Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well(bloomberg.com)
bloomberg.com
Rise of the Creative Class Worked a Little Too Well
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-10-27/rise-of-the-creative-class-worked-a-little-too-well
98 comments
Google, Amazon (for example), are building large work centers in desirable places to work, which are raising the cost of living of everyone else in the town that may not have a six figure income. Google is moving to Boulder, CO as we speak; Denver was on the shortlist for Amazon.
It's the same problem with kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals to live in lofts built on the same foundations: your renewed neighborhood loses all the reasons it was appealing. In Boulder already you cannot really afford living in town with a service industry job, but people who want to work in Google also want to go out and have a beer after work. Those service industry workers need to commute into town, which is time-consuming, adds expense, worsens traffic, and lowers their quality of life.
It's the same problem with kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals to live in lofts built on the same foundations: your renewed neighborhood loses all the reasons it was appealing. In Boulder already you cannot really afford living in town with a service industry job, but people who want to work in Google also want to go out and have a beer after work. Those service industry workers need to commute into town, which is time-consuming, adds expense, worsens traffic, and lowers their quality of life.
> kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals
So artists are wonderful, interesting people, and professionals are boring and unappealing? Wow.
So artists are wonderful, interesting people, and professionals are boring and unappealing? Wow.
Speaking as a boring professional, yes, artists may be insufferable in plenty of ways, but boring they are not and their presence is important for establishing and growing a local culture, whereas professionals are good for growing an economy and both are needed for a healthy, vibrant city.
I know some artists, and many of them are definitely boring :-) Just because someone decides to be an artist and sticks seashells on a model house doesn't make them interesting. And why would, for example, playing a trumpet well make you intrinsically more interesting than mastering complex mathematics?
I'd rather have lunch with the mathematician. In fact, Feynman is at the top of the list of people I'd like to have lunch with, and it's not about his bongo drum playing.
(P.S. I learned to play the trumpet in my youth.)
I'd rather have lunch with the mathematician. In fact, Feynman is at the top of the list of people I'd like to have lunch with, and it's not about his bongo drum playing.
(P.S. I learned to play the trumpet in my youth.)
Because most people can relate to music on an emotional level better than they can relate to complex mathematics.
It sounds like you know some pretty terrible artists, though. I mean, seashells on a model house?
PS. Feynman is Feynman for a reason.
It sounds like you know some pretty terrible artists, though. I mean, seashells on a model house?
PS. Feynman is Feynman for a reason.
People who only relate on an emotional level and don't appreciate intellectual complexity are - wait for it - boring.
You said only, not me. Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity.
The Beatles made some of the greatest music in history, but "she loves you yeah yeah yeah" is a mite lacking in intellectual complexity.
You're going to bring up the Beatles, and not bring up Tomorrow Never Knows or Blue Jay Way or anything off of Sgt. Pepper?
And all art has a wide expanse between commercially available and popular, and the avant garde, and within that range is another range between simplicity and complexity.
Art also encompasses film, fiction, the visual arts, music. All of which have a massive range of intellectual importance and depth.
No offense, but I feel as though you're showing your ignorance much more than proving your point.
And all art has a wide expanse between commercially available and popular, and the avant garde, and within that range is another range between simplicity and complexity.
Art also encompasses film, fiction, the visual arts, music. All of which have a massive range of intellectual importance and depth.
No offense, but I feel as though you're showing your ignorance much more than proving your point.
> All of which have a massive range
Of course they do. I'm merely challenging your claim "Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity." There's no doubt at all that "She Loves You" is a great song. Personally, I prefer the earlier Beatles tunes rather than Sgt Pepper. Perhaps you could quote from the latter some lyrics that have deep meaning to you?
I also greatly enjoy Led Zeppelin, have every album, even cover albums, but am under no illusions about the intellectual complexity of "squeeze my lemon".
Of course they do. I'm merely challenging your claim "Great art is heavy on intellectual complexity." There's no doubt at all that "She Loves You" is a great song. Personally, I prefer the earlier Beatles tunes rather than Sgt Pepper. Perhaps you could quote from the latter some lyrics that have deep meaning to you?
I also greatly enjoy Led Zeppelin, have every album, even cover albums, but am under no illusions about the intellectual complexity of "squeeze my lemon".
There are great examples of lyricism in music. There are great examples of production. There are great examples of musicianship. And there are great examples of songwriting. Each has varying levels of complexity.
Nobody celebrates Led Zeppelin for their lyricism, but I think you knew that already.
Nobody celebrates Led Zeppelin for their lyricism, but I think you knew that already.
Far from making greatest works even in modern music, but they made greatness accessible.
> accessible
I was always baffled by what that was supposed to mean.
I was always baffled by what that was supposed to mean.
