We're living the dream; we just don't realize it
cnn.com
cnn.com
I feel that some force is trying to extract as much work from "us" as possible, sometimes even selling it to us as a liberation. I am not even sure if it is a conspiracy or just human nature or what not. However I found it interesting that apparently 40h work weeks were established because industrialists noticed they yielded optimal output. That is already that principle: squeeze as much work from workers as possible, so in their spare time they have no energy left to produce, only to consume.
In theory, work and leisure time both are goods that you can choose to consume with varying degrees of flexibility. In theory, they are both subject to the usual decrease in marginal utility as you have more of one or the other. In theory, on a marginal basis you will choose to do one or the other as it has more value to you, so if you face an hour in which you could work for $40 or experience leisure time you value at $45, you will not do the work.
I've larded that entire paragraph up with "in theory" because it is a massive oversimplification and we all know that. However, I think in the end the point it leads to is still significantly true, which is that as society has advanced, an hour of work produces more value to the user. Even if the gain is flat in purely monetary terms, in terms of subjectively-experienced wealth the value can still be rising, per all the advances mentioned in the article. (No amount of 1980-money will bring you Minecraft, etc.) Therefore, it is easy for leisure time to get crowded out through perfectly rational decisions by the worker.
Due to diminishing marginal advantage, it's not a linear process; one may work a 55-hour week instead of a 45-hour week, but this process is not capable of producing someone who works a 120-hour week who would have chosen a 30-hour week. The value of the next hour of work goes down too fast and the value of the leisure time goes up too quickly. But it is an effect that shows how an increase in productivity can actually be a cause of longer work hours, not a bizarre inexplicable side effect.
Being able to send all your companies work to China is a big advantage for the company owner (rich) and a real problem for the American workers (middle class) if the rich don't have to give enough of that profit back to society.
Please be specific - name a resource that you believe average Americans consume less of now than in the 70s or 80s. Or, similarly, please name a resource that you believe middle class Americans need to "work longer to afford".
Also, shipping work to China is very good for the American consumer, who benefits from lower prices.
This is also a big advantage for the American consumer. Y'know.. the middle class?
Last I checked, the 99% were enjoying the benefits of PCs, mobile phones, satellites, and better batteries every bit as much as the 1% were.
I don't know about Germany, but in the US we work less than before.
Hours worked per employee is down, while the employment to population ratio isn't up enough to compensate:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/USAAHWEP
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/EMRATIO
Employment per capita was up a bit during the peak of the 90's bubble - by 2 hours/week over the 1970's.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fredgraph.png?g=d5P
Further, I think if you compared the same basket of goods, you'd discover that it's actually quite easy to make ends meet 1970's style. You'd live in a house that is tiny (by modern standards), drive one car/family, and give up all sorts of expensive medical treatments invented more recently than 1970 (MRI, chemotherapy, viagra, most prescription drugs). Not to mention all sorts of labor saving devices in the home (e.g., a dishwasher, washer/dryer or roomba).
The right question to ask: is all the stuff we've gained since 1970 worth an extra 1-2 hours/week of paid labor?
[edit: an earlier version of this post asserted working hours didn't rise at all. That was incorrect - I compared the endpoints. After the fact I spotted the fallacy, and put my third graph in the post.]
What wage would you need to be in a similar position today?
A holiday every year, a new car and a house full of apple stuff?
In the UK you could get a TV and washing machine off craigslist for not very much. You could fly to continental europe and back for less than £100 pp. You can pick up a car for maybe £2000 or so.
Difficult to say what a bar managers salary is today, I've seen very vary from marginally above minimum wage to maybe £50-60K.
Then £145/year for a TV license, £200/year for road tax and MOT costs, £500/year for car insurance, £500-1000/year for petrol, etc. A £2000 car is going to be a maintenance nightmare, probably add £500/year to cover costs.
Don't even get me started on the cost of owning or renting a place to live, which will make all these costs pale in comparison...
Perhaps we can agree that "bar manager" is subject to temptations, and rewards, that most jobs aren't?
