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> 1. We’re eating more fresh fruit Is this supposed to be a joke? "Let them eat fruit?" > 9. Comparing wage growth to the cost of necessities It's here, far

> 1. We’re eating more fresh fruit Is this supposed to be a joke? "Let them eat fruit?" > 9. Comparing wage growth to the cost of necessities It's here, far below the fold, that the real story begins. Spoiler: health care, housing, and education did not get cheaper. Which you already knew, because you pay out the ass for them, and that's not a feeling one forgets. But we are eating more fruit, so I guess on the balance everything is fine.

markus_zhang 4y ago
HC, schooling and housing are essentially gov subscriptions. We all "love" subscriptions.
buescher 4y ago
Avocado is a fruit, right?
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  gee, I should just eat 88 fewer avocados every day and use the savings to pay my rent!
nikanj 4y ago
The big ticket items (housing, healthcare, education) got exponentially more expensive, but at least hammers and avocados are cheaper.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Yeah education especially, it's gone up 520% of inflation, plain extortion. "Youngest adults" meaning ages 18-25 who include the legal women that don't want to have babies immediately and whom everyone wants to fuck, and the young men who look their best in their "pretty boy" like Ashton Kutcher appearance, because they have the thick hair and best skin and are skinny, and sure enough the same is true for them there's lots of men and women out to fuck them. Or exploit them. So all of them, youngest adults. They are being harmed. Colleges--meaning not the faculty or the adjuncts who are true to the students but the administrators in the bloated bureaucracies--just charge up the ass. They say the students don't pay for that but they absolutely do, they lump that in with Tuition. It's not Tuition, in my case the money spent on administration was mostly to persecute me (I got lynched). There should be three categories: tuition (strictly professor salaries, fuck that adjunct status promote them to professors), Room and Board (or better yet call it Rent and let students pay for food on their own), and then Administration. Just like other non-profits. In some colleges the professors are the administrators, there's no bureaucrats. And the harsh part is for youngest adults, you need to go through the gauntlet--the time you're told is the best time in your life, when it's really the absolute worst--to participate in the economy with dignity. Otherwise you get a shit job.
- l33t2328 4y ago
  I’m confused about what your paragraph about people wanting fuck college students has to do with the price of college.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    So that pretty boy was me. Self-referential. The only thing older adults want out of youngest adults, really, is their youth. They have no assets except for their admission letter, and no way to enforce their contracts to pay for college. Older adults want to exploit that youth. And they youngest adults don't want to be prostitutes, so they go to college, but that doesn't change things by enough.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    Have some patience with them. They were lynched ffs.
- notch656a 4y ago
  > persecute me (I got lynched). I've never interacted with a ghost on HN before.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    There's always a first time.
- haalia 4y ago
  Very much confused by the 2nd paragraph incel screed.
haswell 4y ago
> But we are eating more fruit, so I guess on the balance everything is fine. Nowhere did the post claim this. Intake of fresh fruits/vegetables is associated with a meaningful decrease in mortality rate, and are increasingly seen as the best way to promote a healthy gut/microbiome (vs. taking probiotics). If you interpret this post as "n reasons that everything is fine", then you might be right - everything is definitely not fine. But if you interpret this post as "in a world where a lot is going wrong, and that's usually all we hear about, here are n things going right", it's a more useful read. To me, this falls into a category similar to the book Factfulness [0], which seeks to correct misconceptions about the state of the world by examining certain areas of progress over a broader historical context. Personally, I think an occasional break from the doom and gloom to focus on "here are some things that have improved" is necessary. That doesn't have to mean that everything is fine. - [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  An honest analysis would weight its concerns by importance. This was not an honest analysis.
  - haswell 4y ago
    I don't think you or I can issue judgements about honesty without understanding the author and their motivations. We can conclude that the analysis is poor, or misses key factors, or is only useful when answering a narrow set of questions, or requires additional disclaimers / context. But concluding that the author is dishonest takes us in a direction that is no longer focused on how the analysis can improve, and instead seeks to question motives directly, instead of expanding our shared understanding of the subject. I do think the glaring issue with the piece is that we (the royal we) have not agreed on the list of factors that should be measured when examining living standards, nor the weights of those factors. The post doesn't really attempt to justify its chosen measures either, and would carry more weight if based on earlier scholarly attempts to quantify quality of life.
    - 4y ago
nostromo 4y ago
Thought experiment: do you wish you were born 40 years earlier? I suspect most of us do not wish this, and I think the primary reason is because our lives are much better now than 40 years ago. Healthcare and housing is more expensive, yes. But healthcare is also much better. (Things that were once death sentences no longer are.) Our houses are more expensive, but also larger even though our families are smaller. The technology we have access to is amazing. Traveling the world is more affordable and not just something the richest person you know has done. Not to mention human rights have expanded for lots of protected classes. Overall I think the doom and gloom of some younger folks about how terrible it is today and how great things were for previous generations is just wildly misplaced. There are lots of reasons to be thankful we're living in the present and not the past.
- alexfromapex 4y ago
  Quantity of life due to healthcare has increased but quality of life I would wager has barely moved the needle. The problem is when Americans say they are dissatisfied with healthcare today it’s conflated with them being dissatisfied with the cost instead of the healthcare industry recognizing that patient satisfaction is low.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  I love tech and I'm doing great. I'm not representative and neither are you. > healthcare is also much better ε more QALYs for 8x the cost. Boo. > Our houses are more expensive, but also larger Because they only built houses for rich people, thereby spiking prices into the stratosphere and forcing more people to go without homes for longer. If you're looking for a silver lining, this ain't it. > human rights have expanded for lots of protected classes. That's a much better silver lining. Usually I find myself arguing with Team Optimism, because I think all the problems we have are solvable and many people disagree. The article doesn't read like a genuine case for optimism, it reads like a PR piece for someone who is part of the problem and wants to deflect attention.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  > Thought experiment: do you wish you were born 40 years earlier? Absolutely yes. Rare divorces, booming economy, a society able to communicate instead of cancelling people, burning cars or locking everyone at home. Technology improves our lives up to a point. I agree with you a lot of things improved (thanks capitalism) but our culture is a complete mess and I'd rather live on another planet. To minimise the problem I moved to a country that many would call backwards. At least they won't teach my kids that men can menstruate. I'm sorry for my kids, hopefully things won't get too much worse in the next couple of decades and hopefully we'll find another country to move to, once idiocracy takes control of this one as well.