Artists generally have a pretty profound application of intellect to their work, which is usually much more conceptually interesting than building a CRUD app.
And they also work with people who don't take an intellectual approach to their production but rather follow intuition.
One thing is certain: it's a more heterogenous environment. I find that to be extremely stimulating.
And they also work with people who don't take an intellectual approach to their production but rather follow intuition.
One thing is certain: it's a more heterogenous environment. I find that to be extremely stimulating.
> Artists generally have a pretty profound application of intellect to their work, which is usually much more conceptually interesting than building a CRUD app.
Deciding to become an artist doesn't make one profound or conceptually interesting. Rather few artists achieve that. The starving artist community generally has not, which is why they are starving.
After all, how many TV shows you watch are "pretty intellectually profound"? And those artists are good enough to get paid for their work, most aren't.
Deciding to become an artist doesn't make one profound or conceptually interesting. Rather few artists achieve that. The starving artist community generally has not, which is why they are starving.
After all, how many TV shows you watch are "pretty intellectually profound"? And those artists are good enough to get paid for their work, most aren't.
This whole thread sounds like hurt feelings.
Generally speaking yes, I think artists add an element of interest and entropy in an area compared to professionals in white collar positions.
Wouldn't agree on the 'wonderful' or 'unappealing' value judgments though; I think you added them for rhetorical emphasis.
Wouldn't agree on the 'wonderful' or 'unappealing' value judgments though; I think you added them for rhetorical emphasis.
I did add "wonderful" for rhetorical emphasis, but "unappealing" came from the parent.
> So artists are wonderful, interesting people, and professionals are boring and unappealing? Wow.
Well, this fine article is partly about Richard Florida, and that's basically what he's saying: keep the creative class around, because they are the ones that add value to a city. Boring professionals flock to neighborhoods put on the map because creative people making them destinations.
In Denver, see the River North neighborhood. What once was a very vibrant place to see DIY shows, gallerys, etc, is now just a brewery neighborhood. Some underground venues were closed by the city and the one-year anniversary of this is coming up. The city shows no interest in providing an alternative. I guess this isn't very important to most, but these spaces were a safe place for many people to go: homeless teenagers, trans-folk, etc.
http://www.westword.com/music/rhinoceropolis-diy-venue-shut-...
Well, this fine article is partly about Richard Florida, and that's basically what he's saying: keep the creative class around, because they are the ones that add value to a city. Boring professionals flock to neighborhoods put on the map because creative people making them destinations.
In Denver, see the River North neighborhood. What once was a very vibrant place to see DIY shows, gallerys, etc, is now just a brewery neighborhood. Some underground venues were closed by the city and the one-year anniversary of this is coming up. The city shows no interest in providing an alternative. I guess this isn't very important to most, but these spaces were a safe place for many people to go: homeless teenagers, trans-folk, etc.
http://www.westword.com/music/rhinoceropolis-diy-venue-shut-...
Hmm, yes?
There's only so much after-work talk I can tolerate about app servers. I want to go to the theater, watch plays, and see bands. The people who have those interests are not particularly enchanted by traditional professional careers.
There's only so much after-work talk I can tolerate about app servers. I want to go to the theater, watch plays, and see bands. The people who have those interests are not particularly enchanted by traditional professional careers.
I bet you'd get bored at watching plays 40 hrs a week, too.
I always get slightly sad when I hear the complaints against Google in Boulder as I honestly believe the effect it has had on housing prices has been overstated. For some context, I'm a Boulder native, I grew up here, went to preschool through college here, and am fortunate enough to get a job that pays me enough to stay here. And for what it's worth Google has had an office in Boulder for about 10 or 11 years now. I'm more than happy to discuss this more thoroughly here, through pms, or over coffee :)
Disclaimer: I work at Google, in Boulder.
Disclaimer: I work at Google, in Boulder.
I really think it's too early to tell, but people who don't work at Google - like me, are worried. In the last two years, the number of people working Google has doubled to 650; the new campus will hold 1500 workers. That's well over 1% of the total population of Boulder, working at Google - and you must agree that this will be a new phenomenon for Boulder's housing market.
For a city that's not so into building new housing, and most especially affordable housing, the writing is on the wall about what's going to happen to current housing prices, not to mention the general cost of living, in Boulder.
The elephant in the room when it comes to any housing boom (like in Denver) in the west is water: the current supply is already strained. Do remember we pump water through massive tunnels under mountains from the western slope to feed the current demand. We need more people on the front range? I dunno.
For a city that's not so into building new housing, and most especially affordable housing, the writing is on the wall about what's going to happen to current housing prices, not to mention the general cost of living, in Boulder.
