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Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

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Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#51

Post by [deleted] »

Auracle wrote: post #35
johnklos wrote: post #31

Considering that the amount of computing that could be rented for the price of a house every month could now be bought for $20, this isn't surprising. What's surprising is that with all these resources made available to the world, we still have systems that allow hoarding of wealth to such a degree that most people can't afford to own a home and many can barely afford rent and food.

Land/space are limited. I live where most on HN would consider very rural - the closest town is 600 people and a town of 20,000 is about 30 minutes from me. Even when I was buying a home back in 2011 there were basically no good plots of land for sale. What was there was about $10,000 an acre. I eventually got my house for $180,000 and it’s on 15 acres, meaning my 3,000 square foot house was basically only $30,000 wh…

[deleted]

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#52

Post by ajkdhcb2 »

HPsquared wrote: post #9
stuckinhell wrote: post #4

That's cool, but inflation is still hitting me harder than I expected at the grocery store with 3 hungry kids. This article and honestly a lot of articles by the WaPo seem tone deaf lately.

Inflation is the economics version of "software getting slower faster than hardware gets faster". In other words, the increased output is being diverted to areas that don't produce value.

Milton Friedman would say only the governments' money printing presses can cause it. A lot more simple, convincing and clearly logical to me...

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#53

Post by s1artibartfast »

imtringued wrote: post #45
s1artibartfast wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet if you take into account welfare payments and programs, total income growth has been large. If you make 20K a year, you get about 40K of additional government welfare. If you make 45k a year, you get zero. For a vast number of Americans, increasing wage is a bad thing. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-warped-welfare-syste...

I don't think anyone expected anything different but the housing and childcare benefits basically account for 80% of the welfare trap.

Which make it even more effective as a trap. If working more or increasing salary means losing your housing and childcare, it is a non-starter.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#54

Post by VoodooJuJu »

johnklos wrote: post #31

Considering that the amount of computing that could be rented for the price of a house every month could now be bought for $20, this isn't surprising. What's surprising is that with all these resources made available to the world, we still have systems that allow hoarding of wealth to such a degree that most people can't afford to own a home and many can barely afford rent and food.

This. A cheap lamp on a table does little good when I can afford neither the table, the roof above it, nor the food to serve at that table.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#55

Post by NeoTar »

psychphysic wrote: post #32
rsynnott wrote: post #8

Mildly weird piece, in that it's really measuring two things; lighting efficiency (and only at an extremely low resolution, implying a whole-system efficiency that doesn't change between the invention of the light bulb and the fluorescent light) and wage growth. 60 hours of work may have bought 72 hours of electric light in 1880, but rather more in 1990, say, for a combination of both reasons. That said, LED bulbs do…

Ironically, LEDs being so efficient means I need to use the central heating more often. My CFL TV used to provide some respite, not now I have an OLED.

I hope your heating is more energy efficient than heating with electric light bulbs though!

(And it should be - worst comes to worst basic electrical heating can be effectively 100% efficient, and heat pumps can do better)

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#56

Post by chung8123 »

johnklos wrote: post #31

Considering that the amount of computing that could be rented for the price of a house every month could now be bought for $20, this isn't surprising. What's surprising is that with all these resources made available to the world, we still have systems that allow hoarding of wealth to such a degree that most people can't afford to own a home and many can barely afford rent and food.

Things that can be produced and consumed all over seems to have been averaging down (from US perspective) but things that cannot be done somewhere else or have strong limits on their production (services, housing) have inflated a lot. We had inflation with a pool of items I think.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#57

Post by mech987987 »

johnklos wrote: post #47
somewhat_drunk wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>2.7 million illegal border crossings have zero to do with 1.6 million housing units Only if you assume all 2.7 million people are now homeless. Price is a function of supply and demand. Obviously, increasing the number of people within a system without commensurately increasing housing will result in upward pressure on housing prices. You could argue that the system-wide effect is minimal, but you would need data to…

[flagged]

You two are talking past eachother. You did not address his argument.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#58

Post by barelyauser »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #52
HPsquared wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is the economics version of "software getting slower faster than hardware gets faster". In other words, the increased output is being diverted to areas that don't produce value.

Milton Friedman would say only the governments' money printing presses can cause it. A lot more simple, convincing and clearly logical to me...

It really is that simple, but certain people benefit from muddying the water and describing any increase in price as inflation.

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#59

Post by kortilla »

johnklos wrote: post #31

Considering that the amount of computing that could be rented for the price of a house every month could now be bought for $20, this isn't surprising. What's surprising is that with all these resources made available to the world, we still have systems that allow hoarding of wealth to such a degree that most people can't afford to own a home and many can barely afford rent and food.

Homeless people have cell phones. Why do you think great advancements bringing down the price of computing would solve housing?

Re: Amount of work that once bought an hour of light now buys 51 years of it (2017)

#60

Post by bgirard »

Wow, I had to check the math and with my assumptions it does in fact take >2 hours of minimum wage labor to power a CFL for 1 year ($7.25/hr, 0.14$ KWh). It's much higher than I expected. I had the notion that turning off CFLs was hardly worth my time but that's not entirely true.
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