[refurb]

That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's.

And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt).

And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.

[Lammy]

Go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s and you can actually see things change. California voters put the brakes on infrastructure projects starting in the late 1950s, for example, like the 1959 anti-freeway San Francisco Supervisors vote. It all made sense to me once I learned about the Second Great Migration, a topic that strangely wasn’t taught to me at all by American public school curriculum.

[mikem170]

>Go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s and you can actually see things change.

The time just after World War II was kind of an economic anomaly for the U.S. Our population of about 4% of the world generated something like 50% of the worlds GDP, most other industrial economies were still rebuilding.

It might not be accurate to consider that period as a baseline for purposes of economic comparison.

[Lammy]

I'm making a population comparison, not explicitly an economic one.

[heavyset_go]

And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.

[refurb]

Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything.

My point was, the US is not falling apart. Or if it is, it’s always been falling apart.

The current situation is not unique.

[heavyset_go]

> Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything.

I'm curious what this is supposed to tell you, then:

> And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt).

[refurb]

That was a counterpoint to the OPs concern about corruption today in an attempt to convey that it’s not all that different now, not to argue it’s better now.

[scarface74]

Has any other President - Republican or Democrat - actively tried to make it less effective? Why are we pretending that the current administration is normal?

This isn’t a difference on the margins about whether you believe in supply side or demand side economics.

If you look back on Presidents or politicians on either side of the aisle. We have never seen anything like this during my lifetime (born in 74).

I didn’t agree with all of the policies or proposed policies of Republican or Democratic candidates on either side. But it was more like seeing your favorite sports team win or lose. I didn’t feel like they would or did do long term harm to the country (except for the deficit).

I would say the same about any of the other candidates in 2016. If they had won it wouldn’t have been the end of the world.

[jessaustin]

The orange one has done his share of awful things (like every president), but if this virus hadn't appeared we would very much still be in the "sports team" situation.

We will certainly destroy ourselves by other means before "the deficit" affects us in the least. It never stopped us from buying more weaponry; now that there is obviously something else on which to spend money suddenly we should worry about it?

[scarface74]

No we wouldn’t and by pretending anything Trump has done even pre-Covid is both trying to see “both sides” not to get flagged by HN and to say that all Republicans are just as malicious, corrupt and incompetent as his administration has been and is a lazy argument. I went out of my way not to paint all Republicans since 1980 with the same brush.

Before Trump, a Republican administration supported both the Voting Rights Act - didn’t try to disenfranchise minorities - and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Both Republicans and Democratic Presidents supported the EITC.

Bush didn’t demonize Muslims after 9/11 he went out of his way not to.

No I didn’t agree with all of their policies, but I didn’t feel that they went out of their way to target “others”. They showed a level of decency and poise that you don’t see now.

I still don’t see how this is coming off partisan.

To act as if any other President of either party in modern history has done the same things that he has said and done is a severe case of “whataboutism”.

[jessaustin]

Well, Trump hasn't killed a million Iraqis for no reason.

[clarkmoody]

WTF happened in 1971?

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

[dexen]

A sharp change in labor supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_of_foreign_born_in_...

due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

[bhupy]

Who cares about inequality — poverty is down: https://www.nber.org/papers/w26532. The difference between the rich and the poor is less important than making sure that the poor are rich enough.

Real median income is up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Tax revenues as a %age of GDP are mostly flat: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

US median disposable income is about the 3rd highest on the planet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...

[heavyset_go]

And yet 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck[1], and 40% don't have the money to cover a $400 emergency expense[2]. For our riches, we have the highest population of people without health insurance in the first world, and the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical expenses.

Inequality drives cost of living up. Normal people in the US are competing with the richest people domestically and internationally for housing. While normal people need housing to shelter themselves, the rich, especially the rich outside of the US, see housing as a means to store value.

In the past 15 years, the largest growing population of homeless people are entire families, and the most common reasons for homelessness are lack of affordable housing, insufficient income, or loss of income.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/01/11/live-pa...

[2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-em...

[api]

From what I have both seen and read, housing costs are the #1 cause of this. They have exploded in the last 25 years.

The thing that blows my mind is that the COVID recession shows no sign of slowing down house price growth, though it has tempered rents in expensive markets.

If housing still rises even now, something is totally insane.

[nemo44x]

Interest rates have crumbled over that same period. As interest rates go down, housing prices go up. The problem becomes the down payment goes up making it difficult for a lot of people to get the initial equity.

