Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?

[Myth465]

Very interesting Manual of ideas. I am planning on reading Stiglitz one of these days who talks more about what you posted. Also thanks for the Teledyne info, it was very helpful.

 

---

 

In terms of being better off.

 

I think it depends on context. Thats an easy yes for me, because I am a black male. Being able to drive freely around the country, eat at lunch counters, and generally enjoy life makes you simply feel better about things. Though 30 years may be a bit too close - 40 to 50 years is easily a no brainier. Given my circumstances.

 

I am sure women would also very quickly say yes. The reasons would not be items that people typical quantify as standard of living though, and have nothing to do with economics. I would also argue that for the typical suburban American family in the 70s the standard / quality of life has actually gone down interestingly enough. They now need 2 incomes to afford a life which required 1 in the past.

 

This is what makes test like this completely retarded. Zarley's comments were quite provocative but he has a point. You are especially calling for a Poll Test which has a very interesting history in America, which again wouldn't benefit someone like myself.

 

I think you have a thesis and are trying to make it fit a problem vs. looking at the problem and coming up with fixes. I dont hold the American people in extremely high regard from an intellectual standpoint but believe we are hardworking and honest people who tend to pick capable leaders (probably with the exclusion of GW). Our officials very clearly understand whats going on and are fairly sharp (youtube moments aside). They are just highly incentivized to make the wrong decisions. I think they use ideology to justify these decisions. Remove the incentives (campaign finance reform, and laws disallowing the movement from Government to industry for a period of time) and you will get better quality decisions. Poll tests will do what they are designed to do. Disenfranchise people.

 

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As Siglitz's would say about the only thing just about every economist from all ideologies agree on is that incentives matter. I would spend more time working on that vs ideology or Econ 101.

[turar]

I think it depends on context. Thats an easy yes for me, because I am a black male. Being able to drive freely around the country, eat at lunch counters, and generally enjoy life makes you simply feel better about things.

 

I am sure women would also very quickly say yes.

The question was about 30 years ago though, not 50-60 years ago. I think that's a big difference in terms of women and minority rights.

 

Also a difference when considering technological advances. I've read some debate elsewhere arguing that in the last 20-30 years, there weren't really any significant breakthroughs in sciences on the scale that were occurring in the first half of 20th century (think space exploration, nuclear physics, etc), and that the most of the technological advances we're seeing now are simply the result, the application, of major breakthroughs of many years ago (i.e. Internet, a.k.a. ARPANET, was the product of research in 50s and 60s). But that's a little off-topic.

 

P.S. Oops, realized I was replying to an older version of your post, but yeah, 30 years is different than 50 years in that regard.

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

The discussion on standard of living change interested me a bit. Seems like the expected answer is that it did increase from 30 years ago, mainly due to innovation in technology. But I wouldn't consider technology an integral part of standard of living consideration, certainly not in the same category as food, housing, and health care. 30 years ago is only as far as 1980. I tried looking up historical personal per capita income in the US, and just eyeballing it, it didn't seem to increase much at all, adjusting for inflation. Seems like some basic costs such as food and shelter have stayed flat as well, but some of the "quality of life" costs like education and health care increased a lot more, thus opening room for argument that the standard of living may have actually decreased. Am I missing something, or am I really dumber than the fifth grader?

 

http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

 

These are figures directly from BLS:

 

1980 CPI: 89.7

2010 CPI: 173.8

 

1980 Median Hourly Wage: $7.12

2010 Median Hourly Wage: $18.85

 

Adjusting for HOURS WORKED, and adjusting for CPI there has been a 36% increase in take home wages.

 

-This does not account for the fact that many things (Computers, telephones, tvs, medicine) are better today but cost the same or less

-This also does not account for the expansion of FEMALES in the workforce (more jobs have been created for females that wanted to join workforce)

 

[Myth465]

Not your fault. After some thinking I figured someone would say that so I edited my post. I tend to think its 1999, so 30 years back feels like someone is talking about the 70s, which was a horrible time.

