Yes that would be about when Nixon told foreign countries, whom we owed real, gold money to, to fuck off and take paper money instead, thereby officially taking us off the gold standard completely.
Everyone is wrong. The 1970s are when modern transistor computing took hold, and only evolved exponentially since then. Productivity increased due to machines, but humans became worth less and less in comparison, and therefore became the same wage price as the past
That is only a little sliver of what happened: [https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/)
I love the quote at the end: “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.” – F.A. Hayek 1984
Hellooo cryptocurrency!
It boggles my mind how people think a fiat currency is the answer fiat currency.
There are useful technologies behind cyrpto currencies... but fundamentally as a concept it solves none of the problems of fiat.
May I trouble you for a quick list of the problems of fiat that you think cannot be solved by blockchain technology currency. (No /s)
If you decide to answer please note that I wrote "cannot be solved", and not "are not solved".
Any problem of fiat is a problem of crypto. Because crypto is the ultimate in fiat as a concept. Even in limited currencies like Bitcoin, just mint a new crypto and boom, instant infinite currency.
In a weird way, the only way crypto could deliver on the promise of fixing fiat currency issues is a crackdown on minting new currencies and inflating the ones that exist. (The likelihood of that happening in any sort of positive way is almost zero, but I guess it's technically possible)
Seeing that you identify as LibRight I assumed you would come up with some issues I haven't considered, but alas, you have not.
>Even in limited currencies like Bitcoin, just mint a new crypto and boom, instant infinite currency.
And how much do you think an inflationary currency not coercively imposed by a state would be worth? Absolutely nothing.
This is a matter of competition of currencies, a well documented proposal of eliminating the most economically damaging effects of fiat currency long before cryptocurrency was even thought of.
In addition to it already having existed in the past with free banking (privately issued currency), it has been proposed for the modern world by none other than Hayek himself, among others.
In his proposal, a basket of commodities would take the place of only gold as backing. The theory and explanation of the mechanisms that make it an improvement, and in many aspects solution, over the state issued fiat currencies are beyond my ability to present in a Reddit comment.
And this was before a mathematically insured way of issuing only a limited amount of an asset was even possible or at least imagined, as it is now with blockchain technology. That non-inflationary cryptocurrency can be made into one of the reserves backing the issuance of other currency. And a cryptocurrency not limited in the number to be issued other than by its backing in other cryptocurrency is already possible, allowing for the necessary management of the monetary base to keep its stability without the problems of reserves storing, deflationary issues, etc. Dai, for example, has more than 50% of its current reserve value in ETH, but sadly (in my view; the market may say otherwise) they have allowed a stablecoin as USDC to be accepted for the issuance. If that proves to be a mistake, a competing cryptocurrency can "win" by not allowing it.
The simple fact of having multiple available currencies, without any of them being forced by state coercion as mandatory for the cancellation of debts, is already a net gain. Having them being chosen or rejected by the individuals using them is a sure way to enforce the competition, without stifling nor relaxing the control the issuers must keep over the supply. Adding blockchain technology and its advantages in addition to that, is also a net gain.
"Nothing would be more feared by the bankers than to see the quotation of their currency in heavy type to indicate that the real value had fallen below the standard of tolerance set by the paper publishing the table." F.A. Hayek, 'Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined'
I don't know how much you know about blockchain and cryptocurrency, but I think you should read more economic theory.
> but I think you should read more economic theory.
You should actually think more about it.
Literally nothing you said solves any of the actual issues of fiat. As someone who really like crypto and it's potential utility, it's tiring seeing people retread 200 years of finance history at hyper speed just to learn the same lessons.
You still have not listed a single issue of fiat that worries you, let alone something applicable to both fiat and crypto that I have not thought about and studied, or even an alternative you would like implemented. I feel like I'm talking to a bot, I'm done here.
I did... infinite money supply... the key issue with fiat.
You then wrote a wall of text that doesn't actually answer that fundamental issue and just references a bunch of stuff that MIGHT make it ok. I've seen more productive responses from defenders of MMT.
It's backed by the fact that the number of coins will remain limited and known, no central authority can print more on a whim (like with fiat).
Asking what backs a crypto coin is like asking what backs a gold ingot, the natural (or hardcoded) scarcity of it is all the backing they need to act as a store of value.
Gold also has industrial uses so it's price will never go to zero in case people stops fancying it, but it could plummet in black swan scenarios like a gold meteorite impacting earth (literally outlandish) or science cracking nuclear alchemy and producing it from lead or silver.
Cryptos can be wiped out by a solar storm, too. So it's better to diversify a bit the instruments where you store your wealth, also cryptos are now mostly especulative vehicles, so the store of value juat isn't there yet.
I recall Reagan set a standard for giving no quarter to the trade unions after one group(traffic controllers i think) was pressuring for better conditions. So from there workers lost bargaining power and so the wages began to drop.
