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Robotics, technology, etc. sure haven't led to more jobs in America the last 50 years. I'd be hard pressed to name a large country (a nation with a sizable pool

Robotics, technology, etc. sure haven't led to more jobs in America the last 50 years. I'd be hard pressed to name a large country (a nation with a sizable pool of labor) in which it has. The American standard of living has fallen by half during that time. I'm sorry, are you seriously arguing that the American median standard of living was better in 1963? I could spend 20 minutes or so going statistic by statistic, but more or less everything has improved dramatically since then, most especially for the lower 20% or so of the income scale.

adventured 13y ago
The American standard of living was drastically better in the mid 1960s in fact. It took one worker in the household to pay the bills; now, two people work and can't make ends meet. Mortgages were 15 years, not 30. The savings rate was extremely higher; now the savings rate is negative. America had little debt, and consumers had little debt. College education could be paid for with a part time job; now we're sitting on $1.2 or so trillion in debt on that end alone. The minimum wage was equivalent to over $40,000 in 1967. Now a decent job pays that. Using nearly any measurement, even the bogus CPI from the Feds, you find that wages peaked in about the late 1960s to 1970. And meanwhile, we've had to accumulate vast amounts of debt just to maintain these levels, so in real terms the standard of living has plunged. In the 1960s, America had roughly half of all global manufacturing to itself. A lot of that was due to our manufacturing base surviving WW2 fully intact. However, we saw the benefit of that, and it showed up in the form of jobs and wages. Now, welfare program dependency is at all time highs. Poverty rates are at multi-decade highs. The split between the rich and the poor is up dramatically, as workers drown, good jobs disappear and the rich shift capital to avoid the devaluation of the dollar. The % of the population dependent on food stamps is off the charts. The labor force participation rate is at multi-decade lows. The Federal Government is running a 3/4 trillion dollar deficit, propping up millions of jobs. Interest on all of our debt is as low as it can possibly go, and won't stay this cheap, that includes student loans, consumer debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt. Add it all up, and there has been an extraordinary real erosion of the standard of living over four decades.
- paul_f 13y ago
  This is so wrong it is ridiculous. Take this example. In 1959 it took one month of an average income to buy a Sears washer dryer. In 2012, it took less than 4 days average income to buy a far, far better washer dryer. http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/appliance-shopping-1959-vs-2012/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/appliance-shopping-1959-vs-...
  - gaius 13y ago
    Sure, now look at buying a house and you will come to the exact opposite conclusion.
    - demallien 13y ago
      Yes! This is the point that always seems to be missed when we talk about abundance economics. There are some goods that aren't abundant - housing is one of them. If we can't find a solution to long commutes to work / restaurants / theatre / the beach etc then housing Ina good area will remain a scarce good. It will take a bigger and bigger slice of our income, because we are competing with other people, and the abundance of other products, freeing up that money to be spent on housing. If you want to live in the middle of nowhere, you can buy a house very cheaply - they don't cost very much to build these days (thanks abundance!) but if you want to live on the river front, or in the cafe district, well, be prepared to sink a large percentage of your income into your house. Of course we may end up finding a solution to the constrained housing supply - maybe populations will decrease, or robotic cars will make commutes shorter / less painful, or maybe we will develop virtual living, with people hanging out / working in virtual reality, not real reality. Housing isn't the only scarce good. Being able to go to a live performance of your favourite band, and indeed the host of things that you can't do today at any price are other examples. But housing is far and away the scarce good that has the largest impact on most of us, and that is only going to continue to grow in importance in the near term.
    - yummyfajitas 13y ago
      A quick google search suggests home ownership has increased, and people are buying much larger houses than before. So no, looking at buying a house gives the same conclusion. http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2007032701?OpenDocument http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2007032701?Ope...
enko 13y ago
From the excellent UR essay [1]: Okay, let's apply a gross reality check. You're an alien. You're observing Earth with an infinitely powerful telescope from Alpha Centauri. You have a simple question. Since 1950, has human civilization - or American civilization, which amounts to pretty much the same these days - advanced or declined? Apparently the easiest way for Sam Altman to answer the question is to trade it for a different one. He is not alone in this. He asks: since 1950, has human technology advanced or declined? Clearly, the alien, you, I, and Sam Altman all have the same answer to this question. Any question with an obvious answer is a stupid question. "Is an iPad more advanced than a Smith-Corona?" is a stupid question. Who asks stupid questions? Obviously, blithering idiots. But we can compose an interesting question by factoring out the stupid question. Which world would Sam Altman rather live in? 2013, with iPads and teh Internet? Or 1950 - with iPads and teh Internet? In a sense, this 1950 is just as real as the "real" 1950. Neither exists. Sam Altman cannot pack his bags and move to either the real 1950 or my imaginary super-1950. Both exist only as thought experiments. It is not hard to construct or define the super-1950, though - one run of a time machine, with a printout of Wikipedia, would be pretty much all the real 1950 needed. Send the technology back to 1945, and you'll have iPads by '55 at the latest. Those guys got things done. The interesting (and scary) question this thought-experiment asks is whether, aside from technical progress, human civilization has advanced or declined since 1950. In actual reality, this too is a stupid question. The answer is no less obvious - I assert. [1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/sam-...
- twoodfin 13y ago
  This is just a more clever way to project the same nostalgia as adventured's comments. What evidence do we have that 1950's America was a font of innovation and civilization that 2013 cannot match? "Civilization" is an odd term for a place with millions living under legalized segregation, and an entire half of the population largely consigned to domestic labor. Not to mention, much of the prosperity of the '50's was a "fringe benefit" of most of the rest of the industrialized world blowing itself up for the second time in 30 years. And of course there's survivorship bias: No one remembers all the terrible inventions of the '50's. (Had they come up with Smell-O-Vision yet?) All we remember is the transistor radio and the hydrogen bomb. Look back on the 2010's in 60 years and you'll see all sorts of amazing stuff that made its mark on the future, I'm sure.
wisty 13y ago
Real US median household income hasn't budged much since the mid 60s ($35-40k, inflation adjusted), and I think that's on the back of more hours worked, lower job security, etc. Health is better, and people are better educated, but it's just not paying off for the average household. Most countries don't have this problem though.
anoncowherd 13y ago
> I'm sorry, are you seriously arguing that the American median standard of living was better in 1963? Perhaps he was referring to the difference in purchasing power, which was most definitely greater back then. There were no iPads, but lots more people were getting by comfortably.

