From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Thu May 07 1998 - 09:50:46 MDT
planetp@aci.net (Paul Hughes) writes:
>Peter C. McCluskey wrote:
>> I see no sign that automation has been causing or is likely to cause a
>> significant number of people to need to work harder to maintain a stable
>> standard of living. As to how hard people will need to work in order to
>> upload, I don't know.
>
>Why are there more and more 2-parent working families? Why has the average work week
>been increasing?
My impression is that many people want an increasing standard of living.
> Why did the average wage in the US steadily decrease from 1971 to
>1996?
I did a hasty search for data to check this claim, and found the following
(from the St. Louis Fed, http://www.stls.frb.org/fred/):
eciwag -- Employment Cost Index-Wages: Private Industry Workers (SA, 8906=100)
DATE ECIWAG
1980.1 63.1
...
1998.1 133.6
I didn't find any wage data earlier than 1980. Since it appears unadjusted
for inflation, I checked the CPI for the comparable period:
1980.01 78.0
...
1998.03 162.0
This sure looks inconsistent with your claim.
Even if you have some data which tell a slightly different story, I
don't think that has much implication for which political system is
best. Automation has been going on for something like 2 centuries, and
if you use all the worldwide data to compare how the average person has
fared, you will see a clear correlation that favors relatively capitalist
countries.
planetp@aci.net (Paul Hughes) writes:
>P.S. Why are so many people on this list so preoccupied with shredding
>peoples arguments that they don't even bother reading or trying to
>understand what other people are writing? If there is a loss of S/N on
>this list, it's due in large part to people putting their ego's and elitist
>bully attitudes first over genuine and healthy discussion and debate. Am I
>alone on this list in thinking this way?
The increased volume of uninteresting posts on this list has caused
my reading habits to be less carefull than they used to be. I try to
keep this habit from affecting how I read posts that I reply to, but
I doubt that I done a perfect job of that.
I suspect that the declining S/N ratio has also driven away some of the
people who were most carefull about how they read. If current trends
continue, I'll probably leave the list in a few months.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | Critmail (http://crit.org/critmail.html): http://www.rahul.net/pcm | Accept nothing less to archive your mailing list
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