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Comment by ren_engineer | Hacker News Reader

alternative title: Number of dual income families in the US with both parents forced to work to survive increased since 1967, while also working longer hours

don't piss on my boot and tell me it's raining, almost every observable metric shows living standards have dropped significantly in the US over the past few decades

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I’d be interested in seeing these metrics and how they quantify living standards. Does living standard mean “keeps pace with the average <standard> at a given time” or does it mean “given a specific objective <standard>“? For example, when I was a kid having cable television went from not standard when I was in elementary school to standard by the time I entered high school. Similarly: internet access, cell phones, having a computer, having a laptop, etc. This was true even outside of tech: having more than one car, having central air AC, having your own bedroom, taking the bus to school or being driven, and even having a bike evolved as I grew up.

Yeah you're gonna need to back this one up chief. Not sure about you but I'd rather be living in a 1 bedroom apartment with modern appliances, internet, smartphone, and a laptop than I would in a 8000sqft that had none of these things.

We have a lot more expenses today in large part because standard of living has increased. Certain components, like home affordability and medical, have become much worse than they were. Many other components have improved.

> Yeah you're gonna need to back this one up chief. Not sure about you but I'd rather be living in a 1 bedroom apartment with modern appliances, internet, smartphone, and a laptop than I would in a 8000sqft that had none of these things.

That's a _very_ subjective viewpoint.

I know it is, it's just as subjective as OP's generic "drop in living standards "statement. And while subjective, I can't imagine it's uncommon. A lot people really have a difficult time conceptualizing life before the internet. It's become almost an extension of reality that we take for granted as an absolute, when in actuality it's a luxury afforded to us.

Here's one measure: the US GDP expressed in gold.

http://pricedingold.com/us-gdp/

As for medical, the US has a problem, especially compared to other countries.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...

They don't though. Real GDP per Capita is almost 2x what it was in 2000, and 3x what it was in 1980. Hdi has also increased over those periods, though not as much as in European countries.

I'm actually not sure if there are any metrics that show us living standards dropping, much less "significantly" from the late 20th century to 2020.

> Real GDP per Capita is almost 2x what it was in 2000, and 3x what it was in 1980

I guess that means real wages have increased almost 3x since 1980, with hours down since people have to work less to survive due to increased productivity.

Actually US real wages have been basically flat for half a century.

GDP per capita increasing is bad for the people working and creating wealth, as the workers creating the wealth see none of the increase in wages, and it gives the heirs parasitically expropriating surplus labor time from workers more power.

It's raining. The reason you're not more well off is that due to cultural and technological progressions you are overall less valuable to other human beings in general than a smaller group of human beings 80 year ago. This is not a deliberate scheme to disenfranchise you or others. Trying to compare the modern economy with the economy of the late 1960's is childishly naive.

> almost every observable metric shows living standards have dropped significantly in the US over the past few decades

What are some examples of the specific metrics you're referring to?

And it's all downhill from here. With the collapse of globalization, everything will become cheaper, slower, worse quality, and harder to get.

Globalization will not collapse. As long as we have free and open trade nothing is really going to kill it.

>As long as we have free and open trade nothing is really going to kill it.

I've got some really bad news for you, friend. The free trade era is already over and demographic collapse is coming for almost everyone.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/20/free-trade-dead-managed...

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