We're living the dream; we just don't realize it

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/24/opinion/johnson-progress-overlooked/index.html

by rmah • 14 years ago

57 102 14 years ago

rmah2• 14 years ago

One thing that I, as an older person, don't understand is the pervasive negative world view that so many young people today seem to have. I grew up with the threat of nuclear annihilation, burning cities, race riots, out of control crime, etc, etc. All that has passed. Things are so much better but the younger generations seem to see things in a much more negative light than when I was young. Why is this?

kiba• 14 years ago

People have really bad infodiet. They eat junk information rather than analyzing if their information is wholesome. On local news, you hear about the latest shooting or the latest robbery or the latest bad thing that happen, all of which doesn't mean anything until you aggregate them into statistics and analyze them.

benihana• 14 years ago

I'm sure your parents' generation would ask why you were so negative. They vanquished Hitler and saved the world. So what's there to complain about?

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.

rmah2• 14 years ago

Um, no. That was never really a complaint of our parents to my generation. Note, I wasn't talking about a recognition of struggle. I never said we had to struggle and, IMO, we didn't really.

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.

Jayschwa• 14 years ago

Younger generations didn't grow up through "real" crises. Their frame of reference is different, and through that lens, mountains are made out of molehills.

wavesounds6• 14 years ago

A attack on the nations largest city killing 3000 people or the greatest economic down turn since the great depression aren't "real" crises?

Whats with this Self-righteousness?

kalms• 14 years ago

Come on. We're fighting proxy wars, losing friends, and recession is biting us in the ass. Please don't try and lecture us on what a real crisis is. We might not be in a world war right now, but war is war.

mark_l_watson3• 14 years ago

+1 I am in my early 60s. I think that the world was a much more dangerous place during the 'cold war' but few people seem to realize that. Part of this is marketing by special interests ("Orange terror alert today!") motivated by profit.

wavesounds6• 14 years ago

There were no attacks on American soil during the cold war, its easily as arguable that the "special interests" during the cold war were motivated by profit just as much as during the war on terrorism and during both times the American public was lied to by so called "marketers". Being a young person I don't see the difference except perhaps your generation was more gullible.

caseysoftware• 14 years ago

We (in the US) have a political system where the other side isn't just portrayed as being wrong.. but being immoral monsters looking to destroy: people, businesses, society, women, families, gays, religion, etc, etc.

When everyone claims those are the stakes, everything looks like it's life or death.. and every little loss is monumental.

_delirium3• 14 years ago

All those things have gotten better, but for a lot of people economic security has gotten worse, and economic security tends to override a lot of other views when it comes to perceptions. Median incomes are roughly flat, and security of those incomes is on a significant downward trend. My dad, for example, graduated with an engineering degree in the '60s, and landed basically a "good job for life": good income, defined-benefits pension, full health coverage, informal understanding that as long as you didn't do anything absurdly bad, the company would find a continued place for you. Also, workweeks were 40 hours, vacation 6 weeks/yr, and there was only quite rare overtime or weekend work. That kind of secure employment is much less common today.

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.

ams61103• 14 years ago

You can still find it in university staff positions. They are notorious for never firing even the most incompetent, do-nothing workers. Salaries are not great, but benefits and vacation time tend to be extraordinary.

swalsh• 14 years ago

I had 5 good friends when I was in high school. They were all extremely intelligent, and motivated people. Right now, 1 is a security guard at a fireworks factory, another works in a print shop loading stacks of paper, another just dropped out of college to join the army (due to financial reasons), the fourth works 4 part time jobs to live in a crappy apartment, and the 5th is unemployed.

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.

wavesounds6• 14 years ago

Did both of your parents have to work to support the family? Then if one of them lost their job did you have to wonder if you were going to lose the house? Or if someone in your family got sick would you have to worry about losing your house or going bankrupt?

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?

readme• 14 years ago

>Or if someone in your family got sick would you have to worry about losing your house or going bankrupt?

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.

randomdata2• 14 years ago

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.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

Yeah well no.

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).

mongol• 14 years ago

> Nuclear war didn't happenand really after Cuba it should have been clear that it wouldn't happen.

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?

chime• 14 years ago

I'm a fervent believer in the notion that despite short-term setbacks, humanity as a whole is improving on all fronts - social, political, technological, and economical. However, there is tremendous inequality in where the real improvements are occurring, especially when compared to segments that experience turmoils.

