I have found this to be distinctly not true. I don't know of many places were living a more modest life is a good choice. It seems like most people who says this have already benefited from cheaper education, real estate, their partner or career. In many countries average savings doesn't keep up with the increase in property values, especially not in attractive job markets. If you don't have wealth, or go into debt, you are falling behind. I really don't see it, maybe you have some example?
I think the kind of things you're talking about are more exceptions, and probably don't matter as much to a given family in the long run. For example, once I've managed to buy a house, that's a stake in the ground; it doesn't matter that property values continue to rise beyond that, since you've already got the housing you need.
But so many other things really are choices. I see lots of my colleagues replacing their new cars every 3 years; mine is five years old, having replaced the car I previously owned for 12 (and they were a Hyundai and Subaru, respectively, even if I could afford a Mercedes). Having cable TV with all the movie and sports channels is very much a decision that anyone can pass by. How often and where you eat out makes a big difference in expenses. Clothes, shoes, jewelry, furniture, matching stainless steel appliances with wifi, ... the list goes on and on.
Maybe a couple can survive changes in the housing and job market well enough that it they don’t mind the changes to their quality of life. But it very likely will be noticeable to their kids when other families have stronger finances and better access to housing and job markets. If you can’t save more than the difference to such markets what you get for the money is de facto less. It is sort of inflation by inequality. Then the theory doesn’t really hold and the frugality has just been to try and keep up.
I am all for frugality but in many places it hasn’t worked out in the last 10 years because you haven’t had the same access to growth. Unless you already had assets in the first place.
Huh? I guess I'm really not following your reply. It seems like you're saying that my willingness to keep a car for a dozen years and to bring my lunch rather than buying, and my wife having a $30 purse rather than a designer one, hasn't actually helped my financial situation. That seems a rather silly claim.
Apparently I'm wrong, and there's no point in trying to be economical. The evidence is wrong, and people who spend wantonly actually end up with more net available funds. Who woulda thunk it?
Life is not black and white and studies study only certain things. Don't consider yourself wrong because certain use-cases may lead to other outcomes.
Being economical will save you money. At some point being too economical will mean you have to accept lower quality/value. There is a tradeoff.
If your parents were being economical they might not have purchased a computer in the 80s.. It was seen as an expensive toy and not purchasing one would have saved them thousands. Long term the opportunity cost would outweigh the purchase cost.
Buying a cheap kettle it might last 6 months paying a little more and you don't need to replace it for 5 years.
There is an old British saying. Penny wise / pound foolish.
Sure, and you can also buy an expensive kettle today and replace it with an even more expensive Alexa-commanded kettle next-year.
It’s silly to say that not going to Hawaii for a week or not buying a $1000 handbag is going to cost you more money down the road...
Where is the opportunity cost in bringing your own lunch to work? Would he increase his chances of getting a better job if he stopped doing that in his current job?
The person who throws out working stuff for something newer always has a pulse on what is hype and has the first mover's advantage. You can't be the first to write an amazon kettle app if you don't own the product.
The bringing a lunch eating alone vs eating with the group does matter. A lot of company information gets shared during lunches, friendships are made and sometimes you get to interact with people from other parts of the company. This does give you a leg up when promotions come and or layoffs.
Not going on vacation ever or not buying a purse doesn't seem like it would matter. It could if you are looking to join a social group where everyone goes and shares vacation photos or if the group goes purse hunting together.
The point is any path could save/cost you as long as it fits with your goals and your situation. Saving that college money instead of spending it and going could allow you to buy a home sooner but it also could limit your career growth. Everything is a tradeoff.
It also makes sense to buy lots of kettles and designer handbags when you're a merchant of kettles or luxury goods. You could make a case for anything, but some of those scenarios may be more relevant for the general population than others. I'm sure that for most people spending in real estate or education may be better than spending in fine wines, holidays or luxury cars.
> Everything is a tradeoff.
Absolutely. You trade work against money and money against stuff. You could have more money and less stuff. Which means having less stuff now and more stuff (or less need to work) in the future. Because money and debt are tools to move consumption between the present and the future. That's the point. It's a choice and nobody is limiting your capacity to consume in the future by forcing you to consume today.
An example of what? If you are getting by with an income of $X and you get a raise of $Y you have the choice to keep your spending at $X and save the additional $Y.
