7 ms·

funny how we have all of this progress yet things that actually matter (sorry chess fans) in the real world are more expensive: health care, housing, cars. and

• jordwest 9mo ago
  It would be kinda funny if not so tragic how economists will argue both "[productive improvement] will make things cheaper" and then in the next breath "deflation is bad and must be avoided at all costs"
  • actionfromafar 9mo ago
    But is it really, though? Dollars aren't meant to be held.
    • jordwest 9mo ago
      I think the idea of dollars as purely a trading medium where absolute prices don't matter wouldn't be such an issue if wages weren't always the last thing to rise with inflation. As it is now anyone with assets is only barely affected by inflation while those who earn a living from wages have their livelihood eroded over time covertly.
      • actionfromafar 9mo ago
        Exactly as the current owners… ahem, leaders of this country want it.
      • samdoesnothing 9mo ago
        Barely affected? They benefit massively from it. That is why the rich get richer.
        • jordwest 9mo ago
          True, in terms of share of the pie for sure
• atleastoptimal 9mo ago
  Those are all expensive because of artificial barriers meant to keep their prices high. Go to any Asian country and houses, healthcare and cars are priced like commodities, not luxuries. Tech and AI have taken off in the US partially because they’re in the domain of software, which hasnt bee regulated to the point of deliberate inefficiency like other industries in the US.
  • tyre 9mo ago
    If we had less regulation of insurance companies, do you think they’d be cheaper? (I pick this example because our regulation of insurance companies has (unintuitively) incentivized them to pay more for care. So it’s an example of poor regulation imo)
    • davidw 9mo ago
      Health care is the more complicated one of the examples cited, but housing definitely is an 'own goal' in how we made it too difficult to build in too many places - especially "up and in" rather than outward expansion. Stuff like this isn't Wall Street or Billionaires or whatever bogeyman - it's our neighbors: https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing-shortage/ https://bendyimby.com/2024/04/16/the-hearing-and-the-housing...
      • wyre 9mo ago
        Health care is complicated, but I don't think it would hard to understand how less regulations could lower prices. More insurers could enter markets, could compete across state lines, and compliance costs could be lowered. However regulation is helpful for those already sick or with pre-existing conditions. Developed countries with well-regulated systems also have better health outcomes than the US does.
    • deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    • murderfs 9mo ago
      Well, they'd be more functional as insurance, at least! The way insurance is supposed to work is that your insurance premium is proportional to the risk. You can't go uninsured and then after discovering that your house is on fire and about to burn down, sign up for an insurance plan and expect it to be covered. We've blundered into a system that has the worst parts of socialized health care and private health insurance without any of the benefits.
• dzonga 9mo ago
  yeah that my question to the author too - if A.I is to really earn its keep it means A.I should help in getting more physical products into people's hands & helping with producing more energy. physical products & energy are the two things that are relevant to people's wellbeing. right now A.I is sucking up the energy & the RAM - so is it gonna translate into a net positive ?
  • Avicebron 9mo ago
    That's the question though isn't it. If everyone got a subscription to claude-$Latest would they be able to pay their rent with it?
    • twodave 9mo ago
      No, because they’d be waiting in the lengthy queues that would be necessary for anyone to use it. There are hard constraints to this tech that make what you’re talking about infeasible.
    • goatlover 9mo ago
      No because nurses, mechanics, and janitors are still needed.
• AnotherGoodName 9mo ago
  To give backing i’m from Australia which has ~2.5x the median wealth per capita of US citizens but a lower average wealth. This shows through in the wealth of a typical citizen. Less homelessness, better living standards (hdi in australia is higher) etc. Compare sorting by median vs average to get a sense of the issue; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe... This is a recent development where the median wealth of citizens in progressively taxes nations has quickly overtaken the median wealth of USA citizens. All it takes is tax on the extremely wealthy and lessening taxes on the middle class… seems obvious right? Yet things gave consistently been going the other way for along time in the USA.
