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You're not an outlier. If you look at US GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, it's higher than ever. If you then look at the median personal income, also adj

You're not an outlier. If you look at US GDP per capita, adjusted for inflation, it's higher than ever. If you then look at the median personal income, also adjusted for inflation (i.e. the middle class), you see the same trend. There's a lot of doom and gloom but it doesn't seem consistent with the data. There's a weird tendency to zoom in on particular data points that paint a particularly negative story and leave out the rest. For example, we look at housing and will say that its prices outpaced inflation. And that's true, sort of. But it's also completely untrue. For example, if I look at my own situation compared to my parents: I have a 1.5% interest rate on my mortgage, my parents paid 15%. Homes are now about 50-75% bigger than my parents' generation, on average. And the average home is shared by 33% fewer people than my parents' generation. So the cost to rent the money to buy a certain area of home for 1 person, i.e. housing costs, has actually gone down, despite the average price of a house having gone up. In all fairness I wouldn't want to trade with the average person in past generations.

hello_moto 2y ago
GDP (per capita or not) cannot show wealth inequality. Personal income does not include capital gain. Wealth grow is not included in either of these dataset. CEO unrealized gain is huge and represents a huge chunk of his/her eventual hidden income that becomes wealth.
eli_gottlieb 2y ago
So you're saying that on average if you can afford to buy a house, it's bigger and better than it used to be, but also that the fraction of people who can afford to do that is stagnating or declining.
borgdefenser 2y ago
Romanticizing the past while at the same time having an apocalyptic view of the future, while I don't know if it is a human thing to do, it is certainly a western thing to do. I think about how much is it worth for me to work remote vs working at the same factory for 40 years like my father. Some people pretend like this is just a given in the modern world and basically worthless. In reality, it is hard to put a price tag on because the difference is so valuable to me. I actually could have been the 4th generation working at a flour mill if I had wanted. Even if the flour mill paid double what it does, my life is so much more grand than what that would have been, it isn't even close.

hello_moto 2y ago

GDP (per capita or not) cannot show wealth inequality. Personal income does not include capital gain. Wealth grow is not included in either of these dataset. CEO unrealized gain is huge and represents a huge chunk of his/her eventual hidden income that becomes wealth.

eli_gottlieb 2y ago

So you're saying that on average if you can afford to buy a house, it's bigger and better than it used to be, but also that the fraction of people who can afford to do that is stagnating or declining.

borgdefenser 2y ago

Romanticizing the past while at the same time having an apocalyptic view of the future, while I don't know if it is a human thing to do, it is certainly a western thing to do. I think about how much is it worth for me to work remote vs working at the same factory for 40 years like my father. Some people pretend like this is just a given in the modern world and basically worthless. In reality, it is hard to put a price tag on because the difference is so valuable to me. I actually could have been the 4th generation working at a flour mill if I had wanted. Even if the flour mill paid double what it does, my life is so much more grand than what that would have been, it isn't even close.