7 ms·

>which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders) We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the l

>which as a side effect can increase capital (and profit everyone, not just startup founders) We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in productivity. In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people, those individuals have not magically captured any of the productivity gains of the 21st century, in fact they're probably unemployed because the low skill job that would've existed now has been automated. Trickle down economics is such a farcical scam made by those who benefit from it, it makes me unironically proud of my country's propaganda machine that people are drinking the neoliberal gospel so hard, it'll make the next few decades a lot funnier.

baandang 4y ago
The irony is that the pejorative phrase "Trickle down economics" was pure propaganda. Incredibly effective propaganda considering you are repeating it back like a stochastic parrot decades later.
subradios 4y ago
"Real" earnings staying stagnant are a byproduct of inflation artifacts and certain non pay employee expenditures rising astronomically, notably the employer paid portion of health insurance. There's also the socialist or conservative refusal to build houses (depending on where you live). Assuming you are US based, you will notice that the nationalized health services are slowly going bankrupt or worse, losing all their doctors. Even still, the per capita expenditure on health care in Western countries is an exponential. Giving credit to the nationalized systems, they managed to constrain it to perhaps n^1.6 instead of n^2, but it's still not a problem with "capitalism" directly, as it affects health systems with no meaningful concept of private business. How does progressive thought deal with people wanting to spend enormous amounts of money on increasingly more advanced Healthcare as they age, and those costs being hidden such that nobody realizes how much money that is? It appears that the American system has replicated the failures of communist planning - nobody know how much anything should cost! Perhaps the nationalized systems were able to perform better, for a time due to having very smart people trying their best to work it out - but this even is starting to become unglued. A proper progressive answer to this cannot be to nationalize more Healthcare, as that is failing the metric used to criticize the private system. More slowly, admittedly - but still failing. If all talk about the way capital markets improve the world is the "neoliberal gospel", there needs to be an answer for these problems that don't rely on sovereign wealth funds or extremely creative central bank manipulation.
resonious 4y ago
As with most things I "know", I'm not sure what info to trust, but I'm currently under the impression that most of America's homeless population are homeless because they're hopelessly addicted to fentanyl and can't think straight.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  And fentanyl comes from China, right? I don't get it how China's communist party can't enforce the law and stop fentanyl production.
  - lmz 4y ago
    Why would they? Payback for the Opium Wars.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      Making the US pay for GB's wars? The crisis is fueled by the pharmacy industry, not some revenge.
  - defrost 4y ago
    They dropped the hammer two years ago .. these days: > Instead of finished fentanyl being shipped directly to the United States, most smuggling now takes place via Mexico. > Mexican criminal groups source fentanyl precursors — and increasingly pre-precursors — from China, and then traffic finished fentanyl from Mexico to the United States. it's hard to even get (direct) fentanyl precursors from China .. but those that have the knowledge in both India and Mexico can start further down the chain and get "pre - precursors" to produce fentanyl to smuggle into the US. (2022) [1] https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-and-synthetic-drugs-control-fentanyl-methamphetamines-and-precursors https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-and-synthetic-drugs... (2020) [2] https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-...
- chefandy 4y ago
  > As with most things I "know", I'm not sure what info to trust, but I'm currently under the impression that most of America's homeless population are homeless because they're hopelessly addicted to fentanyl and can't think straight. Sure, drug addiction is a giant problem in the US, but you were correct to second guess your take. Reducing the most dire portion of the US's housing crisis to drug addiction is flabbergastingly reductive. You should start by trusting information from people who have meaningfully studied housing in the United States.
latency-guy2 4y ago
The number of vagrants had been decreasing YoY from ~2000 to 2020. I think the effect you see in cities is an increased concentration of vagrants from numerous states and other cities into just a few. I do believe homeless population has generally increased over the last 2 years, so I won't belay this point any further. Real dollars and wages have not increased a lot... for the average citizen, but has increased tremendously for those with more skills. Nevertheless, the average citizen does have more purchasing power compared to their rough equivalent ~50 years back. The main culprits of rising costs is healthcare, housing, and education. Housing has performed it's worst effect on the average American over the last 2 years, but before that was quite steady in relative cost to the average income. Food, entertainment, clothing, transportation, and communication are now much more affordable, inflation over the last 2 years has also put a dent into the relative cost to the average income, but nevertheless still better now than previous. What solutions are there for the average American? Take advantage of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease, learn new skills and drive forth competition. Stagnant industries will have to adapt or they will die. I don't think reality is quite so dire. There's not a lot that can convince me, I'm well aware of wage stagnation, I'm well aware of inflation YoY, I'm well aware that the average American is hurting quite a bit over the last 2 years. But in the long run, the average American is doing OK, and will be doing OK. Hopefully, OK turns into GOOD and thriving. Happy to be proven wrong though.
randomdata 4y ago
> We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in productivity. It's funny how this is so widely recognized, yet at the same time we like to claim that college, which also started gaining in popularity 50 years ago, will increase your earnings...
ciphol 4y ago
> We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years Who's "we"? The world as a whole has experienced rapidly growing real earnings throughout the last 50 years. Real earnings worldwide have doubled since 2001 alone! [1] Of course, most of the growth has happened in developing countries (where, honestly, it's most needed) rather than in rich countries where you and I live. But even in rich countries real earnings are rising, just more slowly. [2] > In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people Only in the rich cities, not in poor rural areas. And that's because homelessness is a result almost solely of high housing prices due to political building restrictions, not low incomes (or mental illness or drug use). [3] Increasing incomes won't actually decrease homelessness significantly - higher income just means housing prices will have to rise higher before poor-er people are forced out. The same number of people will be forced out either way, because a fixed number of housing units can accommodate a roughly fixed number of people, meaning that everyone additional person has to leave. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=c... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~DEU~AUS~ITA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=c... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homelessness-affordable-housing-crisis-democrats-causes/672224/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...

