5 ms·

Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America. The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devas

by jitix 11mo ago

Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America. The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devastation everywhere else. We can see the economic crisis' in the US first in the 70s/80s with Europe and Japan rebounding, then again in 90s/00s with China and East Asia growing, and now again with the rest of the world growing (esp Latin America, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Philippines, etc). Unless US physically invades and devastates China, India or Brazil the competition will keep getting exponentially higher. It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war.

jimbokun 11mo ago
> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. What does this sentence mean?
- redhed 11mo ago
  I assume the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.
  - jimbokun 11mo ago
    So "social capital" == "education"? The US has pushed a shit ton of money into education. I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there.
    - nradov 11mo ago
      Education is part of it. But a lot of the social capital which makes societies prosperous is separate from what we usually consider to be education. On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes take for granted but they forget that there are a large number of fellow citizens in the economically disconnected underclass who never had a good opportunity to learn those basics. As a society we've never done a good job of lifting those people up.
      - deleted 11mo ago
        [deleted]
      - jrjeksjd8d 11mo ago
        The existence of an upper class necessitates the existence of a lower class. You can't just pull everyone up to be above average.
        nradov 11mo ago
        What's your point? I didn't make any claims about averages. We could do a lot more to improve opportunities and social mobility for people caught in the permanent underclass.
        Ferret7446 11mo ago
        But we have. The underclass today has much better lives in many aspects than the highest class from many decades ago. The absolute level of wealth has increased, it's simply that the delta between the high and the low is widening. Would you rather live equally in poverty or live comfortably with others who are way more wealthy than you? Surprisingly people do seem to prefer the former, though I'd prefer the latter
        user____name 11mo ago
        This is the sort of reductio ad absurdum inverse relationship that never survives a reality check.
        jimbokun 11mo ago
        You do have to go back several decades for that to be true, though. In the US at least, progress in life expectancy and real wages has really stagnated in recent decades.
      - rightbyte 11mo ago
        > On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes take for granted I don't see your point. Those rules does not apply to the upper class and middle class workers have way more leeway regarding that than the lower class.
    - bonsai_spool 11mo ago
      > I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there. This is wrong. The increase in administrator pay began well after the crises cited in OP. You could cite spending on the sciences (and thus Silicon Valley), but the spending by the US did not accrue to administrators; and further, federal money primarily goes to grants and loans, but GP is citing a time over which there were relatively low increases in tuition. Edit: Not at home, but even a cursory serious search will turn up reports like this one that indicate the lack of clarity in the popular uprising against money "[going] to administrators" https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/who-to-believe-on-university-administrative https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/who-to-believe-on-u...
      - malcolmgreaves 11mo ago
        For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12.
        bonsai_spool 11mo ago
        > For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12. First, where is your data? Second, this discussion is clearly about post-secondary education ("the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.")
- jitix 11mo ago
  Cheaper education, free/subsidized healthcare, free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support, etc. Things that let workers focus on innovation. IT workers in cheaper countries have it much easier while we have to juggle rising cost of living and cyclical layoffs here. And ever since companies started hiring workers directly and paying 30-50% (compared to 10-15% during the GCC era) the quality is almost at par with US.
  - palmotea 11mo ago
    >>> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. >> What does this sentence mean? > Cheaper education, free/subsidized healthcare, free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support, etc. Except for free/subsidized healthcare, didn't the US already have those things during the post-war boom? Cheaper education? Public K-12 schools, the GI bill, generous state subsidies of higher education (such that you could pay for college with the money you made working a summer job). Free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support? Wages high enough to raise a family on a single income, allowing for stay-at-home moms to provide childcare.
    - jitix 11mo ago
      > Except for free/subsidized healthcare, didn't the US already have those things during the post-war boom? Yes, but education system is being dismantled piece by piece at all levels. I work in edutech and our goal is to cut costs faster than revenue. Enrolments are down, students are over burdened with student loans, and new grads can't compete in the market. Also, do you think kids going to K-12 in the US can compete with kids who go to international schools in China and India? High end schools in those countries combine the Asian grind mindset with western education standards. > Wages high enough to raise a family on a single income, allowing for stay-at-home moms to provide childcare. This was a special period of post war prosperity that I mentioned. It was unnatural and the world has reset back to the norm where a nuclear family needs societal/governmental support to raise kids, or need to have two 6 figure jobs. "It takes a village to raise a child" is a common western idiom based on centuries of observations. Just because there was 20-30 years of unnatural economic growth doesn't make it the global or historical norm.
palmotea 11mo ago
> Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America.... > In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war. So, what's your point? That the plebs shouldn't expect that much comfort?
- jitix 11mo ago
  A common maxim across all cultures is to "manage expectations" for happiness. And while comparing societal standards expand the time horizon to 100 years, not nitpick one specific unnatural era of history. An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt. The equivalent in today's world would be aerospace engineers, AI researchers, quantum engineers, robotics engineers, etc who arguably have the same standard of living as the automotive engineer in 1960s Detroit. Economic and technological standards evolve - societies should invest in human capital to evolve with them or risk stagnation.
  - palmotea 11mo ago
    > An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt. > The equivalent in today's world would be aerospace engineers, AI researchers, quantum engineers, robotics engineers, etc who arguably have the same standard of living as the automotive engineer in 1960s Detroit. You know were not really talking about top-end positions like automotive engineers in Detroit in 1960. I think we're talking more about automotive factory workers in Detroit in 1960. > Economic and technological standards evolve - societies should invest in human capital to evolve with them or risk stagnation. You need to be more explicit about how you think things should be for the common man.
    - jitix 11mo ago
      I hope you understand the concept of relative prosperity - The current equivalent would be a factory worker at Boeing. In 60s cars were innovative in US, now Nigeria can outcompete China in cars. Times change, standards rise, competition increases. If America wants to remain competitive globally you need to work in the top 1% fields like you did back in 60s, not expecting $25 per hour for flipping burgers (which should have been automated with robots by now).
eli_gottlieb 11mo ago
So you're saying that working-class living standards are a zero-sum competition across capitalist countries, even negative-sum as competing national economies grow their total output and hourly productivity? That sounds like a really shitty system.
pfannkuchen 11mo ago
Were there a lot of imports at that time in terms of materials or labor or food? If not, I don’t really see how money flowing in from abroad actually changes the economy in this area. If the wood is harvested in America and the workers are in America and the wood and workers are available, then any amount of money value generated by everyone else will be sufficient to pay them, unless there is a significant stream of imports that need to be paid for (which I’m not aware of in this time period). What could have made a big difference is if foreign competition arose for American materials and land, which it did. But that is under our control, we collectively can choose whether to allow them to buy it or not, and whether to let people in at a rate that outpaces materials discovery and harvesting capabilities. We also restricted materials harvesting quite a bit during this time period, for example I believe a lot of forestry protections were not in place yet.
leptons 11mo ago
>The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devastation everywhere else. The US just renamed "Department of Defense" to "Department of War" and they seem willing to go to any extreme to "Make America Great Again". Threatening to take over Canada, Greenland, and Panama already in the first few months of the current administration. Using US military on US soil. There's no line they won't cross. WW3 isn't off the table at all, unfortunately.
xnx 11mo ago
> In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war. Don't give them any ideas.
f1shy 11mo ago
> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. Are you aware of the plan Marshall?
- philipallstar 11mo ago
  Or of Silicon Valley, or Hollywood.
philipallstar 11mo ago
Everywhere else being destroyed doesn't raise your standards of living. The main difference is the difference between post-war East Germany and West Germany. One got socialism and the other capitalism.

