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by Spivak 243 days ago
Well the falsifiable part of his statement is at least true, median real wages are up in the US. Americans are wealthier than we have been since at least 1980. Especially women, as a group our real wages are basically a straight line up. Some confounding factors there obviously but still. As for whether you can attribute the growth to Capitalism specifically, *shrugs*.
1 comments

It’s a bit more complicated:

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/comparing-the-costs-...

Basically some things have gotten cheaper – TVs, gas, etc. – but things like inflation-adjusted housing or college prices have increased so much that people affected by them have a very different experience. This is a constant refrain many people I know who are under ~50 or so have where older relatives simply don’t understand that, say, they could go to UCLA with a part-time summer job because prior to Saint Ronnie that meant book and lab fees, and at first tuition was an order of magnitude lower (adjusted for inflation).

That creates enormously different beliefs because someone who bought a house in 1982 and has been rolling equity forward ever since has no idea what the subjective experience is like for their kids who graduated with heavy debt service and rents 50% higher.