5 ms·

> Scientific progress is the biggest driver of overall progress > There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand th

> Scientific progress is the biggest driver of overall progress > There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we’ll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before Real wages haven’t risen since 1980. Wealth inequality has. Most people have much less political power than they used to as wealth - and thus power - have become concentrated. Today we have smartphones, but also algorithm-driven polarization and a worldwide rise in authoritarian leaders. Depression and anxiety affect roughly 30% of our population. The rise of wealth inequality and the stagnation of wages corresponds to the collapse of the labor movement under globalization. Without a counterbalancing force from workers, wealth accrues to the business class. Technological advances have improved our lives in some ways but not on balance. So if we look at people’s well-being, society as whole hasn’t progressed since the 1980s; in many ways it’s gotten worse. Thus the trajectory of progress described in the blog post is make believe. The utopia Altman describes won’t appear. Mass layoffs, if they happen, will further concentrate wealth. AI technology will be used more and more for mass surveillance, algorithmic decision making (that would make Kafka blush), and cost cutting. What we can realistically expect is lowering of quality of life, an increased shift to precarious work, further concentration of wealth and power, and increasing rates of suffering. What we need instead of science fiction is to rebuild the labor movement. Otherwise “value creation” and technology’s benefits will continue to accrue to a dwindling fraction of society. And more and more it will be at everyone else’s expense.