markus_zhang 4y ago

HC, schooling and housing are essentially gov subscriptions. We all "love" subscriptions.

buescher 4y ago

Avocado is a fruit, right?

jjoonathan 4y ago
gee, I should just eat 88 fewer avocados every day and use the savings to pay my rent!

nikanj 4y ago

The big ticket items (housing, healthcare, education) got exponentially more expensive, but at least hammers and avocados are cheaper.

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Yeah education especially, it's gone up 520% of inflation, plain extortion. "Youngest adults" meaning ages 18-25 who include the legal women that don't want to have babies immediately and whom everyone wants to fuck, and the young men who look their best in their "pretty boy" like Ashton Kutcher appearance, because they have the thick hair and best skin and are skinny, and sure enough the same is true for them there's lots of men and women out to fuck them. Or exploit them. So all of them, youngest adults. They are being harmed. Colleges--meaning not the faculty or the adjuncts who are true to the students but the administrators in the bloated bureaucracies--just charge up the ass. They say the students don't pay for that but they absolutely do, they lump that in with Tuition. It's not Tuition, in my case the money spent on administration was mostly to persecute me (I got lynched). There should be three categories: tuition (strictly professor salaries, fuck that adjunct status promote them to professors), Room and Board (or better yet call it Rent and let students pay for food on their own), and then Administration. Just like other non-profits. In some colleges the professors are the administrators, there's no bureaucrats. And the harsh part is for youngest adults, you need to go through the gauntlet--the time you're told is the best time in your life, when it's really the absolute worst--to participate in the economy with dignity. Otherwise you get a shit job.

