Comments by "L.W. Paradis" (@l.w.paradis2108) on "Joe Rogan, Elon Musk Criticize 'LEFTIST DEATH CULTS'" video.
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@gavintrades3425 Easy: fifty years ago, minimum wage jobs covered rent, medical care, and in-state tuition literally everywhere in the country. This gave people opportunities to become educated, live where they want, and try out different jobs without being petrified of ending up on the street. The top four quintiles in income had a chance. Now, only the top quintile does; in fact, only the top 10% is truly secure.
No, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have not provided us with a better life. They have provided us with a financialized service economy and mass surveillance, plus advertising we can no longer spot and defend ourselves against. When people are always watched and don't make real things, count on lying to be a major job description. No, it's not good.
Also, if you've ever lived in different cities with different levels of inequality, you know from experience that less inequality is better. Some inequality is normal; San Francisco level makes no sense.
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Back to the central question: no, these are not wonderful times, and homelessness and drug abuse should tell you that.
Fifty years ago, minimum wage jobs covered rent, medical care, and in-state tuition literally everywhere in the country. This gave people opportunities to become educated, live where they want, and try out different jobs without being petrified of debt or even ending up on the street. The top four quintiles in income had a chance. Now, only the top quintile does; in fact, only the top 10% is truly secure.
Silicon Valley and Wall Street have not provided us with a better life. They have provided us with a financialized service economy and mass surveillance, plus advertising we can no longer spot and defend ourselves against. When people are always watched and don't make real things, count on lying to be a major job description. No, it's not good. And I haven't even touched on the political class, or the pandemic.
Also, if you've ever lived in different cities with different levels of inequality, you know from experience that less inequality is better. Some inequality is normal; San Francisco level makes no sense. No job is worth 10,000 times more than any other. Work isn't organized that way.
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@christopherleslie Yes, of course I looked at data. First of all, nearly everyone either had one roommate or was married, and sometimes, people had more than one roommate. That means that two people sharing an apartment spent well under 25% of total earnings for rent. To live alone comfortably, it is true a person would need to make about $3.00, hardly out of reach for a high school grad. But people were convivial, and didn't want to live alone.
$1.75 per hour, 40 hours per week (the norm) meant that within 10 to 12 weeks, you earned a full year of in-state tuition and fees. In other words, the lowliest summer job covered it, for an entire school year, in-state, exactly as I said.
No one lived with their parents because of a lack of money, or because of debt for college. It was either a choice, or the result of some illness or disability. A college grad was a free human being.
I personally know people who did it. We haven't even started to talk about the intense pride that working your own way through school brought to a teenager, and what the freedom to live wherever you wanted, in a vast country, without needing a TRUST FUND, meant. The exhilaration can't be captured in numbers. But you didn't even do the math. You just eyeballed it.
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