That’s widely quoted but turns out to be incorrect. https://twitter.com/jmhorp/status/1125468274995675138
They claim "median personal income for ALL AGES us up 394.4% since 1977". However a quick check on FRED [0] tells me this figure is way off: 1977: $23,202 2016: $31,099 (2017 not available in the data) ~34% increase They said they had sources but I only see sources for the price of bread claim. Maybe they aren't looking at real wages? In which case the claim is very misleading. I also agree twitter's thread layout is…
Yes, they aren't looking at real wages, that's the whole point of the comment: they are comparing the inflation of bread price with the nominal growth of median personal income.
That's like saying if heroin is causing you pain then just back away from it. Rising sea levels will kill and or displace millions of people. That's heartbreaking for those who care .
And it's terrifying (or should be) to even those who are only self interested. Displacement of millions means mass migration and destabilization of larger parts of the world. The climate change and warming that cause it mean crop failures, novel diseases, and weather changes that will have the potential of affecting everyone.
Yes, that is bad. How bad though? To be both objective and realistic you would need to break that down as a cost increase, per capita, in portion to percentage increase of annual cost of living. There are real numbers to these things, and I suspect they are large, but I really don’t know. Objectively speaking until such numbers are simulated we are all just making things up and that is most depressing of all.
My wife and I are not having kids. If you could sum it up into one short explanation as to why: My wife and I don't believe that the future is going to be a better place. Chief among the reasons are wealth inequality and buying power. If I can barely afford to buy a house now with a great job, I shudder to think what my kids would be faced with.
Have some context - you are better off living in this time/place than any other time and your future children would probably be too.
Just because now is better than in the past, doesn't mean now is worth bringing someone into the world.
That's just a logical argument, not whether or not you actually believe now is or isn't worth it. That's entirely subjective and not really worth arguing about IMO.
It is honestly ludicrous to see the results of decades of economic warfare and the nonstop closing of proverbial doors of economic opportunity done by boomers and to a lesser extent gen X and then boil everything down to "Social media means more people compare their normal to everyone else's best." It isn't that it's not true, it is! Social media sucks for mental health. It's just also true that there are many legiti…
I think it's a tricky one, because there are a couple of factors here. It's not just one thing, but rather a ton of things - for example, there is social media which is a great way to see which of your 500 friends is currently on vacation right.this.second (and someone always is). While in some senses there's more opportunity than ever before for some groups (e.g. minorities / women) in the workplace, there's also mo…
> now cost next to nothing...international travel
I'd like to know your travel agent. Or could it be that despite your very real housing woes, you're making a high salary (as you say) and don't realize that international travel is still well out of reach for most Americans?
There have been 4 or 5 (one is a bit ambiguous) elections where the winner lost the popular vote. [0] So no, this isn't more than any other time in US history combined. But more importantly, who cares? They lost the popular vote in an election in which the popular vote didn't count for anything. If the popular vote had counted for something in these elections, you would have gotten a different result. The candidates…
I agree. Complaining about the popular vote in presidential elections is like complaining that the NBA Finals were won by the team that won the most games, but had a lower total score across those games. Winning 2 games by 5 points each, is better than winning a single game by 30 points. So, winning more states even by close margins, is better than running up the score in a few states.
> the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable Here are some things I remember from that time off the top of my head: We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer Acid rain was going to destroy lakes, trees, rivers, eventually killing us all HIV was not well understood and very very scary Waco/…
> We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer I'd probably be ridiculed by most of the younger crowd here for my views on global warming, I mean climate change, but as someone who distinctly remembers the nonstop warnings of the Ozone Layer - we're all gonna die - I just don't put much energy into worrying about the latest issues related to the environment. Part of me knows…
> Part of me knows that I'm probably underestimating the actual problem, but I've been hearing warnings for years that never amounted to anything.
Listening to the cultural zeitgeist is one thing, but actually listening to the scientists who are doing these studies or people who are summarizing their findings is another. I really recommend reading through the NCA summary https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/ and sitting with the data and what it says.
The short answer is that you are vastly underestimating the problem
> We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer I'd probably be ridiculed by most of the younger crowd here for my views on global warming, I mean climate change, but as someone who distinctly remembers the nonstop warnings of the Ozone Layer - we're all gonna die - I just don't put much energy into worrying about the latest issues related to the environment. Part of me knows…
This is a very insightful comment! When all you've heard for the past 40 years is the end of the world is around the corner, and that doesn't turn out to be true, you start to tune it out.
Yup, I’m over 40 and there’s definitely a “Boy who cried wolf” effect in play here. I’m tired of having to be constantly outraged about the latest environment disaster that’s sure to kill us all this time!
Social media's ills, rising wealth and income inequality, rising sea levels, mass extinction event, crumbling roads, shit wages, corruption in government and industry, governments overwhelmingly filled with representatives of other generations with different priorities...there is a huge list of reasons to be pessimistic and they are constantly thrown in our faces online.
Constantly hitting records for economic highs. Lowest unemployment rate for blacks and Hispanics in the history of recorded unemployment rates. Rising wages. Just took a huge step in eradicating HIV in the US by securing free treatment for 200k poor people every year. Between the technological advances in solar/wind/batter, renewed interest in nuclear, and shrinking CO2 it seems climate change is well on its way to b…
Economic highs seem to be part of the problem.
Only about 15% of Americans participate in the stock market, most of the rest of the world doesn't even have the access. The best investment opportunities are being reserved for the elites. 2009 housing crisis resulted in a massive wealth transfer to the people who happened to be in position to take advantage of it. Capital gains are the primary cause of inequality.
Technically unemployment is low, but the share of involuntary part-time work has been steadily climbing. Young people are working these low paying dead end jobs just to survive.
> the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable Here are some things I remember from that time off the top of my head: We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer Acid rain was going to destroy lakes, trees, rivers, eventually killing us all HIV was not well understood and very very scary Waco/…
> We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer I'd probably be ridiculed by most of the younger crowd here for my views on global warming, I mean climate change, but as someone who distinctly remembers the nonstop warnings of the Ozone Layer - we're all gonna die - I just don't put much energy into worrying about the latest issues related to the environment. Part of me knows…
The nonstop warnings of the Ozone layer were probably among the reasons for the quite decisive switch away from CFCs, preventing the problem from getting truly bad. It's an interesting balance: you need to push it through to people that something needs to be taken care of, it's mostly successful and everyone is annoyed that it wasn't so bad after all, why the panic? (I wonder if Y2K is a good IT equivalent: Not much happened, because people were worried before and stuff got fixed, but the worry jumped over into mainstream not seeing that distinction)
> the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable Here are some things I remember from that time off the top of my head: We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer Acid rain was going to destroy lakes, trees, rivers, eventually killing us all HIV was not well understood and very very scary Waco/…
> We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer I'd probably be ridiculed by most of the younger crowd here for my views on global warming, I mean climate change, but as someone who distinctly remembers the nonstop warnings of the Ozone Layer - we're all gonna die - I just don't put much energy into worrying about the latest issues related to the environment. Part of me knows…
You need to look at what was done in response to those warnings before you can say whether they were wrong — otherwise you’re like the people who say Y2K was a waste of money because they didn’t see the bugs which were fixed.
In the case of CFCs, we know that a global response largely solved the problem. In the case of global warming, where a trillion dollar industry has been pumping out spin since they first realized global warming was really happening in the 1970s, we have not see the same response and we’re right on the trajectory predicted by reports in the 1990s — only now it’ll be much harder to do anything: