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From a business/research perspective the advantages of the web are far too numerous to list, they are things you don't even see yet benefit from.
Apologetic nonsense.
At no other point in our history did people have to resort to this kind of BS. "Sure your wages are lower and your share of the pie is shrinking. But look you have stuff that didn't exist 50 years ago!"
Someone born in 1880 lived through horse and buggies, the invention of cars and all sorts of mechanized machinery, planes, telephones, electricity, radios, movies, television, medicine, etc.
In addition they saw a huge increase in living standard, not just "you have new stuff" gains, but a massive increase in the amount they could *afford*.
And they reason is simple. Economic productivity gains were shared. That ended in the 1970s. Since then the top .1%+ have done very well, but that's it.
It's great for those with a supremely high intellectual and technical aptitude. But what about everyone else?
Everything. Anything. The super-geniuses are off making cars that drive by themselves and run on electricity. You can either fret about never being a taxi-driver, or you can realize there's lots of people that are now going to be able to go to some po-dunk area because it costs less. So you can create something people would like to do. You can figure out that driverless cars get dirty and still need maintenance and learn how to get them taken care of. You can help build the roads that will allow them to run more efficiently, or just place the markings on said road.
Vanderbilt started by owning ships. He switched to railroads. That's a genius. The person that sets up a store selling candy outside a now busy railroad station doesn't need to be, but has a pretty good chance at making good money. The person that learns how to run to be an railroad engineer doesn't have to be a genius. The farmers that could now sell their crops to a wider market didn't have to be a genius. Retailer Sears and Roebuck realizing they could now sell to distant areas was a genius, but the increased volume that allowed the factories making those goods didn't have to be a genius.
When Buffett was born, most people didn't have cars, some parts of the country didn't have electricity yet or telephones. The landline's prime has come and gone, but AT&T still has many employees. The kerosene stores are all closed now and GE has automated the lightbulb production, but someone still needs to change all those lights that illuminate dimly lit areas that once were scary walks to make. Car has gone from a luxury to necessity, and though the assembly is getting more and more automated all the time, the talent and education needed to be a mechanic lessens, allowing more people to enter the trade, while the geniuses are connected enough to go an work on engines for aircraft and more.
Each technological breakthrough gives everyday people opportunities. It shifts everyone's landscape. I have a friend that started a now multi-state venting company with some neighbors from a trailer park doing something that's an unpleasant necessity. I have a neighbor that started his own cleaning service because he couldn't read English and now has multi-million dollar company. Another friend, who's earnest and nice but not the sharpest tool in the shed, showed diligence in selling items on Amazon. His business now covers him after his company laid everyone off. Being smart doesn't make you successful. Being good at something and adaptive to change does.
200 years ago, your birth dictated your life. 100 years ago you could achieve a place, but then you went with it going forward. Now...you may have some downtime, but you can switch careers. It's accepted. Soon, it'll be demanded. The opportunity is here now more than it ever has been before.
That's why the Oracle is optimistic. The jobs we'll be doing 30 years from now haven't even been invented yet.
At no other point in our history did people have to resort to this kind of BS. "Sure your wages are lower and your share of the pie is shrinking. But look you have stuff that didn't exist 50 years ago!"
Someone born in 1880 lived through horse and buggies, the invention of cars and all sorts of mechanized machinery, planes, telephones, electricity, radios, movies, television, medicine, etc.
In addition they saw a huge increase in living standard, not just "you have new stuff" gains, but a massive increase in the amount they could *afford*.
And they reason is simple. Economic productivity gains were shared. That ended in the 1970s. Since then the top .1%+ have done very well, but that's it.
Your graph is incorrect. The average male did not make $5,000 in 1860. The average male didn't make $5,000 in 1960 either.
I would trade the effing internet & smartphones for my father's college tuition, home price, and health care costs ANY DAY.
I question how much those things have actually improved life. Some things are somewhat more convenient or faster compared to the old days when they took several steps to accomplish. Other than that, not much good has come of it in my view.
