With apologies, I’m still lost as to your point. Lowering the unemployment rate is generally a good thing even though, as you say, the types of jobs available are changing somewhat. The types of jobs available are always changing in a modern economy, however, and early recognition of this trend can help alleviate some of its worst effects.
The OP poses an interesting question. I think the rate of change will continue to accelerate; there are many changes yet to come. If we stumble across a controllable fusion-like energy source, the game changes even more dramatically. If we don’t eradicate ourselves first, of course.
47 years ago, a man working eight hours of unskilled labor could earn enough by himself to support a family of four with the basic needs of food, shelter, health care, transportation, and some entertainment. Today, it takes a man and his wife working 8 hours each plus a part time job to provide that for just the two of them, even with no kids.
Follow this line, and see where it takes us in 47 more years.
Not really. If you compare, say, the cost of food to the median pay packet, then we are on average, much, much wealthier than 47 years ago. And it’s the same story for clothing, appliances, travel etc.
I suspect that the comparison that you have in mind is not like for like, or doesn’t take account of changing working patterns. (e.g. a factory worker might have made a reasonable salary in 1970, not so much now. But this doesn’t mean a decline in living standards for most people as most people don’t do that kind of work now).
The problem is people are getting dirt pay these days. Now days a unskilled labor to support family for a stay home mom will need pay of $100,000 a year.
But the problem is unskilled labor today will be making less than $15,000 a year.
Even other jobs other than unskilled labor do not get way too much money.
There not too many jobs that pay $100,000 a year and this is nothing today.
And doctors, surgeries, specialists, lawyers, judges and engineers so on will have to make double the money and they not making double the money.
Once again I think you are not comparing like-for-like in this rosy picture of the past.
In the developed world, living standards have improved a great deal, on average (and yes, median average, not mean).
Worldwide, the last few decades have seen the fastest rise out of poverty, in absolute or relative population, in recorded history.
So yes if we just going to talk economics I hope the next 50 years can be like the last 50.
Right, but the real difference is that, today, ‘some entertainment’ is much, much more than it was 47 years ago. FWIT, I was 11 47 years ago and my family was very blue collar. 47 years ago we had 1 (small) TV in our house…and we had just gotten it (before that there was one in our neighborhood). We had electricity but not in all the rooms. Indoor plumbing of course. That TV got basically 3 stations. We did have a phone…1 in the living room. I want to say we could go see a movie a few times a year (but we went to the equivalent to the dollar movie today, i.e. we didn’t see movies when they came out but instead we went to the cheaper theater to see them months after they were out of the main theaters). We almost never went out to dinner…just very special occasions like birthdays and maybe anniversaries. Things like having a coke were special occasions and I was thrilled if I could get enough pocket change for some bubble gum or a candy bar. It was a treat that I really looked forward too. The food was good (Mexican, obviously), but pretty monotonous and we didn’t have meat with every meal or every day…and then, meat was generally just to flavor the dish.
If you compare and contrast that to today, even the poorest Americans have it better than that. Hell, you get more entertainment on an average smartphone alone than we had all together in a year. If you wanted to live a spartan life today, if you didn’t want a larger house, 2 cars, TVs, computers, smartphones, didn’t want to eat out for lunch and/or dinner a few times a week, didn’t go to the movies, only used broadcast TV instead of cable or satellite, didn’t have a game console, didn’t have the myriad other things we take for granted today you certainly could have your family of 4 with wife at home and not working and live pretty much the same life as those folks 47 years ago on a blue collar salary. I know some folks where one of the partners doesn’t work and they are able to live quite comfortably…they just can’t do all the other things that people take for granted (many of them don’t want to).
Yes, income inequality, slow hiring, low wages, high poverty rates…it will definitely get worse.
And the economy is getting worse every year. The problem is people are swimming in debt now, industrial and manufacturing gone to China, middle class disappearing really fast every year and low paying jobs.