- I do not have the option of paying much less for health insurance and still maintain access to emergency room care, while not getting access to the most modern and expensive treatments. I can get modern cadillac, blank check, insurance, or I get nothing at all. And if I go without insurance and pay out of pocket, the costs are frightfully expensive since I have do not have access to the much cheaper negotiated rates and could be on the hook to pay whatever the hospital charges, even for the most simple procedure.
- I do not have the option of paying much less for a 1970's style car. There are imported cars that cost $7k U.S. that are equivalent to what you could buy in 1970, but they are not legal for sale. The cheapest cars on the market today are just as expensive as the cheapest cars on the road in 1970, relative to median income.
- If I live in the suburbs, there is no option to have only one car and maintain the same standard of access as in the 1960's. All of retail, employment, and housing is now completely car centric, and a second car is essential for running errands, shopping, going to work, and generally getting around anywhere.
- If I live closer to the city or in many of the ring suburbs, I do not have an option for a cheaper, smaller home. I am mainly paying for land, not for the size of the home, so even a small home is more expensive than the equivalent home in 1970. Zoning laws have restricted building, while easy lending and two income families have resulted in the prices getting bid up. If I do find a cheap home, it is very likely in a neighborhood with more violence and worse schools than an equivalent home in 1960.
- Earning a median or upper middle class income now requires a much greater investment in schooling than earning the equivalent income did in 1960. That is a cost that must be taken into account when comparing standards of livings.
Most other benefits of modernity ( dishwashers, mobile phones, kindles, laptops) are actually relatively cheap. We're not working extra hours to buy iphones. It would be fully feasible to halve the working hours and get that night stuff. I appreciate that we have these great toys and conveniences, but appreciating advances in some areas of the economy does not mean that we should ignore decline in other areas.
I'd also note that I do not really have the option of taking half pay and working half hours. I wrote about this on HN a few days ago - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4780087 I need to work hard enough to stay ahead of the Joneses. If I fall behind, my income does not just fall a little bit, I could fall out of the workforce entirely, or fall out into much lower paying career tracks (as has happened to friends of mine). So given that I have to work hard, I end up earning more money than I really need, and I do get to enjoy eating out a lot and buying expensive cappuccinos. I might rather work less, make less, and live luxuriously, but I do not have that option.
(also buying a car thats ~5 years old is much more cost efficient than buying new)
This certainly does make living cheaply more difficulty. However, this doesn't change the fact that we are getting a lot more stuff for marginally more work (comparing trough to peak).
However, you made me realize that it is of course a choice to live in the city (kind of, depending on job availability), and in the countryside things might be cheaper.
Actually I wonder if the "one person sustains the family" thing was mainly a thing of the countryside. In Germany there are some cities that are dominated by one big company. If you were around when those companies started, you probably had very good living conditions (good wage because of the successful company, cheap housing because of the countryside).
Not sure if such companies even get started anymore these days. Perhaps the IT companies have to go to the cities because IT workers prefer the stimulating environment. Less of a concern for the factory workers of the past? Just a thought off the top of my head, though.
Actually the perhaps biggest German IT company, SAP, is one such case of a big company dominating a small city. But it also started quite a while ago already (1972). SAP has it's main base in "Walldorf", a village of 15000 people. I suspect people working for SAP in Walldorf don't have trouble to afford a house.
I've never found high cost-of-living cities to be particularly more attractive than average cost-of-living cities.
I definitely wouldn't consider Oakland (40% higher than US average COL) an attractive city. Certainly not more attractive than Orlando (2% lower than US average COL).
But of course, what city we consider "attractive" is also a choice. If one considers Manhattan to be the most attractive because of some particular attribute, then choosing to live in the most attractive space is going to be costly and perhaps out of reach with a single middle class income. But a single middle class income is plenty to live in a comfortable house in a decent neighborhood in Denver, Kansas City, or Dallas, and many people find those places quite attractive.
It's like my parents asking me if I want to be just like them, only work a lot harder and get a lot less for it. Um, no thanks.
