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Sure, people’s well being as a whole haven’t gotten better since the 1980s, except for

>Air quality (no more leaded gasoline)

>Life expectancy

>Cancer survival rates

>Access to information

>Infant mortality

>Violent crime rates across the western world

>Access to education

>Clean water and food for 4+ billion people

>HIV treatment

>etc

The negativity on this site is insane. They will deny the greatest scientific achievements if it lets them dunk on AI or whoever is the enemy of the week.

Not to mention global poverty: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-po...

My position is more nuanced that you present it to be.

I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievements. Looking through your list it’s social policies which either drive or are necessary components of most of the improvements you mention. Even the medical advances you mention are dependent on a society’s ability to offer healthcare to its members - a notable deficiency of the US system. I emphasized the importance of the labor movement in my comment; but I don’t want to deny the importance of governmental policy changes. It’s just in the current political arena it’s not clear to me that politicians are interested in much more than serving corporate and billionaire interests, so I don’t have much hope for our ability to continue to make positive policy changes. Therefore the main avenue that people have to take control of their futures seems to me to be organized labor. This is a tool which has shown itself effective in the past for achieving all sorts of improvements in the mass of people’s lives.

Besides that I advocate for taking a sober look at our current situation. Painting the picture of society as one of progress by looking at our achievements and denying our societal shortcomings is naive. Examples: the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, warmongering among nuclear powers, high rates of depression and anxiety, concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Science and technology may plausibly play some role in addressing these issues, sure, but progress rarely occurs without struggle. Altman’s version is utopian, unrealistic, and will likely make society worse unless the working class can successfully struggle to reap the benefits of “value-creation” for itself.

You need both social change and technological change to drive progress, but more often technological change drives the conversation.

Standards for workplace safety, working hours, social welfare are only possible because technologically developed societies are sufficiently productive to even consider those possibilities. The idea of a 40 hour workweek, the fact that most people aren’t farmers now is due to the industrial revolution, machinery and tech multiplying the productive capacity of a single individual. HIV treatment, cancer treatment, blood tests are a standard part of healthcare not because social policies willed them to be so alone, but because the technology to deliver those treatments at scale exists and allows that to be a possibility in the first place.

I do agree that without the right social structures, policy and general political will, the conditions for those technological advances may never have come about in the first place, but in general, it is technology that makes certain allowances for human flourishing possible at all.

You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that factory owners were living lives of affluence that we know the workers were being exploited. There was an highly unequal relationship between workers and owners. It’s not the productivity growth of the Industrial Revolution the made lives better for workers - actually it got much worse initially as they were squeezed by the capitalist class. It’s only when workers organized to struggle for a larger share of the value they were creating for their bosses that their lives got better.

Today wealth inequality is at unheard of levels. The wealth of the richest person roughly equals that of the 50% poorest. That is profit extracted from the value workers produce for the wealthy. Technological andvancement isn’t required to give workers a larger piece of the pie; the pie today is already quite enormous. Instead workers must organize if they want better lives. In lieu of that, advances like AI will continue to only profit the very wealthy; the rest of us will likely experience a mix of advantages and drawbacks (analogous to what we’ve seen with the internet or smartphones).

Worldwide wealth inequality isn't as important to look at as overall worldwide poverty, which has gone down markedly over the past century. It is much preferable to be able to have running water and food despite the richest person in your country having 30 houses, over having no water or food but the richest guy only has 2 houses. In the former, inequality is higher, but the absolute pain of poverty is lower, which is a more relevant metric for human welfare.

The industrial revolution, in the 1800s, transformed England and Europe due to the incentives of the growth of industry, and the free movement of labor towards those incentives. Largely, those who worked in factories did so because the benefits/costs exceeded that of farm work. If there were no incentives to change, everyone would have stayed on the farm, preserving the agrarian status quo. Despite all the hazards, the benefit/cost was better for industrial work, largely because it paid more, the money allowing for the improvement of living conditions for those who worked in factories.

