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Comment by jackosdev | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny when someone is parroting the doom and gloom they hear from mainstream media, and you point out something like how world hunger and poverty is at an all time low, the standard of living has never been higher etc. most of the time they’ll just continue justifying their position, its only engineers that I’ve heard say “oh yeah..”

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It's a bit more nuanced than that. The standard of living for the bottom half globally has substantially improved over the past 100 years. The standard of living for the bottom half of the developed world has arguably declined in the past few decades. In the last 5 years or so, due to inflation and Covid, more people have fallen into extreme poverty.

I agree with you, but it is important to keep long-term trends in mind. If we track from 1700 to now, things go vertical in the late 1800s, and then only accelerate from 1990 forward. Periodic dips are somewhat expected due to inflationary expansions of credit and subsequent retractions in credit as people and organizations default. Likewise, wars tend to happen which cause periodic drops in theater.

> The standard of living for the bottom half of the developed world has arguably declined in the past few decades. In the last 5 years or so, due to inflation and Covid, more people have fallen into extreme poverty.

What’s the source for this? It was my understanding (e.g. from the poverty line) that there’s been significant improvements also in the last few decades.

The source for this is on the street man.

I laughed, but also The World Bank

If you look up real wages in the USA it's been flat or negative for everyone but the top 4% for 40 years.

We were talking about the WORLD. Not the US. The WORLD has seen enormous improvements. Much larger than the backslide the US has experienced.

"The standard of living for the bottom half of the developed world has arguably declined in the past few decades."

I am willing to hear this argument, but intuitively it seems like this is not the case. Does a poor person in Arkansas have a lower quality of life now than they had in the 1980's? I feel not, but I'm not sure how to measure or validate this. Income numbers aren't great, because often they don't account for various assistance programs and subsidies (not that assistance programs are a satisfying end-state).

I'd love to look at things like

- whether that have indoor plumbing (I would have assumed this was near 100% even in 1980, but I don't know).

- Ownership of microwaves, TVs, cars, etc.

- Hours spent working

- Usage of things that have made all our lives better, like vaccines and other medicine, internet, education, etc.

It's debatable, of course. Some points I would add:

- Prices of healthcare, education and housing have increased in real terms

- Double income trap

- Shift from well paying union jobs to gig economy, temp agencies, Amazon warehouse etc. leading to precarious employment

- Opiod crisis

I don’t know about the hypothetical average person from Arkansas but I’m sure the average Israeli, South Korean, Taiwanese, Czech and many others are immensely better off today than in 1980.

And in 40 years the same will be true for the average Indian, Vietnamese, Bangladeshi and the other fast growing developing economies of today (unless climate change wrecks havoc in the tropics by then).

We’re seeing the highest growth in the countries that aren’t already at the top.

The elephant curve[0] is an interesting quantification of global income changes in the modern era. Notably it represents global incomes so presumably the United States occupies the higher end of this range.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_Curve

The problem with the progress that we're witnessing is that it's not sustainable. It's made possible by depleting non-renewable resources and messing up the environment. According to the best models at our disposal, our living conditions are going to decline in the coming decades. So maybe this is why it is precisely engineers who are sceptical since they have better understanding of the scientific consensus on the matter.

Well... maybe. Partly for sure. But we also know that the GPD-to-CO2-emissions coupling that used to be super strong has been thoroughly broken. So first order yes, second order? maybe. Third order? Almost certainly not.

That being said, we need to do WAY more obviously.

Better to do that than parroting anything they hear from the fringe media. Their takes on the world are even more gloomy.

> its only engineers that I’ve heard say “oh yeah..”

Yes - only engineers are capable of independent and rational thought. The orange site continues to sniff its own farts.

Not that I really disagree with you but you could have said that more civilly.

Yes, I should be more civil in my comment and thank you for pointing it out.

I find the tone of "engineers, developers smart, everyone else dumb" to be really tiresome; and when it becomes self congratulatory, it becomes really irksome. It's also the casual dismissal of knowledge in other fields and lived experiences of others that just happen again and again here.

I should probably find a different place to hang.

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