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Notes -
There’s an idea, rarely expressed explicitly, that seems to underpin some of our commenters’ idea of the world- and considerably more popular among DR twitterati- wherein recent economic growth in the west is not representative of an increase in the quality and quantity of stuff, it’s reflecting accounting tricks and rising real estate prices. Seemingly a right wing corollary to the socialist/socdem idea that western economies are like South Africa where everything goes to the top 1/5/10%.
I’m not really looking for a steelman, so much as a when do these people think ‘real’ GDP started to decline. Hourly compensation became uncoupled from productivity in the 70’s but we’re much richer now than we were then.
I've recently encountered a somewhat similar narrative, pointing to a similar stagnation and decline, but, rather than being purely "accounting tricks and rising real estate prices," it's, to put it succinctly, software isn't stuff.
The example given was to consider if you took every modern electronic screen out of your house. Get rid of your flatscreen TV, and maybe replace it with an old CRT set. Toss out the laptops, the tablets, the smartphones, the GPS and other "screen" electronics in your car, etc.
Now, how does your stuff, your surroundings, your life differ from someone of similar class, job, etc. back in the 70s or 80s? What has gotten better in terms of material stuff, rather than telecommunications, internet, and software, software, software? It's the whole "flying cars vs. cyberpunk dystopia" thing, the building of the virtual "layer" atop a stagnating, even declining material one.
(I'm reminded here again of the likes of Tyler Cowen's Average is Over and the future he projects, where ~80% of the population lives in third-world style favelas, concentrated in the narrow latitude/climate band that minimizes annual heating+AC costs, eating beans, making pennies on Amazon Turk; but most people will be fine with that because VR will have become so good they won't care about their conditions in the material world (and for those who don't, there will be better psych drugs and cops with omnipresent surveillance drones).)
My car is much nicer. My house is probably not that different, but it’s definitely not worse. My diet is probably mildly better; my parents remember eating liver, franks and beans, etc, and I certainly don’t have to do that. I have more options for vacationing within my price range even if I prefer to spend my money on things other than flights(and tradesmen in the 70’s or even 80’s did not get to fly places). Most of my minor chattels are mildly better or about the same.
And, for two new technologies- cell phones and the microwave are a massive improvement in the quality of life for ‘white van men’- the cell phone, because I’m no longer confined to my house when I’m on call, and microwaves because I can now eat a hot lunch at any gas station without having to either a) eat a 7/11 hot dog or b) go to McDonald’s. It seems fair to also note that the internet and Amazon are large improvements in QoL in middle class suburbs, even lower middle class ones.
Oh, and I get all that working fewer hours.
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