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.

randomdata2• 14 years 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

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.

rizzom5000• 14 years ago

I recently saw a report by the World Bank regarding climate change and how it will likely change our future.

That could be one reason.

Tichy4• 14 years ago

Yes and no. What puzzles me is that people seem to have to work more and more to make ends meet. Our parents could finance a home and family with one earner, now both parents have to work. Social welfare is always under attack (speaking of Germany), which doesn't seem to make sense - why could we afford these things a couple of decades ago, when today the industry should be much more efficient? We should have an easier time than our parents, but do we?

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.

jerf• 14 years ago

"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."

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.

JeffL• 14 years ago

But in practice, the vast majority of quality jobs are 40 hours per week minimum, and its somewhat difficult to get a comparably good job for less. If I had to guess, I would guess that nearly everyone I know with a full time job would take an extra few weeks of unpaid vacation if they were allowed to without stigma.

wavesounds6• 14 years ago

The rich are much richer today then they used to be.

ams61103• 14 years ago

But how does that impact the ability of a "middle class" person to earn a decent living?

yummyfajitas6• 14 years ago

What puzzles me is that people seem to have to work more and more to make ends meet.

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.]

tomwalker• 14 years ago

My grandfather worked as a bar manager (not owner) and his wife did not work. They were one of the first to get a TV and washing machine on their street, had a car, went on foreign holidays every few years and had 5 children.

What wage would you need to be in a similar position today?

_delirium3• 14 years ago

Side point, but in the U.S. at least, dishwashers and washers/dryers were pretty common in the 1970s. In my mind they're even very postwar 1950s/60s culturally. My grandparents living in a small 1930s house in LA weren't that well off, so were behind on acquiring such things, but even they had ditched the backyard clothesline by sometime in the 1960s. Admittedly, they didn't have a Roomba.

jiggy20112• 14 years ago

I wonder if those figures include unpaid overtime or not?

bokonist4• 14 years ago

One problem is that is not possible to cut costs and live 1970's style, at least not where I live (metro-Boston):

- 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.

Androsynth2• 14 years ago

dishwasher and washer/dryer? Dont you mean smart phone and tablet?

Tichy4• 14 years ago

In the attractive cities housing is very expensive, even a small place might be out of reach for a family.

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.

captobvious• 14 years ago

This is exactly my feelings as well. I just compare my situation with my parents and see that they had it ridiculously easy compared to what my situation is like now, while the lifestyle is basically the same in every way.

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.

rmk2• 14 years ago

This is what someone said about why the times don't seem to get easier despite everything being seemingly more advanced:

> 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)

ckuehne2• 14 years ago

Since the standard of living for the 'society of producers' has risen by a good measure since the time 'someone' said that, I guess 'someone' has been proven wrong by a good measure.

Turing_Machine2• 14 years ago

Of course, every single attempt to build a society on Marxist principles has resulted in slavery, starvation, and mass murder, but I'm sure it'll work if we give it just one more chance, right?

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

No small part of it could be that our parents generation did not have the means to spend $1mm in resources to keep an old man alive for 8 months longer coupled with the dangerous idea that everyone might be entitled to those last 8 months no matter what they did in their lives leading up to that point.

This seems to me like the huge, looming problem our generation will have to solve.

potatolicious3• 14 years ago

> "the dangerous idea that everyone might be entitled to those last 8 months no matter what they did in their lives leading up to that point."

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.

cynicalkane• 14 years ago

For the lower and lower middle classes the standard of living has been about the same since the 70s. But what you expect to see is life get easier for some segments of the population, and harder for others. You might be stuck in a population where life got harder. In particular, I remember seeing a paper (wish I could find the link) that claimed, specifically, white lower class individuals are worse off, whereas most population cohorts are better off today than decades ago.

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.

QuantumGood• 14 years ago

It would be interesting to calculate cost of living per square foot, adding in changing monthly technology costs and commute costs.

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.

wissler• 14 years ago

Would you like the red pill or the blue pill?

bokonist4• 14 years ago

"Our parents could finance a home and family with one earner, now both parents have to work."

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.

yummyfajitas6• 14 years ago

But production of housing did go up. A quick google search suggests the increase was from about 1500ft^2 to 2500ft^2 [1], though I can't seem to find the primary source.