 

Even still I doubt most minorities yearn for the 80s. My girlfriend's dad (he lives in the Caribbean and went to college in the US in the 80s)  and my dad both say the US is a paradise now compared to then, both aren't from the US. As I think about it more even groups such as Gays and the like would never want to go back based purely on the freedom and acceptance available now.

 

You bring up a very good point, technology these days is especially new consumer goods and inst anything earth shattering baring the internet. MP3 players vs 8tracks and the like.

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

Not your fault. After some thinking I figured someone would say that so I edited my post. I tend to think its 1999, so 30 years back feels like someone is talking about the 70s, which was a horrible time.

 

Even still I doubt most minorities yearn for the 80s. My girlfriend's dad (he lives in the Caribbean and went to college in the US in the 80s)  and my dad both say the US is a paradise now compared to then, both aren't from the US. As I think about it more even groups such as Gays and the like would never want to go back based purely on the freedom and acceptance available now.

 

You bring up a very good point, technology these days is especially new consumer goods and inst anything earth shattering baring the internet. MP3 players vs 8tracks and the like.

 

Myth- you bring up excellent points regarding standard of living in 1980 vs. 2010 and additional factors that are not accounted in the cold, hard 36% increase in hourly wages (racism, sexism, other issues we've grown out of or continuing to grow out of).

 

I think that particular question on the survey, the one regarding standard of living, is meant to take advantage of logic flaws some make, in particular the heuristics nostalgia bias.

[turar]

These are figures directly from BLS:

 

1980 CPI: 89.7

2010 CPI: 173.8

 

1980 Median Hourly Wage: $7.12

2010 Median Hourly Wage: $18.85

 

Adjusting for HOURS WORKED, and adjusting for CPI there has been a 36% increase in take home wages.

 

-This does not account for the fact that many things (Computers, telephones, tvs, medicine) are better today but cost the same or less

-This also does not account for the expansion of FEMALES in the workforce (more jobs have been created for females that wanted to join workforce)

 

 

Watsa, where are you getting your numbers? I couldn't find these exact CPI numbers on BLS. However using their online calculator and your hourly median wage numbers (without adjusting for hours worked), $7.12 in 1980 is equivalent to $18.84 today, so flat almost to the penny. Online calculator: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl

 

If I dig further, I find the following AVERAGE wages for 1980 and 2010 (couldn't find median wages):

 

1980

Weekly hours: 35.2  

Hourly rate: $6.85

Weekly rate: $241.1

               

2010

Weekly hours: 33.1  

Hourly rate: $18.91

Weekly rate: $625.92

 

Source: ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb2.txt

 

Using the same online calculator, $241.1 in 1980 is equal to $637.89 in 2010, about a 2% increase.

 

Using CPI-U numbers that I could find, which are different from yours, I get about the same difference using my own calculation. Source: ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

 

Now I'm not an economist and known for lack of attention to detail, so correct me if I'm wrong. Regarding changes in technology, such as better telephones and computers, I already made my point. I'm not sure they can be treated as a major contributor to the standard of living. I'm also not sure health care cost decreased, I keep hearing otherwise. Regarding non-tangible things like racism and sexism, I can think of offsetting newer issues such as terrorism and surrounding security paranoia, food quality (genetically modified produce), lower quality of K-12 education, lower standards of national discourse (media is idiotic), etc.

[Packer16]

I think the intangibles you quote as being negative are not negatives versus the past.  The good ole days were not as good as folks remember.  Terrorism replaced the Soviet Threat (with probably a lower cost - even with Iraq and Afgahnistan), the food developed is cheaper (we spend less on food so we can spend more on other items) and you have the option if you want to be non-GM food if you want to (at Whole Foods), the lower quality of K-12 education has more to do with the union issue (no mechanism to weed out underperforming teachers) which is being worked on but we do have the best community college and post-secondary system which is available if folks chose to become educated, the lower quality of discourse is only lower if you look at specific outlets but if you can sythesize many sources (including this site), I think the discourse is more diverse and enlightening.  In this context, I feel more I have a better life today then I had 10 -20 years ago.  What does everyone think?  Is life in general better or worse than 10 -20 years ago?  We have more choices so those who want to can utilize these choices.

