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30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

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Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#21

Post by qaq »

SimianSci wrote: post #15

"America’s problem isn’t that we lack wealth - we have enormous wealth - it’s that we’ve made our wealth invisible while letting everything visible decay in a way. We’ve inverted the formula." In a way, I see this as our unwillingness to invest back into society. It very much is the fault of our wealthiest who have alienated themselves from anything resembling the everyday people and created themselves walled off enc…

Are you sure paper wealth truly translates into world of atoms. The fact that market values some hypothetical future profits of TSLA at 270x current profits vs Ford 7x is cool but can you actually deploy a significant fraction of that into real physical world?

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#22

Post by joe_the_user »

treis wrote: post #12

It's hard to put thoughts into the right words but the world she wants exists. They're not writing for substack or flying around to conferences. They're out there living their lives without being so unrelentingly negative. I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there…

I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there's this massive undercurrent of negativity that's hard to reconcile.

Personally I'm doing something that brings me more happiness than most of my activities for the last twenty years - I'm providing direct aid for the unhoused and the impoverished. And I'm know there are people who are doing things that are their passion unrelated to that.

But I have to say, your list for is remarkable for being about things, not people. You amazed by the cool stuff available for some people for a lot of money and some things that are pretty cheap. But X percent of the population can't pay their rent with their income, cool stuff for sale is hardly going to help them. And indeed that statement itself is a strong illustration of how self-insulating people are from the conditions people live with.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#23

Post by jfengel »

TylerE wrote: post #5
quantummagic wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring how easy it is for statistics to be misleading, let alone outright lies, the official statistics are rather mute on the topic of economic distribution. It doesn't matter how well an economy is doing, if the majority of wealth is accruing to a small minority.

[flagged]

"Moot" wouldn't be correct here. It is applied to a question, one whose assumptions do not apply. There are definitely moot questions involved here, but the usage above isn't about that. It is about statistics, which are not themselves questions. So they can be mute but not moot.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#25

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #18
SimianSci wrote: post #15

"America’s problem isn’t that we lack wealth - we have enormous wealth - it’s that we’ve made our wealth invisible while letting everything visible decay in a way. We’ve inverted the formula." In a way, I see this as our unwillingness to invest back into society. It very much is the fault of our wealthiest who have alienated themselves from anything resembling the everyday people and created themselves walled off enc…

I see this a lot in socal especially in the san fernando valley. Neighborhood like sherwood forest with 2-10 million homes or more. Nearby offerings comprised of a run down strip mall with a smoke shop, liqour store, coin laundry, nail bar. It is sort of bewildering. Like why isn’t there an upscale restaurant? Seems the people in these neighborhoods are content to drive 20+ mins away for the sort of stuff they actual…

Is that a new thing, though? Or could it go back decades to a time when Americans didn’t feel their country was decaying? Already in the 1960s Los Angeles was depicted as immense sprawl where people drove long distances for everything.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#26

Post by SimianSci »

delichon wrote: post #16
jmclnx wrote: post #7

To the billionairs via income inequality. When I was young, you could live off the wage you made in retail. I had uncles who worked in retail and where able to buy a nice house and raise a family. Now, you need snap to live if working retail. Buying a home, out of the question. We need to go back to the tax rate we had in tge 1950s and force companies to pay a living wage as they did back then

I'm sending IP packets to you from a computer I bought from one billionaire, built by another billionaire, with an operating system made by another billionaire, over satellites built by yet another billionaire, through a web forum written by another billionaire. These people made billions by capturing a fraction of the value they created. The market is not a zero sum game.

We have more companies that can be classified as monopolies in existence than ever before. In principal our market is not a zero sum game, but in practice we see it quickly collapsing to become one.

How many of the billionaires you mention are themselves the proginy of previously wealthy parents?

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#27

Post by conception »

qaq wrote: post #21
SimianSci wrote: post #15

"America’s problem isn’t that we lack wealth - we have enormous wealth - it’s that we’ve made our wealth invisible while letting everything visible decay in a way. We’ve inverted the formula." In a way, I see this as our unwillingness to invest back into society. It very much is the fault of our wealthiest who have alienated themselves from anything resembling the everyday people and created themselves walled off enc…

Are you sure paper wealth truly translates into world of atoms. The fact that market values some hypothetical future profits of TSLA at 270x current profits vs Ford 7x is cool but can you actually deploy a significant fraction of that into real physical world?

https://www.dcfpi.org/all/how-wealthy-households-use-a-buy-b...

Yes they can get at that wealth, tax free at that!

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#28

Post by treis »

joe_the_user wrote: post #22
treis wrote: post #12

It's hard to put thoughts into the right words but the world she wants exists. They're not writing for substack or flying around to conferences. They're out there living their lives without being so unrelentingly negative. I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there…

I dunno I just see so much cool shit in the world today. I see Waymo cars driving themselves around. LLMs are still wildly revolutionary. My TV is the tits. There's so much good happening but there's this massive undercurrent of negativity that's hard to reconcile. Personally I'm doing something that brings me more happiness than most of my activities for the last twenty years - I'm providing direct aid for the unhou…

Unrelentingly negative

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#29

Post by accrual »

Retric wrote: post #20
chasd00 wrote: post #8

This US is a big place, I don’t think it’s accurate to start an article with “traveling accross America” when you only drove around the DC area, one part of Maryland, NYC, and small part of South FL.

US didn’t have many large prosperous cities in the west or most of the south until very recently. Railroads and AC really changed where people lived in America. https://1940census.com/Img/1940_census_map_usa.jpg vs zoom in a little here: https://maps.geo.census.gov/ddmv/map.html LA and New Orleans should have made the list, after that it’s more questionable.

What is "very recently"? Atlanta for example is a central rail hub and was founded 188 years ago as Terminus.

Re: 30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?

#30

Post by runako »

SimianSci wrote: post #19
reactordev wrote: post #6

Two words: “subscription fees” It’s the silent suck on the wallets that get you. Everyone budgets for food, shelter, but very little attention is paid to the dailies, the subs, the fees, the lattes.

I call it Rent-seeking, of which, subscription fees are just a part. The biggest issue here is that the "meta" of capitalism has turned to toll booths and rent collection. This is why people say that American capitalism is turning into neo-feudalism, the people making the money are not the people producing things of value, its the landlords, asset holders, and tech companies that can continuously tax the peasantry.

> the landlords, asset holders, and tech companies

Largest household expense after housing is usually (sometimes indirect) health insurance premiums. For a family of 4, this is running on the order of $30k annually now. That's creeping up on half the median household income (which often requires two workers).

Hiding this very real expense in tax deductions for employers obscures the fact of just how large it is.

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