The elephant in the room when it comes to any housing boom (like in Denver) in the west is water: the current supply is already strained. Do remember we pump water through massive tunnels under mountains from the western slope to feed the current demand. We need more people on the front range? I dunno.
Also I think it's safe to think that the Silicon Valley region is a pretty unlivable/undesirable place to be, and what's happened to S.F isn't something any city really wants, unless you are filthy rich. "Google Effect" and all...
Or we could just pay service-workers more. If you'd like to have a cool bar where the employees can afford to live in the neighborhood, then create one. Charge enough per drink to pay the rent and advertise why. I'm curious if it'd succeed.
I don't know if working as a bartender to owning a bar is that easy of a process.
In Boulder at least, I'm not there to drink at a cool bar, work at a cool bar, or own a cool bar. I'm there because it's a livable city. Or was a livable city.
In Boulder at least, I'm not there to drink at a cool bar, work at a cool bar, or own a cool bar. I'm there because it's a livable city. Or was a livable city.
Then it sounds like you don't care if the bartenders move elsewhere. Which is reasonable.
kicking out artists in a dilapidated warehouse area, and moving in boring professionals
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Oakland_warehouse_fire
I think the question to answer is this: What does Small Town, U.S.A. have to offer the world that people are willing to pay for? My sense is that until very recently, the answer was "stuff the locals want plus a few large operations that 'plugged into' the national economy like farms and factories."
Now, as you point out, the barriers to consolidating industry into mega-hubs like Shenzhen are dissolving.
The only reasons to start or keep a business somewhere now are 3: 1. Physical resource dependence (ex. mining operations need to be where the mine is), 2. Regulatory (ex. tax policies), and 3. Talent.
Small towns used to rely on #1, which is now a losing strategy since global markets have dramatically driven down the costs of extracting and moving physical resources.
Now they're trying to do more of #2, which works for a little while but there's always another government somewhere willing to cut a better deal.
The only way small towns can compete is to focus on #3: Talent. They have to develop highly skilled workforces. That's literally all they can do.
Now, as you point out, the barriers to consolidating industry into mega-hubs like Shenzhen are dissolving.
The only reasons to start or keep a business somewhere now are 3: 1. Physical resource dependence (ex. mining operations need to be where the mine is), 2. Regulatory (ex. tax policies), and 3. Talent.
Small towns used to rely on #1, which is now a losing strategy since global markets have dramatically driven down the costs of extracting and moving physical resources.
Now they're trying to do more of #2, which works for a little while but there's always another government somewhere willing to cut a better deal.
The only way small towns can compete is to focus on #3: Talent. They have to develop highly skilled workforces. That's literally all they can do.
They have to develop highly skilled workforces AND keep them there. My smallish town where I grew up certainly hasn't done that. Of all of my classmates who attended college directly after high school, I can count on one hand with spare fingers the number still living in the area. I'd say well over half don't even live in the state anymore. Mind you, nobody in my high school attended any fancy private universities. We almost all went to state schools. (Big Ten, MAC, and smaller schools.) The private school attendees went to local religious affiliated colleges.
Developing talent does no good if you can't stop the brain drain.
Developing talent does no good if you can't stop the brain drain.
Does anyone have the book? I noticed in the chart they measured 'San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward' which would be the northern half of the bay area that does not include the Santa Clara valley (aka Silicon Valley). I'm wondering if there was a measurement for the 'Redwood City - San Jose - Fremont' southern half of the bay area.
The San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward MSA[0] contains San Mateo and Alameda Counties, so Redwood City and Fremont are included.
Santa Clara County is not included, however.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oakland...
Santa Clara County is not included, however.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose-San_Francisco-Oakland...
That is awesome, it lead me eventually to discover the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara MSA (which is the 'other' side of the Bay) and this comparison site (https://datausa.io/profile/geo/san-jose-sunnyvale-santa-clar...)
Don't worry. Programming is becoming a blue collar job.
Being an "electrician" in 1880 was a big deal, the high technology job of its day. By 1920 it was a union blue collar job. That's programming.
Being an "electrician" in 1880 was a big deal, the high technology job of its day. By 1920 it was a union blue collar job. That's programming.
I think that programming is splitting into several different fields. Some of it is rather like 1920's electrician jobs, which by the way were good middle class jobs that people could be proud of being able to do. But other kinds of programming are not blue collar yet. I think it's rather like how electrical engineering and electrician split into separate fields; it's not like electrical engineers ceased to exist, it's that now you people who could actually specialize in doing electrical work.
Afaik electrician is still a solid blue collar job?
Electrician can be a very good blue collar job - if I hadn't gone to college, I'd have thought real hard about doing electrical in a trade school. I'd be sort of surprised to see it significantly automated any time in the near future, as well.
