That optimization that makes everything fragile is why people can afford the quality of life that they do. You can't have a serious discussion about buying local at a macroeconomic level without an accompanying serious discussion about cost.
Outside of the bubble that is HN tech workers - wages have stagnated. The wealth being generated is severely concentrated at the very top. I think your average person walking down the street would gladly exchange their $2 gallon of milk for a $4 gallon of milk if they had a $40k/year salary vs. their current $7/hr.
Cost rising isn't the fault here. It's costs rising faster than wages (especially minimum wage).
That relationship was broken, but not the assumption that if you are poor, you are lazy.
What this is really doing is providing welfare to all the companies paying below-poverty wages - the taxpayers pay for benefits to allow the workers in those positions to live, while simultaneously increasing corporate profits.
The portion of GDP going to wages has almost never been lower than it is now [1]
It is about corporate regulatory capture redesigning the economy for corporate wealth extraction and not for the benefit of the citizens.
I swear I've heard this before.
I really hate when people do this. Those are totally different scales, and it's not obvious how they compare.
According to this converter [0] (and ignoring specific differences between wage and salary like overtime), using the defaults of 40-hour work week and 50-week year (to account for holidays):
* $40k/year is about $20/hour
* $7/hour is about $14k/year
we should not put all the eggs in the same basket even if our quality of life changes.
Regarding quality of life, this economy based on material wealth can only give a sense of well being up to a point.