nradov 1y ago
Real wages have risen a lot since 1980 when you include employer contributions to employee health insurance.
- xboxnolifes 1y ago
  No, that's not a real wage increase, thats nominal wage. If i make 20k more, but health insurance costs also went up 20k, my real wage did not change. I am no richer.
  - nradov 1y ago
    No, that's a real wage increase. The healthcare system can effectively treat a lot more conditions than it could in 1980. That makes you richer as measured in terms of QALYs.
    - xigency 1y ago
      That's a nice thought but I've only had one physical in the last 15 years. I'm sure others are sitting in the same boat.
      - nradov 1y ago
        These are obviously aggregate statistics and individual experiences may vary. It shouldn't be necessary to point that out.
- ImHereToVote 1y ago
  Does it correct for housing costs?
- boole1854 1y ago
  Even without including employer health insurance costs, real wages are up 67% since 1980. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxBn https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxBn Details: uses the "Wage and salary accruals per full-time-equivalent employee" time series, which is the broadest wage measure for FTE employees, and adjusts for inflation using the PCE price index, which is the most economically meaningful measure of "how much did prices change for consumers" (and is the inflation index that the Fed targets)
  - fusionadvocate 1y ago
    How has inflation behaved since 1980?
    - boole1854 1y ago
      It rose 2.75% per year (239% over 45 years). Source with details: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxIa https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxIa
      - fusionadvocate 1y ago
        Can you walk me through how to reach this '239%' number? Thank you.
        boole1854 1y ago
        You can hover over places on the chart to get exact values. In January 1980, the index was at 37.124. In April 2025, it was at 125.880. Then calculate cumulative inflation as the proportional change in the price level, like this: (P_final - P_initial) / P_initial = (125.880 - 37.124) / 37.124 = 2.39 This shows that the overall price level (the cumulative inflation embodied in the PCEPI) has increased by about 2.39 times over the period, which is 239%.
        sph 1y ago
        The thing that bugs me to no end when talking about inflation in an historical context, is that everyone forgets to consider how the indexes of consumption it's calculated from (PCEPI, CPI, etc.) are NOT static, and very arbitrarily are changed over time, often to make inflation seem lower than it actually is for the consumer. Overall, historical comparisons of inflation numbers are so imprecise to be practically worthless the longer the timescale. You can expect the real figure to be much greater in reality for consumers, given the political incentive to lie over inflation data.
- Rooster61 1y ago
  It's difficult for me to call those wages "real" when medical costs have been so absurdly gouged to eat up those contributions. Those increases have had no real impact on the average consumer, and is profoundly awful for those without access to employment that provides that insurance
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    All costs. New roof on the house? $30k. Hail damage on the car? It’s actually totaled. Whatever is in the store? Inflation certainly hit there too.
  - nradov 1y ago
    That's not entirely accurate. Wages are real enough whether paid out as cash, or paid to a third party for the employee's benefit. Some medical costs are unreasonably inflated, but on the other hand much of the cost increase reflects greater capabilities. We can effectively treat many conditions today that would have been a death sentence in 1980, but some of those cutting edge treatments cost >$1M per patient. That doesn't directly benefit the average healthy consumer, but it can help a lot if you get sick. I do agree that it makes no logical sense to couple medical insurance to employment. This system was created sort of accidentally as a side effect of wartime tax law and has persisted mainly due to inertia.
    - grafmax 1y ago
      It’s somewhat misleading to claim that better care today is the reason for higher costs. Most other developed countries have some form of universal coverage and pay significantly less per person. That includes countries like England, Germany and Switzerland which also have advanced healthcare capabilities. Other countries negotiate drug prices, provide budgets for hospitals rather than charging per procedure, regulate medical prices, and have reduced administrative costs (compared to the US which must deal with the complexities of multi-payer). That’s to say nothing of the fact that millions are uninsured in the US and have limited access to necessary medical treatment, never mind “cutting edge” treatments.
    - nandhinianand 1y ago
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  Not when you account for the insane rise in cost of health care.
tim333 1y ago
>Real wages haven’t risen since 1980 is a very US thing. In China they've probably 10xd over that time.
- hollerith 1y ago
  Even after that 10x growth, median Chinese household income is only 13-16% of US median household income: China: ~$10,000 – $12,000 US: ~$74,580 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022)
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    Purchasing power parity matters a lot too.
    - hollerith 1y ago
      The context here is growth and I doubt China's GDPPPP/person has grown anywhere near as much as its GDP/person because the median Chinese household of 40 years ago could still afford the essentials (food, housing, clothing) that the PPP adjustment indexes off of. (It just couldn't afford any imports.) Actually I doubt that economists even tried to calculate PPP of China 40 years ago because (even back then) the basket of goods used in the PPP calculation probably included gasoline and cars and such, which only the economic top 1% of China could afford 40 years ago, but if you forced the calculation somehow, you'd probably arrive at a GDPPPP/person not much lower than the current GDPPPP/person (i.e., China has grown spectacularly in GDP/person, but not in GDPPPP/person)
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        The difference now is that China makes a ton of consumer goods itself, so whereas 40 years ago Chinese PPP would have required forex, now it can be done internally. That shift opens the possibility of GDPPPP changes in excess (or under) strict GDP per capita growth.
