Comment by PantaloonFlames | Hacker News Reader

Comment by PantaloonFlames | Hacker News Reader

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PantaloonFlames

> The rich get richer and everyone else gets screwed.

Not actually true. a more accurate telling is: the rich get richer and the poor get richer too. You may commenting on the fact that the rich are getting richer FASTER than the poor are getting richer, and that's an interesting phenomenon to comment on, but it is undeniable that everyone is getting richer, almost regardless how you slice the data.

Worldwide, extreme poverty is on an accelerating decrease, and is set to be completely eradicated by 2030. In the US and in Western economies, poverty, which used to be common only 80 years ago, is almost completely erased. Meanwhile those who have low income, but are above "the poverty line", continue to see growth in wages, in standard of living, and in lifespan and in quality of life. Objectively.

Why are we are inundated with the false idea that "things are so bad" by mainstream media? That narrative sells papers and clicks. But it's not supported by the data.

Whether we all would benefit from rebalancing the wealth distribution is a different question.

reference: Humanprogress.org, and Steven Pinker's new book, "Enlightenment Now" (highly recommended)

I have always wondered how we can reconcile that things "are" objectively so great and yet "seem" subjectively so bad. In my experience both online and off, there is a pessimism about work, poverty, and basic security that persists (or is even getting worse) despite these changes. To my eyes, it has to be larger than just the state of the media.

We have a few of things we can quantify, and that are often brought out in discussions such as this one. Healthcare outcomes, wages, life expectancy, basic material goods, access to education, casualties from war, etc.

I heard another commenter here talk about the human experience being understood as a vector, with twenty or thirty dimensions. Most of those are moving in their positive directions. But the problem is that when God made the human experience, he crafted it with uncountably many components, most of them themselves unquantifiable.

Unfortunately for us "objectively" exists only in that limited set, not in the greater whole. "The number of species going extinct per unit time is more than it has ever been, maybe ever." What is the cost, paid in pessimism and hopelessness rather than dollars, of knowing that? Does it counteract a 2 month increase in my projected lifespan?

> how we can reconcile that things "are" objectively so great and yet "seem" subjectively so bad

Because one of the things that has been fueling GDP growth is disintermediating community and family support systems. Health care spending is up because you don’t have a family home where the older generation slowly ends up and where the younger generations can share elder care burdens. You don’t have people cooking for the extended family. You don’t have neighborhood sharing of homemaking tasks. Etc.

These things have been disintermediated in favor of nuclear family and individual solutions provided by commercial providers. Because that leads to GDP growth and GDP growth drives culture.

But even though you might be getting a slightly bigger piece of a much bigger pie, and even though fewer people might be starving, a much higher percentage of your personal self care burden is falling 100% on your shoulders. And that means you have more pressure on your earning potential, which means you are more sensitive to changes in employment.

Essentially, a larger portion of your well-being is bottlenecked through your checking account. So even though you may be “more taken care of”, the subjective (and possibly objective) precariousness of your well-being is much higher.

> Why are we are inundated with the false idea that "things are so bad" by mainstream media?

Maybe because it's not false and it's actually happening to an alarming degree in the U.S.?

https://hbr.org/2017/10/why-wages-arent-growing-in-america

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-01/america-s...

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