I wouldn’t even call it a blue collar job: the labor isn’t very intense, the pay is excellent, and it’s very stable; easily salariable compared to seasonal and contract work (though you can contract if you want).
An electrician in 1880 did a lot of design work. One of 1920 (and today) does it by rote - they just follow canned rules and procedures already worked out. It's all coded into regulations, too, so there's little flexibility.
An electrical engineer, on the other hand, does design work.
An electrical engineer, on the other hand, does design work.
Could nt that happen to programming as well ?
I've been programming for about 16 years. Started with C++, doing my own memory management for routine tasks. Later, started abstractions like garbage collection, jdbc, and servlets.
Of course, the day comes when the high level abstractions of your youth are referred to as "low level". And while that may seem silly to people who write machine code, there is something low level-ish about managing your own database connections and/or writing your own resource pool.
Almost everything we do is routinely turned into, well, routine work. Rails automated a lot, but not all, of what I did. I'm tiptoeing close to a "no true scotsman" argument here, but I'd almost define "programming" as writing code that hasn't been automated yet - which is why the job of being a programmer won't be automated.
Here's why I think my argument is almost, but not quite, a "no true scotsman" fallacy. I have a lot of trouble seeing how anything could replace human programmers, but that's the rub - the way it happens, should it happen, will surprise me. The analogy I have in my head is someone who is trying to create a mechanical turk to replace a symphony orchestra. A wind up doll to play a violin, trumpet, piano. There are a few successes, with self playing pianos, but overall, it appears to be distant.
And then... an unanticipated concept, one that blows your mind: it turns out that you can actually capture music, exactly as it was played, with a device that will project that sound back just as it was made the first time. You can play the symphony once, and listen to it an unlimited number of times. And just like that, live music played by a human goes from 99% of all music heard to well below 1%.
We could very well be replaced, but not as we are. I think it'll be something different, that provides what we provided, in a way that makes us largely unnecessary.
Of course, the day comes when the high level abstractions of your youth are referred to as "low level". And while that may seem silly to people who write machine code, there is something low level-ish about managing your own database connections and/or writing your own resource pool.
Almost everything we do is routinely turned into, well, routine work. Rails automated a lot, but not all, of what I did. I'm tiptoeing close to a "no true scotsman" argument here, but I'd almost define "programming" as writing code that hasn't been automated yet - which is why the job of being a programmer won't be automated.
Here's why I think my argument is almost, but not quite, a "no true scotsman" fallacy. I have a lot of trouble seeing how anything could replace human programmers, but that's the rub - the way it happens, should it happen, will surprise me. The analogy I have in my head is someone who is trying to create a mechanical turk to replace a symphony orchestra. A wind up doll to play a violin, trumpet, piano. There are a few successes, with self playing pianos, but overall, it appears to be distant.
And then... an unanticipated concept, one that blows your mind: it turns out that you can actually capture music, exactly as it was played, with a device that will project that sound back just as it was made the first time. You can play the symphony once, and listen to it an unlimited number of times. And just like that, live music played by a human goes from 99% of all music heard to well below 1%.
We could very well be replaced, but not as we are. I think it'll be something different, that provides what we provided, in a way that makes us largely unnecessary.
Isn't that what being a Software Engineer or Software Architect is?
I'm in the compiler business. Compilers handle an increasing amount of routine programming tasks, but programmers respond to that by making more complex programs, so the creative input needed by programmers is about the same.
What do you think about the API ification of things because of AWS or Google Spanner database . Everything is abstracted away so you're just gluing things together.
Its not AI but it turns even complex projects into things that anyone can learn to do in months . I can't imagine this remaining so well paying in such circumstances.
Its not AI but it turns even complex projects into things that anyone can learn to do in months . I can't imagine this remaining so well paying in such circumstances.
The complex design work goes into creatively gluing these APIs together to form new product categories. If you don't need to spend time worrying how to fit bits on disk, you can spend that mental energy searching for and solving problems that would've been too complex without the APIs.
Smart programmers move up the value chain as needed so that they're still doing work that can't be done easily with an existing product.
Smart programmers move up the value chain as needed so that they're still doing work that can't be done easily with an existing product.
Good point .
So that begs the question , what are some of the things that are right now higher up the value chain ?
So that begs the question , what are some of the things that are right now higher up the value chain ?
Writing a better compiler :-)
It could and it should.
>they just follow canned rules and procedures already worked out
To a degree. I get the contrast you're drawing and don't really disagree. But an electrician (like plumbers/contractors/etc.), especially working in an older building, has to deal with a lot of unexpected circumstances that have to be dealt with. There's a lot of problem-solving involved.