 

Packer

[opihiman2]

The discussion on standard of living change interested me a bit. Seems like the expected answer is that it did increase from 30 years ago, mainly due to innovation in technology. But I wouldn't consider technology an integral part of standard of living consideration, certainly not in the same category as food, housing, and health care. 30 years ago is only as far as 1980. I tried looking up historical personal per capita income in the US, and just eyeballing it, it didn't seem to increase much at all, adjusting for inflation. Seems like some basic costs such as food and shelter have stayed flat as well, but some of the "quality of life" costs like education and health care increased a lot more, thus opening room for argument that the standard of living may have actually decreased. Am I missing something, or am I really dumber than the fifth grader?

 

http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

 

These are figures directly from BLS:

 

1980 CPI: 89.7

2010 CPI: 173.8

 

1980 Median Hourly Wage: $7.12

2010 Median Hourly Wage: $18.85

 

Adjusting for HOURS WORKED, and adjusting for CPI there has been a 36% increase in take home wages.

 

-This does not account for the fact that many things (Computers, telephones, tvs, medicine) are better today but cost the same or less

-This also does not account for the expansion of FEMALES in the workforce (more jobs have been created for females that wanted to join workforce)

 

 

The fallacy here is to assume the CPI is correct.  There is alot of controversy surrounding the inflation index.  I do not believe 2% inflation is right.  I think 4% is more accurate.  Using 4% as the adjusted inflation index, I see median wages falling.  

 

Also, debating whether we have better standard of living now than before is moot.  It's all relative and debatable.

[twacowfca]

Well said.

 

The answer to every question is it depends. I can show you both sides where the statements would be true or false, regardless of dogma. Would you really want an certified heart surgeon?

 

 

Again, the questions weren't supposed to be do you agree or disagree with the policy.  I agree with the policy of having licensed heart surgeons.  However, I recognize that requiring licensing will increase the cost of heart surgery, as it restricts supply.  

 

The question in that instance is "Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services."  I think you would have a pretty hard time arguing that by not allowing just anyone to perform heart surgery, the cost is higher.  

 

The questions are restricted to a specific economic impact, and determining how many people do not understand that impact.  I'm not trying to argue for or against licensing of heart surgeons; but it is undeniable that by restricting just anyone from becoming one, you restrict supply, and therefore increase cost.  Almost ANY economist, liberal or conservative, would agree with this statement.

 

 

Has anyone on the board read The Constitution of Liberty or The

Road To Serfdom by F A Von Hayek or the Works of Milton Friedman?  To license or not to license and nothing more beyond that, may not be the way these economists would have approached the issue.   Occupational licensing has a downside beyond increasing the cost of services: a false sense that the holder of a license is necessarily competent.  Friedman makes a good case that occupational certification would be much more valuable to the public than mere licensure.  Occupational licenses do promise that the holder has met certain minimal standards when the license was issued, but the license is generally good for a lifetime, absent gross misconduct or incompetence, granting the holders of a license monopolistic privileges as a group.

 

Certification, and especially periodic recertification, offers greater information about competency than merely holding a license as well as potentially lower costs and better service.  :)

 

 

Example#1:  In the US it is generally not required to have an occupational license to do accounting. This is is highly productive.  Those with a low level of accounting skill can set up a small business and be self employed, but for more important tasks having certification such as CPA may be required.  The profession is self regulated and sets and periodically revises its accounting standards so successfully that government can find little reason for mandating occupational licensure or its own standards.

 

 

Example#2:   Within businesses that were generally accounting in nature three companies rose to prominence rating bonds.  They became so good at this that the government mandated that regulated financial institutions must have a large percentage of their assets in securities that received a high rating by one of these three companies, effectively giving them an exclusive license in this very important area, a de facto oligopoly.  I think that most of us know how this second story ended sadly with these outstanding organizations becoming sloppy with their license that protected them from the healthy influence of competition.  

 

The worst effect of licensing these organizations was to cause financial organizations to suspend judgement and rely on their license as approving their competence to rate strange, new, very complex securities.