> Die kapitalistische Produktion strebt beständig, diese ihr immanenten Schranken zu überwinden, aber sie überwindet sie nur durch Mittel, die ihr diese Schranken aufs neue und auf gewaltigerm Maßstab entgegenstellen. Die wahre Schranke der kapitalistischen Produktion ist das Kapital selbst, ist dies: daß das Kapital und seine Selbstverwertung als Ausgangspunkt und Endpunkt, als Motiv und Zweck der Produktion erscheint; daß die Produktion nur Produktion für das Kapital ist und nicht umgekehrt die Produktionsmittel bloße Mittel für eine stets sich erweiternde Gestaltung des Lebensprozesses für die Gesellschaft der Produzenten sind. (Karl Marx: Das Kapital, Bd. 3, S. 260)
> Capitalist production seeks continually to overcome these immanent barriers, but overcomes them only by means which again place these barriers in its way and on a more formidable scale. The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, the motive and the purpose of production; that production is only production for capital and not vice versa, the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers. (Karl Marx: Capital, Volume III, p. 249)
Then it says "the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers". A repetition of what was said before. The means of production is not JUST about improving the standard of living for the society of producers. It is about other things. You're claiming it says somewhere in there that the standard of living will not rise for producers. It does not say that. You have not contradicted anything.
We live in a day and age of shareholders rights and profit and dividend being the key objective of corporations. This is actually codified into law. Layoffs, mergers and salary freezes/cuts are seen as good things. This is not a secret at all, just read Business Week or the Wall Street Journal. So the original point holds. "The means of production are not MERE means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers." You seem to be ignoring the word mere in that sentence, and the sentence before it.
[1] Since 'not mere' does not exclude anything the means of production could be means for everything. But technically your point about the non-implication is correct.
This seems to me like the huge, looming problem our generation will have to solve.
Are you suggesting that the amount of medical resources expended to keep an individual alive/healthy should be keenly judged on an individual basis, based on some arbitrary notion of "worthiness", by some authority?
Would this hypothetical authority be called a "death panel"? It would seem very fitting.
In the UK I heard you don't get Dialysis after a certain age, which I always found quite shocking. But some equivalent of that will probably happen everywhere :-(
Also the worthiness of the previous comment probably referred to people actively ruining their health. That could be seen as freeloading off society.
Eventually the simple reality will be that there are more people whose lives could be extended than can be extended, even with our entire economic output allocated to that purpose.
We correctly recoil in horror at the thought of "fair and impartial" authorities rationing those resources because we instinctively know that once government gets involved, those decisions will be anything but fair and impartial. At the same time, it doesn't seem that the free market as it is now will perform any better because health care is a completely inelastic good and the "free" has been riddled with monopoly and regulatory capture. Either way, right now it looks like the rich and influential win disproportionately at the dire expense of the less well off. This is the big looming problem.
It's a deep rabbit hole, but the point is, it's a tough puzzle. It might take moral mettle equal to or even greater than winning a global war against a genocidal madman bent on world domination to solve it. We've got our work cut out for us and then some.
Avoid Marxist conspiracy theorizing: though it might be useful and easy to think about the capitalist class as a class, trying to reify them as a coordinated conspiracy of exploiters creates a lot of conflict but offers little in the way of explanatory power and little in the way of working solutions. Aside from the philosophical argument, you can see this is also historically true.
In the U.S., all three keep expanding: living space per person keeps growing, as do monthly tech costs, e.g. cable, mobile phone, etc. and there are more and more people choosing long commutes.
These are just the things that occur to me off the top of my head, making me think comparing the past to the present over generations is very much an apples-to-oranges comparison.
The causality might go the other way. When feminism became popular and women entered the workforce, it's not as if more homes got built, more oil was pumped from the ground, more land was discovered, more cars were manufactured, etc. Women did not enter construction and manufacturing trades in large numbers, and the production of homes and natural resources are bounded by natural conditions and regulations, not by labor. So when women enter the workforce wages are pushed down as they compete with men, the price of housing is bid up by two earner families, but production of housing does not go up accordingly. So prices rise and then all households need to have two earners to keep up. The modern economy is primarily not labor bound, it is natural resource and regulation bound, so more labor just results in an arms race where other people need to work harder to keep up. Legislation that mandates maximum work weeks, minimum vacation amounts, and mandatory retirement, might make a lot of sense to avoid the sort of work-hours-prisoners-dilemma we seem to be stuck in.
