Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

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"The rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s (under Reagan in the US; Thatcher in the UK; Mulroney in Canada; etc) and the disinvestment that followed made the stagnation in living standards--and increasing socioeconomic insecurity--for the median person inevitable."

If you meant to say the total opposite of that, then maybe!

Inequality may be up, but material standards of living for everyone but the poorest are way, way up, and it's a little ridiculous because it's obvious and palpable for anyone who was alive at the time.

By almost conceivable material measure: the amount of travel, safety, life choices, entertainment, access to healthcare (we used to go in when we were sick, now we go in due to age related issues) - 'Heart Surgery' used to be a very scary thing, now it's literally 'outpatient' basis (my aunt got a 'heart stunt' home same day - this is like Science Fiction). Cars are faster, better safer, we have access to all the world's information (to know what 'Russia' was in the 1980's you had to go down to a library and check out a book to read about it).

Tthe notion you can go in this magical thing called a 'mobile phone' and have any number of super cheap gadgets delivered to you from literally all the way around the world - China - for just a few dollars, was unthinkable.

Walmart is the most benevolent thing imaginable for poor people: they can buy every material need under the sun for very little, something impossible before.

I have family members with 'regular government jobs' - not part of the elite, they live in a giant new home, new cars, every toy under the sun for their kids.

When I was young got fruit and candy in my stocking at Christmas, everyone I knew wore 'hand-me-downs', nobody took foreign vacations (we drive to Florida and stayed in motels), people did not have fancy sporting gear, 'long distance' calls on the telephone were very expensive.

Material prosperity has exploded, and it really strains credibility for people trying to argue otherwise.

Ownership and capital has not been spread evenly - the financial surpluses of globalisation has gone into the pockets of the 1%, but the productive surpluses have mostly gone into the pockets of the 85%. The 'losers' of the economy of those who lost their jobs due to globalisation and can't afford to participate in the game.

The other way of looking at things is that, prior to neoliberalism, one full-time middle class income could pay for a house and support a family of four.

After neoliberalism, getting a house and two kids takes two working adults, and often jobs that involve much more than 40 hours a week. The situation for millennials and younger is even worse, as most of them have been frozen out of the housing market in regions where there are good jobs.

We all have cell phones now, but are we really better off if we (collectively) have so little time outside of work that we (collectively) don't get to see our kids grow up anymore, or if we can't afford houses anymore?

The other, other, thing to look at is that household wages have stagnated since the 1980s in comparison to GDP (see eg: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=bOfK) while unavoidable costs (e.g. housing, education, healthcare, communications) have exploded. There are lots more fancy toys available now than in the 1980s, but the median person has a smaller percentage of discretionary income to spend on them. I'm not convinced that taking away choice is a net positive.

Housing prices have more to do with zoning rather than a lack of income. Housing prices have skyrocketed in real terms just because there's more people and not more houses.

"We all have cell phones now, but are we really better off"

???

Are you saying that people don't want cellphones, but chose spend a fortune on them anyhow?

Many people are literally choosing materiality over 'seeing their children' more often, there is no doubt about this. If you don't want to live in NY, SF, LA there are suburbs all over America which are very affordable, if you give up all the extras you can definitely spend more time with your kids.

1) If there are 2x more workers, because women have entered the workforce, all other things being equal obviously homes will be 2x as much.

There is a fixed supply of land (homes increase with the size of the population)

It's not the 'home' is the 'real estate' i.e. cost of accessing that property.

2) Interest rates are insanely low. Go ahead and overlay the graphs that you referenced with historical interest rates.

Most Americans are 'home owners' and they are actually massively financialized - they have more leverage than ever over renters due to very low interest rates.

3) Actual homes have increased a lot in material value over 50 years. Have you been in a home built in 1950? Ratty windows, often no HVAC, they were much smaller.

Conan O'Brien's father was a Doctor, mother a Yale Lawyer and he often talks about how small and cramped his home was.

If you want to 'raise 4 kids on one income' - you can absolutely do that, but you'll have to live at a lower standard of living and give up a lot of things which those 'advanced jobs' have made available.

4) In 1960 about 7% of people went to college, now it's about 28%. Literally a 400% increase (!), and even more going to some kind of post-high school training. This is good.

There is a limited supply of 'choice jobs' and yes, entry to 'top schools' is going up radically, but the average is misleading, many state schools are not expensive. You can absolutely get a solid education at a decent rate, and the opportunity is considerably greater than 50 years ago.

What has changed is that Uni is not 'access to the elite' as it once was. But the education is just as good.

5) Healthcare - our services are considerably better than they were before across the board.

We used to retire at 65 and die at 68, now we retire at 65 and die at 85 - and we slowly die and retire tons of healtchare.

In 1960 people 'just died' and we didn't do that much about it (ask your parents) because there wasn't much we could do. Now we can and it's expensive.

Most healthcare spending used to be on intervention, illness etc. now it's almost all related to getting old. So yes, healthcare is getting expensive because we are older and breaking down all the time.

And yes, even accounting for that, we do spend more on Healthcare (from 7% to 11% of GDP over that time in Canada for example) and that's no unreasonable.

We spend a lot less $ for the same amount of material goods as we did in 1970, for example, the amount on basic groceries is about 1/2 and we eat out in restaurants a lot more.

The demand for groceries like most things is finite, but the demand for healthcare is infinite - there are always new, better procedures that we all want that are 'in development' and only when 'billions more' are spent will they come to fruition.

Imagine if there were massive productivity gains in home appliances, food, anything physical - and prices dropped i.e. full on deflation in those sectors? What would we end up spending that share of our income on? Healthcare and Housing in particular.

That's exactly what's happening: the surpluses are immense, our cup runneth over with goods, services, choice, opportunity.

There are some people 'left out' of the system (the bottom 20%) which is not good - and - the 1% are gaining increasingly more financial power, not so good, but otherwise we live in a time of incredibly high standards of living, easily the highest in history.

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