by jitix 11mo ago

jimbokun 11mo ago

> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. What does this sentence mean?

redhed 11mo ago
I assume the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.
- jimbokun 11mo ago
  So "social capital" == "education"? The US has pushed a shit ton of money into education. I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there.
  - nradov 11mo ago
    Education is part of it. But a lot of the social capital which makes societies prosperous is separate from what we usually consider to be education. On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes take for granted but they forget that there are a large number of fellow citizens in the economically disconnected underclass who never had a good opportunity to learn those basics. As a society we've never done a good job of lifting those people up.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - jrjeksjd8d 11mo ago
      The existence of an upper class necessitates the existence of a lower class. You can't just pull everyone up to be above average.
      - nradov 11mo ago
        What's your point? I didn't make any claims about averages. We could do a lot more to improve opportunities and social mobility for people caught in the permanent underclass.
        Ferret7446 11mo ago
        But we have. The underclass today has much better lives in many aspects than the highest class from many decades ago. The absolute level of wealth has increased, it's simply that the delta between the high and the low is widening. Would you rather live equally in poverty or live comfortably with others who are way more wealthy than you? Surprisingly people do seem to prefer the former, though I'd prefer the latter
        user____name 11mo ago
        This is the sort of reductio ad absurdum inverse relationship that never survives a reality check.
        jimbokun 11mo ago
        You do have to go back several decades for that to be true, though. In the US at least, progress in life expectancy and real wages has really stagnated in recent decades.
    - rightbyte 11mo ago
      > On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes take for granted I don't see your point. Those rules does not apply to the upper class and middle class workers have way more leeway regarding that than the lower class.
  - bonsai_spool 11mo ago
    > I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there. This is wrong. The increase in administrator pay began well after the crises cited in OP. You could cite spending on the sciences (and thus Silicon Valley), but the spending by the US did not accrue to administrators; and further, federal money primarily goes to grants and loans, but GP is citing a time over which there were relatively low increases in tuition. Edit: Not at home, but even a cursory serious search will turn up reports like this one that indicate the lack of clarity in the popular uprising against money "[going] to administrators" https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/who-to-believe-on-university-administrative https://www.investigativeeconomics.org/p/who-to-believe-on-u...
    - malcolmgreaves 11mo ago
      For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12.
      - bonsai_spool 11mo ago
        > For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12. First, where is your data? Second, this discussion is clearly about post-secondary education ("the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.")
jitix 11mo ago
Cheaper education, free/subsidized healthcare, free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support, etc. Things that let workers focus on innovation. IT workers in cheaper countries have it much easier while we have to juggle rising cost of living and cyclical layoffs here. And ever since companies started hiring workers directly and paying 30-50% (compared to 10-15% during the GCC era) the quality is almost at par with US.
- palmotea 11mo ago
  >>> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. >> What does this sentence mean? > Cheaper education, free/subsidized healthcare, free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support, etc. Except for free/subsidized healthcare, didn't the US already have those things during the post-war boom? Cheaper education? Public K-12 schools, the GI bill, generous state subsidies of higher education (such that you could pay for college with the money you made working a summer job). Free/subsidized childcare, cultural norms around family support? Wages high enough to raise a family on a single income, allowing for stay-at-home moms to provide childcare.
  - jitix 11mo ago
    > Except for free/subsidized healthcare, didn't the US already have those things during the post-war boom? Yes, but education system is being dismantled piece by piece at all levels. I work in edutech and our goal is to cut costs faster than revenue. Enrolments are down, students are over burdened with student loans, and new grads can't compete in the market. Also, do you think kids going to K-12 in the US can compete with kids who go to international schools in China and India? High end schools in those countries combine the Asian grind mindset with western education standards. > Wages high enough to raise a family on a single income, allowing for stay-at-home moms to provide childcare. This was a special period of post war prosperity that I mentioned. It was unnatural and the world has reset back to the norm where a nuclear family needs societal/governmental support to raise kids, or need to have two 6 figure jobs. "It takes a village to raise a child" is a common western idiom based on centuries of observations. Just because there was 20-30 years of unnatural economic growth doesn't make it the global or historical norm.