I like it when my doctor knows my medical information right then and there. I like being able to collaborate with people I've never met, and be able to schedule it with them from afar.
I used to travel in many countries to audit for a large company. Travel is still time consuming to setup, but can you imagine the distribution of manual tickets that you must not lose, having to pay for them upfront, finding a hotel in a foreign country, finding a map of said foreign country that you can read? It's ok to get to the main town, but what about once you're there? Did you forget cash? Did you want a rental car at a not ridiculous rate? If your plane is going to be late, and you're getting a ride, will they know beforehand? How about a hotel room? Don't forget that you're going to be carting around trunks of paper because nothing is accessible online. I wonder how I should call back to the USA? I can't send information any other way so I guess I'll wake up either very early or very late. I hope I can find a phone that charges less than a half day's wages for a 10 minute call and really hope that I can actually reach my contact when I finally can get to a phone that can make said call. I hope I remembered my book of phone numbers. At least postcards are cheap. I hope my wife doesn't mind that I completely ignore her for a few weeks and the card that I send the day I landed maybe will beat me back to the US.
Anyway, now that I'm here, I hope I can write correctly and quickly, because there's now way to lug a giant computer out here. Hopefully the new guy is good at copying papers, because that's what he's going to be doing most of the time. We put together our books with paper machete precision because we know they'll be reviewed and if anything is wrong...how can I get that document again? If I want to show someone something, I have to get it and bring it to them or mail it.
That's why there were the jack of all trades. You had to be. You couldn't specialize in something. You had to spend your effort doing all of this stuff manually. Now you can go so much deeper doing whatever you want to do.
As for a small business, you had word of mouth, signage and advertising in the yellow pages. (That's a big book of all the businesses with their phone number updated annually.) If you had money you could go for the paper or billboards.
Trust me, the internet and connectivity is amazing. Find your passion, or if you don't have one, just pick something and learn all you can on it. It really is much easier now. You probably have no idea how much more information you simply absorb without trying that only specialists would have known back in the day.
Paying greater attention to such tremendous errors of fact may help your career more than anything on this board will.
I'd assume the graph has been "adjusted" for inflation. It shows the average male in 1960 making $25k. In 1959 Vance Packard wrote "The Status Seekers" and noted that $10k per year put you into that elite who could afford to seek status, as it were. My mother got her first teaching position in fall of 1959, and I think she was making $3,000 for the year. Of course, her cable TV bill was zero, and so was her cell phone bill.
Trying to adjust wages for inflation for a +150 year period is pretty meaningless.
Warren Buffett is being optimistic for the sake of the future generation. He knows beyond technology most young people will not have it easy in terms of having a family, a house, and savings. The economy makes it hard for people to have kids. Without immigration America is just like Japan. A dying country. Forbes Welcome
Anyone who comes to the U.S. from a foreign country, especially from a developing country, knows how unbelievable the standard of living is for the average person. The difference is drastic.
Buffett should know better than anyone that a damn smartphone or internet service does not make one rich.
A data plan is like a car payment. It sucks money away. We save on long distance bills but pay for data. Oh, when we travel we can look at our phones instead of asking a human for assistance. Great, if you can afford to travel somewhere more than 100-200 miles away, which I can't.
Most of the apologists on here are talking about how the internet helps the top 5-10% - the people who are the smartest, most technically or situationally aware, the most lucky. Oh, it increases your business connectivity? Wowee. Oh, it made millions for some lucky person. Good for him/her. Well for me it means I have to log on and work at night. So now my employer can expect that any e-mail can and should be responded to within a few hours. Day or night. Working people, which maybe some of you on this board are not, but I am and 85-90% of Americans are, are not that much better off thanks to it.
I say again, I would trade all the smartphones in the world for the college tuition, health insurance, and housing costs that my father and mother had. Yes, I know square footage was less in the past but at least you could hope to own a house. What good are these large luxury units that sell for 400K when I can only afford 150K?
Last edited by redguard57; 02-29-2016 at 04:19 AM..
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