I agree that to get better working conditions has been a constant battle between the interests of the working class and capital owning class, but looking at everything through that lens ignores the whole point of work/industry in the first place, in that it produces surplus wealth, and only once that wealth is produced can societies make the decision on how that wealth is allocated. In every society that has generally followed the rule of "free market capitalism with common sense regulation and protection of private property", living standards, median wealth ownership and wages, etc. have almost universally gone up decade after decade.

If you look at the decline in poverty since 1980 most of that is due to China’s policies [1] which have combined social programs, central planning, with, yes, a portion of the economy running in market economics. And note that this occurred after private property was widely expropriated in a communist revolution. Free markets centralize wealth and power; the capitalist class always uses its wealth to control the political process as best it can. What we attribute to “common sense regulation” in the global north is actually the result of historical compromises made by the ruling class due to pressure from below. Left to itself the capitalist class will pursue profits at the expense of everything else. Failing to do so, capitalists will be outcompeted by those that do. (We see the effect of such structural incentives today with the climate crisis.)

Can markets be useful? Yes, as part of a broader policy that checks capitalist power either through labor or government. In the US I believe the government is captured by the capitalist class; thus it seems to me that organized labor is the only avenue for real progress in the US.

[1] https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...

The China thing people always bring up, but it's notable that the complete expropriation of private property and radical communist central planning preceded the massive periods of famine in China from 1950-1970, and only after free market reforms, creation of the special economic zones and integration into the world market did China see massive growth in general welfare.

Notably, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan had much faster improvements in GDP per capita and general welfare compared to mainland China, and today enjoy a higher standard of living, despite starting from a similar point in the 1950s.

Still, I agree with you, social programs are necessary, and China's top-down programs have perhaps given it distinct advantages it otherwise would not have now, but fundamentally free market capitalism as a foundation has routinely been the biggest driver of wealth over the 20th century. My examples (the "Asian tigers") do have strong social welfare programs, workers rights, etc, but they all fundamentally are capitalist countries whose wealth came largely from the benefits of commerce, free market incentives for technological innovation, and free enterprise.

I guess my concern is about the living standards of workers not creation of wealth. I think your argument is that growing wealth helps the working class as it creates more wealth, and thus a bigger pie. My argument is that a bigger pie does not benefit the working class without external forces pressuring the capitalist class.

I agree markets can be beneficial in some ways but they also have pathological behaviors left on their own. In capitalist countries the capitalist class more or less runs the government, even in so-called democracies. This is because wealth and thus power sits with the capitalist class. In our society market effects over time have produced a wealth disparity so great that the capitalist class is pushing austerity measures that will likely succeed in further enriching itself at the expense of the working class - lowering living standards while increasing profits. In the meantime existential risks to the human race like climate change or nuclear war are not only neglected but actively stoked.

I also would caution against the use of the term “free” market; China directs its markets; even the “Asian tigers” story was the outcome of state policies deliberately building a manufacturing base including measures such as education and land reform - admittedly a much freer hand given was given to markets compared to China; yet in neither case would I characterize these gains as the result of markets operating truly independently or freely; in both cases market effects were guided and channeled toward specific desired outcomes.

>Largely, those who worked in factories did so because the benefits/costs exceeded that of farm work. If there were no incentives to change, everyone would have stayed on the farm, preserving the agrarian status quo.

This is true for the first generation of factory workers. After that the proletariat emerges, an urban underclass that can’t use the threat of going back to the farm as negotiating leverage, because they don’t know how to farm. I don’t think that the way that leftist governments went after farmers was fair or even humane, but the motivation for it was basically terror at being trapped under the thumb of the owner class.

If you were a handicraft worker and a factory opened, your old livelihood was destroyed. You may be making optimal choices for yourself by shifting to factory work, but to claim that factory life was better because people chose it obscures the fact that the old choices were made defunct by the factory opening.