  - Y_Y 1y ago
    I think GDPPPP/capita is a better measure here, but the story is similar. From the IMF's 2025 numbers: USA $90k, China $29k, world average $26k. Lovely tabulation of the data here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
Herring 1y ago
Lots of people don't care about "progress" in an absolute sense, eg longer healthier lifespans for all. They only care about it in a relative sense, eg if cop violence against minorities goes down, they feel anxiety and resentment. They really really want to be the biggest fish in the little pond. That's how a caste system works, it "makes a captive of everyone within it". Equality feels like a demotion [1]. That's why we have a whole thing about immigration going on. It's the one issue that the president is not underwater on right now [2]. You can't get much of a labor movement like this. [1] https://www.texasobserver.org/white-people-rural-arkansas-recession-forgotten-girls/ https://www.texasobserver.org/white-people-rural-arkansas-re... [2] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...
sjducb 1y ago
The problem is that housing and health insurance are too expensive. Tech isn’t responsible for either of those problems.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  In a way it is. Why are housing costs so high in Redmond, WA? The result of an influx of high income tech workers to the local housing market and the resulting shift of prices such as to eventually dilute the utility of that high salary to begin with. People in the area without a hook on that whale are of course left high and dry.
  - skeaker 1y ago
    Citation needed, my understanding was that housing prices are being driven up by real estate owners/agencies buying tons of property to either rent at extortionary prices or sit on until they sell for a higher price to the next sucker. Also stuff like the RealPage scandal where they simply illegally collude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330007 I think the idea of a law that only allows a limited number of owned properties per person and requires them to actually be using those properties would be interesting to alleviate this.
    - 0xffff2 1y ago
      Housing prices are being driven up by the fact that we don't build enough housing. That should be the end of the discussion. What you describe is just a symptom of not having enough housing. If we just built more housing then there wouldn't be any business angle for the corporations buying up housing.
      - skeaker 1y ago
        The obscenely rich entities that buy up tons of property without actually using it do so because they only stand to gain even more money on it later. Making more housing would help in the long term for sure, but these entities would still buy up most of it as it becomes available. Remember that as long as they hold the vast majority, they essentially have a captive audience and can set whatever outlandish prices they want (especially when they collude as they have done). Something to restrict the number of unused properties a person can own would still be beneficial either way. This also goes without mentioning the restrictions on "just" building new housing (land, time, and space, particularly space located near job sites).
azan_ 1y ago
> Real wages haven’t risen since 1980. Do people really believe that? I think either people have too rosy view of 80s or consider that real wages should also adjust for lifestyle inflation.
- naryJane 1y ago
  Yes. It’s even a part of Ray Dalio’s speeches on the topic. Here is one example where he mentions it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...
yencabulator 1y ago
> The utopia Altman describes won’t appear. Sure it will, as far as Altman is concerned. To make the whole post make sense, add "... for the rich" where appropriate.
atleastoptimal 1y ago
Sure, people’s well being as a whole haven’t gotten better since the 1980s, except for >Air quality (no more leaded gasoline) >Life expectancy >Cancer survival rates >Access to information >Infant mortality >Violent crime rates across the western world >Access to education >Clean water and food for 4+ billion people >HIV treatment >etc The negativity on this site is insane. They will deny the greatest scientific achievements if it lets them dunk on AI or whoever is the enemy of the week.
- dustincoates 1y ago
  Not to mention global poverty: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-poverty-declined-substantially-over-the-last-generation#key-insights https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-po...
- grafmax 1y ago
  My position is more nuanced that you present it to be. I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievements. Looking through your list it’s social policies which either drive or are necessary components of most of the improvements you mention. Even the medical advances you mention are dependent on a society’s ability to offer healthcare to its members - a notable deficiency of the US system. I emphasized the importance of the labor movement in my comment; but I don’t want to deny the importance of governmental policy changes. It’s just in the current political arena it’s not clear to me that politicians are interested in much more than serving corporate and billionaire interests, so I don’t have much hope for our ability to continue to make positive policy changes. Therefore the main avenue that people have to take control of their futures seems to me to be organized labor. This is a tool which has shown itself effective in the past for achieving all sorts of improvements in the mass of people’s lives. Besides that I advocate for taking a sober look at our current situation. Painting the picture of society as one of progress by looking at our achievements and denying our societal shortcomings is naive. Examples: the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, warmongering among nuclear powers, high rates of depression and anxiety, concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Science and technology may plausibly play some role in addressing these issues, sure, but progress rarely occurs without struggle. Altman’s version is utopian, unrealistic, and will likely make society worse unless the working class can successfully struggle to reap the benefits of “value-creation” for itself.

