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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 234 KB, 540x540, Thomas-Sowell-2.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11491329 No.11491329[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

>I read
>haven't read Sowell

Get out.

>> No.11491336

I'm already on advanced economics sweetie

>> No.11491342

>>11491329
Sowell writes a lot of books about the same ideas. You can summarize most of his books in a few lines:

>Liberals create systems that fail
>Liberals are never held accountable for those failures
>Liberals continue to create those systems because of no feedback
>Liberals are in denial of reality, this is why nothing they propose actually works

Now, he goes about discussing these core ideas in interesting ways (thought his idea on cosmic justice vs practical justice was neat), but it's ultimately a reiteration of the "liberals are in denial of reality" point.

When you've read one book of his, you've read them all.

>> No.11491346

>>11491329
>reading the science black guy of economics
Kys

>> No.11491352

>I read
get out nerd!

>> No.11491362

>>11491329
Hijacking this thread to ask

What's a non-meme reading list for economics? What should I read to get a grouding and a survey of different schools of thought?

>> No.11491368

Black rednecks and white liberals is p good

>> No.11491394

>>11491362
Read mankiw's principles of economics
Then read econometrics and then learn calculus
Fuck chronology

>> No.11491403

>>11491394
After that just sign an economics academic journal and you're good

>> No.11491405

>>11491329
I only bother with daddy Friedman.

>> No.11491417

>>11491342
This. Just listen to him on YouTube and save yourself wasting the time reading hundreds and hundreds of pages reiterating the same points.

>> No.11491429

>>11491417
>/lit/ in a nutshell
>don't bother reading, just watch his youtube videos
pathetic

>> No.11491432

>>11491329
>Thomas Sowell Man Among My Mentor
What?

>> No.11491435

>>11491329
If you read Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and Friedrich Hayek, please excuse yourself from /lit/.

>> No.11491436

>>11491329
>Controversial Essays
I guarantee there is nothing controversial in that entire book. This guy even denies the IQ difference between races.

>> No.11491439

>>11491329
Literally based black man. Very boring prose though. I guess that's what you expect from an economist

>> No.11491451

>>11491329
based and redpilled

>> No.11491456

>>11491435
>reading things I disagree with is bad!

>> No.11491459

>>11491362
98% of economists are New school Keynesians (i.e. a bastardised love child between Keynesians, New Classical, and Friedman monetarists)

Hence all other schools can be ignored

>> No.11491462

>>11491435
You forgot Rothbard and Mises
Don't be mad cause you're a pseud

>> No.11491466
File: 18 KB, 637x631, Brainlet+1518981716537.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11491466

>>11491435

>> No.11491471

why does he get assmad over liberalism?

>> No.11491473

>>11491462
You forgot Menger
Don't be mad cause you're a pseud

>> No.11491521

>>11491473
Too old: his works are older than many modern developments such as the rise and fall (and then the rise of the romantic ideal) of communism, which is the application of what many of their most important writings are about, and the Great Depression

>> No.11491543

I don't care about yanks and their petty political struggles

>> No.11491564

>>11491342
This isn't true.

In Black Rednecks and White Liberals (and building on Migration and Cultures), Sowell explores explanations the situation of African Americans today, and convincingly (imo) argues that today blacks underperform due not to their treatment under slavery but rather due to their slavers, who were predominantly from a particular region on England. The inhabitants of that region migrated to the South en masse and exhibit behavior not at all unlike their negroid chattel (and in fact strikingly similar). Combine that with multiple generations of cultural isolation and you end up with what we have today.

Don't take that to mean it's an apology to slavery; obviously there are other factors and it's not as if the government has always been helpful (or even non-harmful) in the "recalibration" of nigs.

>> No.11491577

the white supremacist's favorite black intellectual

>> No.11491589

>>11491329
I've read about a half dozen of his books, including Basic Economics. Wealth, Poverty, and Politics is his best work. Most of what he says is obvious, but that just illustrates how lost academia is.