> The utopia Altman describes won’t appear.

Sure it will, as far as Altman is concerned. To make the whole post make sense, add "... for the rich" where appropriate.

The problem is that housing and health insurance are too expensive. Tech isn’t responsible for either of those problems.

In a way it is. Why are housing costs so high in Redmond, WA? The result of an influx of high income tech workers to the local housing market and the resulting shift of prices such as to eventually dilute the utility of that high salary to begin with. People in the area without a hook on that whale are of course left high and dry.

Citation needed, my understanding was that housing prices are being driven up by real estate owners/agencies buying tons of property to either rent at extortionary prices or sit on until they sell for a higher price to the next sucker. Also stuff like the RealPage scandal where they simply illegally collude: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41330007

I think the idea of a law that only allows a limited number of owned properties per person and requires them to actually be using those properties would be interesting to alleviate this.

Housing prices are being driven up by the fact that we don't build enough housing. That should be the end of the discussion. What you describe is just a symptom of not having enough housing. If we just built more housing then there wouldn't be any business angle for the corporations buying up housing.

The obscenely rich entities that buy up tons of property without actually using it do so because they only stand to gain even more money on it later. Making more housing would help in the long term for sure, but these entities would still buy up most of it as it becomes available. Remember that as long as they hold the vast majority, they essentially have a captive audience and can set whatever outlandish prices they want (especially when they collude as they have done). Something to restrict the number of unused properties a person can own would still be beneficial either way.

This also goes without mentioning the restrictions on "just" building new housing (land, time, and space, particularly space located near job sites).

Well, why dont we build more housing?

Exactly. Who has the political connections to get develkopment policy tilted their way?

No... the reason housing prices are high and rising is that not enough housing is getting build in the places people want to live. The main reason for that is that the people who already live in those places can block construction of new housing. That, and zoning.

Housing prices in so many places are high because Californians, used to spending crazy high prices for property in tech spheres (or able to sell their property for crazy high prices because of the tech spheres) moved to other locations and caused property values in those areas to go up. Why is Hacker News trying to rewrite this?

No one's trying to rewrite anything.

"Californians, used to spending crazy high prices for property"

Please dig into why that statement is true and re-read your parent statement. Your analysis can't just abruptly stop there. It all goes back to housing supply.

It all goes back to tech. Tech jobs grow in the area and pay significantly higher than previous jobs. Those jobs increase people moving to the area by dramatic, non-traditional numbers outpacing how the area previously approached housing, and give the people much more buying power than the current residents, pushing those people (including me) out. The housing supply problem goes back to... tech. No community is prepared for a gold rush to happen, nor has housing plans in place to accommodate it. Nor do they normally want to accommodate it. So it turns into a big of a mess.

Please dig into why my analysis is correct. I lived through it. I had to leave friends and family. It negatively impacted mine and almost every friends life negatively (as in had to more away and start a new life).

"No community is prepared for a gold rush to happen, nor has housing plans in place to accommodate it."

laughs in Tokyo/Singapore. Sorry, I want to feel bad for incumbents in the area, but they've worked hard to create this situation, especially the landlords. People gaining wage power is a GOOD thing and arguing against it is an insane political choice even if you are in the majority.

The rest is just basic agglomeration theory [1]. You are arguing against gravity making things going down. People will always come together since Vienna, since Baghdad, and the productivity gains are supposed to be good for the country again, if it wasn't for landlord incumbents. The solution seems obvious: remove incumbent controls.

There are only one people who are truly indigenous to the Bay Area (and I'm guessing they aren't on HN right now). Everyone else came as part of a proverbial gold rush, going back to 1849, so complaining about the only gold rush that came after you is not a morally substantive position. Your complaint should be against rent-seeking capital and their political power, not immigrants (national nor international, rich nor poor).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_agglomeration

P.S: Just to be clear, I'm not advocating for displacement. You can have gentrification and growth without displacement, what you have to accept (nay embrace) is rapid change. If you don't, displacement is inevitable.