  • jacquesm 9mo ago
    I think by the time the wealthy realize they're setting themselves up for the local equivalent of the French Revolution it will be a bit late. It's a really bad idea to create a large number of people with absolutely nothing to lose.
    • tadfisher 9mo ago
      They already know, and do not care. Their plan is quite literally to retreat into bunkers with shock collars enforcing the loyalty of their guards. The richest of the rich have purchased islands where they can hole up.
      • AstroBen 9mo ago
        Stripped of their infinite freedom out here to hide in a bunker? No chance The bunkers are in case of nuclear war or serious pandemics. Absolutely worst case last resort scenario, not just "oh I don't care if I end up there"
    • hsuduebc2 9mo ago
      Moreover when you acting absolutely relentlessly like certain car maker. People usually change their behavior after some pretty horrific events. So I would predict something like that in future. For both Europe and US too.
• renewiltord 9mo ago
  Well, politically, housing becoming cheaper is considered a failure. And this is true for all ages. As an example, take Reddit. Skews younger, more Democrat-voting, etc. You'd think they'd be for lower housing prices. But not really. In fact, they make fun of states like Texas whose cities act to allow housing to become cheaper: https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1nw4ef9/are_they_libs_owned_yet/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/1nw4ef9/... That's just an example, but the pattern will easily repeat. One thing that came out of the post-pandemic era is that the lowest deciles saw the biggest rises in income. Consequently, things like Doordash became more expensive, and stuff like McDonald's stopped staffing as much. This isn't some grand secret, but most Americans who post on Twitter, HN, or Reddit consider the results some kind of tragedy, though it is the natural thing that happens when people become much higher income: you can't hire many of them to do low-productivity jobs like bus a McD's table. That's what life looks like when others get richer relative to you. You can't consume the fruits of their labor for cheap. And they will compete for you with the things that you decided to place supply controls on. The highly-educated downwardly-mobile see this most acutely, which is why you see it commonly among the educated children of the past elite.
  • mlrtime 9mo ago
    Thank you, I've replied too many times that if people want low priced housing, it's easily found in Texas. The replies are empty or stating that they don't want to live there because... it's Texas. So the young want cheap affordable housing, right in the middle of Manhattan, never going to happen.
    • baq 9mo ago
      Don’t blame people they want to live close to where the good jobs are.
• lowbloodsugar 9mo ago
  >in the real world are more expensive: health care, housing, cars. Think of it another way. It's not that these things are more expensive. It's that the average US worker simply doesn't provide anything of value. China provides the things of value now. How the government corrected for this was to flood the economy with cash. So it looks like things got more expensive, when really it's that wages reduced to match reality. US citizens selling each other lattes back and forth, producing nothing of actual value. US companies bleeding people dry with fees. The final straw was an old man uniting the world against the USA instead of against China. If you want to know where this is going, look at Britain: the previous world super power. Britain governed far more of the earth than the USA ever did, and now look at it. Now the only thing it produces is ASBOs. I suppose it also sells weapons to dictators and provides banking to them. That is the USA's future.
  • copypaper 9mo ago
    Yep. My grandma bought her house in ~1962 for $20k working at a factory making $2/hr. Her mortgage was $100/m; about 1 weeks worth of pay. $2/hr then is the equivalent of ~$21/hr today. If you were to buy that same house today, your mortgage would be about $5100/m-- about 6 weeks of pay. And the reason is exactly what you're saying: the average US worker doesn't provide as much value anymore. Just as her factory job got optimized/automated, AI is going to do the same for many. Tech workers were expensive for a while and now they're not. The problem is that there seems to be less and less opportunity where one can bring value. The only true winners are the factory owners and AI providers in this scenario. The only chance anybody has right now is to cut the middleman out, start their own business, and pray it takes off.
