Economic fallacies I could do without

[Willy702]

Originally Posted by jimhcom

Worse or better is not an easy equation, due to advances in technology. The question that you need to focus on is; are you able to accumulate real wealth, and what price do you pay for your prosperity.
Technology has made everything exponentially less expensive due to massive increases in efficiency.
That does not mean that inflation has aided prosperity. While we may live an easier life because of that technology, the majority of people are no more than well treated wage slaves.
In 1913 for example ownership of land which has long been a measure of wealth was much easier for common people than today. The usual family farm at that time was at a minimum 40 acres. Who do you know today who owns 40 acres?
In 1913 the so called American dream was still very much alive and people were under much less burden from laws, taxes and regulations that now stifle common people. It was possible to get ahead, as millions of immigrants proved. My father returned from WWI to start his own factory with only what he had saved and went on to employ 40 people before losing everything in the depression.
A depression caused by the Federal Reserve’s policies of credit and inflation.
Today people pat themselves on the back for having a good "standard of living" but nearly 50% of the population is a couple of paychecks away from living in poverty. Many people who are able to obtain degrees in order to get upper level employment do so at the cost of 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars in debt which hamstrings their lives for decades. Most people live under constant fear and stress of losing their jobs, and being unable to make payments on everything they own. They chronically use alcohol, antidepressants, and recreational drugs to cope. 50% of all marriages end in divorce shattering the lives of school age children, and the overwhelming cause of most divorce is financial problems. Suicide rates have never been higher. So you tell me do we have it better or worse?

Please we have it better now than 1913 and its laughable to even try to argue otherwise. Yeah we create problems for ourselves because of our increased wealth, but go and look at what living standards were really like for most of the population back then. Many today may be temporarily in poverty if something bad happened but they could get out of it in time. In 1913 if you were poor you were going to stay poor and no amount of hard work would change it. Your kids werent going to be any better because you had to put them to work by the time they were 10 or 11. And complain all you want about medical bankruptcy today, but you get treated and live to fight more battles. You would have had no such luck 100 years ago.

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by Willy702

...but go and look at what living standards were really like for most of the population back then.
In 1913 if you were poor you were going to stay poor and no amount of hard work would change it.
Your kids werent going to be any better because you had to put them to work by the time they were 10 or 11.

Are you describing 1913 in the US or 1813? Or maybe somewhere else?

With the exception of the backward and back country coal miners...
I can't think of anywhere that was like what you describe in the lower 48.
Portions of such sure... but portions of it exist today too.

Please we have it better now than 1913 and its laughable to even try to argue otherwise.

Was someone saying that what we have today (for most) isn't better?

Granted I don't read the WOT (wall of text) posts by those two...
but I don't think even they are saying that.

ETA: If you're interested in relative standards of living (and how they are paid for) I'd suggest
that you limit the discussion to more recent and more easily researched time frame...
or even better a time frame that includes your own experience.

2013 vs 1993 or vs 1983 or vs 1963

[jimhcom]

Originally Posted by gwynedd1

Glad to see a good point. Just because you have a good harvest has nothing to do with the crows eating the corn. It is also worth pointing out, again, that unequal income no matter how good it is yields unequal political power especially with unearned income since it has few limits. I am not here defend the crooks in finance at all , quite the opposite. I am here to say that they steal with deflation as well as they do with inflation. They steal with the changes in the volume of money they know about being the insiders they are. The volume of money can go up or down. Some people get the idea that they only steal when it goes up. And it certainly is not nearly so much stealing when depressions are prevented with da guberment deficits when finance tries to steal reducing the volume of money.

Exactly, as Jefferson said.. first by inflation and then by deflation the banks and the corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless in the contenent their fathers conquered...
It is the same game they have been playing for hundreds of years.

[jimhcom]

Originally Posted by Willy702

Please we have it better now than 1913 and its laughable to even try to argue otherwise. Yeah we create problems for ourselves because of our increased wealth, but go and look at what living standards were really like for most of the population back then. Many today may be temporarily in poverty if something bad happened but they could get out of it in time. In 1913 if you were poor you were going to stay poor and no amount of hard work would change it. Your kids werent going to be any better because you had to put them to work by the time they were 10 or 11. And complain all you want about medical bankruptcy today, but you get treated and live to fight more battles. You would have had no such luck 100 years ago.

You really need a better, or at least some understanding of history, you have it backwards, 100 years ago you had all the opportunity in the world.
100 years ago you were free to do business and to run your life as you saw fit. The early 1900's were liken to the dot com boom when everyday people were becoming millionaires using innovation to take advantage of the new technologies of electricity and internal combustion engines. Just look at the Victorian homes built during that period, they are far superior in craftsmanship to anything built today.
In 1915 there were literally hundreds of automobile manufacturers, and as many oil companies to go along with them. The appliance business was off the charts with people inventing everything you can conceive to use the new power of electricity. 99% of these businesses were eventually bought up by mega corporations in order to monopolize industries much like what has happened in dot com and internet related industries leaving the former owners wealthy from just and idea and a little ambition.
Today the government has for the most part made it very difficult to run a small business or your own life without massive interference. Most activities in this country today in fact are illegal. By definition anything you need a license to do is illegal and only permissible by having a "license" or "permit" from the government.
Stop and think what that encompasses. It is illegal to travel by automobile without a license, it is illegal to do business, it is illegal to build a house, to get married, to leave the country, it is illegal to own a dog, it is illegal to have a parade, to broadcast on a radio, or to light a fire on your own property. The list goes on indefinitely. Even your right to work is infringed upon and is not possible without "voluntarily" getting a Social Security card and thereby agreeing to go along with a whole slew of contractual obligations including pledging everything you own to cover the debts of the US government.
In 1915 you could hold alodial title on your land meaning absolute title, today you are given a grant deed which only entitles you to use of the land, not real ownership. Bottom line is 100 years ago you were a free person living in a free country with every opportunity that entails; today you are a peasant without any rights living in a country where you must kowtow to government officials for permission to live your life. You are a wage slave with little to no chance to ever purchasing your freedom as has been the practice for slaves for thousands of years.
Keep lying to yourself and telling yourself you have it better now, in truth, it is all you have left.

[gwynedd1]

I have made this point before but since an item of it has been made again:

//www.city-data.com/forum/25552085-post22.html

The ancient Athenians never seem to have had a problem as many people lived past seventy. They had little or no meat because they lived in rather barren country and were too far from the sea to receive fish.

So why was a barren land the birthplace for democracy?

There was no way to stake a claim to a resource with high marginal utility and nothing to monopolize. When there is nothing to monopolize, unearned wealth is impossible. When wealth only comes with work, everybody works and wealth is distributed. No seed of oligarchy....

If you think just because total wealth is rising that multi-billionaires are not going to be a problem? You think that a piece of paper that says your free is going to trump Pottersville?