This is part of it yes. But after sufficient housing stock is built for the available working population, prices generally reach an equilibrium around median worker pay in the area. And if the median worker pay is now inflated by tech salaries and you are are still a line cook, you’ve been screwed. The construction market will not respond by making housing until it is cheap and unsold enough to be affordable on your line cook salary. The construction companies would sooner take jobs in more lucrative markets. If you are a line cook where most everyone in the area is paid about as much as you on the other hand, you can probably afford a local mortgage.

Parent didn’t claim tech was responsible for every problem? Housing prices are likely an inequality issue; as a greater portion of money in the economy is held by rich people, more money is invested and less is spent on goods/services, hence a scarce asset like land sees an increase in value.

I mean home prices went up insane in California due to tech. Many people cashed out and bought homes in cheaper locations...driving up the housing prices there beyond what locals could afford.

How did Hacker News already forget these things?

I don’t say it was responsible. My argument is against Altman’s picture of progress. He argues that improvements in science and technology drive progress. My argument is that technology brings both positive and negative changes, and the degree to which the working class sees a net benefit largely depends on its ability to struggle against the business class.

Real wages have risen a lot since 1980 when you include employer contributions to employee health insurance.

Does it correct for housing costs?

Even without including employer health insurance costs, real wages are up 67% since 1980.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxBn

Details: uses the "Wage and salary accruals per full-time-equivalent employee" time series, which is the broadest wage measure for FTE employees, and adjusts for inflation using the PCE price index, which is the most economically meaningful measure of "how much did prices change for consumers" (and is the inflation index that the Fed targets)

How has inflation behaved since 1980?

It rose 2.75% per year (239% over 45 years).

Source with details: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1JxIa

Can you walk me through how to reach this '239%' number? Thank you.

You can hover over places on the chart to get exact values. In January 1980, the index was at 37.124. In April 2025, it was at 125.880.

Then calculate cumulative inflation as the proportional change in the price level, like this:

(P_final - P_initial) / P_initial = (125.880 - 37.124) / 37.124 = 2.39

This shows that the overall price level (the cumulative inflation embodied in the PCEPI) has increased by about 2.39 times over the period, which is 239%.

The thing that bugs me to no end when talking about inflation in an historical context, is that everyone forgets to consider how the indexes of consumption it's calculated from (PCEPI, CPI, etc.) are NOT static, and very arbitrarily are changed over time, often to make inflation seem lower than it actually is for the consumer.

Overall, historical comparisons of inflation numbers are so imprecise to be practically worthless the longer the timescale. You can expect the real figure to be much greater in reality for consumers, given the political incentive to lie over inflation data.

1.0275 ^ 45 = 3.389

3.389 - 1 (to account for increase) = 2.38 ~ 239%

It's probably worth noting that the "real" in "real wages" indicates that the number is already inflation adjusted.

It's difficult for me to call those wages "real" when medical costs have been so absurdly gouged to eat up those contributions. Those increases have had no real impact on the average consumer, and is profoundly awful for those without access to employment that provides that insurance

All costs. New roof on the house? $30k. Hail damage on the car? It’s actually totaled. Whatever is in the store? Inflation certainly hit there too.

That's not entirely accurate. Wages are real enough whether paid out as cash, or paid to a third party for the employee's benefit. Some medical costs are unreasonably inflated, but on the other hand much of the cost increase reflects greater capabilities. We can effectively treat many conditions today that would have been a death sentence in 1980, but some of those cutting edge treatments cost >$1M per patient. That doesn't directly benefit the average healthy consumer, but it can help a lot if you get sick.

I do agree that it makes no logical sense to couple medical insurance to employment. This system was created sort of accidentally as a side effect of wartime tax law and has persisted mainly due to inertia.