adventured 13y ago

The American standard of living was drastically better in the mid 1960s in fact. It took one worker in the household to pay the bills; now, two people work and can't make ends meet. Mortgages were 15 years, not 30. The savings rate was extremely higher; now the savings rate is negative. America had little debt, and consumers had little debt. College education could be paid for with a part time job; now we're sitting on $1.2 or so trillion in debt on that end alone. The minimum wage was equivalent to over $40,000 in 1967. Now a decent job pays that. Using nearly any measurement, even the bogus CPI from the Feds, you find that wages peaked in about the late 1960s to 1970. And meanwhile, we've had to accumulate vast amounts of debt just to maintain these levels, so in real terms the standard of living has plunged. In the 1960s, America had roughly half of all global manufacturing to itself. A lot of that was due to our manufacturing base surviving WW2 fully intact. However, we saw the benefit of that, and it showed up in the form of jobs and wages. Now, welfare program dependency is at all time highs. Poverty rates are at multi-decade highs. The split between the rich and the poor is up dramatically, as workers drown, good jobs disappear and the rich shift capital to avoid the devaluation of the dollar. The % of the population dependent on food stamps is off the charts. The labor force participation rate is at multi-decade lows. The Federal Government is running a 3/4 trillion dollar deficit, propping up millions of jobs. Interest on all of our debt is as low as it can possibly go, and won't stay this cheap, that includes student loans, consumer debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt. Add it all up, and there has been an extraordinary real erosion of the standard of living over four decades.