Eliminating legislation which mandates minimum house sizes, minimum insurance coverage, etc, can also serve to make the cost of living cheaper. If houses smaller than 2000 ft^2 are illegal (which they are in many places), you are obligated to pay more for a house bigger than you need.
[1] E.g.: http://www.realtor.org/RMODaily.nsf/pages/News2007032701?Ope... or http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-home-size.html)
Also note that even as more homes were being built, the resources to build these homes were getting more expensive due to the price of lumber and copper getting bid up. So even if you can change the zoning laws to allow more building, the price still gets bid up to some extent from the price of the natural resources.
I agree of course that these laws enforcing minimum house sizes and minimum lot sizes should be repealed. I think there are all sorts of policy policies that should be enacted to lower the minimum cost of living while preserving quality of life for the things that really matter.
Homes were much smaller and had many fewer amenities. In the U.S. home sizes have doubled since the 1950s, at the same time the family sizes have declined. My house as originally built in 1949 was about 800 square feet and had one bathroom (of a size that would qualify as a "3/4 bath" now). That was for a husband, wife, and three kids. It's had some additions over the years that bring it up to 1100 square feet, but no one would consider it a "large" house. It's okay for just me, though.
Families had one car at most. Kids in previous generations didn't need thousands of dollars in electronics and sports gear to keep themselves entertained, nor did they have (e.g.) orthodontics or other expensive (but elective) medical procedures. Vacations didn't involve trips to Hawaii.
I'm not saying that these are bad things (in fact they're largely good), but neither are they cheap.
It seems to be true economically. Take a look at the communities built post-WW2. The homes are tiny. As wages increased, people didn't reduce the % spent on housing, they increased the value of their housing so that the % stayed the same.
I have a colleague at work who is the sole breadwinner in his family. His wife home-schools their 7 (yes, seven) kids. He earns $75K if he gets a lot of overtime. He has substantial retirement savings. It can be done. Of course, he buys steers from 4H, raises and slaughters them for meat. He penny-pinches like crazy (not unlike my grandparents).
I think a big cause of human suffering is the built-in human psychology that you always have to work to make things better. Of course, humans never would have reach the level of wealth (in the broad definition) without that drive. However, it also leads to a lot of suffering as people who are very well off (the vast majority of the US) lament their unfortunate circumstances.
For example, if I'm expected to work a 40 hour work week but I figure out a way that everyone at the company with my job can do their job twice as fast, I don't suddenly get to work 20 hours a week and get paid the same--I get half the other employees fired because the company doesn't need them anymore--and maybe I get a pat on the back and some extra paid vacation.
The company gets a tremendous benefit, they take that money and invest it in software and robots that will help eliminate more jobs and make a small startup's founders rich in the process. The people that got laid off take whatever money they happen to have (which is probably a negative value) and try to get another job in a similar scenario and continue the cycle of being expected to do "more with less"
And what do people do with their savings if they're lucky enough to have managed to save something sizable? They buy houses, cars, TVs, and other stuff that has little likelihood of building more wealth.
I don't think anyone designed it this way on purpose, it just works out this way and will continue to until people start building value for themselves and escape from 9-5 prison (or 8-6 since no one actually works 40 hours anymore, or 7-7 if you include a decent commute)
The thing is, this article leaves a lot out. Per capita GDP has been rising. What has been happening to the inflation-adjusted hourly wage? It is below what it was in the early 1970s.
I look at the Forbes 400 and heirs like the Koch brothers, or the Waltons or the Mars family are doing well. Or entrepreneurs like Amway's Richard DeVos. Or upper middle class sons of lawyers and congressmen like Gates and Buffett, with rumored screwy mothers of the type that the sons don't kick back and relax once they hit $20 billion, they have to go on.
The majority of people are worse off. I don't primarily look at it as a "moral" thing, I see it as a broken system which will eventually collapse in some manner due to its internal contradictions - just as feudalism did, just as slavery in the US south and ancient Rome. This article is an example of this. Why not just tell the truth, that according to the government, the real hourly wage was better in the early 1970s, that things have gotten worse since then?