[ERICOPOLY]

The discussion on standard of living change interested me a bit. Seems like the expected answer is that it did increase from 30 years ago, mainly due to innovation in technology. But I wouldn't consider technology an integral part of standard of living consideration, certainly not in the same category as food, housing, and health care. 30 years ago is only as far as 1980. I tried looking up historical personal per capita income in the US, and just eyeballing it, it didn't seem to increase much at all, adjusting for inflation. Seems like some basic costs such as food and shelter have stayed flat as well, but some of the "quality of life" costs like education and health care increased a lot more, thus opening room for argument that the standard of living may have actually decreased. Am I missing something, or am I really dumber than the fifth grader?

 

http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

 

These are figures directly from BLS:

 

1980 CPI: 89.7

2010 CPI: 173.8

 

1980 Median Hourly Wage: $7.12

2010 Median Hourly Wage: $18.85

 

Adjusting for HOURS WORKED, and adjusting for CPI there has been a 36% increase in take home wages.

 

-This does not account for the fact that many things (Computers, telephones, tvs, medicine) are better today but cost the same or less

-This also does not account for the expansion of FEMALES in the workforce (more jobs have been created for females that wanted to join workforce)

 

 

 

There are different CPI's that the BLS publishes (CPI-W, CPI-U, etc...)

 

The CPI-U (All urban consumers) does not support your conclusion...

 

In fact the CPI-U suggests a slight decrease in what you are calling take home wages.

 

Jan 1980:  77.8

Apr 2010:  218

 

218 / 77.8 = 2.8

 

$7.12 * 2.8 = $19.93   (adjusting 1980 wages for rise in CPI-U of 2.8x)

 

$19.93 > $18.85  

 

 

Here is the link to the CPI-U data:

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

 

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

The discussion on standard of living change interested me a bit. Seems like the expected answer is that it did increase from 30 years ago, mainly due to innovation in technology. But I wouldn't consider technology an integral part of standard of living consideration, certainly not in the same category as food, housing, and health care. 30 years ago is only as far as 1980. I tried looking up historical personal per capita income in the US, and just eyeballing it, it didn't seem to increase much at all, adjusting for inflation. Seems like some basic costs such as food and shelter have stayed flat as well, but some of the "quality of life" costs like education and health care increased a lot more, thus opening room for argument that the standard of living may have actually decreased. Am I missing something, or am I really dumber than the fifth grader?

 

http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

 

These are figures directly from BLS:

 

1980 CPI: 89.7

2010 CPI: 173.8

 

1980 Median Hourly Wage: $7.12

2010 Median Hourly Wage: $18.85

 

Adjusting for HOURS WORKED, and adjusting for CPI there has been a 36% increase in take home wages.

 

-This does not account for the fact that many things (Computers, telephones, tvs, medicine) are better today but cost the same or less

-This also does not account for the expansion of FEMALES in the workforce (more jobs have been created for females that wanted to join workforce)

 

 

 

There are different CPI's that the BLS publishes (CPI-W, CPI-U, etc...)

 

The CPI-U (All urban consumers) does not support your conclusion...

 

In fact the CPI-U suggests a slight decrease in what you are calling take home wages.

 

Jan 1980:  77.8

Apr 2010:  218

 

218 / 77.8 = 2.8

 

$7.12 * 2.8 = $19.93   (adjusting 1980 wages for rise in CPI-U of 2.8x)

 

$19.93 > $18.85  

 

 

Here is the link to the CPI-U data:

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

 

 

If you are going to use the CPI-U data (urban only), then you would have to use the wage data for urban-only.  What I gave was national, so neither were urban only, and if you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison you shouldn't use the CPI-U.

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

The discussion on standard of living change interested me a bit. Seems like the expected answer is that it did increase from 30 years ago, mainly due to innovation in technology. But I wouldn't consider technology an integral part of standard of living consideration, certainly not in the same category as food, housing, and health care. 30 years ago is only as far as 1980. I tried looking up historical personal per capita income in the US, and just eyeballing it, it didn't seem to increase much at all, adjusting for inflation. Seems like some basic costs such as food and shelter have stayed flat as well, but some of the "quality of life" costs like education and health care increased a lot more, thus opening room for argument that the standard of living may have actually decreased. Am I missing something, or am I really dumber than the fifth grader?