For example, people on both the left and right harp on about how incomes have stagnated over the last 50 years. What they don't say is that these are HOUSEHOLD incomes, and over this period, households have decreased by ~40% (mainly due to the rise in divorces and the glorification of single motherhood). This means that per individual, incomes have actually increased by 40%, which is a completely different story from what we are told.

His books are filled with things like that. Very fact-dense!

>> No.11491596

>>11491577
No, that would be Mussolini

>> No.11491609

Sowell's the contemporary Spinoza. Falling on deaf ears.

>> No.11491653
File: 31 KB, 450x296, productivity-wages.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11491653

>>11491589
>His books are filled with things like that. Very fact-dense!
lol it takes literally 15 seconds of googling to see this for the crap it is
very fact-dense indeed


>lookie here massa, you gotsa habs dem mahkits be FREE! oooh lawdy lawdy lawdy, we gon get dat wealth rollin in fo SHO!

>> No.11491657

>>11491596
kek

>> No.11491663

>uncle toms
into the trash

>> No.11491673

>>11491653
Yes yes, a meme you found from facebook, that is all well and good...

HOWEVER

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where-has-all-the-income-gone

>> No.11491680

>>11491653
but you just proved him right massa

>> No.11491689

>>11491653
Why would you assume that wages should correlate with productivity? Technological innovation is a thing which can increase productivity while making jobs easier and less demanding.

>> No.11491720

>>11491653
kek

>> No.11491737

>>11491680
there are 2 lines, dumbo
one is household income and the other is wages
his dumb argument was that the household income stagnated because there were less households with two working parents and more singles and working single parents, which would mean that the incomes actually rose
the hourly wage line's stagnation debunks that
>>11491689
I don't assume they should correlate with productivity, I am saying they should. it's a statement like "people should go to jail for murder", a value, not a fact.
holy shit what's wrong with captcha, this is the seventh time I'm clicking through it and it always sends me back to the start

>> No.11491761

>>11491564
Interesting. So he's arguing that lower class Englanders are the cause of lower class blacks in the South? I find this hard to believe since a significant number of God's chosen were slaveholders. Why didn't they adopt those cultural attitudes?

Like, I would buy this argument if it was mere cultural imperialism since it's more or less proven that colonies take on the character of their colonizers. But slavery is a different beast entirely. I think the (unfortunate) truth is that black people were bred to be strong and compliant, not smart and individualistic. This is why black athletes from America are so much stronger than black athletes from Africa-- it was literally eugenics before the term even existed.

That is the uncomfortable truth I think no one wants to address. Slavery might have fucked with the gene pool of an entire people.

>> No.11491777

>>11491737
>I don't assume they should correlate with productivity, I am saying they should.

So you believe wages should correlate with productivity. Why? I think I've had this conversation with you before but you didn't explain yourself. If I were in the business of making chairs and I had a machine which automatically created a new one every time somebody pushed a button, I wouldn't have to pay the person pushing the button all that much money since it doesn't require a lot of skill and anyone could do it. However, if the only way to make chairs were to pay individual carpenters to hand craft every piece and assemble them then I would have to give them more. This is why productivity is not a good measure of what wages should be. My chair making machine has an incredible rate of production compared to the carpenters but doesn't require as much skill or labor.

>> No.11491793

>>11491653
>>11491737
Thanks for validating my point!

How are "real hourly wages" calculated? Do they take into consideration employer-provided benefits, which have massively risen since the late 60s? Over the last 10 years, avg hourly wages have risen by 35%, which outpaces inflation.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003

There's no indication that the purple line in productivity is scaled for the growth in population. Even if wages were stagnant, we would expect a rise in productivity as more people participated in the workforce.

Your graph is missing a lot of supplementary information that we need to understand the full story. This information was omitted either deliberately or ignorantly - not the mark of a good economist!

>> No.11491806
File: 23 KB, 320x499, black41CrXbB7qRL._SX318_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11491806

Is pic related a good place to start?

>> No.11491810

>>11491761
Jews were a relatively minor proportion of slave owners in the South, and if not statistically insignificant then very close to it. Perhaps the blacks under Jewish ownership did fare better than their English-owned contemporaries.