Stratification means the white, upper middle class, college educated Americans reading this have no idea what I mean. They are living in their own bubble of VC, congratulatory back-slapping etc. Born on third base and thinking they hit triples.
The point is, why are lying articles like this necessary? Why can't they just tell the truth? The fact that lying and propaganda, which the average wage worker believes no less than Russians believe Pravda, shows the weakness of the system. People don't buy these lies any how. They know. The majority of people - not the SF bay white upper middle class bubble of people.
I don't see what the problem is. I like the fact that women work as much as men do. I also like the fact that people in other countries are so productive. It means my family can buy better stuff than they could 40 years ago for a much cheaper price, and someone halfway across the world can put food on their table because of it.
This can mean one of two things. You may mean you are from one of the wealthier families who have benefited from the decline of US hourly wages. If so, you're in a minority.
If you mean it in a more general sense, I don't think you understand the concept of the terms inflation-adjusted wages or real wages. The man in 2012 making less in inflation-adjusted hourly wages than his father did 40 years ago can not buy more with his wages. The amount of food, clothes etc. he can buy after eight hours work is less, not more. I don't think you understand what I mean by real wages or inflation-adjusted wages. The average American working 40 hours a week can not afford as much food, clothes etc. as he could 40 years ago. Because real hourly wages have fallen over the past 40 years.
And looking at the data, to me it looks like real wages are roughly at the same level they were 50 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Real_Wages_1964-2004.gi...). If goods a cheaper and real wages are roughly the same, aren't we all better off?
This is true. But the figures you cite adjust for Chained CPI, not inflation. Chained CPI is not the same thing as inflation because the basket of goods does not remain constant.
Any purported inflation metric which doesn't come with a starting date is flawed. In fact, people today spend far less of their income on food, clothes, etc as they did 40 years ago.
It's that these damn kids just don't understand everything I had to struggle for. Or maybe, just maybe the older generations have forgotten what it's like being handed a world with unsolved problems.
We are trying to fix things that your generation gave us. Things like an increasingly warming planet, awful race relations, a failed and unjust war on drugs, lack of LGBT rights, and a huge aging entitled population who feel it's my responsibility to pay for their medical expenses. I'm sure my children's generation is going to deal with the issues we haven't solved and will (rightfully) be pissed at us about it.
But on the flip side of that coin, my life is easier than almost any other human's in the history of this planet. I live the life of a king from 80 years ago. I have the sum of human knowledge in my pocket. I can communicate with people across the globe for like no money. I have access to art and information and entertainment that my parents could only dream of. It's important to keep perspective on what's really going on.
What I meant was things like your statement "awful race relations". In the USA at least, race relations are HUGELY better today than when I was a kid. The improvement is astounding really given that most people from back then are still alive today. Also, LGBT rights are stronger and better recognized today than in the past.
Finally, I'm not pissed about anything related to what I wrote. More simply mystified.
Each generation is convinced they discovered the world and its problems. Same as it ever was. They'll grow out of it, like we all did before them.
But the core of the average American's existence has gotten worse. The core is economic - affordability of housing, affordability of raising children, affordability of health care and education - all of which are considerably worse today than they were decades ago.
The young of today are pissed because the odds are ludicrously stacked against them when it comes to the basics.
Sure, smartphones are $100 in a prepaid box and can get you any fact in the world at the touch of your fingertips. That's a pretty shitty replacement for, say, owning your own home, or being able to afford to send your kids to college. Hell, many of the young today can't even find stable employment, much less good enough employment to allow them to pursue future goals. Entire classes of labor are disappearing with nothing to take their place.
So yeah, we've landed robots are Mars, we know a lot more about most diseases, and we have technology that would seem like utter magic to people in the 50s. But all of that is very cold comfort to today's youth, who would give up all of that if it meant a decent income and a real shot at owning their own future.
But owning a home is easier now than ever before, not harder. It's up about 10% since the 60s: http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/data/histtab14.xls
College attendance is up too (you need to combine this data with population stats): http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98
If it's harder to attain these things, how are more people doing it?
By going further and further into debt.
