From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 16:10:55 MDT
Hal Finney wrote:
> ...
>
>In then-current dollars, per capita income rose from $4,101 to $30,069
>from 1970 to 2000. Applying the inflation factor vs constant 1996 dollars
>(not shown in the table but it can be calculated from other columns as
>3.44 for 1970 and 0.94 for 2000) gives a constant-dollar per capita
>income increase from $14,114 in 1970 to $28,121 in 2000. Per capita
>income has roughly doubled during the time period when inflation is
>taken into consideration.
>
>In other words, the cost of living for a typical family is about half
>as much today, relative to their income, as it was in 1970, just the
>opposite of what you claimed.
>
>Hal
>
These are calculations based on the mean, however. Calculations based
on the mode would be more illuminating. One can project, however, that
if the distribution of income has changed so that richer people have
become richer, moderate people have almost maintained their position,
and the poor have become much poorer, then the mode would reveal a very
different trend than you are reporting.
And independant source (of, be it admitted, varying quality) do apprear
to indicate that the distribution of income has changed in the manner
that I proposed. (Well, it's not happenstance.)
More to the point, in my observation the number of homeless people has
increased considerably and appearantly monotonicly, though not at a
constant rate. In a suburb you probably wouldn't see them. When I
visit suburbs *I* don't see them. In the city they are inescapable, if
not omnipresent. So I have direct evidence that things are occuring in
a manner that other evidence would lead me to predict. (Again,
unfortunately, biased. I knew my observations before I accepted the
theory. But this bias is probably inescapable, except by someone raised
in true isolation.)
We don't need to visit a foreign country to find people whose government
has abandoned them. Some of the homeless people still have jobs. But
since they can't afford rent... well, rent plus first and last and
damage deposit, it doesn't matter. Then again, when you have policemen
on welfare, because they can't otherwise afford housing on their salary,
what can you expect. Most of them won't keep their jobs. If you don't
have a place to store spare clothes, a place to sleep, and a place to
shower, you don't tend to be able to keep a job.
-- -- Charles Hixson Gnu software that is free, The best is yet to be.
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