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)

gcheong• 14 years ago

People have been lamenting the difficulty of making ends meet for as long as humanity has been around and I'm not so sure that today it is truly any less possible to finance a home and family with just one earner than it was a generation ago. I certainly don't think it was easily affordable on one income a generation ago as seems to be the perception. A lot of the reason for two earner families today is because of the fact that more women are able to work due to a more equitable marketplace for jobs. Perhaps the people of a generation ago would have liked the extra income but that just was not an option. Now two inomes is often seen as a necessity but that could be because people's expectations of what kind standard of living they should have, as well as what is possible for the average person to have today, has risen along with their incomes. As for the 40 hour workweek, if I read the same source, that amounted to a reduction in hours for the average person.

marknutter9• 14 years ago

I think what happened was that more and more women entered the workforce, either out of necessity or out of personal desire (I think largely the latter) and the market adjusted accordingly. Because the work pool roughly doubled, the wages decreased over time. Add to that the fact that one of the two largest expenses a family typically has, a car, doubled because both parents work, and also the fact that we generally live in houses that are larger and better equipped than the previous generations, and I think it makes sense that we have adjusted our lifestyles to using up the full capital we receive when both parents work.

Turing_Machine2• 14 years ago

"Our parents could finance a home and family with one earner"

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.

refurb• 14 years ago

Just a week or so ago someone posted an article that stated "Increases in electrical efficiency just lead to the use of more electricity."

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.

dave_sullivan• 14 years ago

I think a lot of it has to do with who benefits most from efficiency and where that benefit is allocated after.

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)

arjunnarayan• 14 years ago

Cue: Everything is amazing and nobody is happy. http://vimeo.com/14975413 (starts at 1:54, although the whole thing is vaguely related)

chm• 14 years ago

I suggest to watch the whole video, it's not very long, but funny!

phaemon• 14 years ago

I love that video. It's like the ultimate "blame the victim" of all time.

Flying should be the ultimate fun thing ever to do!

That's great!

I randomly take flights somewhere and back just for that fun!

charleshaanel• 14 years ago

"We're living the dream..." The question is, who is the dreamer? Red pill or blue pill? Hmmmm

lucian3032• 14 years ago

Stopped reading at the point he names anti depressants as a life improving discovery. Author obviously forgot this is supposed to be journalism not creative writing.

marknutter9• 14 years ago

If you didn't read the article, then you have no business posting comments on this thread.

lucian3032• 14 years ago

Oh the hacker news Gestapo. Please show me where it says that in the TOS. And I did read it, only to the point where it started being fiction.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

AFTER EDIT: I am curious about the initial pattern of upvotes and downvotes in this thread. I'm especially curious about whether anyone disagrees with any of the factual points of view I have expressed here, and particularly if anyone has any authoritative source to prove me wrong about anything I have said here. I like to learn. I'll leave the rest of this comment just as it was when it was first posted, and invite everyone's learned comments.

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.

brandall10• 14 years ago

"I'm especially curious about whether anyone disagrees with any of the factual points of view I have expressed here, and particularly if anyone has any authoritative source to prove me wrong about anything I have said here."

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.

waterlesscloud2• 14 years ago

Am I reading this wrong, or does it basically say that half of all first marriages end within 20 years?

AdelsonVLandis3• 14 years ago

"per capita GDP...the trend is positive"

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.

marknutter9• 14 years ago

It's not some conspiracy perpetrated by the rich that our wages have been going down over time, it's simple economics. In this country, women are now just as likely to work as men, so the labor pool has roughly doubled. Wages decline accordingly. There are also more and more people in other countries willing and able to produce goods and services we desire but at a lower wage.

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.

AdelsonVLandis3• 14 years ago

"It means my family can buy better stuff than they could 40 years ago for a much cheaper price..."

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.

ams61103• 14 years ago

We're starting to see these kind of pieces in the mainstream press... from the "I'm glad I'm not dead" pablum in the NYT to this. Why? Whose interest is served by trying to convince people that the worst economy and employment situation in most people's lifetimes is "really not so bad ... be glad you're not dead."

ucee054• 14 years ago

OT, but: Why the hell do Americans refer to the old-blue collar workers of the 1970s (eg General Motors factory workers) as "middle class"?

The term working class was invented for a reason.

We're living the dream; we just don't realize it

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