"Comparative Advantage", something something about corn and wool, meanwhile the whole supply chain was moved to China, our middle class was decimated and we went into tremendous amounts of debt to pretend everything was fine...
Left, right... whatever. The elites have failed us.
In the ‘80s Dems saw being default pro business was more lucrative and jumped ship.
Now both parties play both hands and workers get shafted.
Oh but the Dems are pro workers! No, they are not. They pretend they are. The only ones who are pro worker also sold out (Bernie) and went globalist —Compare his positions in the 80s vs now.
But it is too easy to blame them and overlook the role of the public. Particularly in politics, where it cannot be overlooked that the voters vote for whoever they want. This didn't creep up on the US - this was a 30-40 year process overseen by the Boomers which anyone could have seen coming had they looked. Many did, it was obvious China was the future. It is well worth being sober, realistic and evidence based about what they did and whether their successes and failures were correctly learned by the next generation.
I think the 30s and under have learned a lot more lessons about the environment and social theory than developed an understanding of why China is becoming the pre-eminent world power, why it is led by Communists and whether the US should have done things differently.
It worked in that millions of Chinese have been uplifted (of course this is vast oversimplification: they helped themselves and many other countries also trade with them), but has definitely failed if we ever thought to make the Chinese government less authoritarian as a side effect.
It was definitely paid for by American workers. I don't know what economists were smoking when they thought the entire blue collar workforce would be retrained into better jobs, but that's the theory they kept forwarding.
I've also heard that this has helped America by keeping inflation low. What they mean when they say "inflation" is almost always "wage inflation". You can see the mindset in the Covid relief debates- God Forbid we give people more money than the slave wages they get from corporations- they might not work! Corporations might have to pay more in wages!
COVID-19 has made it apparent that there are significant advantages to having the operational capabilities to organize human resources at scale. The US, for example, was unable to staff an effective test and trace program even while a significant percentage of its population sat idle or to mobilize healthcare resources to hot spots. Effectively the US traded 300,000 lives because the US couldn't effectively organize 300,000 people quickly.
You vote for them, and you feel good if they win. But then what happens? Nothing.
The rich keeps getting richer. While the poor stays poor. And the middle class becomes poorer.
The elites just wants to make more money. And what do they do? They buy out the politicians, in order to keep themselves rich.
And what’s the biggest lie that they’ve sold you?
That trickle-down-economics works for everyone.
Spending does not equal outcomes.
As a side note, the US has the second highest public spending per capita (second only to Norway, last I checked). Our Government spends more per citizen than all but one "socialist" country. We then of course spend another doubling of that in private expenditures, and, yes, get worse outcomes.
The US is in a very bad spot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
And knowledge jobs are jobs for smart people. Most people are not smart enough to do those jobs and no amount of money spent on education (the US spends more than almost every other western country, at every level) can change that.
Why didn't state funding pick up the tab?
Not sure about housing.
To me a forum like this is like when I'd be sitting around in uni wondering aloud about some problem and someone will say "Well, maybe if you use the fact that the functions which invert the sign of the √2 and √3 parts in Q(√2, √3) are automorphisms, then you can see that the group containing them and their composition is just Z2×Z2".
The truth of that part isn't important. It's the fact that it's a good faith hint. It's my job to go find the truth given this mild heuristic.
They're the ones doing me the favour so I have to contribute in order to get more information. In this case, I can attempt to find an error in the proof or to ask clarification. But if I were to ask them to write out a proof then I'm being a fool and I'll get fewer hints from them in future.
I noticed that most people who really know their field don't cite their assertions. It makes sense. So now I'm not surprised when people don't provide a citation. It's just a hint. They didn't sign up to be my tutor.
I didn't do any particular research here, because it conflicts with the preexisting knowledge I have about the subject, and because my experience tells me that figures like these, which can be, and especially when they actually are used to further political narrative, are often misleading, and/or wrong. However, I didn't want to accuse the commenter of any bias or misconduct, hence I phrased my question to leave out my skepticism.
The truth of that part isn't important. It's the fact that it's a good faith hint.
You actually hit the spot: you can assume good faith when sitting around in uni and asking people to help you calculate Galois groups. You cannot assume good faith when talking to strangers online on politically charged topics: even if they are themselves operating in good faith, it is highly likely that they were fed, as you call them, "hints", by bad faith actors. Hence, I ask for sources.
I noticed that most people who really know their field don't cite their assertions. It makes sense. So now I'm not surprised when people don't provide a citation.
That's because they can rely on their authority and experience to establish trust, and they have reputation to protect in case their assertions are actually completely wrong. None of this is true when talking to random, anonymous people online.
Page 19 of this document produced by the NBER states that indeed, the wealthiest 10% own 84% of all publicly traded stocks, mutual funds, trusts, or various pension account assets:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24085/w240...
It has many other interesting insights that are worth quickly reading through, for example you mention you are unsure about housing, but that report says the top 10% own 41% of all housing in the U.S.
The other interesting figure is debt, where the top 10% owe 28% of all debt.
https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
Adult children living at home, adults living in homes with roommates, people underwater on their mortgage, etc would all count towards a higher home ownership rate.
> Zillow’s Negative Equity 2012 Q3 data; we find 29% (20.6 million) of homeowners own their home outright
https://www.zillow.com/research/free-and-clear-american-mort...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-10-15/the-econo...
I bet a large fraction of the posters on here who complain about being oppressed by economic inequality are themselves part of the top 10% too (and have benefited greatly from the trend towards more inequality).
45% of Americans do not own a shred of stock at all, including indirectly through mutual funds or retirement accounts [1].
1: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266807/percentage-americans-own...
That's definitely not everyone.
Someone who is 60 years old has had approximately 30-35 years worth of time to invest and accumulate assets compared to someone 30 years old who has only had 5-10 years worth of time.
What would you have expected to see in the alternative?
What's not discussed is that these cities were much smaller back then, had far fewer services both private and government, had much higher crime and pollution and a host of issues that have all been substantially ameliorated over the decades, specifically the 90s.
If people want the experience that their parents had to find cheap housing, then they have to move to a location that is in a similar state today that London or Toronto was in 30 years ago. Those places do exist and there's no shortage of affordable and cheap housing in Canada, many parts of the U.S., and I suspect the UK.
The problem is that what people my generation really want are all the benefits that have come over the past 3-4 decades without the cost of paying for those benefits, and that's just not likely to happen.
But there are also places like Calgary, Winnipeg, London and Halifax that are smaller, much more affordable, and have a decent standard of living. The issue is that if you compare Halifax or Winnipeg to Toronto it's a no brainer that Toronto is just significantly ahead in development, but it's not like people in Halifax are struggling to find work, or are poor or living in bad conditions. There are plenty of good places across Canada to raise a family and enjoy a good standard of living.
This almost reads like satire. You're saying it's a problem that people who have worked their entire life have more wealth than people who have more recently begun their career?
confusing the map for the terrain
If wages haven't risen in proportion, then this doesn't seem like a win.