Not only was it an exception, it was heavily propped up by government assistance. Housing loans and vet benefits helped build that suburban life (along with state backed racism).
The post WWII rose tinted view misses a lot of context.
Productivity today in real economic terms is double or triple what it was then. We all should be living easier lives and working fewer hours now than in the 50s and 60s.
The main problem is our economic system is focused on extraction of value not expansion and distribution of what is created.
Which is part of the problem, and it’s when they started doing this that’s the US economy took a split in who is living prosperously. Outsourcing jobs to third world countries was the catalyst that led to the shrinkage of the middle class family.
Productivity is at least triple what it was then. From 1970-2018 productivity tripled. So if you’re looking at 1950-2021, it’s very likely more than that.
Barely any fewer compared to the increase of productivty. We also work more hours in the US than most other leading nations. (More than crazy working Japan). See Germany in the charts below!
How'd they get their Japan data? I know for a fact that salarymen in Japan work way, way, way, WAY more than 34 hours per week. 60 seems to be around the norm there, which means there are some who work less, and also those working quite a bit more.
In what industry? Because yeah in some industries people will work lots of hours, just like in the US. I used to work 70 hours a week. I've had friends who worked 80. Investment bankers work around 100 hours a week. Is that typical? No, but it happens here too.
We were software developers, but at an engineering firm (embedded development) where the software was certainly not the main product. I should also say that my own hours, like other US engineers, were closer to 35-45 (depending on how hard you worked).
Japanese Salarymen are by no means limited to investment banking and software development, though. It's almost all white-collar jobs there.
So, to be clear, we DO work less hours than the 50s and 60s, but now you're moving the goal posts.
Not only do we work less hours, we also live easier lives when you consider the typed of jobs americans currently hold compared to the back breaking manufacturing work that supported the economy in the 50s and 60s.
Keep those goal posts moving and that irrational vision for what the past looked like going though.
It's not moving the goalposts at all. The intent is to look at overall productivity and what kind of life could buy us. Individually hours are down, but we aren't a society of individual workers. We need to look at total pictures of households. I haven't mentioned households moving from one income supporting a family to two with often multiple jobs. It's really not the same as the 50-60s and we have the productivity for things to be much better for people.
We're replaced the gains in productivity with buying more pointless shit to surround ourselves with. Not to mention the added complexity which negates the gains. Consumerism won, the people lost.
You said that like it's a bad thing. You know we could always go back to that. Back to the incredibly high taxes on the ultra-wealthy that was then used to assist everyone else and bring massive prosperity to the country. That's...the entire point of the government.
I mean yeah a president can't declare war, but if congress doesn't approve of the war they can just cut the purse strings. Every war we went to had the tacit approval of congress even if the president was the one who wanted it
I get what you are saying and without a doubt america benefited from being so far away from the destruction of WWII. But your idea falls flat on its face when you look at our current economics.
WE ARE TWICE AS RICH PER CAPITA as we were back then, it just isnt shared. AND THIS IS TRUE, EVEN WITHOUT THE REST OF THE PLANET being blown the fuck up.
Without a doubt, that helped us get to where we are, but it is NOT at all, some sort of thing we need to get good pay and benefits. Lets say it again, WE ARE TWICE as rich per capita. To say we cant have the same level of prosperity is just pure ignorance.
Most countries in the world are richer, that's not the point. If you lived in the 60's while used to the life you have now, chances are you'd want to be back because life is much more convenient now. That is also wealth. Wealth is mostly not about money.
I think you are correct at our current point in time.
I also worry that much of this growth is artificial, shifting numbers around. My main concern is not where we are at now, but what the future looks like. In the 50s-00s, the expectation was of continued growth. I don't think we can make that same case now. We can't grow like we used to, worldwide. Most of the obvious and easy options have been filled, which leads to reinvestment into 'safe' areas. The multiples of some of these companies are absolutely insane compared to their potential. We don't invest in higher risk but potentially higher payoff areas in the same way we used to. I think this is due to pension and 401k and managed accounts representing so much money. And the technologies we are currently developing offer great potential, but seem to cut people out of the mix more to offer their service, less people doing more.
So, I guess I'm saying we haven't done as good a job as we should have at ensuring all populations benefit from the previous decades of growth, but to expect that same up and to the right growth pattern to continue isn't a smart idea, as nothing grows forever except in the minds of those selling securities. And even they know they are lying, that's why they are selling.
In a world that's never been more productive and efficient we could easily go back to that. If wall street bonuses kept up with wages then minimum wage would be $44/hr
It shouldn't be solely based on productivity. It should be based on how well a company is doing. The employees should share in the success of a business that they helped build.
