841–850 of 1001 posts
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I don't think you've seen starving people if this is your opinion. I have never seen someone in america starving.
Oh boy, you're not paying attention or you're in a bubble. Not usually distended belly-famine starving, sure, but malnutrition is rife in many rural and impoverished counties in the country.
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I'm not even sure where "houses got expensive" come from. Houses certainly did not increase in price (per unit of area) in last ~80 years, inflation adjusted - they tightly fluctuate around the same point. Housing affordability is in fact 4th best in the US among all countries in the world, and it got better in the last decades (although with fluctuations, and periods when it was getting cheaper were not pleasant as…
Interesting. This posture contradicts quite a few testimonials we can read about everywhere, including here in HN. Maybe it's the salaries, then, that are half what they should be?
I do feel this trend in my life. I have a job which I'm grateful for but nothing feels satisfying anymore, and I feel like it is much harder to connect to people or form deep relationships, especially in this field, unless you already have a clique in your workplace. On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. Despite all the hype of Altman and whonots, I feel like people just don…
> On top of that, AI is generally a demotivating entity to the majority of people. I agree. I think we should just stop.
Americans hate each others guts that’s why. And they are not equipped for a more cplx world. As seen from a European (often going to US, have friends and relatives there) I am surprised the author does not mention how the US became so much more polarised (on the usual race/guns/abortion/sex/gov topics). Covid fragilised people social networks (isolation, job market shifts) and they’re left herding around the usual di…
When talking about that polarization, it feels irresponsible not to mention the role of Fox News and companies like Sinclair Broadcast Group in pushing 24/7 fear-and-hate programming nationwide, partly to continuously promote right-wing politics, partly because angry and scared people are more vulnerable to ads like "use all your money to buy gold from us because it's the only safe investment".
My mom said, "whatever we built isn't working anymore," and I think that captures most of the sentiment. It's also funny to see the "the economy is roaring!" "incomes are up!". Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Can I afford a home? Work has if anything gotten worse in general. Remote's gone. Pay's less. ADHD maximum AI use required. Nobody can take a break. Pressure's on. 1.5 trillion more to the mi…
All work and no play... gives you a birth rate crisis, apparently.
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Home "ownership" is misleading. You don't own a home until you've paid it off. Younger people are getting into more debt, for much longer in order to be able to survive. When we start comparing the numbers (i.e, house paid off, even reflected as a percentage paid off, relative to age) the numbers reveal the real crisis. Anecdotally, I know tons of 20-30 year olds getting into the property market (with insane levels o…
To be pedantic what most people consider ownership is a revocable land lease from the state government which you forfeit if you fail to pay protection money to the gov. True ownership is non-existent.
...It's more likely than you think !!
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This graph on that page was very interesting to me: "Below-Basic Reading Levels". People's education levels are dropping.
Any "aggregate" statistic needs to be broken out until it is understood. Is everyone dropping, or is it a certain subset of poor, etc that is dropping? E.g., does the Mississippi Miracle translate into something notable? https://jabberwocking.com/mississippi-revisited-the-mississi...
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> Great, have they increased by as much as inflation? Yes, real wages have been on the rise for the past few years. With the exception of the somewhat artificial COVID peak, median real wages are the highest on record: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
The "inflation basket" keeps getting rejiggled to hide things. Rent as percentage of income is up. Groceries as percentage of income is up. Medical insurance as percentage of income is up. etc. People aren't stupid. They can see and feel this. Yes, it's nice that computers and phones are super cheap and powerful. That doesn't help people eat .
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> inflation adjusted wages are actually up over the long term Inflation is a tool for monetary policy. It doesn't track cost of living. For example, if luxury items become more affordable, but housing prices rise, inflation-adjusted pay doesn't capture this kind of negative effect on the working class.
It doesn't track cost of living? The way it's calculated is all about cost of living! In the US, the official inflation numbers are based on a "basket of goods" meant to be representative of a typical person's spending. Housing currently makes up about a third of the basket, while luxury items are a fairly small percentage. Here's a pretty well-written summary, albeit with numbers from 2022: https://www.pewresearch.o…