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Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

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Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#61

Post by yuzi »

trymas wrote: post #40
yuzi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1930 my grandfather bought his house for $20K. So one years salary. But in 1930 people spent 80 percent of their monthly income on food. So house costs have gone up dramatically and food costs have gone down dramatically (as a proportion of income). So even if consumption were to have remained the same, the costs of things would still adjust forcing people to work closer to 40+ hours a week.

$20K of todays money or 1930s? because: > In 1930 the average American earned $1,368/year which is roughly $19,500/year in todays dollars. True about the expense shift. Today food is probably as cheap as it have ever been, and rent/real-estate is as expensive as it have ever been. :)

My family situation aside, it looks as though the average cost of a house in the 30's was $7145 in historical money [src]. I'd imagine 1930 itself was probably lower than that average over the period, but I'm not sure.

[src - not sure about the credibility, but it's good enough for me and this discussion] https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/bentleytran/living-cost-of...

There's a general problem with using averages anyway. As I see it an average wage/cost does not actually equal a normal cost which I believe is more important. That is the most common occurrence of something is often distorted by the averaging out process. So I don't put a lot of stock in using them.

Overall I'm pretty sure a few things happened:

1. Product costs went down due to cost reductions (found via economies of scale within manufacturing) and things like sugar manufacturing.

2. Money saved from General goods went into fuelling house price surges. i.e. People don't have bidding wars over food they just buy them at market price, but houses are different, they immediately are driven up with no regulation and lower supplies.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#62

Post by monk_e_boy »

xlm1717 wrote: post #52
monk_e_boy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society has some warped views sometimes. At the moment, stopping to help a homeless person isn't worth anything. We should live in a society where helping someone in need makes you a millionaire. Where people are out hunting down the homeless, fighting to help them. A society where helping a kid to become happy makes you rich. Making a classroom of kids happy and teach them something at the same time earns you tens…

Talk about rose tinted glasses! You would need to invent some new product that did those things for kids and convince parents to buy it, otherwise no one will ever pay you millions to make kids happy and teach them something.

That's the point I was making. In a post money society (think reddit karma or Star Trek) this could be a thing.

The money loving capitalist couldn't imagine being rewarded for helping someone. It makes me sad.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#63

Post by zpharer »

yuzi wrote: post #61
trymas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$20K of todays money or 1930s? because: > In 1930 the average American earned $1,368/year which is roughly $19,500/year in todays dollars. True about the expense shift. Today food is probably as cheap as it have ever been, and rent/real-estate is as expensive as it have ever been. :)

My family situation aside, it looks as though the average cost of a house in the 30's was $7145 in historical money [src]. I'd imagine 1930 itself was probably lower than that average over the period, but I'm not sure. [src - not sure about the credibility, but it's good enough for me and this discussion] https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/bentleytran/living-cost-of... There's a general problem with using averages any…

Is a 1930's house really equivalent in value to a 2016 house though? I would expect that the price increase is at least partially due to us know having nicer/bigger houses (bay area excepted).

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#64

Post by golemotron »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
golemotron wrote: post #30

The thing about markets is that they cut through all of the fuzzy thinking about what jobs "should" pay more than others, and tell us what we actually pay - what we collectively find valuable. That reality escapes most people.

> The thing about markets is that (...) tell us (...) what we collectively find valuable. No, they don't - that's the very point of this article. What society finds valuable and what is economically valuable are two different, separate concepts (and we should really have two different words for them - the term "value" is way overloaded). First of all, the market is not an information display - it's an actor. It doesn…

> Rarely can a society coordinate strongly enough to have its collective will affect the market on purpose (if it could, soccer players and movie stars wouldn't be making that much money).

This is just wrong. Soccer players, movie stars, and the organizations that front them make money based upon ticket sales. If you don't want them to make as much money you don't buy the ticket. Buying the ticket is making a choice to give them that money.

The problem is that it is easy for people to dissociate from the choices that they make with their purchasing. Not everyone is this deluded. Some people boycott things they disagree with. What you are arguing is that mechanisms like boycott, i.e., voting with your dollars don't always work in the sense of producing outcomes that an observer might consider better for everyone. The same case could be made about democracy for exactly the same reasons. That is a different argument than the one outlined here, that markets do not represent the direct choice of their participants. They certainly do, even when the participants refuse to acknowledge that they are making those choices.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#65

Post by yuzi »

zpharer wrote: post #63
yuzi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family situation aside, it looks as though the average cost of a house in the 30's was $7145 in historical money [src]. I'd imagine 1930 itself was probably lower than that average over the period, but I'm not sure. [src - not sure about the credibility, but it's good enough for me and this discussion] https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/bentleytran/living-cost-of... There's a general problem with using averages any…

Is a 1930's house really equivalent in value to a 2016 house though? I would expect that the price increase is at least partially due to us know having nicer/bigger houses (bay area excepted).

Yes I agree. The quality of almost everything has dramatically improved, but I believe even if it was the same quality the bidding wars would push prices up to the same level. In my city I've seen 30 year old houses go up in value by 100% to 200% over a 5 year period. And honestly I've seen them and the quality didn't change. The price surge was fuelled by banks allowing people to borrow beyond their means or extending terms and the bidding wars people engaged in. Meanwhile incomes did not jump by nearly that much.

Anyways, my whole point is that this idea of a 15 hour work week by 2030 is just not going to happen and it's not because people are consuming more (which they are). It's because prices continually adjust to an maximum level which pushes people to sacrifice more.

Re: Why Garbagemen Should Earn More Than Bankers

#66

Post by golemotron »

mac01021 wrote: post #41
golemotron wrote: post #30

The thing about markets is that they cut through all of the fuzzy thinking about what jobs "should" pay more than others, and tell us what we actually pay - what we collectively find valuable. That reality escapes most people.

That's probably 90% true, but there are phenomena that defy this. Imagine you live in a society where the population is mainly composed of two segments. Members of the first segment enjoy consuming service A. Members of the second segment would benefit tremendously from service B, but all the money is held by the first segment. Which service are you going to spend your time offering to the public? This is at least pa…

> You'll say, of course, that advertising is so lucrative because businesses around the world (and therefore the society made up of them) value the extra income that advertising provides. You'll say that society as a whole does, in fact, want more, better advertisements. But I suspect that there is a segment of the population just as large that would rather everyone in the advertising industry do something else. Only that segment can't pay.

Allow yourself the recursion. They could pay if we valued their work more. Every job is on the market.

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