paul_f 13y ago
This is so wrong it is ridiculous. Take this example. In 1959 it took one month of an average income to buy a Sears washer dryer. In 2012, it took less than 4 days average income to buy a far, far better washer dryer. http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/appliance-shopping-1959-vs-2012/ http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/12/appliance-shopping-1959-vs-...
- gaius 13y ago
  Sure, now look at buying a house and you will come to the exact opposite conclusion.
  - demallien 13y ago
    Yes! This is the point that always seems to be missed when we talk about abundance economics. There are some goods that aren't abundant - housing is one of them. If we can't find a solution to long commutes to work / restaurants / theatre / the beach etc then housing Ina good area will remain a scarce good. It will take a bigger and bigger slice of our income, because we are competing with other people, and the abundance of other products, freeing up that money to be spent on housing. If you want to live in the middle of nowhere, you can buy a house very cheaply - they don't cost very much to build these days (thanks abundance!) but if you want to live on the river front, or in the cafe district, well, be prepared to sink a large percentage of your income into your house. Of course we may end up finding a solution to the constrained housing supply - maybe populations will decrease, or robotic cars will make commutes shorter / less painful, or maybe we will develop virtual living, with people hanging out / working in virtual reality, not real reality. Housing isn't the only scarce good. Being able to go to a live performance of your favourite band, and indeed the host of things that you can't do today at any price are other examples. But housing is far and away the scarce good that has the largest impact on most of us, and that is only going to continue to grow in importance in the near term.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    A quick google search suggests home ownership has increased, and people are buying much larger houses than before. So no, looking at buying a house gives the same conclusion. http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2007032701?OpenDocument http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2007032701?Ope...

enko 13y ago

From the excellent UR essay [1]: Okay, let's apply a gross reality check. You're an alien. You're observing Earth with an infinitely powerful telescope from Alpha Centauri. You have a simple question. Since 1950, has human civilization - or American civilization, which amounts to pretty much the same these days - advanced or declined? Apparently the easiest way for Sam Altman to answer the question is to trade it for a different one. He is not alone in this. He asks: since 1950, has human technology advanced or declined? Clearly, the alien, you, I, and Sam Altman all have the same answer to this question. Any question with an obvious answer is a stupid question. "Is an iPad more advanced than a Smith-Corona?" is a stupid question. Who asks stupid questions? Obviously, blithering idiots. But we can compose an interesting question by factoring out the stupid question. Which world would Sam Altman rather live in? 2013, with iPads and teh Internet? Or 1950 - with iPads and teh Internet? In a sense, this 1950 is just as real as the "real" 1950. Neither exists. Sam Altman cannot pack his bags and move to either the real 1950 or my imaginary super-1950. Both exist only as thought experiments. It is not hard to construct or define the super-1950, though - one run of a time machine, with a printout of Wikipedia, would be pretty much all the real 1950 needed. Send the technology back to 1945, and you'll have iPads by '55 at the latest. Those guys got things done. The interesting (and scary) question this thought-experiment asks is whether, aside from technical progress, human civilization has advanced or declined since 1950. In actual reality, this too is a stupid question. The answer is no less obvious - I assert. [1] http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/sam-...

twoodfin 13y ago
This is just a more clever way to project the same nostalgia as adventured's comments. What evidence do we have that 1950's America was a font of innovation and civilization that 2013 cannot match? "Civilization" is an odd term for a place with millions living under legalized segregation, and an entire half of the population largely consigned to domestic labor. Not to mention, much of the prosperity of the '50's was a "fringe benefit" of most of the rest of the industrialized world blowing itself up for the second time in 30 years. And of course there's survivorship bias: No one remembers all the terrible inventions of the '50's. (Had they come up with Smell-O-Vision yet?) All we remember is the transistor radio and the hydrogen bomb. Look back on the 2010's in 60 years and you'll see all sorts of amazing stuff that made its mark on the future, I'm sure.

wisty 13y ago

Real US median household income hasn't budged much since the mid 60s ($35-40k, inflation adjusted), and I think that's on the back of more hours worked, lower job security, etc. Health is better, and people are better educated, but it's just not paying off for the average household. Most countries don't have this problem though.

anoncowherd 13y ago

> I'm sorry, are you seriously arguing that the American median standard of living was better in 1963? Perhaps he was referring to the difference in purchasing power, which was most definitely greater back then. There were no iPads, but lots more people were getting by comfortably.