So much for "progress"

It’s going exactly as planned. Beating communism was about making this possible.
- About the only good thing the USSR did was keeping the West serious about bribing the poor to stop them from overthrowing the elites because there was a ready made alternative if inequality got too bad.
  That all ended in 1989.
- The system is working as designed.
  Capitalism is built to reward those with money and punish those without. Everyone in-between is leeched for all that they're worth by the people that control and hold nearly all of the money.
  Over a long enough timeline, nearly all people fall into either the "in-between" category or the "without" category, while the people who hold the vast majority of the wealth become a smaller and smaller group of dictator-like individuals.
  There is no democracy in the workplace.
  The system is working as designed.

My parents never made a lot of money, but they did great with what they had and are now living the sweet retired life. Im doing fairly well myself, but still need to be pretty careful about things. Every time I bring up things being tough, I get a response of "we only used to make..." And they just don't get how that translates to today
- Start having an inflation calculator handy when they try that shit. Like "oh, I only made 25k in 1980, you're doing so good at 50k in 2016" (actual conversation with my mother), nevermind that she made basically 75k adjusted for inflation.
  I'd like to say it shut her up once I started showing her how her raw numbers were bullshit at every step, but she found more things to argue about until she had to change the subject. But it at least made her shut up about it for a while though.

The stat he's missing that answers the question is what happened to per capita GDP (14.6x)? Gains there went somewhere, and it sure as shit isn't in the median household.
- Every time someone says GDP is good for "the economy", I mentally convert that to "the rich".
- Insect populations have declined significantly during that time, so I assume that they just collectively stole all wealth hidden between the floorboards and scarperred off. Little buggers.

Obligatory: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
- That's a lot of graphs, but do any of them answer the question? Or just beg the asking?
  
  Very roughly, you had liberalism until that crashed in the 1930 with the Great Depression.
  Capitalism was rebooted with social liberalism to include welfare, education, healthcare. In the seventies that ran aground in stagflation. Rich people didn't like investing anymore as the profits weren't big enough to their liking with all that welfare. Then came the oil crisis and that killed it completely.
  The system was rebooted again with a tweaked form of liberalism, so that's now neoliberalism. It repeats all the mistakes of that past, slowly salami slices welfare and healthcare away, chips away at all the safeguards and then crashes again in 2008 with financial crisis.
  After that, the system was basically resuscitated, pumped full of money to keep it going and now we see how long it lasts before something really bad happens. Welfare, education and healthcare are turning into dust for most people so something going to give.
  
  I believe it's referring to the end of the gold standard for the dollar, as a way to sell bitcoin.
  https://singlelunch.com/2023/09/13/the-bad-economics-of-wtfhappenedin1971/
  I don't agree with the entire analysis in that post, but definitely agree with the general "wtfhappenedin1971 trying to scam you" vibe.
  
  I didn't see it in a quick scroll through on that page, but I'd assume the answer has something to do with this.
  
  Here's what happened.
  Lyndon Johnson thought he could knock the Communists out of Vietnam with one massive push. That plan failed and LBJ was stuck with a giant war. He didn't want to raise taxes so he printed money. Nixon ran as a pro-peace/anti-inflation candidate, then doubled down on both of LBJ's worst policies.
  In the middle of all this, the Arabs tripled the price of oil, which really skyrocketed inflation.
  Carter managed to slow inflation by hiring a guy named Paul Volker, but Jimmy was kicked out before his policy began to kick in.
  Reagan kept Volker, but Ronnie cut taxes without cutting spending. He gave the rich a big boost, plus he let the S&L banks give out loans to anyone who could walk in the door. When the banks failed, the taxpayer had to bail them out.
  In 1968, middle class was still defined as one income supporting a family of four. In those days $1 million was considered a vast fortune.
  By the time Bush Sr. left, 'middle class' was two jobs to support a US home, and $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
  
  could be coincidence, but Biden started on a county council in 1970, and first got elected to the US senate in 1972.
  I suspect a lot of the, uh "old guard" entered politics around the same time.

The only thing that has gotten cheaper is electronics, everything else has gotten more expensive and of worse build quality.
- everything else has gotten... of worse build quality
  (It even applies to a lot of electronics chassis too, to be honest. Most devices aren't machined-aluminum flagship laptops or whatever.)
  
  The problem isn't just plastics.
  I have many things built with plastics that are rather durable and of good quality.
  The root issue is cost savings. When you try to save costs by reducing the total amount of materials used for the structure and frame of a thing to the minimum level, you end up with garbage products that are literally designed to fail because of how cheaply they're being produced.
  Sure, plastics are not as structural as other materials like aluminum, steel, iron, etc..... But if they're used correctly, they can contribute to the overall durability of the product. When used incorrectly they can severely detract from the same.