Yup, 60% of the world’s wildlife population has died in the last 40 years, I expect that trend will continue. Most wildlife will be something people read about on Wikipedia or old people remember.
Again, all of the items on this list are either a reversal of the trend in the last few decades, or are trends localized to the US (e.g. income inequality)
No, they really are minor things. For some reason, you keep bringing up minor changes in everyday life as fundamental shifts. I agree things may be on the cusp of changing drastically, but as of now, not much is different, except somewhat faster, easier etc. My own personal detailed memories go back to 1984 or so, and, aside from arguing over stuff online, there isn’t anything I do now that I couldn’t do back then. Being able to browse an online catalogue on your phone and buy something with a couple of clicks etc. is no biggie.
I was something of a late adopter to smartphones; they were out a couple years before I bought one, then I didn’t bother to carry mine with me most of the time, and still now I’m the guy saying “There’s an app for that?!” while other people are shocked I haven’t heard of blah blah.
And even I accept how fundamental the change that smartphones have made is.
Every area of my life has been changed by having one in my possession. Work, study, leisure, dating, socializing, financial transactions, caring for others, safety and security etc.
I recently was sent to work overseas for a few weeks. I’m old enough to remember when that meant a few weeks staring at the wall of a hotel room. This time I met lots of people and went to countless activities. I had no idea where I was going; I’d just hop in my car and look on my phone for available activities and let the phone tell me how to get there.
That is a fundamental difference to my quality of life and it’s just one trivial example.
As a (somewhat big) aside, I was in a debate recently about what the world might really be like after some kind of Mad-Max style apocalypse.
It’s only during this debate that I realized (and hear me out here…) smartphones will still be a thing, and they’ll still be popular.
The reasoning is this: there are millions of smart phones out there; it’s hard to envision an apocalypse that humans survive but our phones do not. They require relatively little power; it would be easy to rig up some wind up mechanism to charge a phone.
And information always has been useful. It’s not that people in the past had no use for information, they just didn’t have it. Absolutely there could be life saving uses for apps, even in a world where civilization has collapsed.
Frankly, your description of being sent to work overseas, before and after, sounds like a late night infomercial - staring at the wall? Countless activities now that you have a smartphone? I’m old enough to remember reading the local newspaper’s Where to go?-section to learn about exhibitions, concerts, sports events, nightclubs etc. In fact, my main international hobby started by reading those and attending a meeting. Just walking on a foreign street you’ll still see countless physical ads for all kinds of current happenings to choose from. Hell, it’s often best to just start walking and enter any public building that seems promising.
I still don’t have a smartphone, and no need for one.
Well it’s my experience, so if it sounds like an infomercial to you so what?
IMO there’s no comparison between trawling ads in a paper and the dozens of popular social networking apps.
For example, one of the simplest ways to make new friends IME right now is just to go to a dinner. Here in Shanghai you have a choice of many such events any night of the week. Whereas an ad in a paper “Hey join us for dinner tonight” are undoubtedly much rarer: I never saw it.
I agree. Modern technology has changed the way we do certain things and made them far more convenient, but there was a substitute for all of the things we do on a smartphone. Instead of paying my bills with a couple of clicks online, I would sit at the kitchen table, handwrite the checks, and put them in envelopes with stamps.
The other poster mentioned traveling. I remember (and most hotels still have) those big racks of pamphlets and brochures in the lobby that tell you all of the activities in the area. Grab one of each that looked interesting and plot out your week when you got to your room.
You couldn’t text your wife and tell her you made it there safely, but you could dial long distance from your hotel room phone or call collect from the lobby.
I’m not discounting the enormous progress in many fields due to technology, but average day to day life is not really that much different.
That’s similar to what was said just before the Internet and computer explosion. I remember in the 1970s and even the '80s, we all thought 2020 would be not much different. You never know what will come along.
Well, it depends on what is meant by “significantly.” If a person today was dropped into 1972, there would be a slight adjustment period, but otherwise things would be fine. A person from 1972 dropped into 1928 would be lost.