I am not nearly as convincing as Sowell is in my summary. There are similarities that are absolutely mind-blowing (for example, the "WOOO LAWD HALLELUJAH" style of practicing religion, being outwardly violent, etc).

I'm not a biologist but what you offer is very interesting as well: my primary questions would be regarding the effectiveness of selective breeding at the time, how rampant it was among the slave owners, and just how much change can result from so few generations (surely social change comes much faster than eugenics acts?)

>> No.11491820

>>11491806
It's a very interesting and provocative read (and easy to read through its structure; it's just six essays). Approach it with an open mind.

>> No.11491823

>>11491806
It's good for understanding the origins of the cultural problems that have plagued the black community the U.S.

For a quick overview of economics, read Economic Facts and Fallacies.

Depending on how in-depth into political philosophy you want to go, I'd recommend reading A Conflict of Visions, because it gets to the heart of the differences between liberals and conservatives. It's a little dry compared to his other books, though.

>> No.11491834

>>11491823
>A Conflict of Visions

I think VIsion of the Anointed is much better.

>> No.11491859

>>11491823
yo did any of fgts listen to that new mobb deep audiobook thats on apple music (lol at apple music including audiobooks by black guys but not anyone else, but still i like this trend) it turns out mobb deep, some of the most thugged out rappers of the 90s, actually had a ton of money, prodigy's family is part indian and part irish in addition to being black, and his grandmother ran a successful dance school in queens and bought a lot of property, and his mother was in a famous doowop group, the dude is fucking loaded, and practically mulatto, but then he goes putting out these toxic albums encouraging other african americans to throw their lives away on drugs and violence, so shady, but he's not the only one, there are many with the same stories, but his was just the worst since mobb deep is basically the most thugged out shit since maybe ice-t another lightskinned guy who says "redpilled" shit about the jews, but then makes a bunch of toxic records encouraging blacks to be thugs

>> No.11491869

>>11491834
I'll give it a look. I read Conflict mainly because it's more recent.

I hope Sowell comes out with one final magnum opus. Discrimination and Disparities was a good update to some of his older works, but it was so short.

>> No.11491874

>>11491859
based and blackpilled

>> No.11491892

>>11491859
Yeah, I mean a lot of rappers have cultivated personae. Tupac, while not from a privileged background, was not a thug in his youth. The guy went to an arts school and did ballet!

>> No.11491893

>>11491342
platitudes without backing means nothing

>> No.11491914

>>11491362
30-Second Economics
Foundations of Economics: A Beginner's Companion
An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
Contours of the World Economy, 1-2030AD: Essays in Macro-Economic History
Modern Economics - Jack Harvey

>> No.11491930

>>11491329
There's an A in Thomas and "men" in mentor. Wow, that worked out really for that Koeff guy there, jolly good luck that is.

>> No.11492032

>>11491892
yeah his mom was actually one of the panther 21, and he did go to art school but it was in baltimore or something, i feel like tupac was on of the few authentic mother fuckers to do it, his first albums are woke af, all socially conscious shit, it was only after he got shot in nyc and then sent to prison on fake rape charges that he started getting thugged out, but thats because only shug knight supported him, the nyc hip-hop establishment literally tried to have him killed, even tho the first think people think of with tupac is him flashing westside sign shoutin thug life, his albums are mostly all positive, except at the very end of his career, when he probably felt the toxic culture that would eventually kill him engulfing his life, looking back on it, tupac was the ideal rapper, i mean in 2000 years when they look back at rap in america at the turn of the century, tupac is the guy man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dnulzbK52s

>> No.11492154

>>11491777
>I think I've had this conversation with you before but you didn't explain yourself.
No, I haven't talked about this at all.
>Why?
Because it's the right thing. Higher profits should mean higher wages.

>> No.11492186

>>11491793
you can quote all the stats you want bro, it still won't make a dent because I simply don't trust you
>Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

>> No.11492211

>>11492154
>Because it's the right thing
Says who? Isn't the withholding of funds, to reinvest in business and achieve even higher profit, dragging society along and ultimately achieving a high quality of life for everyone indirectly just as righteous?

