Earlier quoted context omitted.
Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers, and we did it sustainably for millions of years, longer than we've been human. 200 years is nothing. It's nothing, unless that is, we try to think about what the mess we're currently making will look like 200 years from now. Then 200 years from now is a terrifying prospect. It has to be sustainable. If it isn't sustainable it's a joke.
> Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers, and we did it sustainably for millions of years Neither clause in this sentence is true.
Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
131–140 of 144 posts
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comp over GDP is slightly down, but is still increasing overall, even when adjusted for inflation. See my sibling post.
Not since the seventies which was the assertion in question
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers, and we did it sustainably for millions of years, longer than we've been human. 200 years is nothing. It's nothing, unless that is, we try to think about what the mess we're currently making will look like 200 years from now. Then 200 years from now is a terrifying prospect. It has to be sustainable. If it isn't sustainable it's a joke.
> Before 200 years ago we lived as hunter gatherers Agriculture ended that thousands of years ago. Even the Indians practiced farming. So did the Pilgrims, and the first settlement, Jamestown. Hunter gathering can only sustain a small population.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not since the seventies which was the assertion in question
And I'm saying it is massively up since the 1970s, and provided FRED links.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XOcj
This is obviously some strange usage of the word 'up' that I wasn't previously aware of
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I'm saying it is massively up since the 1970s, and provided FRED links.
I don't know what measure you're looking at, but here again is literally "Comp over GDP", now trimmed from 1970 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XOcj This is obviously some strange usage of the word 'up' that I wasn't previously aware of
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881600A
The original parent claim was:
> The US Department of Labor measures wages, and adjusted for inflation the hourly wage is below what it was in 1973. It is even lower if you are only counting non-management roles then and now. Wages have not gotten better over the past half century they have gotten worse.
This is a flat out lie. Comp/GDP is a side note that does not negate the fact that inflation adjusted wages are up.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#136The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
You're missing the trees for the forest. The Industrial Revolution was terrible for the people who were working during it . Their jobs got eliminated and they only sorta sometimes were able to retrain for the new jobs, and the working conditions in those new jobs were atrocious, exactly because they were new enough that we didn't yet have safety regulations for them. It was only their children who eventually saw any…
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#137The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.
> pretty consistently improved I can accept the premise that condiitions have improved, but not that it was consistent. It seems to me that it was anything but; more like extremely spiky. great depression, postwar economic miracle. Massive labor movements rose and fell, general strikes... Plus most countries have had several wars + revolutions in the last 200 years, including two world wars. Not all of those are to d…
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know what measure you're looking at, but here again is literally "Comp over GDP", now trimmed from 1970 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XOcj This is obviously some strange usage of the word 'up' that I wasn't previously aware of
> Comp over GDP is slightly down, but is still increasing overall... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881600A The original parent claim was: > The US Department of Labor measures wages, and adjusted for inflation the hourly wage is below what it was in 1973. It is even lower if you are only counting non-management roles then and now. Wages have not gotten better over the past half century they have gotten wo…
> https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0252881600A
That graph does not represent Comp over GDP so it does not show it "is still increasing overall"
> The original parent claim was:...
Maybe so, but my post is a direct response to
> ...the increasing share of the economy consumed by the government...
> [the hourly wage] is a misleading statistic. The actual statistic is "total employee compensation"
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inflation is an increase in the cost of living. It can be caused by deficit spending. It can also be caused by supply shocks. For example, if you restrict building new housing, the price of housing will increase, both rents and house prices. If you tariff imports, a basket including those goods will rise in price to the degree those imports are not substituable. If you start a war in the Middle East, oil prices will…
Sigh. It is always the result of deficit spending. Bob earns $20 every day. He buys 5 eggs $2/ea and 5 apples $2/ea every day. Now, due to supply shocks, egg prices double. He still has only $20, and so he now buys fewer eggs and fewer apples. What happens when he buys fewer apples? The price of apples goes down, due to the Law of Supply and Demand. There is no inflation. What happens when this economy is flooded wit…
We're all well aware of the money supply, M1 / M2 / M3, velocity of money, etc. It's important for money to not get tight when the economy slows down, and it's important to tighten up the amount of money when the velocity increases again. But this is neither deficit spending nor printing money without backing!
Inflation is can come from a social psychological phenomenon around expectations. If the cost of living goes up in a surprising way, you feel the pinch. You want more money. Maybe your employer gives you a raise, and raises prices to compensate, reasoning that other things are also going up in price. The risk is this creates a self-propagating loop (which in turn does to a degree depend on accommodating institutions that don't restrict monetary supply).
You can trigger inflation through loose monetary policy, sure, and you can dampen the cycle by restricting the supply of money, and that's been the main function of independent central banks for most of the latter 20th and 21st century.
But inflation is literally just increase in the cost of living. It's a symptom, not a disease. It admits multiple explanations.
Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> deficits aren't the root of all evil I didn't say it was. I said it was the root of inflation. > robber barons built their empires all the same Kerosene prices dropped 70% while Standard Oil prospered. Rockefeller was benefiting people, not robbing them.
Louis Brandeis would like a word. In particular: no, the fact that tech advances and economies of scale dropped oil prices at the same time Rockefeller was building his monopoly does not make that monopoly harmless or good or justify it into perpetuity. More importantly, after Ronald Reagan and Robert Bork brought us back to robber-baron era antitrust policy, we've seen robber-baron level corporate consolidation and…
Do you have any evidence that corporate profit margins have increased?