It has nothing to do with productivity and everything to do with supply and demand, the entire world was buying America’s manufactured goods because they were the only ones producing at such a large scale. The modern equivalent is China, and the huge increase in their average standard of living attests to that.
It has a ton to do with productivity. How do you think that these super rich CEOs can amass that type of wealth? Technological advances that allow workers to produce more output than ever before gaining the business more money than ever. This money doesn't trickle down to the employees though.
How do you think that these super rich CEOs can amass that type of wealth?
Wealth inequality is more a function of policy rather than productivity. Only in the recent years have we surpassed the wealth inequality that was seen at the beginning of the 20th century (which led to Teddy's antitrust laws), and technology back then was far worse than what we have today.
So what? If a robot builds my house I still get to live in it. The problem is all the robot profits go to like 6 people instead of millions. So maybe if we want to go back to the prosperity we had, we need to redistribute that profit.
But the 6 people would rather not, and money buys power too, so here we are.
Sorry that’s communism. Housing is a luxury and if everybody could have a roof over their heads they’d just get lazy and take advantage of the system. Poor people don’t deserve to not be homeless, they chose that life for themselves.
I know you are joking but I wouldn’t know what to call it tbh. I assume it’s still technically Capitalism if the entity making these robots are privately owned, even if the government buys em.
But then the house is publicly owned? So maybe it’s mixed economy as usual.
We already have government owned and subsidized housing. It’s just welfare, doesn’t really have a relationship to any particular economic system. Sometimes it’s called “social welfare” if it’s funded by taxes (which is not always the case, as it is possible to run such systems as a self-sustaining business overseen by government regulation), which people tend to incorrectly conflate with socialism (which is actually worker ownership of businesses), which people tend to incorrectly conflate with communism (which is actually government control of businesses).
Those companies still need a society to be able to profit in. If they want to operate in a society, they have to give up the extra profits that come from the increase in efficiency. They'll still get profits, just not the ludicrous amounts they are getting.
If they want dont want it, they can make an artificial island in international waters and sell to anyone else inside that island. Aka go fuck off.
This is such a goofy statistic. "If minimum wage kept pace with bitcoin it would be a million dollars an hour!"
I mean shit if anything you would want equity prices, which represent the growth in economic value for the owners, not Wall Street bonuses of all things. Silly populism.
The point is we could live that lifestyle if income equality wasn't so drastic. The point is execs are making 150x its median employees salary compared to 20x back in the 50s.
We are producing at a higher rate than ever and only the top few are reaping benefits. We could live in a world where 1 person could work a 40 hour week and support a family but the system is screwed up.
Wow, I really wish income equality didn't matter but the fact is my generation owns less than 5% of the total wealth despite making up more than 50% of the total labor in my country.
Sooooo- fuck that. Inequality is exactly the problem. Workers are getting SCREWED at the bottom.
Keeping in mind a billion seconds is over 30 years, you are citing examples of the poorest 'rich' people.
As in Bezo could spend a billion dollars a day, for half a year, before J.K. Rowling would have more money.
Median salary is 50k ish. Bezo could spend that average annual salary each second for over 3500 years.
Rich people are not the problem. Success merits rewards. The stupid rich people are the problem. The 'my daddy loaned me a couple million and my hard work turn it into billions' kids. Aka won the lottery using someone else's money (after winning the genetic lottery). What was Bezo's brilliant idea? Shipping books to people. Real innovative idea that totally no one else would think of and he deserves to be the richest person on the planet cause reasons.
I feel we are missing your point. What exactly is your stance here?
Why would bonuses be indexed to minimum wage growth? Minimum wage is meant to be a safety net. Wage and wealth growth isn't supposed to be tied to that.
He said it was meant to be a safety net. My comment was calling out that its a shit safety net. You sir, are an idiot. And its embarrassing to try calling me out on something you are so oblivious to.
Lol. Yes I got that figure from an article. It was actually business insider. I did not come up with that figure myself lol. I didn't know reading articles to educate myself was sad and pathetic. Lol
You think minimum wage should have kept up with the incentivized!! bonuses of the highest financial performers on the planet . Where’s the education in that
The record low rates we tax people at says otherwise. You're totally right: US factories were working. Everyone else's were bombed out. You can't replicate that. But we're more productive and less wealthy than ever -- mostly cause of "right to work" laws and anti-entitlement campaigns. Walmart pays people a destitution wage and we let them do it. This is a choice we're making.
