You persist in the fallacy that averages tell you the significant things without looking at distribution. Products may be cheaper, but if real wages have fallen so that it requires two people to earn enough to buy these cheaper products, that is not an improvement. The benefits accrue at the top. Doug gave the figures that matter,w why do you ignore them?
College enrollment, in an area where cost has significantly outpaced inflation for 30 years, basically going up $1000 a year for every year since 1977, has not increased because it's more available to a broader group, but because demand is, as the economists say, inelastic -- you go to college or you say, "Want fries with that?" Or you can join the service and go to Iraq.
I don't understand the probative value of your repeated allusions to comments you read on thaxis and this list. Are the people you refer to experts to whom we should defer? Are you trying to show that I or Doug or whoever have been inconsistent? Or what? Why is it inconsistent to say that people are both consumerist and in the specified ways indicated, less well off. Consumerism is a subjective attitude. Economic well-being, as we are discussing it, is an objective function of real income over time (including projected into the future).
--- James Heartfield <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Andie Nachborgen writes:
>
> "it's just untrue to say we are better off, lots
> better off, than we were a
> generation ago, or that the secular tendencies are
> to make us better and
> better off. They are in fact in many ways the
> reverse."
>
> But the secular tendency is there, it is the
> tendency to reduce costs. This
> was shown by Cox and Alm, who estimated how long
> you would have to work to
> earn enough to buy some basic consumer goods:
>
> Year 1920
> 1930 1940
> 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 Latest*
> Half gallon of Milk 37mins 31
> 21 16
> 13 10 8.7 8 7
> Three-pound chicken 2hrs27mins 2:01
> 1:24 1:11
> 33 22 18 14 14
> 100 kilowatt hrs electricity 13hrs36mins 11:03
> 5:52 2hrs
> 1:09 39mins 45 43 38
> 3min coast-to-coast call 30hrs 3mins 16:29
> 6:07 1:44
> 1hr 24mins 11 4 2
>
> *latest is 1999, so I accept that it does not
> reflect the pressure on wages
> post 2000
>
> Cox and Alm's calculations are mirrored in the
> survey of US household
> expenditure, where, very gradually, one can see a
> shift of expenditure away
> from basics towards luxuries.
> Food as a share of household expenditure in 1984:
> 15%; 1992: 14.31%; 2005:
> 12.77%
> Entertainment as a share of household expenditure in
> 1984: 4.8%; 1992: 5 %;
> 2005: 5.14%
>
> Andie says that his dad could afford to send three
> children to college. I am
> glad to hear that, but US college enrollments have
> been climbing again,
> after a big dip in the mid 80s, so that now they
> stand at 27.8 million as
> opposed to 20 million in 1967.
>
> Andie Nachborgen surprises me when he says "Anyway,
> James H, don't seem to
> get the point that most
> Americans are Not doing better than they were a
> generation ago".
>
> It is true, of course, that I know Britain, where
> people are a lot better
> off than they were 15 years ago, and generally
> better off each generation
> than they were the previous. I have to say that I am
> a little surprised that
> the wealthiest country in the world is so badly off,
> especially when it
> continues to consume so much of the rest of the
> world's resources.
>
> But if I have a wrong idea of US wealth, don't I get
> it from subscribing to
> the LBO, where listers are always bemoaning the
> consumerism that grips the
> American working class? As some examples show:
>
> US citizens accused of "mindless consumerism"
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2006/2006-April/007129.html
> especially the young
>
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2001/2001-July/012886.html
> or again: "the
> trivialized, commercialized
> and dehumanized consumerism of post-lat(t)e
> capitalist America"
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2005/2005-May/010058.html
> or again "the worse forms of capitalist consumerism"
>
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-August/021030.html
> "prominent scholars of consumerism" are praised for
> their contribution to
> "the excellent new paperback Do Americans Shop Too
> Much?
>
"http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2000/2000-September/016564.html
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
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