l33t2328 4y ago
I’m confused about what your paragraph about people wanting fuck college students has to do with the price of college.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  So that pretty boy was me. Self-referential. The only thing older adults want out of youngest adults, really, is their youth. They have no assets except for their admission letter, and no way to enforce their contracts to pay for college. Older adults want to exploit that youth. And they youngest adults don't want to be prostitutes, so they go to college, but that doesn't change things by enough.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Have some patience with them. They were lynched ffs.
notch656a 4y ago
> persecute me (I got lynched). I've never interacted with a ghost on HN before.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  There's always a first time.
haalia 4y ago
Very much confused by the 2nd paragraph incel screed.

haswell 4y ago

> But we are eating more fruit, so I guess on the balance everything is fine. Nowhere did the post claim this. Intake of fresh fruits/vegetables is associated with a meaningful decrease in mortality rate, and are increasingly seen as the best way to promote a healthy gut/microbiome (vs. taking probiotics). If you interpret this post as "n reasons that everything is fine", then you might be right - everything is definitely not fine. But if you interpret this post as "in a world where a lot is going wrong, and that's usually all we hear about, here are n things going right", it's a more useful read. To me, this falls into a category similar to the book Factfulness [0], which seeks to correct misconceptions about the state of the world by examining certain areas of progress over a broader historical context. Personally, I think an occasional break from the doom and gloom to focus on "here are some things that have improved" is necessary. That doesn't have to mean that everything is fine. - [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness

jjoonathan 4y ago
An honest analysis would weight its concerns by importance. This was not an honest analysis.
- haswell 4y ago
  I don't think you or I can issue judgements about honesty without understanding the author and their motivations. We can conclude that the analysis is poor, or misses key factors, or is only useful when answering a narrow set of questions, or requires additional disclaimers / context. But concluding that the author is dishonest takes us in a direction that is no longer focused on how the analysis can improve, and instead seeks to question motives directly, instead of expanding our shared understanding of the subject. I do think the glaring issue with the piece is that we (the royal we) have not agreed on the list of factors that should be measured when examining living standards, nor the weights of those factors. The post doesn't really attempt to justify its chosen measures either, and would carry more weight if based on earlier scholarly attempts to quantify quality of life.
  - 4y ago

nostromo 4y ago

Thought experiment: do you wish you were born 40 years earlier? I suspect most of us do not wish this, and I think the primary reason is because our lives are much better now than 40 years ago. Healthcare and housing is more expensive, yes. But healthcare is also much better. (Things that were once death sentences no longer are.) Our houses are more expensive, but also larger even though our families are smaller. The technology we have access to is amazing. Traveling the world is more affordable and not just something the richest person you know has done. Not to mention human rights have expanded for lots of protected classes. Overall I think the doom and gloom of some younger folks about how terrible it is today and how great things were for previous generations is just wildly misplaced. There are lots of reasons to be thankful we're living in the present and not the past.

alexfromapex 4y ago
Quantity of life due to healthcare has increased but quality of life I would wager has barely moved the needle. The problem is when Americans say they are dissatisfied with healthcare today it’s conflated with them being dissatisfied with the cost instead of the healthcare industry recognizing that patient satisfaction is low.
jjoonathan 4y ago
I love tech and I'm doing great. I'm not representative and neither are you. > healthcare is also much better ε more QALYs for 8x the cost. Boo. > Our houses are more expensive, but also larger Because they only built houses for rich people, thereby spiking prices into the stratosphere and forcing more people to go without homes for longer. If you're looking for a silver lining, this ain't it. > human rights have expanded for lots of protected classes. That's a much better silver lining. Usually I find myself arguing with Team Optimism, because I think all the problems we have are solvable and many people disagree. The article doesn't read like a genuine case for optimism, it reads like a PR piece for someone who is part of the problem and wants to deflect attention.
jokethrowaway 4y ago
> Thought experiment: do you wish you were born 40 years earlier? Absolutely yes. Rare divorces, booming economy, a society able to communicate instead of cancelling people, burning cars or locking everyone at home. Technology improves our lives up to a point. I agree with you a lot of things improved (thanks capitalism) but our culture is a complete mess and I'd rather live on another planet. To minimise the problem I moved to a country that many would call backwards. At least they won't teach my kids that men can menstruate. I'm sorry for my kids, hopefully things won't get too much worse in the next couple of decades and hopefully we'll find another country to move to, once idiocracy takes control of this one as well.