  • galangalalgol 9mo ago
    But the us is China's market, so the ccp goes along even though they are the producer. Because a domestic consumer economy would mean sharing the profits of that manufacturing with the workers. But that would create a middle class not dependent on the party leading (at least in their minds, and perhaps not wrongly) to instability. It is a dance of two, and neither can afford to let go. And neither can keep dancing any longer. I think it will be very bad everywhere.
• wotWhytho 9mo ago
  [dead]
• hsuduebc2 9mo ago
  It's interesting to see Cyberpunk 2077 became somehow relatable more and more.
  • baq 9mo ago
    Sci fi works on this topic are about as old as sci fi. I’m terrified the stories started hitting close to home in the past few years.
  • torginus 9mo ago
    I remember reading Burning Chrome, written in 1982, and one of the characters commented on late-stage capitalism.
• cal_dent 9mo ago
  Housing is a funny old one and speaks to it being a human problem. One thing a lot of people dont truly engage with with the housing issue is that its a massive issue of distribution. Too many people want to live in too few places. Yes, central banks & interest rates (being too low and also now being relatively too high), nimbyism, and rent seeking play an important role too but solving the "too many people live in too few places" issue actually fixes that problem (slowly, and possibly unpalatably slow for some, but a fix nonetheless) The key issue upstream is that too many good jobs are concentrated in too few places, and that leads to consumerism stimulating those places and making them further more attractive. Technology, through Covid, actually gave governments a get out of jail free card by allowing remote work to become more mainstream. Only to just not grasp the golden egg they were given. Pivot economies more to remote working more actively helps distribute people to other places with more affordable home. Over time, and again slowly, those places become more attractive because people now actually live there. Existing homeowners can still wrap themselves in the warm glow of their high house prices which only loses "real" value through inflation which people tend not to notice as much. But we decided to try to go back to the status quo so oh well
  • torginus 9mo ago
    I see the issue of housing is a combination of: - House prices increasing while wages are stagnant - Home loans and increasing prices mean the people going for huge leverages on their home purchases - Supply is essentially government controlled, and dependent, and building more housing is heavily politicized - A lot of dubious money is being created, which gets converted to good money by investing it in the housing market - Housing is genuinely difficult to build and labor and capital intensive > The key issue upstream is that too many good jobs are concentrated in too few places This no longer is the case with remote work on the rise, If that were the case, housing prices would increase faster in trendy overpriced places, but the increase as of late was more uniform, with places like London growing slower (or even depreciating, relatively speaking) to less in-demand places.
    • cal_dent 9mo ago
      I'd argue that if your point around remote fully held true then that would be shown in the very short-term by rental prices (as the key indicator of people leaving London in lieu of population/census data) but that hasnt been apparent in the data. London rentals have seen much stronger growth post-covid than other places in the UK. What is happening with house prices in london is a combination of the simple effects of high-ish interest rates v high house prices (limiting affordability) and also flats in general taking a beating from post-grenfell building regs changes and leasehold issues. When you look at granular data there is still a surprising amount growth in Zone 3-4 onwards in London because actual houses in those locations are still sort of achievable for decently paid couples. Also regionally, a bit glib, but the price increases are happening in Manchester not Bolton or Sheffield not Scunthorpe. If remote working was truly acceptable then those latter locations would be seeing far more inward movement of people but they're not really
• raldi 9mo ago
  Food and clothes are much cheaper. People used to have to walk or hitchhike a lot more. People died younger, or were trapped with abusive spouses and/or parents. Crime was high. There was little economic mobility. It really sucked if you weren’t a straight white man. Houses had one bathroom. Power went out regularly. Travel was rare and expensive; people rarely flew anywhere. There was limited entertainment or opportunities to learn about the world.
• samdoesnothing 9mo ago
  It's inflation, simple as that. The US left the gold standard at the exact same time that productivity diverged from wages. Coincidence? No. Pretty much everything gets more expensive, with the outliers being tech which has gotten much cheaper, mostly because the rate at which it progresses is faster than the rate at which governments can print money. But everything we need to survive, like food, housing, etc, keeps getting more expensive. And the asset class get richer as a result.