It never ceases to amaze & depress me simultaneously.
For that matter, world abject poverty has been largely eradicated. Increasing customer productivity (both individual and aggregate) increases customer buying power - favorable to capitalism.
What worries me however is how there are more and more laws and regulation to not let people crash and burn - like forcing people to have health insurance. Stupid code for building houses - etc
EDIT: and I'm not being sarcastic. I admire how by taking the correct decision to apparently sacrifice the poor, we have made the pie bigger for everyone including the poor (unfortunately, as noted by a comment below about Des Moines, building code is quickly changing that)
>most homes built in Des Moines will be required to have a full basement, a single-car garage, and a driveway. Minimum lot sizes for single-family houses will range from 7,500 to 10,000 square feet. Building codes meant to guarantee residents’ safety will now decree their comfort
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-02/with-zoni...
The nation continues on its "high variance" trajectory because it is structurally incapable of acting democratically. Two of the four major deliberative bodies are anti-democratic. The Senate is elected in extreme disproportion and the Supreme Court is ridiculous 9 unelected seniors deciding outcomes for an entire country.
It was set up this way intentionally, to entrench and structurally favor wealthy Southern slaveholders and established Northern merchants that traded on their commodities.
1. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/12/12/504867570/how-inv...
Oh indeed, and you're salty about it because you know that you're losing because you simply cannot deliver equivalent results.
dang, if you're reading this, I'll take my smack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper now.
The entire failed national pandemic response is due to the perverse incentives of our system.
Five hundred thousand Americans (and counting) are dead because we couldn't close the economy for a couple months and pay people to stay home.
It's still a global superpower for a reason, and that reason is not "communism will totally work this time"
It's not just the communist countries like Vietnam and Cuba, even capitalist countries with newly minted leftist leadership like South Korea, have weathered this crisis with orders of magnitude less loss.
The systems for rending economic value from the value of human life are deeply entrenched here. Always have been[1]. That we can divorce the success of firms from the success of the people providing the value on the ground doing the work is a testament to it.
It doesn't make us awesome, it makes us abhorrent. The people that you claim "soar" are not randomly distributed, they are frequently born into favorable economic situations that allow them to develop the talents that make them super rich. In our lifetimes those islands of stability have degraded entirely in the service of ensuring the super rich can get even richer.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619...
In non-cultural areas, letting people "soar" is just the result of whitewashed bribery through campaign finance and lobbying.
It's not about middle class. In other rich countries, everyone, incl. the lower class, can afford to live in apartments, and doesn't have to resort to living in trailers.
The US has huge problems with regulation that prevent new housing creation. A lot of that has it's origin in segregation:
https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten...
This applies to cities and suburbs. For example in lost of NYC and SF, most buildings would be "illegal" if they were built today.
If you can't change "supply" a "free market" that relies on balancing supply and demand won't balance. It's crazy. And a building issues in US politics.
Do you mean the same crime ridden inner cities slums ?
That doesn't appear to be true: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/history/chart. Additionally many states have their own higher minimum wages.
> in general wages have not remotely kept up with increases in productivity and revenues.
Isn't this because of globalization?
> There's a lot of paranoia about possible negative impacts of wage increases, but it's been tested in many municipalities at this point with no major issues, and virtually every other western country has a much higher minimum than us.
I don't think this is true? I'm pretty sure when we raise wages, jobs move overseas except for those jobs that are fundamentally local (fast-food employees, agricultural workers, construction, sanitation, etc). I'm not opposed to raising wages, but I think we also need to keep jobs from flowing overseas.
That security guy probably could use that food more than the dumpster.
There's been a large rise in people living in campers in California due to high rents.
Somehow SV just decided to not bother with that at all.
California has such a mild climate, that you can build a house out of ticky-tacky, skip the insulation, and people won't care because they have a lemon tree growing in their yard.
Nowadays code won't allow you to skip insulation (or solar), but with earthquakes and high land prices you still aren't getting stone or brick homes.
Structural stone and brick homes aren't really a thing in the US that much any more.
Beyond seismic issues, when it comes to insulation and efficiency and air/water leaks, homes built using bricks and stone are terrible, because those materials are very difficult to seal.
Most newer homes that have brick or stone exteriors use it only for aesthetics, and do not rely on it for structural integrity or resistance to the environment. Their actual skeletons are wood frames, and the weather resistance is provided by layers of materials over that.
You can build incredibly sturdy homes with wood - not ticky-tacky at all.
https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/energy-efficient-home-des...
With RHNA (and state law attempts like SB50) this may be starting to change, but the people responsible for the economic success are not the ones with the political power to fix housing policy.
Most of these issues stem from bad housing policy and incumbents restraining supply.
Genuine question - when you're in the bay, do you spend time in any of the following: Pac Heights / Presidio Heights / Seacliff / Woodside / St. Helena / West Palo Alto / Stanford's Campus / Saratoga?
I think the reason you have the perception that you do is that the bay area is one of the least tourist-friendly locations in the world, frankly because the class you talk about loathes outsiders.
EDIT: A great microcosm of this is Sand Hill Road. Looks like less than nothing from the street, but it's home to some of the most expensive and nicest office real estate in the world. Apple HW stands out as another great example.
Of course, there's less safety nets, less benefits but for educated people who are part of the upper middle class (doctors, teachers, engineers, etc...), the increase in salary is such that it really makes no sense from an economic standpoint to stay in France.
I'd say it's better only for working class to lower middle class.
That really doesn't represent reality.
The majority of federal spending goes to transfer payments:
>...The federal government spent $2.87 trillion on transfers to individuals in 2017, accounting for 72.2 percent of federal spending.
https://www.concordcoalition.org/issue-brief/troubling-trend...
One estimate is that about 22% of state government is spent on public welfare:
>...Another 22 percent of expenditures went toward public welfare. Public welfare includes spending on means-tested programs, such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
The people of the US also give a great deal of money to charity:
>...The United States has been the most generous country in the world over the past decade.
>That’s the conclusion of the World Giving Index, a ranking that measured how likely residents of 128 countries were to practice acts of generosity.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generou...
>...Americans give around 3 percent of our collective income to charity — more than the citizens of any other country. Better yet, these are individual Americans, not the government, who are generating the lion’s share of the contributions.
https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017...
Given that the rent in many trailer parks comparable with an NYC apartment, it stands to reason that most people are there by choice.
The US is a vast country with a vast population and its economy has been geared towards high end services. Those with the relevant education are able to thrive while those without education or wealth get cast aside. Urban centers thrive in this economy while rural ones fade away and decay; most people don’t want/ can’t move to where the opportunities are.
There’s also a multitude of socio political issues. From the relative independence of States to set social benefits policies, to the phenomenon of convincing people to vote against their own interests when race or culture war is involved.