>> No.11492214

>>11491777
>pushing a button requires less labor and therefor less wages than crafting a chair with tools

and there you have the point of marxism and the labor theory of value, the returns on capital will be less for the button chair machine because if you have high profits from it, a competitor will invest in his own button chair machine and then the competition will drive down profits, meanwhile the handmade chair actually goes up in price comparatively because more human labor vs capital went into it's production, its why mass produced sneakers man in vietnam costs $100 bucks while shoes made by hand in italy cost $800, etc. obviously other factors play like intellectually property i.e. trademarked brands, or patents on machinery, but that is the fundamental truth of the labor theory of value, people weren't that stupid back then, its not like they didnt know scarcity and demand affects prices, but the actual value of something comes from the human labor that goes into it, this is also why are our production becomes more and more capital intensive, labor intensive services like healthcare become more and more expensive at the same time that mass produced commodities become cheaper, because healthcare requires the time of a guy with a doctorate to work with each customer while cranking out computer chips is mostly capital intensive besides the couple hundred electrical engineers who design it

>> No.11492216

>Uncle Tom: the author
yeah nah

>> No.11492228

The history of slavery should be required reading in every high school. It would kill a lot of this mindless activism and black rage

>> No.11492235

>>11492216

>faggot mcgee, the shitposter
Yeah kys

>> No.11492238
File: 77 KB, 380x349, 1526086375160[1].png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11492238

>>11491329
I haven't read any of his books, but I've seen videos of him DESTROYING leftoids on the darkweb.

>> No.11492311

>>11492186
>The stats you quote conflict with my deeply-held views. Instead of doing some investigating, I'm going to bask in my ignorance.

I have no reason to lie to you. Good luck succeeding in life with your attitude!

>> No.11492317

>>11492154
Well now you're changing your position. You didn't say higher profits should mean higher wages, you said higher productivity should mean higher wages. Productivity is how many chairs are getting made regardless of method while profit is how much those chairs are being sold above production cost. You two can't be conflated.

>> No.11492320

>>11491793
good point, healthcare costs are whats eating most of the compensation to labor, too bad you can't by a house with health insurance

>> No.11492468

>>11491435
post face

>> No.11492564

>>11491329
Stop shilling this shit, faggot
How much do they pay you?

>> No.11492666

>>11492311
>I have no reason to lie to you.
I don't think you're intentionally and maliciously lying
we both have ideological frameworks we're working in and I distrust yours, that's all

>> No.11492693

>>11492211
>Says who?
says me
>Isn't the withholding of funds, to reinvest in business and achieve even higher profit
stopped reading there
reinvesting in the business doesn't automatically disqualify you from raising wages and "sharing the wealth", it's not an either/or situation
besides, that's a completely theoretical situation in La La Land, since most of that money is probably being spent on stock buybacks and ridiculous CEO pay/bonus packages

>>11492317
you're nitpicking, in general: higher productivity = more profit

>> No.11492705

>>11492666
I've noticed sort of attitude is becoming more prevalent among the left. They discount facts not necessarily because they're faulty in itself, but because they come from a person or source they disagree with. If you go on the politics forum on Reddit and post something they disagree with they'll be entirely occupied with the source or website rather than what's being said. It's exactly how cults control the information the members receive. They discredit all non-cult sources of information prima facie and they remain blind to reality.

>> No.11492742

>>11492693
>you're nitpicking, in general: higher productivity = more profit

That's an assumption that you're going to have to argue because I don't think it's true because of the principles of supply and demand. The higher production there is, the more supply there is. If the level of demand remains the same the price people are willing to pay for that product will fall so in principle, higher productivity could result in negative profit if supply and demand is sufficiently out of whack.

>> No.11492759

>>11492705
This happens with any political ideology, not just "the left".

>> No.11492769

>>11491435
The thing is, you are somewhat correct.

