Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

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That wasn't true everywhere though, in the USA in the 1950's it might have been true but in the rest of the world?

Whenever I try to think about these large scale systems I end up realizing how difficult it is to predict the outcome. Everything people are buying has to be produced. Everything produced needs people (or automation) producing it. Somewhere there is an equilibrium.

What's happening globally has an impact (e.g. we possibly had a better standard of living by taking advantage of places that had a lower standard of living). Competition (and inequality) has an impact because not getting ahead of the game can put you in the bottom rungs where you're really doing badly. In a game where only the top 20% are doing well there is fierce never ending competition to be in that 20%. In a game where everyone has some guaranteed basic standard of living you would expect the competition to be less fierce.

Another note is that people used to work crazy hours during the industrial revolution. Similar story there, you had to get some work if you didn't want to be poor, and it was easy for employers to take advantage of employees.

The 1950s were a unique time in the American economy. The rest of the developed world had just come out of WW2 with large portions of its cities, industrial production, and overall economies severely disrupted or outright destroyed. Meanwhile, the US was unscathed and had spent the war further building up its industrial capacity.

It was never sustainable, only something possible for a point in time.

US economy was almost a full autarchy in the 50s and 60s - imports and exports as percentage of GDP were at all time low - at about 3-4%. Meaning 96-97% of the economy was done by Americans for Americans - it was a closed system.

The stagnation in standards of living since the 80s is fully engineered - it's a choice. Tax cuts, regulatory changes, disarming the antitrust, union busting, deregulation of finance and similar changes redistributed $47 trillion to the top 10% from 1975 through 2018 (1), enough to give every worker in the bottom 90% a raise of $1140 per month.

(1) https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-ameri...

Yeah. I remember reading somewhere that the US was making 80% of the cars worldwide in 1950 or so.

They were also probably buying 80% of the cars produced worldwide.

Both of which were obviously not going to be sustainable at that rate for long :-)

> In a game where everyone has some guaranteed basic standard of living you would expect the competition to be less fierce.

And how can you, or anyone, guarantee something like that? The standard of living we have, however imbalanced it might be, is a byproduct of fierce competition.

To guarantee any kind of basic standard of living, specially one without even more fierce competition, the only alternatives are: a much much lower standard of living, much lower, or, a much much intense exploitation of natural resources. Pick your poison, as they are both catastrophic, and there is no third option.

I guess the question is what is the cost of a "basic" standard of living. e.g. a shelter, not starving, healthcare, education. As long as that cost is low enough then it doesn't take much to guarantee it. You can certainly see some countries (e.g. Scandinavia, or Australia, or even Canada) finding a different balance point than other countries (e.g. the US). In other words, governments, regulations, unions, can (and do) influence that curve and bring it to a different (better?) place.

Competition does play some role in incentivizing people but I don't think it's the entire story when it comes to progress/improved standard of living. When 8 hour work days were introduced was there some sort of sharp drop in productivity or innovation or standard of living? Or when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 days? I don't think so.

> You can certainly see some countries (e.g. Scandinavia, or Australia, or even Canada) finding a different balance point than other countries (e.g. the US).

Three very resources rich regions. They are exploiting their natural resources to compensate for their (relative) low productivity.

> When 8 hour work days were introduced was there some sort of sharp drop in productivity or innovation or standard of living? Or when the work week was shortened to 5 days from 6 days? I don't think so.

Yes there was a drop, if you consider everything relevant. When the 8 hour work day was introduced new workers were still being added to the workforce. Almost half the population in productive age joined the work force in the later part of the 20th century alone and women were for the most part not working when the 5 day work week became a thing for example. Individually the work hours came down, but as a whole we work much much more today.

But we don't have that luxury now, we don't have an untapped work force to lean against. And of course, the elephant in the room: our declining and aging population. Fewer and fewer working adults will have to provide for an increasingly large number of retirees.

The situation particularly in the west is dire. Pension funds are at very high risk of collapsing almost everywhere and the solution will not be to work less. Maybe, because politicians are politicians, the 4 day work week will be a thing, but retirement will creep into the 70s, it's already being proposed in some countries.

Increases in leisure time will be only on paper, done only in exchange for votes.

> Three very resources rich regions. They are exploiting their natural resources to compensate for their (relative) low productivity.

This can't be the reason, simply because the relative share of GDP is so small. For Denmark, Sweden and Finland natural resources amount to less than 0.5% of GDP. For Norway it's 7%.

For Australia it's 5.4%, and for Canada 1.9%.

For comparison: In Congo, Lybia and Kuweit natural resources explain nearly 50% of GDP.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.TOTL.RT.ZS?most_...

And for USA it is 0.6%, so very much on-par with Denmark, Finland & Sweden.

The pension crisis is because people aren't having enough children, because they're working too much. Working less is a solution to that, strangely enough.

It's not that simple. Young people aren't meeting each other as much anymore, and overwork is just a symptom of that I feel (people with families don't tend to put them second unless the money is needed). We need some kind of cultural shift to fix things.

> people with families don't tend to put them second unless the money is needed

You are basing this on some research? Or just general experience?

> Pension funds are at very high risk of collapsing almost everywhere

How is that the case? The retirees income is by neccesity balanced by the working population's output.

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