How quickly do we forget? The crisis of 2008 wiped out millions of people who were mortgaged up to their eyeballs just so they can own a home. Real wages have been stagnant for years (and regressing in many parts of the country) while home prices continue rising. People are leveraging themselves to extreme (and unwise) levels just to afford the same house their parents comfortably bought with a single middle-class income.
The average student's debt load at graduation has also increased precipitously over the last few decades[1].
Economics and debt is at the root of these frustrations. The affordability of people's futures has decreased dramatically, a trend that was masked and softened by irresponsible borrowing and lending. But now that ride has come to a stop and we're faced with the reality that, for the majority of America, even people with upper-middle class incomes, the lifestyle of their middle-class parents seem downright unattainable..
[1] http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/student-debt-load-dee...
The "same" house? Hardly. People are leveraging themselves to afford bigger houses than their parents had. According to the National Association of Home Builders [0], average new house size was 1400 sq ft in 1970 and 2700 sq ft in 2009. You can find similar data from the census bureau's American Housing Survey [1]. For example, only 16% of total residences in 1970 had 2 or more bathrooms; in 2011 about 50% of residences had 2+ bathrooms.
I actually bought the same house as my parents [2]. Adjusting for inflation, it was essentially the same price in 2012 as it was in 1975 (within 2%, both as compared with CPI and comparing my dad's programmer salary at BigCo1 in 1975 to my wife's programmer salary at BigCo2 in 2009.)
[0] http://www.infoplease.com/askeds/us-home-size.html
[1] http://www.census.gov/housing/ahs/
[2] We recently found a fully wheelchair-accessible condo for my parents. We bought their house for market value; they used the proceeds to buy the condo. While the house has aged 4 decades since they bought it, it's got a brand new kitchen and a bunch of other recent upgrades, so on the whole it's pretty comparable.
Whats with this Self-righteousness?
I agree that the profit motivation was also in place during the Cold War.
The chances of a conflict resulting in billions of deaths seems much higher today than it ever did.
Chaos theory informs us that the future is impossible to predict for non trivial systems. I admit that I am partially relying on a gut feeling about this.
When everyone claims those are the stakes, everything looks like it's life or death.. and every little loss is monumental.
As far as war goes, I'm personally not hugely disconcerted by terrorism, but a lot of people seem to be. Osama bin Laden is certainly less of an existential threat than nuclear war was, but people are in a way almost more on edge about it: the possibility that the whole U.S. might get vaporized is one of those things almost too apocalyptic to worry about on a daily basis, while people do worry (often irrationally) that their subway train might get bombed.
But in any case, my main point isn't that no secure jobs exist, just that they're less common and there's no real clear path to them, whereas there used to be multiple clear paths to one, in both blue-collar and white-collar directions.
Why do they have a negative outlook? Because none of them are doing what they went to school to do, or even want to do.
I feel lucky, i've been programming since I was 13 years old. I love my job, and i get paid extremely well to do it. Sometimes it can be hard to understand why all of my friends have so much trouble, its easy for me to think of all the things they could have done differently. But the point is, life for non techies is not really great right now, and if you're young with no experience its even worse.
Did you have to take out large amount of debt as soon as you reached adult age to go to college in hopes that you chose the right major so that you could have some hope of paying that back before the interest started compounding against you?
Did you ever witness an attack on your country's largest city on live TV while sitting in a classroom with no idea why someone would do this? Then in response have your government send people you know to fight in a war to destroy wmd's that didnt exist and had nothing to do with the attack?
When in history has this not been a problem for Americans?
>Did you ever witness an attack on your country's largest city on live TV while sitting in a classroom with no idea why someone would do this?
Fortunately, no -- but, the current US military is all volunteer. Previously, in Vietnam, we had a draft. None of your friends were sent against their will. They all volunteered.
>Did you have to take out large amount of debt as soon as you reached adult age to go to college in hopes that you chose the right major so that you could have some hope of paying that back before the interest started compounding against you?