To a degree. I get the contrast you're drawing and don't really disagree. But an electrician (like plumbers/contractors/etc.), especially working in an older building, has to deal with a lot of unexpected circumstances that have to be dealt with. There's a lot of problem-solving involved.
Sure, there's some creating work in dealing with obstacles. But let me give another example. My house was wired up by an experienced electrician. I noticed he was running the phone wires through the same holes as the A/C wires. I told him that would not work, as the phone wires would pick up the 60 Hz hum by inductive coupling. He had never heard of the term "inductive coupling". He had NO IDEA what I was talking about. If I let him continue, the phones in my house would all hum.
So I told him I'd do the low voltage wiring myself. Those have to be separated from the A/C wires by a couple feet, and only cross them at 90 degree angles. No hum.
Inductive coupling is something a first year EE student would learn about.
So I told him I'd do the low voltage wiring myself. Those have to be separated from the A/C wires by a couple feet, and only cross them at 90 degree angles. No hum.
Inductive coupling is something a first year EE student would learn about.
Electricians sort of transitioned from design/implementation roles into maintenance/installation roles. This does not really map well with programming because many times doing maintenance on an established project can be as or more difficult than the initial implementation. Having a large number of basically trained programmers maintaining systems that better programmers have built won't really work.
Programming has not gotten easier really, I don't think it will ever be blue collar. Even though development will get easier as technology and tools improve, the bar for what good is is set by our peers. Knowing some html/css/Js was a totally acceptable skillset in 2000, but now you need to have some backend and networking or design/ui/ux skills to be relevant.
Programming has not gotten easier really, I don't think it will ever be blue collar. Even though development will get easier as technology and tools improve, the bar for what good is is set by our peers. Knowing some html/css/Js was a totally acceptable skillset in 2000, but now you need to have some backend and networking or design/ui/ux skills to be relevant.
Lots of people make this claim with no evidence. It's understandable to feel insecure about future career prospects in our fast-changing industry, but honestly I'll believe it when I see it.
Apply for a job as a PHP programmer and see what you're offered.
Are you suggesting the fact that there is not much PHP work around means that the career prospects of the field are in decline? One language is not indicative of the whole, this comment is not evidence either. And besides you seem to be assuming both that legacy work does not happen and that people can't adapt. I know both a fresh out of school person who does cobol and a mid 50s JavaScript UX person who started on punch cards.
Actually, there is a quite a bit of jobs that require PHP considering the plethora of sites built on Drupal and WordPress. I guess it depends where you live.
I actually intepreted that as the jobs require a very low level of skill and provide low compensation—exactly what you’d expect from making a job “blue collar”.
Most of the skill in that area is not working with the CMS but doing the crazy complex integrations that clients ask of them. (And of saving the work of not-as-skilled/too-skilled-for-their-own-good crowd.)
Maybe more of a light blue collar.
Maybe more of a light blue collar.
You can make very good money as a consultant in the PHP/Joomla/Drupal world if you are professional, reliable, and write solid, bug free code.
Nothing you make will be particularly interesting, but you will make an excellent living for yourself.
Nothing you make will be particularly interesting, but you will make an excellent living for yourself.
That is true, but you’re focusing on the php part rather than the median php position part, which is the relevant point to the discussion.
Not at Facebook.
I bet a lot of the frontend guys will have problems when someone comes out with something like Visual Basic for the web. It's harder now to develop a LOB app than when it was twenty years ago and I think this will change at some point. Same for a lot of "data scientists". Unless you are on the forefront of development there will be more and more tools that make the data accessible to regular people instead of having to go to data scientists.
Yes, software developers will always be in demand. The profession stays but the people in it get quickly marked as obsolete and replaced by new people.
Yes, software developers will always be in demand. The profession stays but the people in it get quickly marked as obsolete and replaced by new people.
The promise of visual designers has existed for the past 30 years and it has always blown up spectacularly because everything that can be made to conform to canned design principles is already there, and everything else actually requires non-trivial knowledge that is not easily automated.
Design guidelines change too, and accommodating existing software to new designs is not automatable either.
And for data science? Simple correlations are trivial, but doing useful data science requires domain understanding of the business and products and factors such as seasonality, markets and so on.
Design guidelines change too, and accommodating existing software to new designs is not automatable either.
And for data science? Simple correlations are trivial, but doing useful data science requires domain understanding of the business and products and factors such as seasonality, markets and so on.
As someone who got into frontend as a more specific discipline from more generalized design/dev, I can say that my experience does comport. I don't know if I'd call it "blue collar" necessarily, but I'm looking for a job and it's tough to find the inspiration.
> when someone comes out with something like Visual Basic for the web
Obligatory plug: Check out https://anvil.works - it is exactly that! Drag and drop UI, Python front-end and back-end, database integration...the whole deal.
