[jvanderbot]

What I'm saying is comparing wages is meaningless. If you compare what a month of work gets you in USA, it's astounding compared to what it go you 150 years ago. Imagine buying a beat up car, internet connected computer, cell phone, refrigerator, etc. That's where the productivity growth went: Into better stuff, not into bigger piles of shells.

[alex_young]

I don’t disagree that the quality of many goods is much higher, but when you start looking at what the lowest quartile can actually afford to consume the results are pretty starkly worse than they have been in our relatively recent past.

A huge chunk of lower income is dedicated to housing, to an extent that many cannot actually afford housing at all.

The gains of our productivity have been distributed in a most unequal manner.

[jvanderbot]

I think everyone from 1850 would trade their favorite toe to live in the lowest quartile in the western world.

When I lived below poverty line I still had internet, a computer, an apt, access to high quality food and medicine (by 1850 standards), plenty of friends, and a television. I just had to live with 3 other people.