The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#71

Post by paulddraper » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #63

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #35

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…

Sounds bad (?)

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#72

Post by jgalt212 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:21 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #26

> 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

not so sure about that line. Many of the whatevs are scraping by.

https://www.financialsamurai.com/scraping-by-on-500000-a-yea...

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#73

Post by coldtea » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #67

coldtea wrote: post #60

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. 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 technological innovations, not really relevant. 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.

USSR was run by a party elite, devastated with millions dead/imprisoned in their purges, devastated with millions of dead in WWII, and starting from an agrarian economic base much behind the US of the time (1917) to begin with.

Without those aspects (but keeping equality more or less same, e.g. like Swedish style democratic socialism) it could be a very different story.

It's not like inequality produced them. If anything, today with rampant inequality we have far fewer innovations (and the US has far worse infrastructure, roads, etc) than in the golden post-war era up to the 90s.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#74

Post by Godel_unicode » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #60

Godel_unicode wrote: post #53

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…

You don't think what you get for your money is important in a discussion of economic advancement? It sounds like you decided on an answer, then went looking for a question which fits it.

> We could have had smartphones and anti-retrovirals AND affordable education/housing/healthcare/job prospects.

How can you possibly know that's true? Where are these example economies that have US-level innovation but also has the wealth distribution you crave.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#75

Post by ip26 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

wisty wrote: post #55

polote wrote: post #2

> Chances are good that if you’re in the market for a smartphone, you fall into one of two very clear cut categories. Either: a. you’ve decided that your new phone is a very important item in your life, so you’re going to buy the nicest phone available at whatever price. (Usually this means an iPhone, although some flagship Android phones qualify for this category.) Or, b. you’ve decided that just about every phone o…

IIRC it is true, but it's a quirk of the phone market. People either go for the the flagship or for an economy phone, but it's a weird quirk of the mobile market (since most people assume that the cheapest phones are basically as good as midrange phones, or that they're better off with a cheaper phone and more frequent upgrades, so there's no middle). Cars are different. Not everyone buys a Porsche or a Kia.

The vanishing middle is actually happening in many, many markets IMO. You can either get cheap plastic junk or overpriced glam. MacBook Pro or Chromebook. The high quality, no frills, moderate price product- it's gone from most markets.

Cars are perhaps one of the few exceptions, maybe due to sheer price setting hard limits on the high end and basic safety setting limits on the low end.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#76

Post by jgalt212 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

m1sta_ wrote: post #51

coldtea wrote: post #26

> 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.

True, but unless you are a doctor, high wage jobs are few and far between in cheap cost of living areas. Perhaps, that's why they are cheap to live in. :)

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#77

Post by jnwatson » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #31

mrob wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not similar to height distribution. At the population statistics level, human height is bimodal because humans either have a Y chromosome or they don't. What is the equivalent binary variable for the phone market?

Obviously income. Are you in the upper 20% that does great (or still fine), or in the 80% that's increasingly scrapping by?

The interesting part about IPhones in particular is that they are status symbols. I've seen plenty of working class folks, especially women, flaunting IPhones.

I'm sure part of the reason is that since most carriers (and Apple itself) will finance the phone cheaply, so the practical difference between the cheapest and most expensive phone is $30 a month.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#78

Post by Hermitian909 » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

unreal37 wrote: post #64

jdhn wrote: post #3

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…

The fix is to always hire contractors, let the bad ones go, and convert the good ones to full time if you can.

In any industry where good employees are in high demand (like tech) this strategy has the unfortunate effect of filtering out most individuals who are both good employees and experienced. None of the really good software engineers I know would accept this arrangement unless the contracting wages were a ridiculous multiplier of their normal salary.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#79

Post by Godel_unicode » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #73

paulddraper wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those are technological innovations, not really relevant. 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.

USSR was run by a party elite, devastated with millions dead/imprisoned in their purges, devastated with millions of dead in WWII, and starting from an agrarian economic base much behind the US of the time (1917) to begin with. Without those aspects (but keeping equality more or less same, e.g. like Swedish style democratic socialism) it could be a very different story. It's not like inequality produced them. If anyt…

I think a better comparison is East and West Germany.

You might also want to revisit your assumption that the US in 1917 wasn't an agrarian economy, given that the majority of Americans worked on farms between the World Wars.

Also, Baku (joined the USSR into 1920) produced over half the world's oil at that time.

Re: The Access Economy: Why the Normal Distribution Is Vanishing (2015)

#80

Post by Retric » Sun, May 05, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

Godel_unicode wrote: post #53

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now compare 60 years ago with now.

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…

The real costs for most people in the US is artificial. Housing, internet, and healthcare in the US is 2-5 times what it is in most countries because of systemic corruption.

Consider, 15 minutes of a doctor’s time making 300k total compensation directly costs ~40$. Meaning your copay is often the actual cost of the services rendered and you need insurance to cover overhead.