 

http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

 

These are figures directly from BLS:

 

1980 CPI: 89.7

2010 CPI: 173.8

 

1980 Median Hourly Wage: $7.12

2010 Median Hourly Wage: $18.85

 

Adjusting for HOURS WORKED, and adjusting for CPI there has been a 36% increase in take home wages.

 

-This does not account for the fact that many things (Computers, telephones, tvs, medicine) are better today but cost the same or less

-This also does not account for the expansion of FEMALES in the workforce (more jobs have been created for females that wanted to join workforce)

 

 

The fallacy here is to assume the CPI is correct.  There is alot of controversy surrounding the inflation index.  I do not believe 2% inflation is right.  I think 4% is more accurate.  Using 4% as the adjusted inflation index, I see median wages falling.  

 

Also, debating whether we have better standard of living now than before is moot.  It's all relative and debatable.

 

What basis do you have for your 4%? 

 

To the contrary, most economists would argue the CPI OVERSTATES actual inflation and that the GDP Deflator Understates actual inflation, and true inflation is somewhere in between.  There are many reasons why the CPI has the potential to overstate inflation; the availability for individuals to alter to substitute goods when prices rise in one particular good is not accounted for (because fixed weights are used).

[SharperDingaan]

 

Keep in mind that most of 'standard of living', is not actually measurable.

 

Today pretty much everyone has access to a porcelain toilet; 300 years ago even kings/queens had to use a 'long drop'. How do you measure that progress?

 

All through the 1950-70's you moved out of the house & 'grew up'; pretty much as soon as possible. You could drive a car at 16 (for the most part), get killed at 18 (joined the army), & were mature & an adult at 21. You can still do those things, but now we have the returning 'adult kid' in their mid 20's. How do you measure that!

 

SD

 

[rkbabang]

Now I'm not an economist and known for lack of attention to detail, so correct me if I'm wrong. Regarding changes in technology, such as better telephones and computers, I already made my point. I'm not sure they can be treated as a major contributor to the standard of living. I'm also not sure health care cost decreased, I keep hearing otherwise. Regarding non-tangible things like racism and sexism, I can think of offsetting newer issues such as terrorism and surrounding security paranoia, food quality (genetically modified produce), lower quality of K-12 education, lower standards of national discourse (media is idiotic), etc.

 

There is too much here to respond to all at once, but do you live on the same planet that we do?  

 

Let's start with food in 1970 Americans spent 14% of there income on food, in 1980 13.4%, now it is about 9%. And the food quality is immeasurably better today than it was 30 years ago in every possible way.  It is fresher, more available, more variety, more affordable.  30 years ago people ate mostly canned produce where as today people eat fresh produce.  Do you remember going into a grocery store 30 years ago and what it looked like compared to today?  You obviously don't.  Go into a Whole Foods if you want to see what most stores will look like in the near future. People also spend less as a percentage of income today on clothing, shelter and transportation as well. And that is world wide not just the U.S.   And saying technology hasn't improved our lives is an asinine statement if I ever heard one.  Do you remember what it was like being out and needing to make a phone call (god forbid a long distance call) 30 years ago?   How bad cars were (at any price) 30 years ago?   What houses were like then compared to now.  My kids live, dress, eat, and play like royalty compared to the way I grew up, in every possible measure - tangible and intangible. To say that the standard of living hasn't improved enormously in the last 30 years isn't being a "glass-half-empty" person you need to be a person who looks at a half-full glass and scream that it is completely empty and you are dieing of thirst.

 

--Eric

 

[ERICOPOLY]

If you are going to use the CPI-U data (urban only), then you would have to use the wage data for urban-only.  What I gave was national, so neither were urban only, and if you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison you shouldn't use the CPI-U.

 

Yes well, I didn't mix apples/oranges on purpose.  I assumed that CPI-U is what we wanted because you didn't mention otherwise and I figured you just accidentally pulled the wrong data from somewhere.  CPI-U is what the US Treasury uses to calculate the adjustments for TIPS -- they don't have a "national" CPI for that.

