjustment?
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
https://inflationchart.com/home-in-income/?time=20%20years https://inflationchart.com/home-in-income/?time=20%20years It’s reaching the highest in 20 years. Save up for the inevitable crash.

Ginden 5y ago

I think that inflation isn't exactly comparable over that large periods of time. No amount of money could buy computing power equivalent to smartphone in Dickensian times. Our expectations also rises - no one wants to live in Dickensian standard of living. ;) Also, Cratchit wasn't doing minimum wage job - AFAIR he was accountant or someone like that.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]