281–290 of 573 posts
Because labors in China are extremely cheap. And they are getting cheaper and cheaper in last decade, despite the GDP growth.
Do you have a source?
There's nothing about being in the C-suite that magically endows one with motivation based upon stock price, but we pretend that there is.
People are misreading the conclusion - the Covid related drop is normal and matches previous episodes, but the massive overall drop since 2000 is not. The situation on the ground is unchanged - the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us.
> amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed not true, labor productivity has been steadily increasing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB workers are simply capturing less of the economic value generated by their labor.
Ford now makes more cars, with fewer people. Sears used to have people who took photos, laid out catalogs, opened envelopes (with checks in them).... Amazon has none of that. We replaced switch board operators, with mechanical, then digital switching. More calls routed, fewer people required. go back 45 years and "draftsmen" was a job - replaced by auto cad.
All these industries have seen massive productivity.
Are the people flipping burgers more productive? Plumbers? Welders? Teachers? Nurses? -- to some extent yes, because of technology but not to the same extent as the previous businesses. Anything that qualifies as "service economy" work has not seen the same gains as Ford (see: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/phenomenal-gains-in-manufactu... )
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is consistent with the observation that the top 10% have captured a disproportionate share of GDP growth over the past few decades. https://equitablegrowth.org/new-data-reveal-how-u-s-economic... "The past three economic expansions have largely benefitted the top 10 percent. In each, the top decile received between 47 percent and 59 percent of all income growth in the expansion."
Also note: Labor share has declined similarly across OECD countries for several decades. Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share.
I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.
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I think the point is that we might as well just give up the pretense of a free market healthcare solution and just focus on what's humane.
Is it humane to leave a patient to die in an ambulance when a single-payer nationalized healthcare system is over capacity? https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/06/englands-nhs... I'm not trying to be snarky here, the point is that there is no easy solution and optimizing based on what politicians subjectively consider "humane" isn't going to get us anywhere. If we want to actually fix the problem then we nee…
I think painting the inhumanity of that as a consequence of the structure of the healthcare system is disengenuous at best, especially as the implicit solution you're proposing is to artificially lower utilization rate and access. Deflecting patient deaths into "technically not our fault, they didn't try to get help" by exploiting economics is in no small terms extremely inhumane.
The answer to that is that near universally in the world, our labor pool of medical personnel is too small, and almost all of it has to deal with an arbitrary restriction of labor supply. Stupidly, I have felt this many times in America, so trivially it's a problem no matter the structure of the healthcare system. Optimizing towards maximizing the number of nurses, doctors, pharmacists, the whole spread, in a society is underdiscussed but obviously beneficial (for everybody but those who profit off of the labor scarcity)
People are misreading the conclusion - the Covid related drop is normal and matches previous episodes, but the massive overall drop since 2000 is not. The situation on the ground is unchanged - the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us.
> amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed not true, labor productivity has been steadily increasing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB workers are simply capturing less of the economic value generated by their labor.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=tjto
So in terms of how much consumers are making in relation to their expenses, it's been remarkably steady this whole time.
People are misreading the conclusion - the Covid related drop is normal and matches previous episodes, but the massive overall drop since 2000 is not. The situation on the ground is unchanged - the amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed, but the overall pie has grown massively around us.
> amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed not true, labor productivity has been steadily increasing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB workers are simply capturing less of the economic value generated by their labor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have negative net worth and the bank's money, not yours, is buying your food and housing, you are in abject poverty, just that the system is propping up your survival for a while. A lot of the US looks like they're doing great but fits into the category above. Non-poverty would look like: * You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies,…
> You make enough money to pay for your own food, housing, and transportation in full, with enough buffer for emergencies, without needing to borrow a cent So you're saying I'm in poverty because I couldn't buy my house and my car outright? > and medical expenses in retirement You're saying I'm in poverty because I understand and intend to use Medicare? These are trivially poor definitions.
I think this isn't as unreasonable as it seems to everyone living it. It's like water to the fish.
We are conditioned that everything should be fueled by more and more debt, and your dollars should constantly be devalued so you can't stop grinding.
The little people can never be allowed to just work enough to accumulate what they need and then take it easy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed not true, labor productivity has been steadily increasing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB workers are simply capturing less of the economic value generated by their labor.
Chart goes up, but you really need to look at percent change. Over the last 25 years it's averaged about 2% observation_date OPHNFB_PC1 2000-01-01 2.99256 2001-01-01 2.58092 2002-01-01 4.27146 2003-01-01 3.68422 2004-01-01 2.97991 2005-01-01 2.18582 2006-01-01 0.99665 2007-01-01 1.58927 2008-01-01 1.30737 2009-01-01 4.07061 2010-01-01 3.15513 2011-01-01 -0.02491 2012-01-01 0.93870 2013-01-01 0.59941 2014-01-01 1.0079…
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I'm going to go on a limb and say half of the US is not living in abject poverty? Nor can I get behind the idea that quality of life for folks is on the down trend.
I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark a…
So, the people you are mentioning making 12-18/hr, are literally below 1 in 4, to less than 1 in 10. These are not “average middle class Americans” except maybe in that higher end. These are low wage earners and are far below “average”.
I mean absolutely nothing normative by this statement, nothing about whether this is good or bad or what we should do policy, socially, whatever. But saying someone making below the 10th percentile is average is like saying someone making $75/hr is average.