 

Do you mind adding links to the national wage data and "national" CPI data?

 

I must admit I have not heard of the "national CPI" before.  I went to Wikipedia's article on the CPI and I still cant figure out which one it may be.

 

Here is the Wikipedia link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index

 

It mentions the CPI-U and CPI-W, and "Core CPI", but neglects to mention "national" CPI.

 

 

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

If you are going to use the CPI-U data (urban only), then you would have to use the wage data for urban-only.  What I gave was national, so neither were urban only, and if you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison you shouldn't use the CPI-U.

 

Yes well, I didn't mix apples/oranges on purpose.  I assumed that CPI-U is what we wanted because you didn't mention otherwise and I figured you just accidentally pulled the wrong data from somewhere.  CPI-U is what the US Treasury uses to calculate the adjustments for TIPS -- they don't have a "national" CPI for that.

 

Do you mind adding links to the national wage data and "national" CPI data?

 

I must admit I have not heard of the "national CPI" before.  I went to Wikipedia's article on the CPI and I still cant figure out which one it may be.

 

Here is the Wikipedia link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_Index

 

It mentions the CPI-U and CPI-W, and "Core CPI", but neglects to mention "national" CPI.

 

 

 

I used bloomberg to pull (which accesses the bls) - i think the w is wage earners, that is national, not just urban.  i can send you the bloomberg screen shots if you'd like

[turar]

I think the intangibles you quote as being negative are not negatives versus the past.  The good ole days were not as good as folks remember.  Terrorism replaced the Soviet Threat (with probably a lower cost - even with Iraq and Afgahnistan), the food developed is cheaper (we spend less on food so we can spend more on other items) and you have the option if you want to be non-GM food if you want to (at Whole Foods), the lower quality of K-12 education has more to do with the union issue (no mechanism to weed out underperforming teachers) which is being worked on but we do have the best community college and post-secondary system which is available if folks chose to become educated, the lower quality of discourse is only lower if you look at specific outlets but if you can sythesize many sources (including this site), I think the discourse is more diverse and enlightening.  In this context, I feel more I have a better life today then I had 10 -20 years ago.  What does everyone think?  Is life in general better or worse than 10 -20 years ago?  We have more choices so those who want to can utilize these choices.

 

I agree with opihiman2 that discussion of intangibles doesn't really make sense, as it's highly subjective and will depend on personal experience. I kind of regret even going into that. Most people, especially on this board, would definitely have a higher standard of living today than 30 years ago, simply because of age bias (i.e. a broke college student in the 80s is now a successful professional, or a newly arrived immigrant family in the 80s is now a thriving family business, after years of hard work, etc.).

 

My point was simply that I don't think that the standard of living increased so significantly since 1980, that it should be obvious to a fifth grader. It's not obvious to me.

 

If you are going to use the CPI-U data (urban only), then you would have to use the wage data for urban-only.  What I gave was national, so neither were urban only, and if you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison you shouldn't use the CPI-U.

 

I don't think CPI-U vs CPI-W would be so different. Using CPI-W tables, your quoted median wage of $7.12 in 1980 is equivalent to $19.33 in 2010 dollars. That's a decrease when compared to your quoted median wage of $18.85 for 2010. The table used: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/avgcpi.html  I don't see how you're getting a 36% increase.

 

There is too much here to respond to all at once, but do you live on the same planet that we do? 

 

No, I'm typing this message from Mars.

 

Like I already said, I regret pulling some of those intangible comparisons, as they're highly subjective. My point is simply that wages decreased or stayed flat (see above), prices for "important" items such as health care and higher education have increased significantly (no data to prove that, just guessing), and prices for "unimportant" items such as computers or phones have decreased. But how does that make "standard of living" higher? And what is "standard of living" anyway? The cars maybe better, but they still take you from A to B as they did in 1980, and cost about the same. The housing quality is better? Not sure. Definitely bigger, but better? I keep hearing horror stories of quality of residential construction built in 1990s and 2000s, as compared to older houses. But again, just anecdotal and highly subjective. The food -- definitely cheaper and more mass produced now compared to then. But if I taste a beautiful, big, shiny, nicely waxed apple from Whole Foods, and compare what I taste to an ugly-looking, smallish apple with a worm inside from a bazaar in a third-world country or from a private orchard, the comparison is not good for the former. That's roughly what I meant by "food quality", but yeah, otherwise there's plenty of it, quantity-wise in 2010 than in 1980.