Neither did you. As many HNers know, you could simply learn programming and get a job without spending a dime on college. You could also have attended a vocational school, and become a plumber, electrician, carpenter, HVAC technician, medical/dental assistant, administrative assistant, computer/network technician, hospitality manager.... Most school districts in the US have taxpayer funded vocational schools. You wouldn't even have had to call a 1-800 number. The government already sorted this out for you. And, if you were an at-risk youth, we even have a program called Job Corps that takes you until the age of 25, and gives you a place to sleep, small stipend, feeds you, and gives you job training.
But no. People want the glamorous jobs. No one wants to just do the necessary labor to support society.
It's too bad if you wanted to be a poet and had your dreams crushed, you probably didn't foot the bill for it in the first place. Federal/state pell grants, and subsidized loans, paid for by working Americans probably paid for it. And if it didn't, it's likely that you came from a rich enough family that they should have paid. It is not society's responsibility to ensure that you have an equal opportunity to become the next Shakespeare.
First world problems.
When unions gave you good health insurance and a trip to the ER didn't cost a years salary.
>You could also have attended a vocational school, and become a plumber, electrician, carpenter, HVAC technician, medical/dental assistant, administrative assistant, hospitality manager...
Housing bubble burst all those jobs are worthless these days. Medical field is also swamped with entry level workers. I know this because I have friends that have done all of these things and yes all of them require school unless your dad owns the company.
> Most school districts in the US have taxpayer funded vocational schools. You wouldn't even have had to call a 1-800 number.
Community college used to be free and UC schools were $100 a year. Now UC schools are 30k a year and CC is definitely not free.
> It is not society's responsibility to ensure that you have an equal opportunity to become the next Shakespeare.
Who the hell is talking about being the next Shakespeare? Unless you are comfortable staring at a computer all day, which even though we do should not be that shocking that most humans aren't, it really is very very difficult to find a good paying job right now even with college or even in the medical industry. Maybe not in Silicon Valley but in most of the country it is tough times.
I was just talking to my grandparents about that the other day, and they had the exact same concerns in their time. They said it wouldn't have taken much of a hiccup for them to lose the house. I'm not sure this is a new problem at all.
Nuclear war didn't happenand really after Cuba it should have been clear that it wouldn't happen.
As for crime being higher -- what matter is the _perception_ and in that regard, crime has gotten a lot worse, because there are now so many news papers competing to tell how bad the world is.
As for race riots -- well they happened (in places like LA) and that must have been bad, but really are they worse than the riots in Canada or London?
And you are entirely forgetting terrorism, unemployment and the fear of the government. You didn't have the TSA and the NSA wiretapping everything (granted, properly only because they couldn't do it, technically).
This statement makes no sense to me. As long as the cold war was cold, there was no real end in sight, there was constant tension, and the threat was _real_. I grew up in the late 70, early 80s. That the world would take the turn it did (that the Soviet Union fell) came completely by surprise.
How old are you?
While your generation faced a real, visible threat of political violence, the next few generations face gradual, hidden threats that the current generation has no solution to:
1. Low-skill jobs are going away - be it outsourcing, migrant workers, logistical improvements, advanced software or robots. Imagine the spike in unemployment when Big Box stores automate shelf stocking and implements RFID checkouts. Sure, you will need humans to make, sell, and maintain the robots and new tech. but they will be skilled jobs and most likely fewer in number. You will still have servers and cooks at restaurants but when 50 year olds get laid off from Walmart and Target, they will vie for the same jobs that teenagers trying to support themselves through school do.
2. American Dream is getting harder to achieve - because of global competition, decreasing assistance (from family, society, government), and requirement for higher skill sets. 30 years ago a person could get a college degree with good high school grades and government grants, buy a house with down-payment assistance from family, and have a steady job for decades with a promise of social security and pension. That is rare today, though not impossible. There may be more college graduates today but they are no longer valued as they were a few decades ago. So while blacksmiths and farmers could buy a five acre plot of land and build a house with a barn in 1970s without taking out huge loans, their kids cannot do the same today. If you're 30 and don't make enough to rent a place on your own because of student loans and car payments, things will start to look gloomy. Of course there is a choice of going to cheaper college and buying an $800 car but 30 years ago college graduates had a better standard of living.
