In addition, and as I discuss in the post, right now we can't "solve" poverty because poverty is a moving metric, usually defined as a percentage of income, rather than as an absolute value.
Yes, and this reminds me a point I left out. We also need to look for ways to reduce the cost of living for the basic stuffs of life. In many ways a poor person now is wealthier than 40 years ago. However, the cost of living needed to simply live in society as a semi-normal person has also gone up dramatically. Most people cannot to work, or take a cheap moped to work, because the entire transportation structure was designed for cars. If everyone else is driving a three ton steel machine, you need to drive one too, and better get one with airbags and a four-star crash rating. Similarly, zoning laws have made even small homes in locations near healthy job markers quite expensive. Healthcare is much better now, but there is no option to pay Costa Rican healthcare prices for Costa Rican health quality. It's all or nothing.
The economy is also missing old-school solutions like boarding houses or dorm living for adults, that provide a very cost effective way for single adults to save money while working entry level jobs. Such accommodations now violate zoning laws.
Right now economic policy is geared around GDP and per capita GDP. I would prefer for the key metric we judge economic progress by to be the ratio between the most basic cost of living for a normal person (a two bedroom home near jobs, a food basket with protein and vitamins, transportation costs of getting to work, healthcare coverage that will cover major health problems, amortized costs of education needed to land that median wage job, etc. etc.) divided by the median income for a full time worker. We both need to focus on keeping the basic cost of living down as much as we focus on keeping wages up.
>> "... because the entire transportation structure was designed for cars. If everyone else is driving a three ton steel machine, you need to drive one too, and better get one with airbags and a four-star crash rating."
It's almost like the man designed it this way so as to incentivize you to borrow money from him to buy cars. The only thing stopping something like that would be the fact that the auto industry didn't historically have vast domestic political power and close ties to high finance... wait a second...
"The Man" does not exist, although interest groups certainly do, and the Iron Law of Oligarchy always holds, and I'm always willing to entertain conspiracy theories. But my impression is that the highway system was built because folks like Robert Moses and Ike genuinely thought it was the right thing to do. Cities were in fact massively overcrowded, jammed with congestion, and to be able to escape the tenements of New York and to be able to have the complete freedom to go anywhere in the countryside and have a picnic in a state park was an amazing advancement. What evidence do you have that the main driver behind car culture was conspiracy?
I'm pretty sure it's just the complex result of simple evolutionary forces and small benign decisions, and not the result of some malicious intelligent design.
Yes, and this reminds me a point I left out. We also need to look for ways to reduce the cost of living for the basic stuffs of life. In many ways a poor person now is wealthier than 40 years ago. However, the cost of living needed to simply live in society as a semi-normal person has also gone up dramatically. Most people cannot to work, or take a cheap moped to work, because the entire transportation structure was designed for cars. If everyone else is driving a three ton steel machine, you need to drive one too, and better get one with airbags and a four-star crash rating. Similarly, zoning laws have made even small homes in locations near healthy job markers quite expensive. Healthcare is much better now, but there is no option to pay Costa Rican healthcare prices for Costa Rican health quality. It's all or nothing.
The economy is also missing old-school solutions like boarding houses or dorm living for adults, that provide a very cost effective way for single adults to save money while working entry level jobs. Such accommodations now violate zoning laws.
Right now economic policy is geared around GDP and per capita GDP. I would prefer for the key metric we judge economic progress by to be the ratio between the most basic cost of living for a normal person (a two bedroom home near jobs, a food basket with protein and vitamins, transportation costs of getting to work, healthcare coverage that will cover major health problems, amortized costs of education needed to land that median wage job, etc. etc.) divided by the median income for a full time worker. We both need to focus on keeping the basic cost of living down as much as we focus on keeping wages up.