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walkitoutAt the time I am writing this, a reasonable summary of this general topic can be found at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index
Substitution, Chained CPI, and changes in the relative importance of the consumer basket of goods vs. other costs (notably health care) have been major controversies that (mostly) subsided over time. The salience of this particular data collection and statistic generation is changes to how much money is distributed as part of social security and similar entitlements. These debates _always_ include egregious examples of the Values Driven Positions That Are At Odds With Each Other problem that I have been yammering on about for several posts now.
Obviously to my Correctly Thinking Readers, we do not want the aged poor to be unable to afford health care, purchase food, or be forced to choose between those two and/or HVAC, etc. OTOH, the money to give to the aged comes from somewhere, and there has genuinely been a significant wealth transfer to the older folks over the years that social security and similar entitlements have existed. To my knowledge, PN (mother of an ex-boyfriend) is the only person I’ve ever met to actively speak out against more money to the aged, as an aged, on the basis that the younger folks who are working need the money, too, often for the grandkids. I didn’t always agree with her positions, but I found the insight, thoughtfulness and consistency she put into making sure her various positions _made sense together_ to be really really amazing.
In the years since I was last discussing such matters with PN, I have developed a sadly robust understanding of the difficulty of persuading anyone of anything, much less getting them to keep the Things They Want in any kind of congruence with each other.
Consumer spending for decades reflected persistent deflation in goods that (mostly) compensated for persistent high inflation in certain services (notably: education and health care). Initially, that deflation was the result of a decadal miniaturization trend in semiconductors that reduced power consumption, which reduced fuel consumption by power plants and obviated the need to build more power plants. Over time, deflation spread out to more industries and more and more and more. The initial labor savings of physically moving plant to China were amplified exponentially by innovation in China, making deflation in goods even more gobsmacking.
We now live in a world in which a unit of non-food-goods-intense-GDP however characterized contains remarkably little power or labor as a percentage of the cost. Health care and education (and other forms of child care) remain labor intense and subject to inflation that has accelerated with the Silver Tsunami / global reduction in prime working age population as the post-WW2 cohort finishes retiring but hasn’t all died off yet. Food is surprisingly fuel intense for a variety of reasons (excessive use of fertilizer, mostly), and prepared foods can be very labor intense as well.
We have now washed up on a bizarre shore in which it’s pretty cheap for some rando in one part of the world to tell a story to randos in other parts of the world. We are all, in some sense, sitting in a room with Charles Dickens on Christmas Eve while he reads A Christmas Carol out loud to some poors — it probably cost the poors in the room more to get to that room to listen to Dickens’ read for free, than it costs us to buy a new novel in e-book form.
But for reasons that remain unclear to me, we can’t seem to feel that.
Perhaps it is the same dissatisfaction that relentlessly prodded generations of folks to diligently work to make things iteratively better to get to now, that makes us unable to enjoy it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index
Substitution, Chained CPI, and changes in the relative importance of the consumer basket of goods vs. other costs (notably health care) have been major controversies that (mostly) subsided over time. The salience of this particular data collection and statistic generation is changes to how much money is distributed as part of social security and similar entitlements. These debates _always_ include egregious examples of the Values Driven Positions That Are At Odds With Each Other problem that I have been yammering on about for several posts now.
Obviously to my Correctly Thinking Readers, we do not want the aged poor to be unable to afford health care, purchase food, or be forced to choose between those two and/or HVAC, etc. OTOH, the money to give to the aged comes from somewhere, and there has genuinely been a significant wealth transfer to the older folks over the years that social security and similar entitlements have existed. To my knowledge, PN (mother of an ex-boyfriend) is the only person I’ve ever met to actively speak out against more money to the aged, as an aged, on the basis that the younger folks who are working need the money, too, often for the grandkids. I didn’t always agree with her positions, but I found the insight, thoughtfulness and consistency she put into making sure her various positions _made sense together_ to be really really amazing.
In the years since I was last discussing such matters with PN, I have developed a sadly robust understanding of the difficulty of persuading anyone of anything, much less getting them to keep the Things They Want in any kind of congruence with each other.
Consumer spending for decades reflected persistent deflation in goods that (mostly) compensated for persistent high inflation in certain services (notably: education and health care). Initially, that deflation was the result of a decadal miniaturization trend in semiconductors that reduced power consumption, which reduced fuel consumption by power plants and obviated the need to build more power plants. Over time, deflation spread out to more industries and more and more and more. The initial labor savings of physically moving plant to China were amplified exponentially by innovation in China, making deflation in goods even more gobsmacking.
We now live in a world in which a unit of non-food-goods-intense-GDP however characterized contains remarkably little power or labor as a percentage of the cost. Health care and education (and other forms of child care) remain labor intense and subject to inflation that has accelerated with the Silver Tsunami / global reduction in prime working age population as the post-WW2 cohort finishes retiring but hasn’t all died off yet. Food is surprisingly fuel intense for a variety of reasons (excessive use of fertilizer, mostly), and prepared foods can be very labor intense as well.
We have now washed up on a bizarre shore in which it’s pretty cheap for some rando in one part of the world to tell a story to randos in other parts of the world. We are all, in some sense, sitting in a room with Charles Dickens on Christmas Eve while he reads A Christmas Carol out loud to some poors — it probably cost the poors in the room more to get to that room to listen to Dickens’ read for free, than it costs us to buy a new novel in e-book form.
But for reasons that remain unclear to me, we can’t seem to feel that.
Perhaps it is the same dissatisfaction that relentlessly prodded generations of folks to diligently work to make things iteratively better to get to now, that makes us unable to enjoy it.