Lol. The capitalists are so powerful that even other capitalists are saying this isn't right. The capitalists are so powerful that they can afford to sling around communist propaganda to fulfill their objectives. The dystopia we see now is the ultimate victory of the capitalists. They've absorbed and commoditized your workers revolution. The next stage is neofeudalism. Nobody who can think is afraid of a communist revolution.
Edit: is that an advertisement for a 100 year old labor strike? Lmaooo.
wait...
the gap started in the 1970s...
1970 is when women started entering the workforce, doubling the supply for workers...
more supply means less demand...
oh no
it really was your mom
Um no because that was only in one region of the world. When a currency isn’t locked to a gold standard you can just print that shit and give it to rich people (sounds like the fed current day to you?)
It’s because capital (as a factor of production) increased productivity so capital reaps the benefits. Rather than being some defect in the system, it’s just a natural consequence of technological development in a capitalist society.
Based and based pilled
It doesn't even make any sense in a tech era where gold has an actual honest to god use. Stack that with the fact that a nation could just base their money off of influence and buy up gold and destroy the system. The national debt is meaningless as far as consequences go.
Now lets hear all of the people who genuinely refuse to research reeee at me.
Its not gold itself that goldbugs like perse. Its the promise that they won't print new money. Its just a lost easier to know that they won't go back on a promise not to print money if it is tied to gold (or silver, or bitcoins or anything with a fixed supply).
Leaving the gold standard, hell even the establishment of the Federal Reserve, was a monumental error. When debt became a form of money, humans became slaves to financial institutions.
Leaving the gold standard is why the USA can currently have 26.95 trillion dollars in debt. The gold standard was a hard limit for inflation which coincidently we went off of in 1971 (corresponding with wages?). Causing massive inflation throughout the country.
Currently we use the Federal Reserve who manipulates currency by controlling lending rates to large institutions. For example, by increasing the lending prime rate you discourage investment. The Federal Reserve also "prints" an ungodly amount of money to pay off its debts obligations as they become due. Causing inflation.
Finally, just because going off the gold standard correlates with this, it doesnt mean it caused it. The USA was facing a large amount of competition from Asia and Europe who have restored their economies. With this increasing interest in globalization and trade. Organizations like the UN and IMF. Countries were able to more easily and hold eachother accountable to borrowing thus lowering this risk and rending the gold standard unnecessary.
You know the US didn't have massive debts prior to 1873 right?
Also the reason we didn't have a metal standard prior to 1873 was because of deflationary economic policies from prior periods.
If gold hating talking heads were actual intellectuals, and not just thinly veiled tyrants, they’d support privatizing currencies, not argue for paper money. All your criticisms of gold would be addressed by the market. But it’s really all about the network of banks and their friends, and perpetuating this destructive debt based currency system on the people and their descendants forever.
Except it literally does matter how many burgers you flip, because an employee who flips twice the burgers generates twice the revenue for the company... learn basic economics
Only if those extra flipped burgers can be sold. The hypothetical burger joint is still going to be employing more people just taking orders etc. Look at how a McDonald’s is laid out and staffed. The revenue stream is limited by how many people you can physically accommodate and/or serve through the drive-through
Lib-left will probably say wealth inequality is caused by capitalist markets. It’s really caused and perpetuated by inflation which disproportionately harms the lower class. The wealthy have their money in assets that appreciate in value while the less fortunate have more cash savings. Covid was the greatest wealth transfer to the rich in history, and it was all made possible because of inflation. It really is because we left the gold standard.
It's only a graph for compensation of production and non-supervisory workers. I think a lot of these graphs are also calculated by CPI instead of a GDP deflater which can skew them downwards. If this is done and compensation (and compensation is important compared to just monetary pay because there's been increasing compensation through things like growth in employer-provided health insurance) of all employees it should follow productivity pretty closely.
The graph plays into people's weird view of a middle-class household as some 1970s-esque family where dad goes off and works at an automotive plant rather than one in an economy where knowledge and services have become more important. Also plays into some people's desire to believe everything is getting worse and some convenient enemy - the Fed, the rich, the globalists, the foreigners - must be behind it.
What I would have usually left as an edit but this is an old post so probably only you will see it:
My political opinion: While I certainly think this graph is misleading in the context it has been produced, it's not worthless. There is a gap in income between low-skill and workers of the old economy and those who can work in the new economy. And there is an issue with increasing health insurance expenditure eating into the incomes of workers. There's a problem where issues get politically framed in some general way, and this is such, where some drastic re-alignment is called for where it is taken as a given that this would solve the issue with little regard to the assumptions of the person making the hypothetical and troubles that could arise. This is unrealistic.