baandang 4y ago

The irony is that the pejorative phrase "Trickle down economics" was pure propaganda. Incredibly effective propaganda considering you are repeating it back like a stochastic parrot decades later.

subradios 4y ago

"Real" earnings staying stagnant are a byproduct of inflation artifacts and certain non pay employee expenditures rising astronomically, notably the employer paid portion of health insurance. There's also the socialist or conservative refusal to build houses (depending on where you live). Assuming you are US based, you will notice that the nationalized health services are slowly going bankrupt or worse, losing all their doctors. Even still, the per capita expenditure on health care in Western countries is an exponential. Giving credit to the nationalized systems, they managed to constrain it to perhaps n^1.6 instead of n^2, but it's still not a problem with "capitalism" directly, as it affects health systems with no meaningful concept of private business. How does progressive thought deal with people wanting to spend enormous amounts of money on increasingly more advanced Healthcare as they age, and those costs being hidden such that nobody realizes how much money that is? It appears that the American system has replicated the failures of communist planning - nobody know how much anything should cost! Perhaps the nationalized systems were able to perform better, for a time due to having very smart people trying their best to work it out - but this even is starting to become unglued. A proper progressive answer to this cannot be to nationalize more Healthcare, as that is failing the metric used to criticize the private system. More slowly, admittedly - but still failing. If all talk about the way capital markets improve the world is the "neoliberal gospel", there needs to be an answer for these problems that don't rely on sovereign wealth funds or extremely creative central bank manipulation.

resonious 4y ago

As with most things I "know", I'm not sure what info to trust, but I'm currently under the impression that most of America's homeless population are homeless because they're hopelessly addicted to fentanyl and can't think straight.

