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>Health-care is not cheaper. That's not a fair comparison. Modern healthcare is not cheaper, but healthcare equivalent to what was available a generation or 2
by learc83 14y ago
>Health-care is not cheaper.
That's not a fair comparison. Modern healthcare is not cheaper, but healthcare equivalent to what was available a generation or 2 ago is.
>Food is only slightly cheaper.
Food has pretty steadily been declining as a fraction of disposable income. It would be declining even more dramatically if it weren't being offset by an increase in eating outside the home.
- potatolicious 14y agoWell, yes, but that itself is an example of how the theory fails - it assumes that the bar for "subsistence" never moves. By all measures we are much better off than the average peasant in the Middle Ages, and their lifestyle is now incomprehensibly cheap. But that's not where the bar is at. Ditto energy - the amount of energy a poor person can consume is astronomical compared to that of a poor person even 100 years ago - but that bar hasn't stayed still either. You don't take a horse-drawn buggy to work, and most people have an expectation of keeping warm in the winters without huddling around the stove. I will agree on the food part - we have shown consistently that food cost, as a proportion of income, is at some of the lowest it's ever been, and a massive improvement over a century ago. This has been a clear win - but if you think about it, this is hardly a surprise. The bar for "eats well, not hungry" doesn't move very much over the decades.
- justincormack 14y agoMost of the housing and transport costs are due to the extreme inefficiency of working arrangements which telecommuting is disrupting.
- Joeri 14y agoTelecommuting requires management processes that facilitate it. Until they automate management telecommuting is not going to dominate, because the average manager doesn't perform well enough to manage remote workers effectively.
- justincormack 14y agoI don't think management is going to be automated per se, it is just going to continue to be a declining amount of employment, which it has been for a while, as communication gets more efficient. But also arguably the large firm is inefficient, as it is run on more dictatorial rather than market lines. Also outputs like code are creating a whole way of measuring output thats more useful than most office environments. Telecommuting in the form of outsourcing to low wage countries is efficient enough to work for many cases too. So these things might happen sooner than anyone expects.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoWell, yes, but that itself is an example of how the theory fails - it assumes that the bar for "subsistence" never moves. If we redefine "middle class" upwards to mean flying cars, robot servants and solid gold toilets, then we are all poor. That doesn't mean life hasn't become dramatically better over time, it just means reality has failed to keep up with our moving goalposts.