No amount of education is going to save you if the truth isn't viable. The truth isn't "climate change exists". The truth is "climate change exists and you are going to pay for it". And there isn't much of an alternative to that. I don't like populism either, but what alternative do you have? If the way to promise development is by cutting down the Amazon, that is what is going to happen unless there is a viable alternative.
Of course it is easier to change zoning or make reforms when you address people's concerns. Thinking that there can be development when everyone is either fearing having to move or have most of their assets in housing is what doesn't work.
I have had similar thoughts. There is a lot to say about the information age, but I have mostly changed my perspective. I don't think it is a technological revolution, or more correctly because of the technological revolution, these things are happening. We probably overestimate how fast things change, and overlay what is an economic revolution onto recent technological development.
Shenzhen is sort of a good example since isn't actually that high tech. There is for sure innovation but it is mostly existing, and sometime even old, technology. It is both culturally and matter of fact disconnected from the West. Much more so than other centers in the region. It is economic factors that make manufacturing there possible more so than technological ones. You might even argue that USSR were more cutting edge, but of course US companies manufacturing there would have been mostly unthinkable.
The power outside of centers mostly weren't taken away by technology, but by trade, mergers and mortgages. Of course technology has a role, but I am not so sure much of it couldn't have happened by fax. I really think the movie wallstreet is more of an answer to what is happening than the social network is.
As a Northern European it does seem a bit of a bad deal that women are expected to work but there isn't much of a guarantee for parental leave, affordable child care or even vacation. But I guess there isn't that much precedent for such things.
That expectation is rather cruel. For decades, women who make motherhood their "careers" have been looked down on as somehow inferior to women who pursue careers. Even the terminology used to describe such women is disparaging and loaded with shame and disappointment, as if the woman in question had chosen or had been forced to choose an inferior option. That she is in some sense a failure for prioritizing her children over her career.
EDIT: Anecdotally, it seems that equality was strived for and it's not turning out as great as a lot of folks hoped for. Educated women don't date down like men did/do which makes finding a partner in itself much more difficult [1], women want the same career opportunities as men while also taking leave that puts them at a disadvantage, which is unavoidable; you will be at a disadvantage to someone who is willing to not take their leave to focus on their career, regardless of gender, and men usually take less or no paternity leave even when offered [2]. A lot of people raced to find success and actualization in the workplace, and it is turning out poorly [3]. We have housing, childcare, and education cost inflation due to more dollars chasing the same amount of those necessities. [4]
I want to be absolutely clear that I support woman having equal rights, equal pay, and should never, ever be discriminated against. I shouldn't have to say that, but you know, the Internet. The above paragraph are my observations as an armchair anthropologist.
That's how everything turns out, though. Once you achieve all the things that you thought will make you happy, you'll find new things to be unhappy about, usually in the details of the stuff you just achieved. That's the nature of emotions - they couldn't actually cause motion if you just sat there content with your lot in life. Only thing that'll do that is drugs, and even then you tend to build up a tolerance to them.
The real test for whether something is good or bad isn't whether people are happy, it's whether they would choose to go back. And I think you'll find that most women are not all that eager to go back to the 1950s. If they are, there are subcultures within the U.S. that can provide that, but those subcultures aren't really flourishing in terms of growth rates.
Yes, race equality is measured against the standard of "white" - people advocate for blacks to become richer and less harrassed by the police, not for whites to become poorer and be harrassed more (btw, both would achieve the same amount of "equality").
Same for men vs. women - the drive wasn't/isn't to make men work less (and stay at home more, i.e. like women used to be and like my ideal world would look like), but to make women work more.
> Same for men vs. women - the drive wasn't/isn't to make men work less (and stay at home more, i.e. like women used to be and like my ideal world would look like), but to make women work more.
Indeed. My wife is not a stay at home mom because I force her to be. It it her voluntary choice (and I am happy to support her decision and be the sole income earner in the family) that she gets more happiness and joy from raising our children than as a drone at a desk job or climbing an unfulfilling and meaningless career ladder (her words, not mine).
I think what isn't reasonable is when both parents want to work and expect to achieve similar results. You can't have it all, and you're going to be deeply disappointed when you try and fail.
I apologize. I don’t understand. My understanding was women were fighting to be equal, but men were the bar. What rights are being fought for by women that men don’t have (“people”)? What is the “baseline” for “people”?
