Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers | Hacker News Reader

Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers

washingtonpost.com

17 pointstimr11 comments

Just wanted to point out that although my "net worth" has not increased, I now have a phone that can pinpoint me on a satellite aerial map, and direct me to the nearest favorite coffee shop, I'm in better contact with friends and family than ever before-for less, and my desktop computer can do in a day what my 1999 computer took a nearly a month to accomplish, using less power. My TV has a resolution greater than my best 1999 monitor (oh and its the size of an aircraft carrier), even for broadcast junk, dvd's come to me in the mail, and even if they don't my internet is fast enough to stream them. I could go on all day.

Sure I don't have more money, but I sure as hell feel richer. Lost decade indeed.

What's sad is, even if we continued our "boom" year trajectory , there'd only be a decade of modest job growth: better than 0%, but still less than the 70's, 80's, and 90's.

We need to start rethinking our assumptions about creating jobs: it's not as simple as tax cuts and/or spending programs.

That's an unfair comparison. It was at historically low levels of job growth because the US was experiencing below average unemployment rates to begin with (ie it's tough to grow additional jobs when people are employed - you will always have a certain percentage of unemployed just because of friction). You can chart/see historicals here: http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?series_i...

If unemployment fell much further there would be significant concern over inflation (because the only way to fill jobs would be to keep increasing pay for the same amount of work).

There may have been 0 net job creation; but the way we communicate with one another - and work - was drastically disrupted for the better. In the 10's we will reconsider and rebuild it all.

Dumb question time. What are the aughts?

   Aught 3 = '03
   Twenty Aught 6 = 2006

the 00s for people who aren't comfortable saying "two thousand [1-9]"

Try a lost three decades. Real median household income hasn't increased since the 70s.

http://mwhodges.home.att.net/family_a.htm

...but households have been shrinking in the same period, so the household income numbers aren't directly comparable over time.

The increase in two income families much more than offsets that. Where one income used to be sufficient two are now necessary.

Well, you started with a quantitative observation about income figures, but now have shifted to a qualitative (and more subjective) suggestion, that today's two-income families are worse off than the one-income families of the past.

Maybe they are, but it depends a lot on interpretation of whether the 2nd income is a matter of choice or desperation. And, one side effect of women working more is men working less.

For example, in this meta-survey of time allocation across many countries, average 'market hours worked' by women in the USA rose over 4 hours from 1975 to 2003 -- but the same figure for men dropped by over 8 hours. See Table II:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1233842

I know that no one household is exactly one average man and one average woman -- but if we imagine that as one possible data point, that household is working less overall, but with more of the working hours carried by the woman, and still earning more in real terms.

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