nradov 1y ago

Real wages have risen a lot since 1980 when you include employer contributions to employee health insurance.

xboxnolifes 1y ago
No, that's not a real wage increase, thats nominal wage. If i make 20k more, but health insurance costs also went up 20k, my real wage did not change. I am no richer.
- nradov 1y ago
  No, that's a real wage increase. The healthcare system can effectively treat a lot more conditions than it could in 1980. That makes you richer as measured in terms of QALYs.
  - xigency 1y ago
    That's a nice thought but I've only had one physical in the last 15 years. I'm sure others are sitting in the same boat.
    - nradov 1y ago
      These are obviously aggregate statistics and individual experiences may vary. It shouldn't be necessary to point that out.
ImHereToVote 1y ago
Does it correct for housing costs?
boole1854 1y ago
Even without including employer health insurance costs, real wages are up 67% since 1980. Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxBn https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxBn Details: uses the "Wage and salary accruals per full-time-equivalent employee" time series, which is the broadest wage measure for FTE employees, and adjusts for inflation using the PCE price index, which is the most economically meaningful measure of "how much did prices change for consumers" (and is the inflation index that the Fed targets)
- fusionadvocate 1y ago
  How has inflation behaved since 1980?
  - boole1854 1y ago
    It rose 2.75% per year (239% over 45 years). Source with details: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxIa https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxIa
    - fusionadvocate 1y ago
      Can you walk me through how to reach this '239%' number? Thank you.
      - boole1854 1y ago
        You can hover over places on the chart to get exact values. In January 1980, the index was at 37.124. In April 2025, it was at 125.880. Then calculate cumulative inflation as the proportional change in the price level, like this: (P_final - P_initial) / P_initial = (125.880 - 37.124) / 37.124 = 2.39 This shows that the overall price level (the cumulative inflation embodied in the PCEPI) has increased by about 2.39 times over the period, which is 239%.
        sph 1y ago
        The thing that bugs me to no end when talking about inflation in an historical context, is that everyone forgets to consider how the indexes of consumption it's calculated from (PCEPI, CPI, etc.) are NOT static, and very arbitrarily are changed over time, often to make inflation seem lower than it actually is for the consumer. Overall, historical comparisons of inflation numbers are so imprecise to be practically worthless the longer the timescale. You can expect the real figure to be much greater in reality for consumers, given the political incentive to lie over inflation data.
Rooster61 1y ago
It's difficult for me to call those wages "real" when medical costs have been so absurdly gouged to eat up those contributions. Those increases have had no real impact on the average consumer, and is profoundly awful for those without access to employment that provides that insurance
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  All costs. New roof on the house? $30k. Hail damage on the car? It’s actually totaled. Whatever is in the store? Inflation certainly hit there too.
- nradov 1y ago
  That's not entirely accurate. Wages are real enough whether paid out as cash, or paid to a third party for the employee's benefit. Some medical costs are unreasonably inflated, but on the other hand much of the cost increase reflects greater capabilities. We can effectively treat many conditions today that would have been a death sentence in 1980, but some of those cutting edge treatments cost >$1M per patient. That doesn't directly benefit the average healthy consumer, but it can help a lot if you get sick. I do agree that it makes no logical sense to couple medical insurance to employment. This system was created sort of accidentally as a side effect of wartime tax law and has persisted mainly due to inertia.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    It’s somewhat misleading to claim that better care today is the reason for higher costs. Most other developed countries have some form of universal coverage and pay significantly less per person. That includes countries like England, Germany and Switzerland which also have advanced healthcare capabilities. Other countries negotiate drug prices, provide budgets for hospitals rather than charging per procedure, regulate medical prices, and have reduced administrative costs (compared to the US which must deal with the complexities of multi-payer). That’s to say nothing of the fact that millions are uninsured in the US and have limited access to necessary medical treatment, never mind “cutting edge” treatments.
  - nandhinianand 1y ago
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Not when you account for the insane rise in cost of health care.

tim333 1y ago

>Real wages haven’t risen since 1980 is a very US thing. In China they've probably 10xd over that time.

hollerith 1y ago
Even after that 10x growth, median Chinese household income is only 13-16% of US median household income: China: ~$10,000 – $12,000 US: ~$74,580 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022)
- ethbr1 1y ago
  Purchasing power parity matters a lot too.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    The context here is growth and I doubt China's GDPPPP/person has grown anywhere near as much as its GDP/person because the median Chinese household of 40 years ago could still afford the essentials (food, housing, clothing) that the PPP adjustment indexes off of. (It just couldn't afford any imports.) Actually I doubt that economists even tried to calculate PPP of China 40 years ago because (even back then) the basket of goods used in the PPP calculation probably included gasoline and cars and such, which only the economic top 1% of China could afford 40 years ago, but if you forced the calculation somehow, you'd probably arrive at a GDPPPP/person not much lower than the current GDPPPP/person (i.e., China has grown spectacularly in GDP/person, but not in GDPPPP/person)
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      The difference now is that China makes a ton of consumer goods itself, so whereas 40 years ago Chinese PPP would have required forex, now it can be done internally. That shift opens the possibility of GDPPPP changes in excess (or under) strict GDP per capita growth.
- Y_Y 1y ago
  I think GDPPPP/capita is a better measure here, but the story is similar. From the IMF's 2025 numbers: USA $90k, China $29k, world average $26k. Lovely tabulation of the data here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