I think that the point being made is that in a world with true equality, there is no bar, because each person's perspective is as valuable as any other's. The existence of a baseline necessarily requires choosing a perspective and enshrining that as an ideal to be aspired to, which is a power play on the part of the person setting the standard. There's nothing inherent about reality that requires that: the alternative is that you do your thing, I do mine, each of those things is as valuable as the other, and if our things conflict we work out our differences amongst ourselves (or if necessary, bring in a neutral third party to adjudicate that is mutually acceptable to both of us).
This whole "equality" thing is a big pickle. IMO governments should actively subsidise kids, both via parents (e.g. paying for childcare, school, etc.) and via companies (e.g. giving a company extra money/tax cut for each worker on parental leave, to equalize the amount of value (to the company) of a worker on leave vs. a worker actually working).
All of this assuming we (as a society) actually want people to keep having kids (which, at least in the West, societies/governments seem to want).
None of those things ("guarantee for parental leave, affordable child care or even vacation") seem to help. If anything, the evidence suggests the opposite: there are very few births in the European countries with the greatest amount of those things.
By definition you wouldn't know many lonely people. The chronically lonely ones are going to be the people who didn't end up getting married when they "should" have, couldn't make it into a proper career or fell out of one at some point. Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one. But of course uncertainty and insecurity can make one feel lonely, so I guess that would count. Still that isn't going to be your epidemic. That is going to be those left behind.
> Most upper middle class people won't be lonely since if you can afford a career you can afford a social life or you might even be forced into one.
Social life is not about having money (well unless you're really poor) - it's about having time and people to spend it with. You can be in top 5-10% of income and a total loner - plenty such people in tech.
This makes me think of a good friend from college that I lost touch with, who recently committed suicide. I felt a significant amount of guilt, thinking about the fact that I could have very easily stayed in touch with him, despite not living anywhere close. Really made me think about people that I've had friendships with in the past that I may be able to reach out to and make a difference in their lives just by being the one person (or one of a few) that they talk to on a semi-frequent basis.
It just does not work like that. Many people with stable jobs are lonely. Long hours means that you don't have connection with family even if you have it. You live separate life from partner and your children are not close to you.
One partner working long hours is enough for both partners to be lonely in marriage. Partner having time consuming hobby is enough for you to be lonely in marriage.
People in work are not friends, they are competitors, allies, enemies, whatever. They are not people you can talk with openly. Moreover, there are plenty of jobs where you work mostly alone or have only temporary relationships.
You can find most information on seat61. Many countries just don't have very good infrastructure. It is often either slow in its own right or you have to transfer between trains, or even different operators. I think it is more of a "hard" than a "soft" problem.
You can, because you just have to make them fast enough to be competitive. Really fast train will probably never be widespread because they require to much infrastructure. A train going 5 times the speed of a car requires a lot of very expensive track per hour of travel. That is why the Chinese maglev only travels ~1 minute at top speed. But going 2 to 3 times the speed of a car is competitive as the tracks are cheaper and airplanes are expensive (both in cost and time) to stop. It all of course depends on local factors, but from 2 times the speed of a car trains start taking a lot of passengers from airplanes.
(There is also other benefits, like that trains don't generally go away. There are many places in Europe that are relatively hard or expensive to fly to).
It is a matter of perspective, but I think the more accurate view is that personal travel is what keeps the trains (or the planes) running and business travel makes the profit. You need the "bulk" for flexibility, frequency and maintenance. That is why there are plenty of low cost airlines, but almost no business class only ones.
Differential pricing in itself becomes problem when it comes to something were the value is partly external. Countries that want to maximize utility will have to reconcile with the idea that some of the value won't be captured by the train company. Most countries don't charge different rates for roads, but try to make the best roads and then collect taxes.
Doesn't seem fine to me. Denmark has some of the highest taxes on cars, high taxes in general, is overall expensive and increasingly has dysfunctional politics and uncompetitive infrastructure [0]. Part of the benefit of being a small country is that you can exercise a greater degree of control. With a suitably high tax rate you can lower the barrier to entry to increase participation and make the most out of your population. It if of course up to each country to select their model, but I don't see the endgame of Denmark not upgrading their infrastructure. That isn't something they can win at. Even the US arguably can't anymore.