Obligatory plug: Check out https://anvil.works - it is exactly that! Drag and drop UI, Python front-end and back-end, database integration...the whole deal.
This looks pretty good. I can see it work for a lot of in-house applications.
We had that for frontend for many years
It's called Adobe Muse.
Demand is still high as ever.
It's called Adobe Muse.
Demand is still high as ever.
I don't see that happening; there's no sense for large companies to hire lots of blue-collar programmers, when they could just automate any of the routine repetitive work.
What happens when we eventually train AI to write code for us? Then "programming" would be a lot more like data entry than creative work.
You'll notice that the more real-world experience people have with AI, the less likely they think this is any time in our lifetimes.
That's what the people who created Fortran thought. Instead, the types of programs people wrote became more complex once they didn't have to write them in assembler.
CS education will have to improve dramatically both in reach and quality for that to be possible. Doesn't seem likely for many decades.
The author raises good points which are hard to disagree with. I'm troubled by the decision to choose the odd and seemingly arbitrary "95-20 ratio" though, instead of a more typical 80-20.
Does anybody know what these graphs look like at 80-20?
Does anybody know what these graphs look like at 80-20?
My ex-girlfriend bought this book for me and it was one of the red flags that led me to break up with her. I still love her very much, but this gesture made it so evident she could not understand me. Forgive me father/HN.
This article made me curious about something, statistic wise, with inequality.
Imagine we have a kingdom of a million workers and one king. Inequality would be mostly invisible. Unless you compare yourself to the king (and who would dare do such a thing..), you're doing pretty well - or at least as well as average. But now let's imagine the king wants to modernize his land. So he starts developing and training people. And now we have 1 king, 50,000 skilled experts, and 950,000 workers. Well there's not that many of those skilled workers, so they must still be pretty special. It seems kind of unfair, but things are still pretty decent.
And now imagine the king trains another 50,000 experts and grants 10,000 of the already existing experts vast tracts of land. Now we have 900,000 workers, 90,000 experts, and 10,000 lords. Now inequality is starting to feel very real. There are lots of these guys and they don't seem to be anything special. How is it that they're doing so well, while the majority struggles?
I think we can say that the king's actions have greatly benefited society. Yet there's a strange paradox. As benefit, and privilege, comes to more and more people - it seems ever more unfair for those yet to benefit themselves. And now imagine by the time our hypothetical skilled individuals start to become the majority. It would begin to seem something beyond fair. As we start to see things like there being only 200,000 workers left, they would start to see their situation as more and more desperate. Indeed they would start to seem to be a sort of slave caste.
A quick search for information to try to see if this is indeed what is happening yielded this [1] study which seems to lend some credence to this possibility. In particular they examined the percent of individuals in each income group, based on real incomes. These showed that the middle class has been substantially chiseled out (shrinking from 38.8% to 32% of the population) but that alone is disingenuous. What's happening to every class's population? Here are their data for this specific question:
- Change in share of each class as a percent of US population. 1979 -> 2014
-----
- Rich: 0.1% -> 1.8%
- Upper Middle Class: 12.9% -> 29.4%
- Middle Class: 38.8% -> 32%
- Lower Middle Class: 23.9% -> 17.1%
- Poor or Near-Poor: 24.3% -> 19.8%
-----
This seems incredibly positive at a glance, but this change in demographics has indeed resulted in very large measurable changes in inequality. In particular in 1979 the bottom 3 economic classes controlled 70% of all income, with the upper class and rich controlling the remaining 30%. Today those numbers have practically swapped. The lower 3 classes control 37% of all income to 63% for the rich and upper middle class. Though, on the other hand, the top groups have also more than doubled in size.
One other issue I noticed is that the study (at least at a somewhat intensive glance) did not seem to meaningfully consider that many things critical to the growth and health of the lower classes, such as education and housing, have inflated in price far beyond nominal inflation rates. So real income measurements can be quite misleading. Nonetheless, I'm not sure why but I had not strongly considered this before. This article emphasizing the inequality as more of a changing of demographics than an existing demographic making themselves even richer was what brought it to mind.
[1] - https://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size-and-...
Imagine we have a kingdom of a million workers and one king. Inequality would be mostly invisible. Unless you compare yourself to the king (and who would dare do such a thing..), you're doing pretty well - or at least as well as average. But now let's imagine the king wants to modernize his land. So he starts developing and training people. And now we have 1 king, 50,000 skilled experts, and 950,000 workers. Well there's not that many of those skilled workers, so they must still be pretty special. It seems kind of unfair, but things are still pretty decent.
And now imagine the king trains another 50,000 experts and grants 10,000 of the already existing experts vast tracts of land. Now we have 900,000 workers, 90,000 experts, and 10,000 lords. Now inequality is starting to feel very real. There are lots of these guys and they don't seem to be anything special. How is it that they're doing so well, while the majority struggles?
