61–70 of 221 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> global average wage is $2k ... not per month. Per year How much was it before Globalization ?
Why are you trying to create a false dichotomy?
The trouble with economic globalization is that we assumed that markets work and work well all over the world. That there would be an inevitable stable middle class built from the sheer power of market forces. It turns out that those in power around the world have every incentive to keep the gains to themselves and keep their population desperate -- desperate people have to weigh their economic decisions against thei…
Yes, you have to have some common standards which undercut a race to the bottom, otherwise countries will compete by undermining each others protection and welfare systems.
But you're implying that Trump believes this? Trump has always struck me as a 'cut regulation at all costs' candidate. And the real deal which must make this work will have to be international - perhaps to build these common standards into the trade deals. But Trump again stands directly opposed to that, he wants a 'my country first, beggar thy neighbour' solution, which cannot be sustained.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one support globalization because it's how me and all my friends escaped the fate of our parents. Working all your life for $20k/year in a tiny little country in Europe. Without globalization we'd all be fucked. If we could get skills and jobs that rival Bay Area or are in Bay Area from half the world away, why can't someone from Atlanta? What's stopping them? What, realistically, are the missinh opportunities…
So you were lucky (to be smart enough) to out-compete your peers and a bunch of Americans. By definition not everyone can achieve this success (as it's based on competition), so it does nothing to alleviate inequality on a scale that matters.
Don't get me wrong - I agree with the moral obligation to help those less lucky than you. I don't always agree with the looseness in which the word "luck" is applied these days. The problem is if you look at basically anyone's life, there's always SOMETHING you can point to that was "lucky" compared to their peer(s). Yes, some more than others. But perhaps we can begin to give people the benefit of the doubt when they say they learned a difficult craft, and a new language, to lift themselves out of a shitty situation. It discounts his hard work to say it all came down to lucky brain genetics.
It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity. When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that's disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said…
"It's better to reign in hell."
Poverty is worse than most natural disasters and worse than most of the predicted consequences of climate change. I'm willing to bet that the infant mortality rate in Miami is lower during a category five hurricane than it is in a crushingly poor society in perfect weather.
People will burn the world to escape poverty. It's better to reign in hell.
Poverty is also relative due not only to the hedonic treadmill effect but to relative differences in cost of living. An American cannot even eat on $2k/year and in many places you need a minimum of $40k+ per year to afford basic housing. We have an inflationary economy, which means that anything not increasing is decreasing. You can plunge a first world person into poverty by just not inflating their wages for a while. Now add a ridiculous debt load and high unemployment.
This is why we need to drop what I call "abstinence based environmentalism." The only hope that we have of evading a global environmental catastrophe is paradoxically to increase wealth and standard of living as much as possible. Not only does this make people open to conservation but it also reduces birth rates. Trying to deny wealth to conserve resources will have the paradoxical effect of promoting short term greed and increasing birth rates. It will also lead to conflict and destabilize the international political order, making large scale cooperation on global environmental challenges impossible.
First world morons who romanticize poverty drive me nuts. These folks are either hopelessly naive, delusional, or crypto-elitist. I heard it put this way once: "Rap music comes mostly from poor inner city neighborhoods. That's why it's full of references to money and getting rich. Poor people know that money actually does matter. Only rich people can afford the luxury of not caring about money." I forget where I read that (years ago) but it's spot on.
The biggest problem with Globalisation is that it doesn't contribute to global economic development. It merely outsources manual labour and less profitable/desirable work from rich countries to less-developed countries because of the price difference in labour. Growing up I always imagined a world where the big cities of Africa could be just as developed as those in Europe, Asia or America. Instead we've been given a…
The number of people in poverty has decreased drastically over the past half century. Do you have any other candidates other than trade liberalization?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do realize that while the 1% doesn't include all IT workers in the bay area, the 2% does (I believe 1.6% is 100k per year before tax). It's easy to complain about the 1%, but most people on this site ... are the 1%. Median household income in the US is $55,775. That means, about half of all US households have less than that. [1] By and large, it's not the wealth enjoyed by the few. It's the comfortable, but proba…
It's not even the "1%", it's the "1% of the 1%", Zuckerberg is great no doubt, but does he really deserve 2000X as much as a high level machine learning researcher? The issue is that ~6-8 people in the world own the same amount of wealth as the bottom 40% of the world, that's not because of eight software engineers making $100K.
I don't like the use of the word "predictable". I would qualify this populist uprising as a Black Swan[0], and as Taleb describes in his book, one of the common reactions to a black swan is to rationalize it's obvious predictability after the fact. Were there logical reasons to believe this populist uprising would occur? Of course (and this paper does a good job exploring them). Was it predictable? I don't know. By a…
The problem, is the mainstream media, and even educated researchers miss the mark regularly. To me it appears most poeple assume they know better or listening to the wrong experts.
That's actually the whole reason I created my startup:
We basically filter out the noise, and listen to experts. It works amazingly well for investing, but also predicts things like Trump winning the election. It even creates an awesome (highly relevant) news feed.
I think most people just live in their bubbles and close their senses to what's right in front of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I for one support globalization because it's how me and all my friends escaped the fate of our parents. Working all your life for $20k/year in a tiny little country in Europe. Without globalization we'd all be fucked. If we could get skills and jobs that rival Bay Area or are in Bay Area from half the world away, why can't someone from Atlanta? What's stopping them? What, realistically, are the missinh opportunities…
Globalization unlocks the potential of top 5% types stuck in underdeveloped countries. At the same time, it often undermines the prosperity of bottom 2/3 types born in wealthy countries. As a matter of democratic theory, however, the political establishment's duty is to the majority of the populace in their own country, not to untapped potential in other countries.
Of course, colonialism did not bring any advantages to the West or cause bad things in Asia or Africa.
It is too easy to forget that when a person is employed at $100k-$200k per year in the Bay Area, you want things like stopping climate change, more parks, more air, fair treatment, and above all, peace and prosperity. When making $30k with absolutely zero hope of real increases in Atlanta being a warehouse worker for an industry that's disappearing, the same person would burn all those things down, I would have said…
I for one support globalization because it's how me and all my friends escaped the fate of our parents. Working all your life for $20k/year in a tiny little country in Europe. Without globalization we'd all be fucked. If we could get skills and jobs that rival Bay Area or are in Bay Area from half the world away, why can't someone from Atlanta? What's stopping them? What, realistically, are the missinh opportunities…
I really think the moderators should add "Downvoting are not meant for expressing disagreement." in the HN guidelines.
You mean exporting the middle class and then undercutting upward mobility was doomed to face a political backlash? What a surprise.