palmotea 11mo ago

> Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America.... > In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war. So, what's your point? That the plebs shouldn't expect that much comfort?

jitix 11mo ago
A common maxim across all cultures is to "manage expectations" for happiness. And while comparing societal standards expand the time horizon to 100 years, not nitpick one specific unnatural era of history. An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt. The equivalent in today's world would be aerospace engineers, AI researchers, quantum engineers, robotics engineers, etc who arguably have the same standard of living as the automotive engineer in 1960s Detroit. Economic and technological standards evolve - societies should invest in human capital to evolve with them or risk stagnation.
- palmotea 11mo ago
  > An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt. > The equivalent in today's world would be aerospace engineers, AI researchers, quantum engineers, robotics engineers, etc who arguably have the same standard of living as the automotive engineer in 1960s Detroit. You know were not really talking about top-end positions like automotive engineers in Detroit in 1960. I think we're talking more about automotive factory workers in Detroit in 1960. > Economic and technological standards evolve - societies should invest in human capital to evolve with them or risk stagnation. You need to be more explicit about how you think things should be for the common man.
  - jitix 11mo ago
    I hope you understand the concept of relative prosperity - The current equivalent would be a factory worker at Boeing. In 60s cars were innovative in US, now Nigeria can outcompete China in cars. Times change, standards rise, competition increases. If America wants to remain competitive globally you need to work in the top 1% fields like you did back in 60s, not expecting $25 per hour for flipping burgers (which should have been automated with robots by now).

eli_gottlieb 11mo ago

So you're saying that working-class living standards are a zero-sum competition across capitalist countries, even negative-sum as competing national economies grow their total output and hourly productivity? That sounds like a really shitty system.

pfannkuchen 11mo ago

Were there a lot of imports at that time in terms of materials or labor or food? If not, I don’t really see how money flowing in from abroad actually changes the economy in this area. If the wood is harvested in America and the workers are in America and the wood and workers are available, then any amount of money value generated by everyone else will be sufficient to pay them, unless there is a significant stream of imports that need to be paid for (which I’m not aware of in this time period). What could have made a big difference is if foreign competition arose for American materials and land, which it did. But that is under our control, we collectively can choose whether to allow them to buy it or not, and whether to let people in at a rate that outpaces materials discovery and harvesting capabilities. We also restricted materials harvesting quite a bit during this time period, for example I believe a lot of forestry protections were not in place yet.

leptons 11mo ago

>The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devastation everywhere else. The US just renamed "Department of Defense" to "Department of War" and they seem willing to go to any extreme to "Make America Great Again". Threatening to take over Canada, Greenland, and Panama already in the first few months of the current administration. Using US military on US soil. There's no line they won't cross. WW3 isn't off the table at all, unfortunately.

xnx 11mo ago

> In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war. Don't give them any ideas.

f1shy 11mo ago

> It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs. Are you aware of the plan Marshall?

philipallstar 11mo ago
Or of Silicon Valley, or Hollywood.

philipallstar 11mo ago

Everywhere else being destroyed doesn't raise your standards of living. The main difference is the difference between post-war East Germany and West Germany. One got socialism and the other capitalism.