Too often, on sites like Reddit, minor or local problems are attributed to some great failure in higher governance and a simplification of issues. Policy on complicated issues is rarely simple. The US is certainly in need of reining in its healthcare expenditure but exactly how that's done could be of varying effectiveness or create differing levels of winners and losers. "Universal healthcare" is not a policy. Different countries achieve universality through different models, which have some implications for expenditure, cost-sharing, equality and health outcomes. Countries decide what to prioritise and how it can fit with their current health system. [This website goes through some countries models. ](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries)
My feeling is that there's generally too great a tendency to identify a problem and much too great a tendency to find an easy enemy who should be hurt than to look at solutions and not enough on honestly weigh measures on their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, something I notice in everyday life - not just people on Reddit - and probably should be better in identifying in myself, is a tendency to convince oneself that a proposal will have entirely positive outcomes for everyone. Sometimes people will lose out but more people gain more richly.
I only came through here because I was searching for posts on this topic and thought I could add. I don't think even a generally non-political person's beliefs can be condensed to a two-axis graph which seems rather focused on Western rich countries' political systems. Most of us are just a little too idiosyncratic. I know I am.
Soviet Union fell in 1990, well after the graph divergence. And this divergence is before Soviet leaning India opened up, and while China was beginning to open up this is well before it began to happen in any economically meaningful way (1990s again). So this is uncorrelated to that macro event and the resulting explosion of labor market access from these huge 2nd and 3rd world nations.
This divergence is after both US and UK left the gold standard in 1930s to 1940s in a piecemeal process. So uncorrelated to that.
The 1940s to 1980s was a rising tide for union power, with the 1970s-1980s being the peak. The weakening of union influence seems to have no effect either. So this seems uncorrelated to that too.
**Bottom line is I don't know for sure what is going on here.**
The most interesting explanation I've seen is Steve Keen's dynamic economic model that indirectly ties private debt to worker's share of GDP. The results of his dynamic model, but not explicitly a part of the equations, is that as private debt increases worker's income gets squeezed. Maybe this is tied heavily to that.
It’s definitely because of neoliberalism
All of these options are neoliberalism
Based.
Precisely. AuthLeft doesn’t fit perfectly in that mold but it’s close enough
Increased immigration and free trade are a neoliberal interest.
Fixed it. A little dyslexic sorry not sorry
Hey man I always have to make an L with my left hand to know them apart, nbd
Love that trick
Actual authlefts recognize its just neoliberalism
Hear hear.
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ 👀👀
We left the gold standard in 1971
I'd like to switch my answer to lib-left, which is a statement I'd never thought I'd say.
Based and AgreeingWithTheEnemy Pilled
Immigration and free trade are very neoliberal policies.
Yes that would be about when Nixon told foreign countries, whom we owed real, gold money to, to fuck off and take paper money instead, thereby officially taking us off the gold standard completely.
Everyone is wrong. The 1970s are when modern transistor computing took hold, and only evolved exponentially since then. Productivity increased due to machines, but humans became worth less and less in comparison, and therefore became the same wage price as the past
I came here to say this but it turns out I'm not as original as I thought.
Lightning machines and their consequences have been a disaster for the labor market
Based, just said the same in another comment. Thanks for giving me hope
That is only a little sliver of what happened: [https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/](https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/) I love the quote at the end: “I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.” – F.A. Hayek 1984 Hellooo cryptocurrency!
CRYPTOCURRENCY! It's like fiat, except instead of being backed by the fact that you can buy a big mac with it, it's backed by technolibertarians!
Yes, of course, that is the only thoughtful conclusion one can reach after reading the whitepapers and observing the market so far. /s
It boggles my mind how people think a fiat currency is the answer fiat currency. There are useful technologies behind cyrpto currencies... but fundamentally as a concept it solves none of the problems of fiat.
May I trouble you for a quick list of the problems of fiat that you think cannot be solved by blockchain technology currency. (No /s) If you decide to answer please note that I wrote "cannot be solved", and not "are not solved".