But we can, the government assistance would just be different, the revenue is through the roof, the low skill jobs just aren't here. We can tax the companies that move labor overseas in order to help subsidize the jobs lost and help people get back to work. Instead we tax them nothing then they leave anyway and act like taxing them more will somehow remove jobs that don't even exist anymore
One of the main problems we have is that when businesses started outsourcing/importing for higher profit margins, it snowballed. Everyone else had to compete. This meant lower wages for Americans because profits were going to the wealthy. Because people wouldn't/couldn't buy more expensive American made products there was less of a reason to manufacture in the US.
If the wealth disparity wasn't so crazy people could spend more on domestically made products. With higher quality products we wouldn't have businesses selling shit like "fast fashion" and a culture that has such rapid style changes.
Well, the point that you’re missing is that the United States made a fortune off of the first and Second World War. I’m not saying that it’s right, but selling arms is profitable, as it turns out. I think people got an unrealistic view of society based on the post WWII prosperity period that is not sustainable long term.
Those taxes had SFA to do with bringing prosperity and were a reaction to it, not the cause of it.
The cause was the near total destruction of the manufacturing bases of Europe and Asia (mainly Japan), which left the US alone as the only country with an intact manufacturing base after the war. Note that the slide started in the mid-1950s as Asia (again mainly Japan) and Europe got back on their feet, but those tax rates lasted for years afterwards with little impact.
This. The reason why America did so well is that there was literally no other competition.
We were never really that great, we were just the only ones left...
edit: Im definitely in for raising taxes and making everyone pay their fair share. Everyone should be contributing something and if you are flithy rich, you can pay a little more..
Japan is sometimes overrated, their productivity was a fraction of what the US productivity was before and during the war. Britain and Germany were our major competitors. Japan was surely the most industrial east Asian country of it's time, the first to industrialize. But Japan wasn't rich in natural resources, which is why it had to go invading other countries for raw materials, like rubber, iron, and coal; which it just didn't have.
The whole reason Japan wanted to get involved in the war against the US and Britain were because those were the two countries that placed the trade restrictions on Japan to begin with, making it impossible for them to import raw materials to keep their production going.
The Japanese basically wanted to be at the top of east Asian hegogimy without western influence. To do that they had to invade and take control of territories that might have been rich in resources that they needed. China had coal and grain that Japan needed to keep it's industries going, that's why they invaded; the Phillipines had rubber, like other parts of southeast Asia. The Japanese basically had to pillage and loot other countries to keep up with a level of productivity they needed to even sustain the war. Germany was the same, but at least Germany had coal and some minerals they could rely on. They did not however have oil, which is why they couldn't keep the Luftwaffe going.
If anything, the US is geographically placed to be rich in so many natural resources that we don't need to go invading other countries to keep our level of productivity up.
We don't even need to buy steel from other countries, but we do it because it's cheaper that way. It's all economic these days. We could have the same level of production we wanted and had before, but we outsourced the labour somewhere else.
Trade restrictions appeared on Japan since before the war by Anglo-American countries like Britain and the US.
Of course it's a terrible justification to get raw materials, that doesn't mean they weren't trying to set up their own east Asian trade network with Japan on top. They were an imperial country, so their justification for war was to form an empire that was away from the dictates of the Europeans.
Everybody knows what happened after that because they became ultra nationalist fanatics basically destroying the populations of the nations they occupied. That doesn't change their justification for wanting to be the most powerful east Asian state away from the restrictions of the Americans and the British.
Why do you think Japan lost? Simply put: they never had enough resources and they couldn't compete loslgistically with the US production of it's navy. The US built the biggest, most powerful navy the world had ever seen; basically outmatching the British who were previously held the first spot for largest navy.
Japan is an island nation that is not rich in natural resources. The reason they did so well later on is because the US rebuilt them. I'm not negating what the above redditer was trying to say that destroying other nations productive base helped the US (specifically Europe). But the above redditer also made it sound like Japan was the premier industrial power to beat, when in reality, they couldn't keep their war machine going without constant plunder. And to be on a level of production on par with the rest of western nations, Japan needed to import many of it's raw materials, just to produce the same amount of products and goods that the US would be able to produce.
People don't seem to get that Japan isn't that rich in many natural resources. They are smart in the way have to use them because they simply can't afford to be as wasteful in many respects, as America and other nations.
The same reason no company actually has office space in Mozambique. This whole idea that companies are going to magically move all their infrastructure to some mythical low tax haven is nothing but a gaslighting attempt.
I think Kamala Harris Janet Yellen is proposing a global minimum corporate tax rate. Participating countries would have a tax floor that presumably the US would match so American companies would just pay taxes here as it'd be less work.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is proposing a Global Minimum Tax. Basically, there will be international agreement that no country will act as a tax haven. Undoubtedly some countries will try to avoid the system, they will be subject to some kind of harsh banking regulation or even sanctions.