It’s somewhat misleading to claim that better care today is the reason for higher costs. Most other developed countries have some form of universal coverage and pay significantly less per person. That includes countries like England, Germany and Switzerland which also have advanced healthcare capabilities. Other countries negotiate drug prices, provide budgets for hospitals rather than charging per procedure, regulate medical prices, and have reduced administrative costs (compared to the US which must deal with the complexities of multi-payer).

That’s to say nothing of the fact that millions are uninsured in the US and have limited access to necessary medical treatment, never mind “cutting edge” treatments.

I won't attempt to make the counter-argument on account of being a stranger to America and it's healthcare system, but would point to the existence of this, just in case you haven't seen it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDOQpfaUc8

Not when you account for the insane rise in cost of health care.

No, that's not a real wage increase, thats nominal wage. If i make 20k more, but health insurance costs also went up 20k, my real wage did not change. I am no richer.

No, that's a real wage increase. The healthcare system can effectively treat a lot more conditions than it could in 1980. That makes you richer as measured in terms of QALYs.

That's a nice thought but I've only had one physical in the last 15 years. I'm sure others are sitting in the same boat.

These are obviously aggregate statistics and individual experiences may vary. It shouldn't be necessary to point that out.

>Real wages haven’t risen since 1980

is a very US thing. In China they've probably 10xd over that time.

Even after that 10x growth, median Chinese household income is only 13-16% of US median household income:

China: ~$10,000 – $12,000

US: ~$74,580 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022)

Purchasing power parity matters a lot too.

The context here is growth and I doubt China's GDPPPP/person has grown anywhere near as much as its GDP/person because the median Chinese household of 40 years ago could still afford the essentials (food, housing, clothing) that the PPP adjustment indexes off of. (It just couldn't afford any imports.)

Actually I doubt that economists even tried to calculate PPP of China 40 years ago because (even back then) the basket of goods used in the PPP calculation probably included gasoline and cars and such, which only the economic top 1% of China could afford 40 years ago, but if you forced the calculation somehow, you'd probably arrive at a GDPPPP/person not much lower than the current GDPPPP/person (i.e., China has grown spectacularly in GDP/person, but not in GDPPPP/person)

The difference now is that China makes a ton of consumer goods itself, so whereas 40 years ago Chinese PPP would have required forex, now it can be done internally.

That shift opens the possibility of GDPPPP changes in excess (or under) strict GDP per capita growth.

I think GDPPPP/capita is a better measure here, but the story is similar. From the IMF's 2025 numbers: USA $90k, China $29k, world average $26k.

Lovely tabulation of the data here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

That is because of China and US positions in the global system over this time. The wage/labor/inequality story is broadly true across the global north; China can credit forward thinking central planning, social programs, and industrialization for its economic progress (yet it continues to live under authoritarian rule).

It varies a lot - check this out https://www.businessinsider.com/france-vs-us-real-wages-2015...

The US is kind of an outlier.

I guess if you have the opportunity to have your stuff made by cheap or free labour whether low paid Chinese or AI robots, societies have a choice how to distribute the benefits which has varied from everything to the rich in the US to fairly even in France say. Such choices will be important with AI.

> Real wages haven’t risen since 1980.

Do people really believe that? I think either people have too rosy view of 80s or consider that real wages should also adjust for lifestyle inflation.

Yes. It’s even a part of Ray Dalio’s speeches on the topic. Here is one example where he mentions it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-how-capitalism-needs-refo...

Lots of people don't care about "progress" in an absolute sense, eg longer healthier lifespans for all. They only care about it in a relative sense, eg if cop violence against minorities goes down, they feel anxiety and resentment. They really really want to be the biggest fish in the little pond. That's how a caste system works, it "makes a captive of everyone within it". Equality feels like a demotion [1].

That's why we have a whole thing about immigration going on. It's the one issue that the president is not underwater on right now [2]. You can't get much of a labor movement like this.

[1] https://www.texasobserver.org/white-people-rural-arkansas-re...

[2] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil...