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Really depends on what indices and metrics you're looking at when you describe "standard of living." Apples-to-apples comparisons between living standards in, s
by jonnathanson 12y ago
Really depends on what indices and metrics you're looking at when you describe "standard of living." Apples-to-apples comparisons between living standards in, say, the 1950s and the 2010s do not involve things like the distribution of internet access, TV sets, or microwave ovens -- consumer goods whose general cost has come down dramatically over time, and whose distribution reflects more of a supply-side story than a rising-economic-tide story. Rather, apples-to-apples comparisons involve things like life expectancies, education levels, access to clean water and adequate sustenance, health care, and a roof over one's head. They also include economic opportunity, and the ability to advance one's socioeconomic position.
By many of these standards, on average, poor people are generally better off today than they used to be. By other standards, they're worse off. Upward mobility, for instance, is more stagnant today than it has been in many decades. Health care costs and access have been getting worse, not better -- and recent reforms are unlikely to have changed much, despite what Democrats or Republicans would tell us. (Fucked health care costs are offset, to some degree, by advances in medicine and science, of course.) Access to food is generally a lot better, but the quality of the calories has grown worse, leading to health problems -- for which our health care system is inadequate. Housing is...well, kind of a fucked situation, but has been for quite some time; our interest rates and tax system create a lot of perverse incentives in the housing market. That market is now pretty warped and dysfunctional, with no return to sanity in sight.
On the balance, I think you could say that a poor person today is better off than a poor person would have been in the 1920s. But is a poor person today better off than he would have been in the most recent era of prolonged stagnation, the 1970s? Very debatable.
- MarkMc 12y agoI don't understand why you reject 'supply-side story' things like TV sets, microwave ovens and internet access. I'd certainly feel worse off if you took away my TV - or replaced it with a 1970's black-and-white version. Isn't it obvious that the cost and quality of TVs affects people's "standard of living"?
- sharemywin 12y agoSo you'd trade your TV for adequate healthcare? It's not that those things don't have value it's just compared to the real issues for someone in poverty they don't add up to all that much.
- MarkMc 12y agoNot healthcare, but I would rather live in a house half its current size than give up TV and internet. People living in abject poverty also enormously value their TVs. Here is an example of a man who goes hungry in order to watch TV, from the book Poor Economics [1]: We asked Oucha Mbarbk, a man we met in a remote village in Morocco, what he would do if he had more money. He said he would buy more food. Then we asked him what he would do if he had even more money. He said he would buy better tasting food. We were starting to feel very bad for him and his family, when we noticed a television, a parabolic antenna, and a DVD player in the room where we were sitting. We asked him why he had bought all these things if he felt the family did not have enough to eat. He laughed, and said, “Oh, but television is more important than food!” If you think the cost of rent and house prices affect the standard of living then so should the availability of TVs and internet. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Poverty/dp/1610390938 http://www.amazon.com/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Pove...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- Turing_Machine 12y agoA great deal of what we call "adequate healthcare" didn't even exist in 1970. Cancer was essentially a death sentence back then. So was a heart attack. No MRI. No CAT scan. No minimally-invasive surgery. They were still performing major surgery to "treat" ulcers back then. Now we know they're caused by bacteria and can clear them up with no surgery needed. Really poor people in the United States do get free healthcare. It's called "Medicaid".