America is Downton Abbey?

[100% Wolf]

No it's not. Before the wish was granted, you did not have twice whatever your neighbor has. After it was granted, you do. That's a lot more logical than thinking the genie would just keep re-granting the same wish over and over quadrupling your stuff each time until the universe collapsed.

[Dinner]

It probably is. In, say, 1955 the average American family made an inflation adjusted $50,000 per year with only one person in a family working. Jobs just paid more, part of that was there was no free trade so even low levels of education jobs paid higher (they didn't have to compete with over seas producers to a large degree) so a man working full time in a factory could support a family of four to a middle class standard even if he never went to college. Now we have most families with two income earners, husband and wife, yet they still only make ~$50k per year. Obviously the value of labor has gone down in the last 50 years largely because of free trade and over seas competition where the average Chinese garment factory worker makes about $0.60 per hour with no benefits. There is an upside as regular items now cost less (inflation adjusted), a t-shirt or socks have never been cheaper (inflation adjusted), but income has gone down much faster than the cost of items have gone down especially when we count things like the cost of housing or cost of health care. Sure, houses are bigger now than in the 1950's but even adjusting for that incomes have fallen faster. Plus unions have been gutted, just absolutely gutted, so that the days of at least half of the profits going to workers are now gone and instead the top 1% get all the profits while regular workers don't get squat.

There are pluses and minuses to this arrangement but it is hard to say that in total this isn't a much worse deal for the average man and that we can't do better if our goal is to have a better standard of living for the large majority of people.

[Dinner]

The show sucks

and I wouldn't trade living today for living in 1920's England... not in a million years

The show is great!

I also wouldn't prefer to live there compared to the modern world but it is still a very entertaining show with a good historical twist. On the upside, one set of my grandparents lived in 1920's UK (Scotland not England but still UK) and they seemed to have done ok, there was deprivation, but they were still better of than 90% of the world's population in the 1920's. That said, people were poorer. My grandfather told me that until the day of his marriage he was required to give 100% of his salary (and people started working at 14) to his father as that was the head of household and a young man wasn't considered to be on his own until he was married so that meant he'd be 14-18 and working half a day in the coal mines in Scotland because that was the job available in that location at the time and you got out of school at 2pm so you could still work until 6pm and earn half a day's wage. Remember that young people got paid next to nothing even compared to the low wages people earned at that time. On the day he graduated from high school (1934) the school made sure the graduation cerimony was over pay 10am so the former students could still go down and work in the coal mine for 3/4ths of a day. Itt was a different type of life.

[100% Wolf]

It probably is. In, say, 1955 the average American family made an inflation adjusted $50,000 per year with only one person in a family working.

lol wut

[Sava]

No it's not. Before the wish was granted, you did not have twice whatever your neighbor has. After it was granted, you do. That's a lot more logical than thinking the genie would just keep re-granting the same wish over and over quadrupling your stuff each time until the universe collapsed.

Dynamic updates would be expressed as part of the wish. "Give me twice what my neighbor has at any given moment in time"

Though, a drawback would definitely be if the neighbor eats bad mexican food. You get twice the diarrhea and spicy *******.

[Sava]

lol wut

Oerdin did pull that number out of his ass.

[100% Wolf]

Dynamic updates would be expressed as part of the wish. "Give me twice what my neighbor has at any given moment in time"

Though, a drawback would definitely be if the neighbor eats bad mexican food. You get twice the diarrhea and spicy *******.

He did say the neighbor would "receive double" whatever you get so I guess that checks out.

[Dinner]

OK, not as high as I thought but twice as high as HC claims.



Especially when you include the cost of buying a home and the cost of health care it was far, far, far more sffordable in the 1950's. Hell, I want to know how HC's graph includes duel incomes because I'm willing to bet it isn't a graph of just single income households so that single income earners actually went down even though total income may have gone up because you have more people working more hours in each family.

[pchang]

Still better now than in the 1950s. Also doesn't really measure PPP.

[DinoDoc]

lol wut

Oerdin is always wrong.

[Hauldren Collider]

OK, not as high as I thought but twice as high as HC claims.



Especially when you include the cost of buying a home and the cost of health care it was far, far, far more sffordable in the 1950's. Hell, I want to know how HC's graph includes duel incomes because I'm willing to bet it isn't a graph of just single income households so that single income earners actually went down even though total income may have gone up because you have more people working more hours in each family.

I haven't even posted in this ****ing thread yet you massive ******.

[Sava]

[Sava]

also...

duel incomes

[DinoDoc]

also...

Do they use swords or pistols?

[regexcellent]

This is dumb because the gini coefficient is a stupid and meaningless measure because income inequality is not a real thing.

Also, America is not Downton Abbey because we don't spend 90% of our time being helped into formal dinnerwear.