I mean I am reading The Road to Serfdom right now. Some of the things he says are true, but not many. And also, much like Keynes, he contradicts his logic within several pages of the defined terms themselves. One chapter can really be summarized with a paragraph and an empirical example, but Hayek seems keen on making very verbose what a simple explanation would suffice. I don’t want to accuse him of a political bias, because Mises really seems more prone to that, but I definitely do not think The Road to Serfdom is a masterpiece. It has some neat principles here and there but the entire document is extremely simple. Frederick Von Hayek is nothing like his Vienna contemporary Oskar Morgenstern.

>> No.11492778

>>11492759
I go to a few different conservative or right wing forums and I just don't see it in nearly the same degree. It is the left.

>> No.11492969

>>11492742
then what good is higher productivity if your very logical theory says that it's all gonna be wasted cause nobody will buy shit

>>11492705
I didn't say that your facts were wrong or incorrect, only that I distrust your interpretation
you seem to be very bad at understanding what is actually said
I've seen people arguing with each other and using true statistics to disprove each other's theories and statements (with stats and facts being presented by both sides) enough times to understand that it's the interpretation of facts that is important, not just the facts themselves

>> No.11492986

>>11491793
>>11492705
>Completely reject someone's statistics of 60 years completely and insist on following yours
>Oh no why don't people who aren't like me listen to me? They must be biased!
Are you genuinely a brainlet or do you just lack self-awareness

>> No.11492990

>>11492969
>then what good is higher productivity if your very logical theory says that it's all gonna be wasted cause nobody will buy shit

You've missed the point. Higher productivity can lead to higher profits, but it can also result in negative profits. This is why productivity and profit should not be conflated and it's why productivity is not a good measure of what wages should be.

>> No.11492999

>>11492986
I wasn't part of the argument. I merely object to this person >>11492666 rejecting statistics because they different "ideological frameworks." Even so I don't know what the hell you're talking about because I saw >>11491793 giving arguments and reasons rather just dismissing evidence out of hand.

>> No.11493025

>>11492999
Both of them were dismissing each other's data and imposing theirs as the truth.

>>11491793 completely rejects the previous anon >>11492666
's graph and merely impose his own. The argument between them have not changed. If anything the latter's graph doesn't disprove the former, as the latter is looking at the MEAN income past 2007 while the former is looking at the MEDIAN income till 2005.

Proclaiming only one side to be guilty of this rejection speak volumes of your own ideologically bias instead of others.

>> No.11493063

>>11493025
My bad I confused the terms latter and former. Swap them for better clarity.

>> No.11493066

>>11493025
I didn't choose sides because I wasn't following the conversation. I only responded to the one who explicitly stated that he's rejecting the other because of his ideological framework which is entirely irrelevant to the facts being presented. I think one of the biggest indicators of an irrational bias is when somebody imagines others saying things that facilitate their dismissal so before you accuse people of being irrationally biased then perhaps a little introspection is in order.

>> No.11493106

>>11493066
>before you accuse people of being irrationally biased then perhaps a little introspection is in order
Considering that you gave your opinion and dismiss what >>11492759 said despite admitting that you weren't following the conversation, i would say yes, it is you who need some introspection of your own to get rid of your irrational bias.

>> No.11493111

>>11493106
Forgot to add that >>11492186's rejection is somewhat justified for the reasons that I said earlier of the both statistics not conflicting with one another

>> No.11493138

>>11493106
You're not making any sense to me. I said that in my experience the left is more likely to dismiss evidence out of hand or because of who is saying it. How do you conclude from this that I'm irrationally biased?

The conversation itself is irrelevant because all I did was respond to one person dismissing another merely because of difference in ideological framework. From this you imagine that I'm picking sides or claiming that other people don't do it. I don't care if other people do it because I'm talking to that one person who explicitly stated that it's what he was doing.

>> No.11493162

>>11491810
>And if not statistically insignificant then very close to it
Jews accounted for 1.25% of all Southern slave owners.
Some 150,000 Jews lived in the United States at the time of the American Civil War, about 0.5 percent of the population.