People often forget that mortgages are essentially bonds. When you get a mortgage you are essentially selling the bond. As interest rates fall the bond gets more expensive which means the price of homes rises since servicing the bond gets less expensive in terms of interest. But the principal goes up which means you’re building equity more quickly. So this is good - if you can get to the down payment part.

And interest rates can still get lower. However there are large parts of the country where homes are relatively inexpensive. But they’re cheap for a reason - not many people want to live there.

[api]

What a huge driver of inequality this is... I wonder how much of the economic divergence is explainable by down payments alone?

[jandrewrogers]

Yet the Federal Reserve study whence the "$400 emergency expense" claim was sourced states that 75% of adults are doing okay financially or living comfortably. The question about a $400 expense was about how people would pay for an unexpected $400 expense, not if they could pay for it. Only 12% could not pay for a $400 expense. The news media always tries to paint a dire narrative.

Per the US government, the median household in the US has $1000/month left over after all ordinary expenses. At the 78%, this is around $3500/month. As this strongly suggests, the statistics you are referring to do not actually assert what is often claimed of them. The underlying studies paint a more consistent, and less dire, picture.

[bhupy]

> 40% don't have the money to cover a $400 emergency expense

This is an often cited statistic that's been essentially debunked for being flawed and misleading[1][2].

> And yet 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck

Again, not a particularly useful statistic because 1. real consumption per capita has been increasing[3], and 2. the US has the 2nd highest household consumption[4] in the world.

"Living paycheck to paycheck" includes people that are destitute, but also people that just consume more than they should, and also people that are unable to save money due to increasing housing costs (not due to inequality, but due to zoning regulations). Of those who claim to be living "paycheck to paycheck", you don't know which are destitute.

> For our riches, we have the highest population of people without health insurance in the first world, and the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical expenses.

Sure, this has nothing to do with inequality. If you gave everyone health insurance in America today, inequality would hardly change. And inequality is NOT the root cause of America's healthcare system, the root cause is a series of policies passed in the 20th century that resulted in 1) healthcare being tied to employment, 2) a lack of any form of price transparency, 3) supply constraints on medical professionals that have resulted in the highest PPP adjusted salaries for medical practitioners in the developed world.

> Inequality drives cost of living up. Normal people in the US are competing with the richest people domestically and internationally for housing. While normal people need housing to shelter themselves, the rich, especially the rich outside of the US, see housing as a means to store value.

We’ve always had mega-rich families. The new phenomenon we’re seeing now is not that "normal people" are competing with the super-rich, it's that they are competing with the upper-middle class. Where I live (Brooklyn), The rents aren’t driven up because I’m in a bidding war with Jeff Bezos; they’re driven up because I’m in a bidding war with other high earning millennial white collar workers. The “middle class” worker doesn’t stand a chance in our neighborhood.

Also the cost of living isn't up uniformly across the US, it's only up in most big cities where the root cause is attributable almost entirely to poor zoning regulations, not "inequality". You can see the salary one must earn to purchase the median house in every city[5] and outside SF/NY/Seattle, it's around the median household income.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-04/the-40...

[2] https://www.cato.org/blog/it-true-40-americans-cant-handle-4...

[3] https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=A794RX0Q048SBEA

[4] https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/world-development-...

[5] https://www.hsh.com/finance/mortgage/salary-home-buying-25-c...

[triceratops]

The richest have the loudest voices. Inequality distorts government plans, priorities, and how laws are written.

[bhupy]

That’s just not true, in practice, though. Laws are written by legislators who ultimately need to win the confidence of their constituents. No amount of money will install a representative who cannot win a democratic election.

We’ve seen this play out time and time again.

Jeff Bezos’ own district in Washington State is represented by a socialist.

Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump by 2x in the 2016 election, and still lost. In fact, she had far more corporate backing than Donald Trump, and still lost.

In the 2020 Democratic Primaries, Michael Bloomberg spent $1 billion (!!) on his campaign, and won just 9.4% of the popular vote (1.38% of pledged delegates).

Tom Steyer (a no-name billionaire), spent $343 million on his election, and won a humiliating 0.38% of the popular vote (0% of pledged delegates). Interestingly, you would think he would have at least 1/3 of Bloomberg's vote, which suggests that the vast majority of the variance in Bloomberg's vote share can be attributed to his existing name recognition as a famous businessman/politician. No amount of money was enough to make their core message resonate with ordinary voters.

Bernie Sanders spent $195 million on his election, having spent less than Bloomberg + Steyer and while having handily beaten both.

Joe Biden spent $105 million on his campaign, less than Bernie, and still beat him by 3 million votes.