I think we can say that the king's actions have greatly benefited society. Yet there's a strange paradox. As benefit, and privilege, comes to more and more people - it seems ever more unfair for those yet to benefit themselves. And now imagine by the time our hypothetical skilled individuals start to become the majority. It would begin to seem something beyond fair. As we start to see things like there being only 200,000 workers left, they would start to see their situation as more and more desperate. Indeed they would start to seem to be a sort of slave caste.
A quick search for information to try to see if this is indeed what is happening yielded this [1] study which seems to lend some credence to this possibility. In particular they examined the percent of individuals in each income group, based on real incomes. These showed that the middle class has been substantially chiseled out (shrinking from 38.8% to 32% of the population) but that alone is disingenuous. What's happening to every class's population? Here are their data for this specific question:
- Change in share of each class as a percent of US population. 1979 -> 2014
-----
- Rich: 0.1% -> 1.8%
- Upper Middle Class: 12.9% -> 29.4%
- Middle Class: 38.8% -> 32%
- Lower Middle Class: 23.9% -> 17.1%
- Poor or Near-Poor: 24.3% -> 19.8%
-----
This seems incredibly positive at a glance, but this change in demographics has indeed resulted in very large measurable changes in inequality. In particular in 1979 the bottom 3 economic classes controlled 70% of all income, with the upper class and rich controlling the remaining 30%. Today those numbers have practically swapped. The lower 3 classes control 37% of all income to 63% for the rich and upper middle class. Though, on the other hand, the top groups have also more than doubled in size.
One other issue I noticed is that the study (at least at a somewhat intensive glance) did not seem to meaningfully consider that many things critical to the growth and health of the lower classes, such as education and housing, have inflated in price far beyond nominal inflation rates. So real income measurements can be quite misleading. Nonetheless, I'm not sure why but I had not strongly considered this before. This article emphasizing the inequality as more of a changing of demographics than an existing demographic making themselves even richer was what brought it to mind.
[1] - https://www.urban.org/research/publication/growing-size-and-...
I have thought something similar as well. If you have one Bill Gates and everyone else making $80k, then Bill Gates has a pretty low upper limit on consumption of scarce assets, and thus goods and services are not bid up. But when a larger and larger number of people make more than their peers, then you start to have a bidding war for scarce goods (ex: housing, education, etc). Hats what you have in the Bay Area. More people than ever making more money than ever before, while supply hasn't increased to keep up.
This is something that my typical SF tech peer does not seem to grasp. Relative compensation vs your economic competitors (other knowledge workers in the Bay) matters much more than your absolute pay when considering your ability to afford the good life in a supply constrained environment.
This is something that my typical SF tech peer does not seem to grasp. Relative compensation vs your economic competitors (other knowledge workers in the Bay) matters much more than your absolute pay when considering your ability to afford the good life in a supply constrained environment.
Industries that have government heavily involved in (health care, education, housing) have seen huge runups in prices. Ones government is not involved in (such as software) have seen precipitous price declines.
You can't blame everything on government involvement. You can't just not get involved in heath care, education or housing, You may get sick, to get a job you often need a degree and you need to live somewhere. But you can live without an iphone.
You need food, too, and food is dirt cheap, and there's far less government involved with that. (Yes, I know about the USDA and agricultural subsidies, but the latter doesn't apply to all the food shipped into the US.)
As far as I know the food basics are highly subsidized. Isn't the yearly farm bill around 20 billion?
US population is 323.1m, annual food per is $6000, or roughly $180b. Even more roughly, then 10% of the food budget is subsidized. $20b doesn't explain cheap food prices.
yeah, deflation is bad for the economy, unless it is high tech, in which case staggering rates of year-after-year deflation for decades on end are the engine of economic growth.
At least in the states, both healthcare and education are subsidized by the government so everyone can "afford" to pay more.
I would not describe government as heavily involved in health care. The prices you see rising are from lack of meaningful competition and transparency allowing providers and insurance companies to dictate prices virtually arbitrarily and certainly irrationally to the consumer using the services.
Meanwhile, government is the only meaningful access many have to healthcare and education.
Meanwhile, government is the only meaningful access many have to healthcare and education.
About half of health care spending in this country is done by the government. That's heavily involved by any metric. Secondly, the amount of regulation of it is very, very heavy.
The price rises are due to this. See
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...
Note how prices for Lasik eye surgery, which has little government involvement, have trended down dramatically.
The price rises are due to this. See
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-ame...
Note how prices for Lasik eye surgery, which has little government involvement, have trended down dramatically.