Herring 1y ago

Lots of people don't care about "progress" in an absolute sense, eg longer healthier lifespans for all. They only care about it in a relative sense, eg if cop violence against minorities goes down, they feel anxiety and resentment. They really really want to be the biggest fish in the little pond. That's how a caste system works, it "makes a captive of everyone within it". Equality feels like a demotion [1]. That's why we have a whole thing about immigration going on. It's the one issue that the president is not underwater on right now [2]. You can't get much of a labor movement like this. [1] https://www.texasobserver.org/white-people-rural-arkansas-recession-forgotten-girls/ https://www.texasobserver.org/white-people-rural-arkansas-re... [2] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...

sjducb 1y ago

The problem is that housing and health insurance are too expensive. Tech isn’t responsible for either of those problems.

kjkjadksj 1y ago
In a way it is. Why are housing costs so high in Redmond, WA? The result of an influx of high income tech workers to the local housing market and the resulting shift of prices such as to eventually dilute the utility of that high salary to begin with. People in the area without a hook on that whale are of course left high and dry.
- skeaker 1y ago
  Citation needed, my understanding was that housing prices are being driven up by real estate owners/agencies buying tons of property to either rent at extortionary prices or sit on until they sell for a higher price to the next sucker. Also stuff like the RealPage scandal where they simply illegally collude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330007 I think the idea of a law that only allows a limited number of owned properties per person and requires them to actually be using those properties would be interesting to alleviate this.
  - 0xffff2 1y ago
    Housing prices are being driven up by the fact that we don't build enough housing. That should be the end of the discussion. What you describe is just a symptom of not having enough housing. If we just built more housing then there wouldn't be any business angle for the corporations buying up housing.
    - skeaker 1y ago
      The obscenely rich entities that buy up tons of property without actually using it do so because they only stand to gain even more money on it later. Making more housing would help in the long term for sure, but these entities would still buy up most of it as it becomes available. Remember that as long as they hold the vast majority, they essentially have a captive audience and can set whatever outlandish prices they want (especially when they collude as they have done). Something to restrict the number of unused properties a person can own would still be beneficial either way. This also goes without mentioning the restrictions on "just" building new housing (land, time, and space, particularly space located near job sites).

azan_ 1y ago

> Real wages haven’t risen since 1980. Do people really believe that? I think either people have too rosy view of 80s or consider that real wages should also adjust for lifestyle inflation.

naryJane 1y ago
Yes. It’s even a part of Ray Dalio’s speeches on the topic. Here is one example where he mentions it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-reformed-parts-1-2-ray-dalio/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...

yencabulator 1y ago

> The utopia Altman describes won’t appear. Sure it will, as far as Altman is concerned. To make the whole post make sense, add "... for the rich" where appropriate.

atleastoptimal 1y ago

Sure, people’s well being as a whole haven’t gotten better since the 1980s, except for >Air quality (no more leaded gasoline) >Life expectancy >Cancer survival rates >Access to information >Infant mortality >Violent crime rates across the western world >Access to education >Clean water and food for 4+ billion people >HIV treatment >etc The negativity on this site is insane. They will deny the greatest scientific achievements if it lets them dunk on AI or whoever is the enemy of the week.

dustincoates 1y ago
Not to mention global poverty: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-poverty-declined-substantially-over-the-last-generation#key-insights https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-po...
grafmax 1y ago
My position is more nuanced that you present it to be. I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievements. Looking through your list it’s social policies which either drive or are necessary components of most of the improvements you mention. Even the medical advances you mention are dependent on a society’s ability to offer healthcare to its members - a notable deficiency of the US system. I emphasized the importance of the labor movement in my comment; but I don’t want to deny the importance of governmental policy changes. It’s just in the current political arena it’s not clear to me that politicians are interested in much more than serving corporate and billionaire interests, so I don’t have much hope for our ability to continue to make positive policy changes. Therefore the main avenue that people have to take control of their futures seems to me to be organized labor. This is a tool which has shown itself effective in the past for achieving all sorts of improvements in the mass of people’s lives. Besides that I advocate for taking a sober look at our current situation. Painting the picture of society as one of progress by looking at our achievements and denying our societal shortcomings is naive. Examples: the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, warmongering among nuclear powers, high rates of depression and anxiety, concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Science and technology may plausibly play some role in addressing these issues, sure, but progress rarely occurs without struggle. Altman’s version is utopian, unrealistic, and will likely make society worse unless the working class can successfully struggle to reap the benefits of “value-creation” for itself.