Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

This nonsense drives me bananas. It's not true. There are no numbers showing that the median/average/working-class/whatever American citizen is worse off in any meaningful way. Period. It didn't happen. Americans are wealthier now[1] than they ever have been. Americans are wealthier now than anyone[2] has been, ever, in the entirety of human experience.

That they (and you) don't believe this to be the case is important and interesting. But it's not true.

[1] Maybe not for that ←long once the Q2/Q3 results show up with the tariff impact and the layoff start

[2] Anyone with a broad enough sampling I guess. There are always tiny states with skewed statistics.

View on HN

What precisely are you measuring to conclude that Americans are wealthier than ever before?

When it comes to luxury goods, sure - things like TVs and computers are cheaper than they ever have been, both relative to wealth and even in absolute terms.

However, when you look at necessities like housing, healthcare, and I dare say education, you'll notice that all have far outpaced inflation and even wage growth.

See: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

See: https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/

See: https://www.statista.com/statistics/631987/percent-of-income...

See: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/05/18/cost-of-coll...

See: https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/college-costs-over-tim...

See: https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/07/24/pric...

---

As a personal anecdote - my father did much the same job I do, and yet while he was taking care of a full family of four, I can't say that I feel any better off despite being single and not regularly vacationing like I did growing up.

As far as I can tell - I'm not alone. If anything, I'm uniquely blessed relative to my peers due to my tech background. We have an entire generation putting off family building because stagnant wages coupled with high student loan debt and housing prices cause many to perceive they are hardly getting by. Nearly half of all adults live paycheck-to-paycheck.

Literally not one of those links substantiates "outpaced inflation and wage growth". Not one. Try again?

Sure, the headlines try to imply it. Which is why you believe something wrong. But it's still wrong, and the data don't say what you think they say.

> As a personal anecdote - my father did much the same job I do, and yet while he was taking care of a full family of four

This part is actually true. White Men have fallen off the pace relative to what they expected to earn generations ago. But that's not society getting poorer, it's the disadvantaged finally being allowed to catch up.

Wealthy doesn't mean anything when paired with unaffordable.

No, no, no. Americans are wealthier in PPP metrics than they ever have been. There are no numbers that show what you believe. None. It's wrong. And yet you, and everyone else, believes it anyway. And because Everyone Believes It you figure it must represent some great truth and thus people showing you numbers to the contrary must be wrong, or lying. And so you end up prey for politicians lying to you, and you elect a government that starts a trade war.

And I guess it does represent such a truth, but it's a great truth about universal delusion at the end of an empire, or something else. It's not about wealth. It's not.

It always, always is relative. People compare themselves with neighbors/TV, not with themselves 50 years ago.

Totally agree with you, don't know why so many downvotes. But important point is wealth is never absolute, but comparative. And that's where inequality comes into play. Almost all revolutions happen because of inequality.

I've met Silicon Valley multi-millionaires why cried they are poor and how those damn billionaires gentrifying them from their lovely neighborhoods.

I'm against forced equalization of incomes, but on the long run that's what keeps the system stable. Unless you are Norway, of course, where people strongly believe equalization is good, and post everyone's compensation on public (well, taxes, but it's easy to get comp from taxes).

UPDATE: so the metric we should look at is Gini index, not GDP or PPP.

That explains jealousy, not "suffering" as the upthread commenter put it. No, this is 100% irrational.

I mean, think about it: there have always been phenomenally wealthy people. If every billionaire in the US had their net worth cut by 50%, instantly, that would fix the "Gini index" you think we should be looking at.

But would their lifestyles change? Would anyone but the billionaires even notice? If you stop a person on the street and ask "Is it fair that Bill Gates is worth $50B dollars?", they're going to say "no", right? That's way too much money. Except, of course, that Gates is worth twice that and the number is something that you argue should be "fair".

No, it's not numbers. It's irrational delusion fed by fear and anger and click-chasing from everywhere across the media landscape. But. It's. Wrong. And someone needs to start telling people that.

Because at this point our shared delusion is causing a trade war that is going to make all of us (literally, all of humanity) poorer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com