Elizabeth Warren spent $121.31 million on her campaign, and also handily beat Bloomberg + Steyer while having spent far less than them, while losing to Biden while having spent more than him.

Those are just the anecdotes (of which there are many more). Decades of research[1] suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents. Most of the research in the last century found[2] that spending didn’t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear[3]. Even the studies[4] that showed spending having the biggest effect, like one that found a more than 6 percent increase in vote share for incumbents, didn’t demonstrate that money actually causes wins.

In fact, those gains from spending likely translate to less of an advantage today, in a time period where voters are more stridently partisan. There are probably fewer and fewer people who are going to change their vote because they liked your ad.

Yes, money helps you broadcast your message. If your message resonates, you can even win elections (what a concept). But money alone isn't persuasive.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2605401

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0002764203260415

[3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138764?seq=1#metadata_info_tab...

[4] http://www.sas.rochester.edu/psc/clarke/214/Gerber98.pdf

[triceratops]

I didn't say anything about election funding. Having money to hire lobbyists lets people influence legislation to their benefit.[1] Big businesses can demand larger tax breaks by playing cities off each other.[2] These are just two ways in which more money translates into more influence.

1. https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/0...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_HQ2#Criticism_and_oppos...

[bhupy]

> Having money to hire lobbyists lets people influence legislation to their benefit.

Sure, but ultimately the legislators are accountable to the voters, not the lobbyists. Most voters elect the candidate they think is most likely to represent their interests. Sometimes lobbyists influence legislators in ways that align with the interests of the legislator’s constituents, which is a feature and not a bug. When lobbyists influence legislators in ways that contradict with the interests of the legislator’s constituents, the incumbent is unseated — this isn’t uncommon.

> Big businesses can demand larger tax breaks by playing cities off each other

1. Competition among cities is what allows us to get the lowest possible tax for the highest amount of benefit. This doesn’t just happen with businesses, this also happens with individual taxpayers. This is why cities and states hesitate to raise taxes lest their citizens flee to lower tax states. Switzerland operates in the same way, where Cantons compete with one another. The net result is that the Swiss enjoy some of the lowest tax rates in the developed world, while maintaining one of the highest standards of living. This downward pressure on tax increases is a feature, not a bug.

2. Your own example is a bit of a contradiction, because Amazon ultimately failed to receive the tax break it wanted, since Queens/NYC “prevailed”

[marcinzm]

And the murder rate is half of what it was in the 80s. A number of cities no longer look like third world war zones. Etc.

[rtx]

Inequality is a fake parameter. Economy is not a zero sum game.

[ed25519FUUU]

Healthcare costs are up, but you don’t have to worry about dying from a scraped knee.

This is by far the greatest era to be alive. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.

[heavyset_go]

> Healthcare costs are up, but you don’t have to worry about dying from a scraped knee.

As an American, you just need to worry about dying from incredibly common and treatable diseases like cancer, heart disease or diabetes due to lack of treatment. If you show up to an emergency room without insurance or ability to pay and expect chemo or a supply of insulin or blood pressure medication, you're out of luck.

My grandfather who fought in foxholes in South Pacific jungles didn't have to worry about dying from a scraped knee, either.

[nradov]

The US is at or near the top for cancer 5 year survival rates.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-su...

[heavyset_go]

> The US is at or near the top for cancer 5 year survival rates.

That doesn't mean anything for someone with cancer and no health insurance. If they show up to a emergency room expecting top tier cancer treatment some people in the US can afford, they are not going to get it, while they would in other first world countries. This is what my post was addressing.

Ironically, cancer survival rates are almost the only metric[1] by which the US medical system outranks other nations. When it comes to quality of care, health outcomes, mortality rates, etc they are almost all universally worse in the US than other first world nations[1].

[1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

[nashalo_nighly]

Which is mostly due to lead time bias and overdoagnosis.

[floren]

> My grandfather who fought in foxholes in South Pacific jungles didn't have to worry about dying from a scraped knee, either.

I mean he literally had to worry about dying of gangrene from a scraped knee in the tropics, but I get your drift.

[seanmcdirmid]

Much of, not most. Jim Crow South was never a majority of the country, and racism in the north was much more implicit, segregation was never formal.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Segregation was rarely government mandated in the north during that time period, but it was often formal; many sports teams, property covenants, and unions prohibited black membership.

[fpgaminer]

> And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.

Not only that, eugenics and Darwanism were popular in the U.S. at the time. Hell, we still forcibly sterilize people in the U.S. to this day.