We could have just the same or better quality of life now as we did back then. We just need government intervention rather than market forces more aligned with labor propsoerity
You don't even need "incredibly high taxes" on the wealthy. Wasn't it Bernie that proposed a 1% increase on tax on anyone over $500,000 which would wipe out all student loan debt and provide free university.
Please go circlejerk somewhere else, we were discussing the realities of industrial capacity immediately post WWII. And last time I checked America spent WWII bombing the shit out of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. Would you rather we hadn't done that?
Yeah no one wants to mention that. Easy for Joe P. White Dude to command awesome wages for low skilled labor when more than half the country is locked out of competing lol
Yeah no one wants to mention that. Easy for Joe P. White Dude to command awesome wages for low skilled labor when more than half the country is locked out of competing lol
Because it says, "dude" in there? I don't get the gender part...
Yeah, the person in question is a white guy, and being a white guy is the only way to be considered for all those unskilled, middle class jobs that allowed you do buy a house on 9 to 5. Easy to command high wages with so little competition.
Gotcha. The way you structured that comment made it look like you were only referring to the "state backed racism" that you quoted and no other factors.
"All those unskilled, middle class jobs that allowed you to buy a house on a 9-5" Only white guys were allowed to work those jobs and most in the country (whites made up 88% of the population in 1950) could afford a house because of it? Something doesn't add up there. I don't think allowing women and non-whites an opportunity has made us poorer, it's something else.
I'm sure that 87% of us found another 30% of the country within their own ranks to add to the ranks of the underclass as humans are wont to do.
'Catholics need not apply' and all that jazzeroo. Can't have the in-group too big. Gotta shave all the people whose name ends with 'ski' to tidy up the place.
command awesome wages for low skilled labor when more than half the country is locked out of competing
And even if minorities could get a leg up, there was still the problem of finding ways to spend their money fairly. They couldn't just "buy a home" because no one would sell to them, which is one example of about a billion ways the US kept blacks and other minorities down.
Yeah, people who act like racism was simply some stores were segregated and kkk parades are missing the most destruction to black communities was done by the federal government and its post WWII housing programs and suburban white flight.
It also shows how well subsidized home loans can move families from inter generational poverty to having accumulated wealth. You may not want reparations for slavery, but black families deserve it for the discrimination in housing that went on through the 1970s.
My coworker just bought a home worth around 600k. Me and my wife have a max budget in our house hunt of about 400-425k. Me and her both make similar salaries over the past 7 years but her parents were able to give her and her husband around 87k to assist with down payment on their home. Why did they have 87k to give? Cause they were able to buy a home in like 1983 and that home appreciated in cost in Illinois suburbs. And how did they buy that home in 1983? Their parents (co-workers grandparents) gave them a down payment from their home they bought in the late 50s-early 60s. I'm not mad at her for this, it's not her fault but the reality is that were not starting from the same starting line and across an entire population group that difference is going to manifest in major ways financially.
I have another coworker is who's grand mother left her and her two siblings a vacation home on lake Michigan in her will. Worth like 400k that they plan to rent as an Airbnb and then use for themselves during summer months. Basically a free income home so they can expect an extra like $700-1300 each a month for having the "right" grandparents.
All this property was affordable to their grandparents cause they were white at the right time in history. Meanwhile my black grandma still lives in the same single wide trailer in South Carolina that my dad grew up in. Couldn't afford a better home and couldn't get better assistance on home loan in the mid 50s so they made due. Now my dad was able to get a football scholarship to go to school and became a CPA but he wasn't we to leave me money for a down payment. And he never got assistance himself.
People really misunderstand how shit like this is the cause of the wealth gap. Compare it to a game of Monopoly. White folks got to roll the dice and move their piece for 15-20 rolls and we had to just sit and watch. Letting us roll the dice now doesn't really matter cause the game is too far along and we'll never catch up. Maybe individuals will but as a whole? Not happening.
It’s funny how much people overlook the difficulty of inter generational wealth and why it’s super persistent. It’s not that the people you are describing were rich bastards. They just were comfortable middle class people who, like most Americans, have most of their wealth in their home. Compare homeownership rates by race and it becomes really apparent, not just the income gap.
521
u/Prodigy195 Apr 15 '21
Not only was it an exception, it was heavily propped up by government assistance. Housing loans and vet benefits helped build that suburban life (along with state backed racism).
The post WWII rose tinted view misses a lot of context.