 

Again, these intangibles are highly subjective, let's not get bogged down debating these.

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

I think the intangibles you quote as being negative are not negatives versus the past.  The good ole days were not as good as folks remember.  Terrorism replaced the Soviet Threat (with probably a lower cost - even with Iraq and Afgahnistan), the food developed is cheaper (we spend less on food so we can spend more on other items) and you have the option if you want to be non-GM food if you want to (at Whole Foods), the lower quality of K-12 education has more to do with the union issue (no mechanism to weed out underperforming teachers) which is being worked on but we do have the best community college and post-secondary system which is available if folks chose to become educated, the lower quality of discourse is only lower if you look at specific outlets but if you can sythesize many sources (including this site), I think the discourse is more diverse and enlightening.  In this context, I feel more I have a better life today then I had 10 -20 years ago.  What does everyone think?  Is life in general better or worse than 10 -20 years ago?  We have more choices so those who want to can utilize these choices.

 

I agree with opihiman2 that discussion of intangibles doesn't really make sense, as it's highly subjective and will depend on personal experience. I kind of regret even going into that. Most people, especially on this board, would definitely have a higher standard of living today than 30 years ago, simply because of age bias (i.e. a broke college student in the 80s is now a successful professional, or a newly arrived immigrant family in the 80s is now a thriving family business, after years of hard work, etc.).

 

My point was simply that I don't think that the standard of living increased so significantly since 1980, that it should be obvious to a fifth grader. It's not obvious to me.

 

If you are going to use the CPI-U data (urban only), then you would have to use the wage data for urban-only.  What I gave was national, so neither were urban only, and if you want to do an apples-to-apples comparison you shouldn't use the CPI-U.

 

I don't think CPI-U vs CPI-W would be so different. Using CPI-W tables, your quoted median wage of $7.12 in 1980 is equivalent to $19.33 in 2010 dollars. That's a decrease when compared to your quoted median wage of $18.85 for 2010. The table used: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/avgcpi.html  I don't see how you're getting a 36% increase.

 

There is too much here to respond to all at once, but do you live on the same planet that we do? 

 

No, I'm typing this message from Mars.

 

Like I already said, I regret pulling some of those intangible comparisons, as they're highly subjective. My point is simply that wages decreased or stayed flat (see above), prices for "important" items such as health care and higher education have increased significantly (no data to prove that, just guessing), and prices for "unimportant" items such as computers or phones have decreased. But how does that make "standard of living" higher? And what is "standard of living" anyway? The cars maybe better, but they still take you from A to B as they did in 1980, and cost about the same. The housing quality is better? Not sure. Definitely bigger, but better? I keep hearing horror stories of quality of residential construction built in 1990s and 2000s, as compared to older houses. But again, just anecdotal and highly subjective. The food -- definitely cheaper and more mass produced now compared to then. But if I taste a beautiful, big, shiny, nicely waxed apple from Whole Foods, and compare what I taste to an ugly-looking, smallish apple with a worm inside from a bazaar in a third-world country or from a private orchard, the comparison is not good for the former. That's roughly what I meant by "food quality", but yeah, otherwise there's plenty of it, quantity-wise in 2010 than in 1980.

 

Again, these intangibles are highly subjective, let's not get bogged down debating these.

 

so I can't seem to find the same charts on bloomberg now that I referred to last time, I guess I wan't expecting people to question the fact wages have risen over the last 30 years.  So here is something better; I'm attaching a chart of real wages (already adjusted for inflation).  This is for non-supervisory workers only, this doesn't include management.  The one for all private workers they don't have data going back that to 1980 available.

