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It's not just the quality and craft of works. Worker's pay didn't increase but productivity did, the wealthy have become ever wealthier, the bottom 90% of earne

It's not just the quality and craft of works. Worker's pay didn't increase but productivity did, the wealthy have become ever wealthier, the bottom 90% of earners stopped doing better off, etc. etc. It's kind of crazy how so many measures have gotten steadily worse since then[1]. [1] https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

lolinder 2y ago
An interesting thing about those charts is that most of them start during the 40s, but the ones that don't ("income concentration at the top" and "income share at the top") pretty clearly show that the 30s–70s was the anomaly and we've just reverted to the pre-Great Depression status quo. A more illuminating question might be "wtf happened in the 1940s and how can we get back there short of another total war?"
- seb1204 2y ago
  One view is that after the war people had a lot of new technologies and knowledge but nothing else, as it was destroyed during the war or all drilled to support the war machine. Since the knowledge was there and also a lot of level plain field (pun intended) new visions were developed to rebuild and put people to work. Nowadays most people have most necessities and also luxury stuff making it easy to be on the nimby train rather than developing a small understanding for the complexities of our current world and what decisions can be simple but impactful.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  FDR Wouldn't you know it, adding a little socialism to free market capitalism is insanely effective... Another thing people don't seem to recognize, after both world wars the west basically dismantled all proprietary IP from Germany and gave it away for free. This affected everything and anything that was patented. It was as if the entirety of science development for several decades was open sourced. And it was glorious and literally minted a golden age for about 30 years.

lolinder 2y ago

An interesting thing about those charts is that most of them start during the 40s, but the ones that don't ("income concentration at the top" and "income share at the top") pretty clearly show that the 30s–70s was the anomaly and we've just reverted to the pre-Great Depression status quo. A more illuminating question might be "wtf happened in the 1940s and how can we get back there short of another total war?"

seb1204 2y ago
One view is that after the war people had a lot of new technologies and knowledge but nothing else, as it was destroyed during the war or all drilled to support the war machine. Since the knowledge was there and also a lot of level plain field (pun intended) new visions were developed to rebuild and put people to work. Nowadays most people have most necessities and also luxury stuff making it easy to be on the nimby train rather than developing a small understanding for the complexities of our current world and what decisions can be simple but impactful.
mrguyorama 2y ago
FDR Wouldn't you know it, adding a little socialism to free market capitalism is insanely effective... Another thing people don't seem to recognize, after both world wars the west basically dismantled all proprietary IP from Germany and gave it away for free. This affected everything and anything that was patented. It was as if the entirety of science development for several decades was open sourced. And it was glorious and literally minted a golden age for about 30 years.