>> No.11493196

>>11493162
So yep, statistically insignificant, and likely insignificant as far as influencing blacks towards the "culture" they commonly ascribe to today

>> No.11494228

>>11492986
I never rejected the statistics. I raised the point that the statistics are based on units that aren't static. Household Income is a bad unit of measurement, since it assumes that households stay the same size over time. They do not!

>> No.11494279

>>11493025
I didn't impose my graph over the other anon's. I supplemented one of the three curves. I'm trying to get to the truth of what the units of measurement are. What is meant by the "real" part of "real hourly wages"? This is critical to understanding what story the data are telling. A simple google search didn't reveal anything.

My contention is with the line for household income. You raised a good point that the line is for median, whereas I have consistently referred to average household income. I'm sorry for my imprecision. My point still stands, though. Whether we're talking about median or average HOUSEHOLD income is regardless. My focus is on giving attention to the obfuscating use of HOUSEHOLD as a part of the unit of measurement.

>> No.11494429

>>11494279
>What is meant by the "real" part of "real hourly wages"?
Adjusted for inflation.

>> No.11494889

>>11493138
Because you are cherrypicking your example from this exact same thread. Both of them were doing the same thing and you were harping only one side.

>From this you imagine that I'm picking sides or claiming that other people don't do it.
Considering that you failed to mention or notice that the other person is doing the same thing yes, you are horribly bias making your point in this thread.

>>11494228
But the major thing the anon was talking about that destroyed your point is that median household income has not increased, which you completely dismissed brainlet.

>> No.11494901

>>11494279
You have provided nothing that directly counter the graph, merely casting doubt on it. Hell the points you came up with doesn't directly go against his post. At least >>11491673 posted an article that somewhat critiqued it.

>I'm sorry for my imprecision.
Imprecision? To compare mean with median is blatant and pure sophistry, brainlet or underage. That anon is right to detect that you are arguing in bad faith, but he should have been more classy in dismissing you.

>> No.11495563
File: 180 KB, 1186x676, tyler.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11495563

>> No.11495569

Is this essential Uncle Tom-ness?

>> No.11495675

>>11495569
Only people who want real discussion can post here.

>> No.11495681

>>11495675
I do want real discussion, which is why I don't want to have an exchange with you on the inner truth and greatness of the GOP platform.

>> No.11495685

>>11495681
Nice try, your extreme bias is showing. I havent even read Sowell yet (was just trying to lurk).

>> No.11495954

>>11494889
Median household income has not increased, but household size has decreased. This means that individual wages have gone up.

>> No.11495964

>>11494901
Did you read what I said??? Mean/median is irrelevant to my argument. I was making a point about the use of "household" income as a unit of measurement.

Households change in size! They've shrunken by over 30% in the last 50 years. So for household incomes to remain the same means that individual incomes have actually gone up!

So, no, comparing mean with median doesn't matter in this case, because that was never my point. Read more carefully next time!

>> No.11496068

>>11495964
>>11495954
But as >>11491653 already shown, real hourly wages haven’t increased. You can of course dispute this but you didn’t, casting doubt without providing any counter evidence. Hell, the graph you posted is at the cut off point of where the other graph ends, it is worthless.

>So, no, comparing mean with median doesn't matter in this case, because that was never my point
Then why post it in the first place? The data you prevented is worthless in countering that anon’s point. And waving it off as imprecise is undercutting the faux pas.

>Read more carefully next time!
Fuck off with your passive aggressive bullshit.

>> No.11496187

>>11491435
translated: /lit/ is a place of doctrine, and has no room for people who read

>> No.11496271

>>11496068
>Hell, the graph you posted is at the cut off point of where the other graph ends, it is worthless.
Fine, see this: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages

>Then why post it in the first place?
see >>11491589
or >>11494228
or >>11495954
or >>11495964

Multiple times, I bring up the point of household being a dynamic descriptor for what should be a time-immutable unit.

>And waving it off as imprecise is undercutting the faux pas.
Harping on median vs. avg and ignoring my point about changing household sizes is the real faux pas.

>Fuck off with your passive aggressive bullshit.
Ok you want active aggressive? You fucking got it.