While that may be true, the causal link between government spending and high prices is unclear. The vast majority of waste I see getting healthcare myself is the absolutely massive cost of dealing with insurance itself. This is an industry (billing!) that employs vast numbers of people. I think it’s much more likely the high costs are an effect of ludicrously poor price transparency and the unsustainable healthcare practices that this sustains. At worst, government regulation exacerbates this; I think you’d be hard pressed to demonstrate it’s the primary cause.
Either way, we need price transparency before people start acting rationally, and government regulation of irrational spending is going to be wasteful. Price transparency would make the promise of single payer (government) healthcare actually sustainable for a populace; without it, you’re just making the healthcare industry richer without actually providing a proportionate amount of care to the public.
Either way, we need price transparency before people start acting rationally, and government regulation of irrational spending is going to be wasteful. Price transparency would make the promise of single payer (government) healthcare actually sustainable for a populace; without it, you’re just making the healthcare industry richer without actually providing a proportionate amount of care to the public.
It's the primary cause. See the article I linked to. Government payments, subsidies, regulations, and tax policy all act to distort market incentives.
Hmm, I suppose we have different standards for evidence.
Why have software prices trended to zero, in spite of the desires of their capitalist creators to make it as expensive as possible?
Well, I’d assume price competition. (I appreciate the response!) How can you expect prices to improve if you can’t shop around?
Shopping around in health care is greatly restricted by government policy. Tax policy, for example, is why health insurance tends to be tied to your employer, unlike car insurance. The supply of MDs is closely controlled and restricted by the AMA in order to drive up prices.
See "Competition and Monopoly" by Frecht.
The supply of drugs is heavily restricted by patents and the FDA. See "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Peltzman.
See "Competition and Monopoly" by Frecht.
The supply of drugs is heavily restricted by patents and the FDA. See "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" by Peltzman.
The very lack of meaningful competition and transparency is caused by and a symptom of heavy government involvement.
Governments corrupt markets.
Governments corrupt markets.
Well, average pay in SF is only high if you ignore the homeless person sleeping on your stoop. In that sense the job would be extremely rewarding compared to other parts of the country. If you only compare yourself to people in like jobs, that reward vanishes almost entirely for the average worker.
Happiness is relative.
Humans (and animals) value "fairness" even if they are objectively better off. There is a famous experiment where two monkeys are given a cucumber every day. They are both happy. Then one of them starts getting grapes (sweeter than cucumber). The monkey that doesn't get the grapes rejects the cucumber in protest.
https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg
Humans (and animals) value "fairness" even if they are objectively better off. There is a famous experiment where two monkeys are given a cucumber every day. They are both happy. Then one of them starts getting grapes (sweeter than cucumber). The monkey that doesn't get the grapes rejects the cucumber in protest.
https://youtu.be/meiU6TxysCg
Parts of East London were always there, but remained in the shadows, underdeveloped and relatively cheaply priced compared to the west and central areas. Everyone waited for others to make the area trendy, they needed someone else to socially validate and approve the area before they then came en-masse. They demanded new expensive bakeries, tweeted their delight with the distressed decor coffee shop, and simply purred about the expensive butcher. Then at some point later, those some people went on to complain the area had become gentrified. One day even the hipsters and shiny people will be priced out, and maybe the area will change again, but the original locals, who had business and family for generations there, were never asked about any of this, and the remaining few still don't have a voice.
But the rise in global supply chains - the shipping container in particular - meant that it makes more sense to build just about everything in a few massive hubs (Shenzhen as the prime example), and then ship things all around the world, at a much cheaper rate than if the widget or smartphone were made at home. Likewise for services, like IT and finance, it makes much more sense for all of these professionals to work together in the same places, which is why a handful of cities are crushing the Information Age while hundreds of other towns and cities are either dying slowly or are on life support (higher education economy, tax-break-driven manufacturing, etc)
Will we see the same resurgence of sprawl as followed the petrochemical revolution? I'm not sure. Remote work has its niches but I couldn't imagine a serious major company like Google or IBM existing without a lot of corporate real estate and proximate workers. And as I've argued elsewhere on HN, today's professionals have professional needs: doctors, lawyers, teachers, all things they expect to have within their area. Rural areas and even small to medium sized cities have trouble competing for the best-in-class services that the upper echelons of professionals demand (and given that this class is both responsible for and generally the beneficiary of globalization, that makes it very hard to say that, say, Rochester, NY could become the next great tech hub (a decent tech hub perhaps, but no Silicon Valley) without a LOT more to attract the highest end professional class.
Maybe self-driving cars (personally I predict RVs) will be able to make sprawl great again, but even then it would still be a concentration around a (albeit larger) major metropolitan area.
Urban/rural was the most important divide of the 19th-20th centuries. It looks like it will continue throughout the 21st.