The figure might be misleading. It might not be.

Either way, the idea that the natural and normal state of affairs is that every person can go out into the world and be a perfectly self sufficient but comfortable atomized economic unit without support from their family or society is deeply flawed.

This wasn't the norm for most of human history, and it isn't the norm globally today.

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PaulDavisThe1st 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It might, however, be a nice thing to aspire to, no? Economic self-sufficiency doesn't have to imply atomization, I think.

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PaulHoule 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's an interesting question.

We have a group that promotes a "living wage" construct in Tompkins County that pushes the unquestioned assumption that people who are working in the lowest paying jobs can live 100% alone. It's not something I want to challenge directly, but... It reminds me of discussions about the minimum wage in the late 1980s when it was common for teenagers to work at supermarkets and fast food markets. I think the public never really understood how the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit

was specifically intended to help out people who were raising a family with low incomes that was economically efficient and how there is some logic to people who are working in low income jobs qualifying for food stamps, it is not just a way "Wal-Mart is stealing for us."

e.g. part of "affordability" is keeping costs low and as much leftie folks want to sweep it under the rug there is a lot of internal class conflict in groups such as women: like the Sheryl Sandberg type definitely benefits from exploiting less wealthy women to do child care work for them and child care is basically problematic because the child care worker is not productive enough to put their own children in child care without subsidy and you don't get the Fordist scenario where the auto line worker can easily afford to own one of the cars they make.

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inigyou an hour ago | parent [-]

I can't think of any serious leftist who would advocate for high costs, unless there was some fundamental resource constraint like with fossil fuels.

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PaulHoule 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Well high wage implies a cost that has to be pushed on somewhere. It's not crazy to fear that raising wages, sometimes, can cause costs to go up, which can lead to more demand for higher wages. It may really depend on how much slack there is in the system.

What does improve material standard of living is increases in productivity, but the scope for those is limited, see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

Like the basic story of the past 150 or so years is that agriculture has gotten dramatically more productive so people can do other things and move into cities with all sorts of implications.

	▲	inigyou 30 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		High wages raise purchasing power as much as they raise costs, so aren't exactly raising costs overall. Non-wage costs (i.e. profit and rent) seem to be the killer. Note that Adam Smith hated rent.

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thisislife2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am not sure - in my experience, I've observed that the more money you have the less people care about relations (their social circle becomes smaller) and healthy co-dependency reduces. This is more true of the young. Human nature tends to be selfish, which is not conducive for a healthy society. Young people becoming financially-independent at an early age may negate opportunities for self-introspection on that - without the struggle to earn a good living, many fail to understand the value of money and good relationships, which often lead to costly and immature decisions.

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PaulDavisThe1st 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't agree with your characterization of "human nature". I mostly disagree that there is any such thing, and to the extent that there is, it seems to me that it is more like: cooperative, altruistic, empathic within the in-group, aggressive, selfish and uncooperative with the out-group.

The great work of human civilization is to expand the size of the in-group.

	▲	thisislife2 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Look at any popular religion and you will find a heavy emphasis on sacrifice, selflessness and delayed gratifications (that helps strengthen our control over our base desires). This is because early civilisations (that used a religio-political construct to form societies and nations) recognised that a healthy society only flourishes when humans are taught to fight their innate desire to be selfish. You can observe this when kids demand attention as they become jealous of their siblings or play with toys with anyone - they have to be taught to share, and appreciate it as a value. Your perspective on the in-group and out-group is relevant of course - it isn't healthy if one is self-sacrificing without addressing their own needs. (However the degree of that varies between eastern and western culture. Eastern cultures, which have more civilisational history, perhaps don't necessarily see as it in such rigid terms?). Moreover, my point was that having wealth tends to affects your perceptions to "expand the size of the in-group" - money does provide more avenues to be independent, and thus a financially independent youth can (ignorantly) miss opportunities to learn how to have healthy co-dependent relations as most erroneously assume that such relations are not important to them because they have achieved "independence". Learning to be independent is important. But then learning to understand the importance of co-dependency is another step to become a mature adult.

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vondur 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Look at the comment above, the sample is from really wealthy parents, not the median income in the US, so I'm sure that skews the data.

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PaulDavisThe1st 3 hours ago | parent [-]

No, it mentioned 816 out of more than 4500 respondents had net worth over $1M.

That's quite different to your claim.

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senordevnyc 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's also incorrect, it's not net worth > $1mm, it's "those with total household investable assets, excluding pensions, retirement plans and property" over $1mm, which is a much smaller number. The sources I saw said about 4% of US households meet this criteria, but 18% of survey respondents did.

	▲	PaulDavisThe1st 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ah, indeed, I read that line backwards ("excluding" got transmuted to "including"). Right you are.

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alphawhisky 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Slavery and massive wealth disparity was also the norm for most of human history, but just like generational wealth transfer, that doesn't mean it's equitable (or sustainable). Personally, I'm concerned that this will lead to greater wealth transfer from poor to rich and the subsequent dissolution of social norms that hold countries and cultures together. But I don't really care, I have nothing to lose here.

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dyauspitr 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is something to aim for though. The kid feels good about themselves and the parents can enjoy their hard earned money to have a banging retirement. My parents won’t stop traveling. They’ve been to something like 50 countries over the last 5-7 years.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]