When people talk about how much better things were in the past im always reminded of this image:
- I did not double check the numbers but if they are somewhat correct this is not survivor bias
  There was a lot of shit in the past that was
  Well shit
  But that does not mean some things werent better
- I don't get it, can u explain?
  
  When trying to improve a warplane, they were looking at the planes that returned and reinforced the parts that had bullet holes, until someone remarked they should reinforce the parts that didn't have holes, insinuating that if a plane was hit in those places it couldn't have returned to be inspected, since they were the actual weak spots and would have been shot down.
- A machine purpose built to withstand bullets does well at withstanding bullets. We could still build them to withstand bullets, but as it turns out, being almost invisible to radar is better for the survival of the aircraft.
  It's kind of like how when they started issuing helmets to soldiers, there was a sharp uptick in head injuries. Suddenly more soldiers were surviving getting hit in the head.
  We've made it harder to detect aircraft, and the technology for bringing them down has advanced significantly. They're much less likely to be shot at, and what they're being shot with isn't something any aircraft will survive a fight with.
  There's an interesting story of a tail gunner surviving a fall from 30k feet in the tail section of a B17. The aircraft kept a steady coarse long enough for one other tech to safely escape after it had been shot to hell and everyone else inside had died. Looking very much like this image, without the tail section. But the thing is, these aircraft required fighter escorts because the were essentially sitting ducks. They were big, slow behemoths and they had to send in swarms because half of them would be shot down before reaching the target.
  To become more agile, the aircraft also had to become more unstable. Meaning the technology for controlling these aircraft had to get more delicate. But not being hit at all is still better than soaking up damage. Where 30 bombers were required before, a handful of stealth bombers, or even just one, can deploy ordinance and escape the mission area without ever being detected.
  This image is of a caveman crushing a skull with a rock, saying the rock is built better than a pistol that jams occasionally.
  It's simpler, it's effective, but it's not necessarily better.
  
  The image is not me saying airplanes were better in the past
  
  A machine purpose built to withstand bullets does well at withstanding bullets. We could still build them to withstand bullets, but as it turns out, being almost invisible to radar is better for the survival of the aircraft.
  The image is a somewhat famous incident in which US studies of a certain WW2 plane initially suggested that the marked areas, which were hit more often on returning planes, should be armored to increase survivability.
  Luckily, a Jewish-Hungarian mathematician, Abraham Wald, pointed out that this was actually survivorship bias - the study was looking at the right data, but drawing the wrong conclusion - it was the parts which weren't hit on surviving planes which needed to be armored up - because those were the bits that, if hit, the plane would not survive to limp home after.
  This saved dozens of planes and hundreds of American aircrew lives.

well, the billionaires make the rules. things are better for the billionaires now and that's the only thing that matters. so clearly the system is working and we are making progress.

I hope that's his real name
- Only at night. By day, he dons a snazzy Fedora and goes by the name "Frederick"

This is what annoys me when people say the US has higher salaries than in Europe. That's true but then the cost of everything, especially healthcare is so much higher that it pretty much evens out.
Social democracy with a fair distribution of wealth ensures equitable outcomes for all which is ultimately better for society.

The car's alright, because it disincentives car culture just that little bit (even if it hasn't led to good public transit in most of the US), and because they're about a billion times safer.
Everything else is bullshit though.
But then I remember that car now means light truck in the US.
Set it all on fire.
- The car's alright, because it disincentives car culture just that little bit (even if it hasn't led to good public transit in most of the US)
  Not much of a disincentive if the alternatives aren't available. Just fleecing people who have no choice.
- The car’s alright, because it disincentives car culture just that little bit (even if it hasn’t led to good public transit in most of the US), and because they’re about a billion times safer.
  even in the best-transit-places, the transit here sucks.
- I hate that most vehicles are some derivation of truck/van; that most vehicles increase in size for no good reason.
  Not only that, but consumers but this shit in droves. Significantly more than alternative and more fuel efficient vehicles.
  This annoys me because I'm a bit of a "car guy", as in, I like cars, I think they're interesting and a demonstration of excellent engineering.... Most of the time.
  I don't think everyone needs a truck, or SUV, or van, or minivan, or.... IDK what they're making now? Crossover? APC? Whatever.
  For some people, that makes sense. But most people can trade in their SUV or F150 for a focus, fiesta, or fusion, and they would be well served in doing so. They would pay less for gas and insurance, and they would be able to fit into parking spaces. And that's just talking about Ford vehicles.
  Meanwhile, Ford doesn't even make most of those vehicles anymore because everyone bought up their SUV/crossover/truck/whatever shit in much larger numbers so they just stopped caring.
  This is saying nothing about hybrid, BEV, or HEV products.
  Then, to top it all off, most people who live in cities, don't even need a car, they just need the city to have architecture and designs that are built for use by people (not cars), and a public transit system that isn't an absolute nightmare.
  Ok, I'll get off my soap box. All this shit just sets me off.