The whole argument is mind-numbingly simple. Two facts that absolutely no one disputes:
1. Household incomes have stagnated (adjusting for inflation)
2. Households have shrunk (divorce rates have gone up, about half of children are born to single mothers, people are having fewer children)

For both to be true, it must be the case that individual incomes have gone up. There is no other explanation that is coherent with both facts.

The graph I've included earlier in this post confirms this. I'd like to know how the first graph calculated the real hourly wages, because a flat line is incoherent with the two facts above.

Also, Mr. Mean/Median/Mode, shouldn't you be very upset that the line just says "Real hourly wages"? Are they average or median??????

>> No.11496311

>>11495954
>Median household income has not increased, but household size has decreased. This means that individual wages have gone up.

Are you trying to claim that just because you have less children that means you have more income? That's not how it works, your income is still the same but your spending is just different. Ya, you can save more instead of investing in children and that's neoliberalism par excellence i.e. corporations instead of investing in R&D can just do stock buybacks, governments instead of investing in infrastructure can just do tax cuts, etc, etc. It all leads to a structural crises eventually.

>>11495964
Yes, a household was larger 60 years ago but it had less workers typically, a single worker was supporting a lot of people.

Look at the average price of core assets, like housing, adjusted to inflation over time compared to average lower class incomes adjusted to inflation. Your average person is spending more of their income on those essentials today and less on luxuries.

>> No.11496384

>>11496311
60 years ago, a household had more workers. Teenage employment was much higher in the first half of the 20th century than the second half or today. Of course, they typically didn't make much, but it made enough of a difference to the household income that it was common. Teenage unemployment today in middle and upperclass families is a luxury.

I agree with you that housing costs have outpaced inflation, but what are deemed essentials today aren't really essentials. The average size of a house in the U.S. in 2014 was 2,675 sq ft. In 1950 it was 983 sq ft. That's a 2.7X increase! And with the concomitant decrease in household size of about 30%, this means that each person is getting almost 4 times as much space.

>> No.11496407

>>11496068
>>11496271
My graph that I posted in >>11496271 wasn't inflation adjusted! Sorry!

Here's a better graph, from the liberal Brookings Institute no less:

https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-facts-about-wage-growth/

See figure 9A about real wage growth per year.

If you collectively compound those growth percentages over their relevant years, you get about 16% overall growth. And that's just since the 80s!

>> No.11496484

>>11496068
Ooooh, I discovered the story behind the real hourly wages in >>11491653 !!!!

They adjusted with the consumer price index!!!

The CPI is an awful form of indexing, because like "household income" it is a dynamic term. First of all, it usually overestimates inflation by about a percentage point, which makes a huge difference when you compound that error year after year.

But the real problem with CPI is that it is based on the constantly changing (increasing for the most part, see my point about housing in >>11496384 ) standard of living.

People have been spending more and saving less over time, and there's been a subtle expansion of luxury into the mainstream. Look at the rising prices of flagship phones from Apple and Samsung. The first gen iPhone cost $600 in 2007. The iPhone 8 is $850 and the X is $1150! If Samsung releases their foldable phone next year, people are predicting it will be in the $1600-2000 range!

If we indexed wages to a CPI based just on iPhones, it would look like wages are flat or maybe even down, but the truth is that people are just spending more of their money on tech. Money that they wouldn't have had if their wages were truly stagnant.

It bothers me that economists use these deliberately shady terms. Either they aren't very smart, or (and I hope this isn't the truth) they realize that their societal vision is contrary to reality and use terms that allow them to paint a picture that's more akin to what they want, so that the policies implemented accordingly fit their vision.

>> No.11496524

>>11491329
just read Moldbug, never ever read a politicians book

>> No.11496602

my nigga Sowell be crushing leftists goons on Firing Line
shout out to my homie's work Race & Culture: A World View
truly inspiring gentleman

>> No.11496630

>>11491329
I forgot the part in Uncle Tom's Cabin where he spends 690 pages refuting age of consent laws and talking about trickle down economics

>> No.11496632

>>11491564
>Sowell explores explanations the situation of African Americans today, and convincingly (imo) argues that today blacks underperform due not to their treatment under slavery but rather due to their slavers, who were predominantly from a particular region on England.