galaxyLogic 4y ago
And fentanyl comes from China, right? I don't get it how China's communist party can't enforce the law and stop fentanyl production.
- lmz 4y ago
  Why would they? Payback for the Opium Wars.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Making the US pay for GB's wars? The crisis is fueled by the pharmacy industry, not some revenge.
- defrost 4y ago
  They dropped the hammer two years ago .. these days: > Instead of finished fentanyl being shipped directly to the United States, most smuggling now takes place via Mexico. > Mexican criminal groups source fentanyl precursors — and increasingly pre-precursors — from China, and then traffic finished fentanyl from Mexico to the United States. it's hard to even get (direct) fentanyl precursors from China .. but those that have the knowledge in both India and Mexico can start further down the chain and get "pre - precursors" to produce fentanyl to smuggle into the US. (2022) [1] https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-and-synthetic-drugs-control-fentanyl-methamphetamines-and-precursors https://www.brookings.edu/research/china-and-synthetic-drugs... (2020) [2] https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-008-20%20Fentanyl%20Flow%20in%20the%20United%20States_0.pdf https://www.dea.gov/sites/default/files/2020-03/DEA_GOV_DIR-...
chefandy 4y ago
> As with most things I "know", I'm not sure what info to trust, but I'm currently under the impression that most of America's homeless population are homeless because they're hopelessly addicted to fentanyl and can't think straight. Sure, drug addiction is a giant problem in the US, but you were correct to second guess your take. Reducing the most dire portion of the US's housing crisis to drug addiction is flabbergastingly reductive. You should start by trusting information from people who have meaningfully studied housing in the United States.

latency-guy2 4y ago

The number of vagrants had been decreasing YoY from ~2000 to 2020. I think the effect you see in cities is an increased concentration of vagrants from numerous states and other cities into just a few. I do believe homeless population has generally increased over the last 2 years, so I won't belay this point any further. Real dollars and wages have not increased a lot... for the average citizen, but has increased tremendously for those with more skills. Nevertheless, the average citizen does have more purchasing power compared to their rough equivalent ~50 years back. The main culprits of rising costs is healthcare, housing, and education. Housing has performed it's worst effect on the average American over the last 2 years, but before that was quite steady in relative cost to the average income. Food, entertainment, clothing, transportation, and communication are now much more affordable, inflation over the last 2 years has also put a dent into the relative cost to the average income, but nevertheless still better now than previous. What solutions are there for the average American? Take advantage of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease, learn new skills and drive forth competition. Stagnant industries will have to adapt or they will die. I don't think reality is quite so dire. There's not a lot that can convince me, I'm well aware of wage stagnation, I'm well aware of inflation YoY, I'm well aware that the average American is hurting quite a bit over the last 2 years. But in the long run, the average American is doing OK, and will be doing OK. Hopefully, OK turns into GOOD and thriving. Happy to be proven wrong though.

randomdata 4y ago

> We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years, despite massive increases in productivity. It's funny how this is so widely recognized, yet at the same time we like to claim that college, which also started gaining in popularity 50 years ago, will increase your earnings...

ciphol 4y ago

> We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years Who's "we"? The world as a whole has experienced rapidly growing real earnings throughout the last 50 years. Real earnings worldwide have doubled since 2001 alone! [1] Of course, most of the growth has happened in developing countries (where, honestly, it's most needed) rather than in rich countries where you and I live. But even in rich countries real earnings are rising, just more slowly. [2] > In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people Only in the rich cities, not in poor rural areas. And that's because homelessness is a result almost solely of high housing prices due to political building restrictions, not low incomes (or mental illness or drug use). [3] Increasing incomes won't actually decrease homelessness significantly - higher income just means housing prices will have to rise higher before poor-er people are forced out. The same number of people will be forced out either way, because a fixed number of housing units can accommodate a roughly fixed number of people, meaning that everyone additional person has to leave. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=c... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=chart&country=USA~GBR~DEU~AUS~ITA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=c... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homelessness-affordable-housing-crisis-democrats-causes/672224/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...