3. New problems that the current generation cares about that past didn't as much - Climate change and global equality. I know environmentalism started decades ago and anti-war protests are nothing new. But today's generation no longer considers dictatorship and oppression in distant lands as something you can ignore. I'm not saying every kid with an iPhone in US is actively fighting Kony or Morsi but today they are more aware than ever of injustices happening around the world. Knowing that a thousand people were just killed or imprisoned in a country you want to visit next year makes things look pretty gloomy. Similarly realizing that climate change is happening and is not being addressed by those in power is enough to scare those who hope to be alive in 2050.
I'm not saying world is getting worse. I am saying there are things happening that aren't outright frightening and abrupt like global wars but are still severe enough to worry those who expect to inherit them.
There was really only a short period in the 1970s where food prices skyrocketed and the price of land didn't keep pace. Outside of that small window, I don't think farming was any more difficult to enter then than it is today. The land is more expensive now, sure, but the profits are much greater so it all equals out. Owning a barn on a small acreage in the 1970s that loses you money each year isn't exactly what I would call a win, and I think you could still find some unproductive land that is affordable to the average person if you really still want that today.
That could be one reason.
Flying should be the ultimate fun thing ever to do!
That's great!
I randomly take flights somewhere and back just for that fun!
The article notes, "Many Americans, for instance, are convinced that 'half of all marriages end in divorce,'" but that was somewhat of an exaggeration even at the time of peak divorce rates. The statistical fallacy that prompted that mistaken belief was comparing the rate of new divorces each year to the rate of new first marriages each year, ignoring the tens of millions of people who were already married and who stayed married.
A federal government survey, "First Marriages in the United States: Data From the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth" (March 22, 2012)
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr049.pdf
which may or may not have focused particularly on this issue, projects,
"In 2006–2010, the probability of a first marriage lasting at least 10 years was 68% for women and 70% for men. Looking at 20 years, the probability that the first marriages of women and men will survive was 52% for women and 56% for men in 2006–2010. These levels are virtually identical to estimates based on vital statistics from the early 1970s (24). For women, there was no significant change in the probability of a first marriage lasting 20 years between the 1995 NSFG (50%) and the 2006–2010 NSFG (52%) (Table 5). The remainder of first marriages that ended within a 20-year period were dissolved by divorce, separation, or rarely, by death."
The study also notes that marriages have a higher probability of lasting longer if both members of the couple have higher levels of education rather than lower, and were married a year or more before the birth of their first child.
Here is an article that explains the commonplace statistical fallacy:
"Divorce Rate: It's Not as High as You Think" New York Times (April 19, 2005)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html
". . . . In 2003, for example, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 7.5 marriages per 1,000 people and 3.8 divorces, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
"But researchers say that this is misleading because the people who are divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In fact, they say, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that, with rates now declining, it probably never will."
On other points mentioned in the article and other comments here, work hours have certainly not gone down to the level predicted when I was a child, when rising productivity was predicted to cut the typical work week to as few as twenty hours per week. Instead, personal consumption has gone up to levels unimaginable in the 1960s, with many people flying on jets to vacations in foreign countries, and houses being larger than they have ever been, and cars more powerful and luxurious (and fuel-efficient) than ever before. Americans still work a lot to keep up with the Joneses, and workers in other countries still work almost as much as what has long defined "full-time" employment in law, but people now regard as routine daily spending purchases that once would have been deemed luxuries.
From the article: "The media are heavily biased toward extreme events, and they are slightly biased toward negative events -- though in their defense, that bias may just be a reflection of the human brain's propensity to focus more on negative information than positive, a trait extensively documented by neuroscience and psychology studies." This probably is the most economical explanation for why many people don't notice much of the gradual progress they have enjoyed in their lifetimes. Human cognitive biases run in the direction of noticing and focusing on problems (for good evolutionary reasons), and lack of problems fades into the background and is not noticed.
Perhaps the down votes are because you're quoting a study that samples 20 year increments when marriage is supposed to be a lifetime event.
Many marriages stay together, rather unhappily, until the last child is out of the household. This study pretty much ignores that segment of the issue. And issues beyond that. That it's almost 50% within 20 years actually makes the issue seem worse.
The term working class was invented for a reason.