 

So...Non-supervisory workers have risen about 10-15%...less than the amount I quoted last time.  However, (a) this is a positive increase, and (b) it has been documented that wages for those with college/masters degrees have risen faster than those without over the last few decades, leading one to believe supervisory wages (not included in attachment) were also positive, and likely exhibited much more growth.

[ERICOPOLY]

I used bloomberg to pull (which accesses the bls) - i think the w is wage earners, that is national, not just urban.  i can send you the bloomberg screen shots if you'd like

 

 

CPI-W is called the "The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers"

 

So that too is "urban".

 

Perhaps the Bloomberg figures are for "core" CPI, excluding food and energy costs?  I've been trying to find what those numbers would be fore the "core" CPI, but I haven't been able to find them.  I was hoping to locate them so that we could at least see if they match up with the Bloomberg numbers.

 

 

 

 

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

I used bloomberg to pull (which accesses the bls) - i think the w is wage earners, that is national, not just urban.  i can send you the bloomberg screen shots if you'd like

 

 

CPI-W is called the "The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers"

 

So that too is "urban".

 

Perhaps the Bloomberg figures are for "core" CPI, excluding food and energy costs?  I've been trying to find what those numbers would be fore the "core" CPI, but I haven't been able to find them.  I was hoping to locate them so that we could at least see if they match up with the Bloomberg numbers.

 

 

Refer to the post above, I can't seem to find the same numbers in bloomberg i found yesterday, just playing around with their stupid codes for everything.  However, in addition to the chart posted above, here is Real GDP Per Capita.  This does not adjust for hours worked, but is the total economy, not just non-supervisory production workers.

 

 

[ERICOPOLY]

I used bloomberg to pull (which accesses the bls) - i think the w is wage earners, that is national, not just urban.  i can send you the bloomberg screen shots if you'd like

 

 

CPI-W is called the "The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers"

 

So that too is "urban".

 

Perhaps the Bloomberg figures are for "core" CPI, excluding food and energy costs?  I've been trying to find what those numbers would be fore the "core" CPI, but I haven't been able to find them.  I was hoping to locate them so that we could at least see if they match up with the Bloomberg numbers.

 

 

Refer to the post above, I can't seem to find the same numbers in bloomberg i found yesterday, just playing around with their stupid codes for everything.  However, in addition to the chart posted above, here is Real GDP Per Capita.  This does not adjust for hours worked, but is the total economy, not just non-supervisory production workers.

 

 

 

Personally, I'm in the camp that real wages have risen.  I just find it frustrating that "real" in the Bloomberg calculations isn't defined -- "real" is obviously relative to the data used, and these screencapture shots don't specify the data set used.

 

I wish I was still as young as I was in 1980 though.  In that respect my standard of living keeps declining every year.

[watsa_is_a_randian_hero]

I wish I was still as young as I was in 1980 though.  In that respect my standard of living keeps declining every year.

 

hahaha...i like that. 

[Investmentacct]

Related to standard of Living , you are right it may be personal.

 

Because of cost of communications came down a lot; it is far easy to communicate across the world.

 

Just in year 2000 when I arrived in USA , it used to cost my home country (9000 miles apart) 2 minutes per dollar. And the same time, Yahoo messenger / MSN messenger had one half inch size window video available with poor quality.

 

Ten year goes forward in 2010, and now I could project and talk to my home and family members video on 32 inch lcd with spotless clarity on daily basis using skype on near zero costs. This service which in 90s probably any big public company CEOs had access to.

 

I heard through my cousins here in USA, who came in early 80s and used to write snail mails to reach back home country in 15-20 days.

 

[Packer16]

A portion of standard of living that has not been mentioned which is very important is choice (i.e. having a wide range of options).  Once most folks have enough resources to feed cloth and shelter themselves, the range of choices become increasingly more important than increasing wealth.  This is where I think we are much better than 20 - 30 years ago.  I also think the amount and quantity of leisure time has increased tremendously -  just think of the increase per capital revenues for entertainment type companies.  If we were really in such bad shape or even the same how could we spend so much more and spend so much more time in leisure activities?  I think another thing that is missed is that the qualitative aspect of quality of life (freedom and choices) can be as or more important the quantitative aspect (increased wages).

 

Packer