I always thought blacks underperform because being successful and making wise decisions was seen as "white" or "uncle tom."

>> No.11496644
File: 193 KB, 1280x497, Screenshot_20180721-184056_1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11496644

>>11491653
Go fuck yourself you boring faggot. This is from sowell himself.

>> No.11496657
File: 6 KB, 381x238, 1531054642420.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11496657

>>11491653
>lookie here massa, you gotsa habs dem mahkits be FREE! oooh lawdy lawdy lawdy, we gon get dat wealth rollin in fo SHO!

>> No.11496671

>>11496407
>exclamation points!

>> No.11496971

>>11491793
You imbecile. You absolute moron. Productivity is by definition pegged to the number of goods produced. It's not output, population has nothing to do with it. And I can't actually open your link but average is a shit metric compared to median

>> No.11496994

>>11492742
Bad post, if productivity increases you can keep your output the same and only spend less on inputs, keep sale prices the same and profiting more

>> No.11497003

>>11496187
No.

Translated: recent history has proven their work erroneous so you shouldn't waste your time unless you have a particular interest in that part of intellectual history.

>> No.11497112

>>11496271
>For both to be true, it must be the case that individual incomes have gone up. There is no other explanation that is coherent with both facts.
Or there is more workforce participation in every household during that period. Either lesser children, children entering the workforce at a younger age or people retiring later. Your explanation of household income increasing to balance out the decrease of number of heads in household is not taken as given.

>https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-participation-rate

>>11496484
Sure whatever, your criticism of CPI being inaccurate might be valid, but does that automatically invalidate its usage? I do not know as I am not equipped to counter that point.

My original foray into this thread is to point out that you were effectively talking past that anon and rejecting what he said without any evidence or criticism. The fact that it took so much post for you to spit out actual criticisms shows how hollow your original reply was to him. He was right to dismiss you although he was too heavy handed in his approach. That is all I wanted to prove and I have done it.

>> No.11497184

Is there one guy posting this meme over and over or is it a group? Genuinely curious; I'll read it for an answer

>> No.11497377
File: 31 KB, 913x663, gold vs consumer price index.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11497377

>>11496384
That income was never [by the mid-20th century any ways] a serious factor in household budgets, it was pocket change mostly going towards going to the movies and such. The portion going towards "entertainment" today is probably much lower all things factored in with the much more rapid increase in prices of essentials. Kids were out of the house before they were making any serious income. My point is a family could manage a relative standard of living relatively better than today with a single family member employed i.e. take a family of 4 with one employed breed winner from 60 years ago and compare their Quality of Life with a similar arrangement today. Yes things like televisions are bigger/better today therefore people are getting a "better experience" but these sorts of intertemporal comparisons are stupid because individual utility can't really be quantified or compared and you can't even talk about things being "necessary" outside of a social context.

>>11496484
Well from a Marxist perspective it's really best to look at things in terms of gold and real wages from this perspective have actually been totally obliterated much worse. How many ounces of gold did you're average house exchange for in 1950 vs. today? WOW, BIG DIFFERENCE. Why did the Nixon government drop their pledge to keep exchanging dollars for gold at the same rate? One of the reasons was it was a way for the government to radically reduce real wages of workers beyond just the geopolitical manoeuvring.
The thing is "luxury" consumption hasn't really been increasing, what's considered socially necessary has been increasing in cost and the arrangements of financing have been becoming more predatory. More income today is relatively going towards paying rents than purchasing goods/services.

>> No.11497438

>>11497184
i hope that it is a concerted black propaganda effort by the government instead of one autistic individual

>> No.11497600

>>11496644
wow, those are some nice words
and they're even on a page
that does it, he must be right, I mean it was published in a book after all

>> No.11498058

>still shilling this coon's books
/pol/acks, everyone

>> No.11498646

>>11498058
Shoo, nigger. Shoo.

>> No.11498944

>>11492564
Chicago Boys are like if the Frankfurt School actually did subvert democracy and traditional values.