61–70 of 160 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
500 years ago, only 1-2% could afford "whatever" and the rest had to scrap by and pinch pennies. I'm not sure we're moving to a world of less evenly distributed wealth.
Cute, but facts?
Tournament wages theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory This seems to happen whenever there's (a) direct competition (b) the value provided by the winner is very scalable (media, sports, software) and (c) most importantly, it can't be substituted by splitting the job among more people. So footballers follow this model because you can only have 11 people on the pitch - there's no amount of low-wage no…
> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…
In 1980 median house price in SF was $200k. Median US household income was $17k. So it wasn’t exactly affordable and of course the Bay Area is much more appealing now so it makes sense that relative prices have risen. In Manhattan rent in 1980 was around $1200 for a one bedroom, so it’s not even significantly different.
His paragraph about jobs is spot on. I've seen this in my own workplace on a team that is 75% contractors and 25% full time employees. Contractors are seen as completely replaceable, and if one leaves they'll be replaced with another one after a quick round of interviews. However, if a full time employee leaves, the process to replace them seems to take much longer as it appears that those doing the hiring are lookin…
> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…
> It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and the rest have to scrap by and increasingly pinch pennies (while still doing some desperate wealth-signalling purchases, like poor urban blacks that buy $200 sneakers to feel like they have something nice and can participate in the kind of society they see in ads). I don't see why "poor urban blac…
According to economists Banerjee & Duflo: “The poor are skeptical about their supposed opportunities, and the possibility of any radical change in their lives…Therefore, they focus on the here and now, on living their lives as pleasantly as possible, and on celebrating when the occasion demands it.”
>I don't see how its any different that the 10-20% buying the "best phone" when it provides no greater utility than a cheaper model.*
The difference is that for the 10% that is an insignificant amount, and they still can cover their more basic needs with aplenty left anyway.
So instead of all floor tickets being $100, there are some floor tickets that are worth way, way more than others. Even "row 1" tickets up in the 3rd deck are more than row 2 tickets in the same section now.
Ticket pricing has evolved to maximize profits at the source. The value of the tickets is very close to their retail price.
So if you ask "how much would you pay for Taylor Swift tickets", the answer is "depends on what row".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses. Everyone has a super computer in their pocket, the vast majority of human knowledge is available in your hand for free all the time, you can video chat anyone you want anywhere in the world in HD for free, world-leading educators post hundreds of hour…
> Statins, anti-retrovirals, common availability of antibiotics, treatment for TB, vaccines for many population-decimating (in the traditional sense of the word) viruses. Those are technological innovations, not really relevant. We could have had smartphones and anti-retrovirals AND affordable education/housing/healthcare/job prospects. Like how people in the 50s and 60s could enjoy all kinds of technological and soc…
Those are extremely relevant, especially the source for those invocations.
E.g. I could believe the USSR achieved greater income equality, but I'm skeptical it would have produced those innovations.
> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…
> Back in the 50s and up to the 80s a signle-income middle class household could still send a kid to college, buy a house, and so on. In the US. Meanwhile much of the rest of the world was mired in communism, which created incredible poverty and misery. After the 80-ties when it was finally overthrown for the most part, those billions of people start competing on equal ground with the US, which equalizes the global s…
Depends on where of the world.
Most of the rest of the world in the 50s (aside from eastern Europe, USSR and China) was anything but communist.
And even the communist (socialist) parts, where not really about some "incredible poverty" (e.g. in places like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and so on, just substandard middle/working class existence. Everybody there could get a job, healthcare, college education, and a house, for one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In 1980 median house price in SF was $200k. Median US household income was $17k. So it wasn’t exactly affordable and of course the Bay Area is much more appealing now so it makes sense that relative prices have risen. In Manhattan rent in 1980 was around $1200 for a one bedroom, so it’s not even significantly different.
"Average rents may have been pretty high, but crime rates were high and many parts of New York were more than gritty. As such, there were a lot of cheap places to live, especially Downtown and in Brooklyn. The Lower East Side offered a lot of options for the $300 price range; June 1982 ads show a Ludlow Street studio and a two-room East 2nd Street apartment (in a "well kept locked building") both for $275. For a real…
> We can see, too, that these bifurcations are driven by a shift from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. To me all these bifurcations seem to me to stem from a change of a world of more evenly distributed wealth (for working, lower middle, and middle class) and one with wild inequality. It's a world where a 10-20% can afford the "whatever" (e.g. best phone, live in NY/Bay area, university degree, etc) and t…
There is still a lot of cheap housing in the USA. It's just not in the bay area anymore.