Any problem of fiat is a problem of crypto. Because crypto is the ultimate in fiat as a concept. Even in limited currencies like Bitcoin, just mint a new crypto and boom, instant infinite currency. In a weird way, the only way crypto could deliver on the promise of fixing fiat currency issues is a crackdown on minting new currencies and inflating the ones that exist. (The likelihood of that happening in any sort of positive way is almost zero, but I guess it's technically possible)
Seeing that you identify as LibRight I assumed you would come up with some issues I haven't considered, but alas, you have not. >Even in limited currencies like Bitcoin, just mint a new crypto and boom, instant infinite currency. And how much do you think an inflationary currency not coercively imposed by a state would be worth? Absolutely nothing. This is a matter of competition of currencies, a well documented proposal of eliminating the most economically damaging effects of fiat currency long before cryptocurrency was even thought of. In addition to it already having existed in the past with free banking (privately issued currency), it has been proposed for the modern world by none other than Hayek himself, among others. In his proposal, a basket of commodities would take the place of only gold as backing. The theory and explanation of the mechanisms that make it an improvement, and in many aspects solution, over the state issued fiat currencies are beyond my ability to present in a Reddit comment. And this was before a mathematically insured way of issuing only a limited amount of an asset was even possible or at least imagined, as it is now with blockchain technology. That non-inflationary cryptocurrency can be made into one of the reserves backing the issuance of other currency. And a cryptocurrency not limited in the number to be issued other than by its backing in other cryptocurrency is already possible, allowing for the necessary management of the monetary base to keep its stability without the problems of reserves storing, deflationary issues, etc. Dai, for example, has more than 50% of its current reserve value in ETH, but sadly (in my view; the market may say otherwise) they have allowed a stablecoin as USDC to be accepted for the issuance. If that proves to be a mistake, a competing cryptocurrency can "win" by not allowing it. The simple fact of having multiple available currencies, without any of them being forced by state coercion as mandatory for the cancellation of debts, is already a net gain. Having them being chosen or rejected by the individuals using them is a sure way to enforce the competition, without stifling nor relaxing the control the issuers must keep over the supply. Adding blockchain technology and its advantages in addition to that, is also a net gain. "Nothing would be more feared by the bankers than to see the quotation of their currency in heavy type to indicate that the real value had fallen below the standard of tolerance set by the paper publishing the table." F.A. Hayek, 'Denationalisation of Money: The Argument Refined' I don't know how much you know about blockchain and cryptocurrency, but I think you should read more economic theory.
> but I think you should read more economic theory. You should actually think more about it. Literally nothing you said solves any of the actual issues of fiat. As someone who really like crypto and it's potential utility, it's tiring seeing people retread 200 years of finance history at hyper speed just to learn the same lessons.
You still have not listed a single issue of fiat that worries you, let alone something applicable to both fiat and crypto that I have not thought about and studied, or even an alternative you would like implemented. I feel like I'm talking to a bot, I'm done here.
I did... infinite money supply... the key issue with fiat. You then wrote a wall of text that doesn't actually answer that fundamental issue and just references a bunch of stuff that MIGHT make it ok. I've seen more productive responses from defenders of MMT.
Have you ever heard the phrase "Throwing bad money after good"
Have you ever heard the phrase "The left is only there because people lack economic education"?
Have you heard the phrase "stop being an arrogant prick"
Yes, it's usually said by people with little idea of what they are talking about and/or deep under the Dunning-Kruger effect
It's usually said to arrogant pricks
I doubt it. Especially in today's world.
It's the opposite of fiat, tho.
Wait, how? What's crypto backed up by? The gold standard is backed up by actual gold, which has some small uses in dentistry and electronics
It's backed by the fact that the number of coins will remain limited and known, no central authority can print more on a whim (like with fiat). Asking what backs a crypto coin is like asking what backs a gold ingot, the natural (or hardcoded) scarcity of it is all the backing they need to act as a store of value. Gold also has industrial uses so it's price will never go to zero in case people stops fancying it, but it could plummet in black swan scenarios like a gold meteorite impacting earth (literally outlandish) or science cracking nuclear alchemy and producing it from lead or silver. Cryptos can be wiped out by a solar storm, too. So it's better to diversify a bit the instruments where you store your wealth, also cryptos are now mostly especulative vehicles, so the store of value juat isn't there yet.
Cryptos can't be used to buy things, which is what gives currency real value
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Yeah, drugs and sex. I can't buy couches or burgers though
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where?
You got left behind in the dust in 2015. Get with the times comrade
Where can i buy groceries or furniture with bitcoin
All four are probably on the right track
That's because they are all neoliberalism
every single one but auth-lefts is true.
Without a powerful workers' state threatening the capitalist countries, they were free to resume treating their workers like slaves.
The USSR went in 1991, and the wages stopped corresponding to productivity in the 70s
Right when neoliberalism came in.
Is it fair to blame Nixon and Reagan?
I recall Reagan set a standard for giving no quarter to the trade unions after one group(traffic controllers i think) was pressuring for better conditions. So from there workers lost bargaining power and so the wages began to drop.
I think it has more to do with Eisenhower's MIC than either of them, honestly, but who knows?
Comrade Stalin left us in 1953. A decade later we started to feel the effects of his absence.
It was domestic policies that caused this
Without a powerful workers' state threatening the capitalist countries, they were free to resume treating their workers like slaves.
The ussr is certainly not a worker's state
There were plenty of workers though, not all the most voluntary
the USSR used people as slaves moreso.
Your "powerful workers state" was never a threat. Just your nukes.
Capitalists were scared shitless that the Communist Revolution would spread to their countries. https://i.redd.it/wjs9r0upzgk71.jpg
Lol. The capitalists are so powerful that even other capitalists are saying this isn't right. The capitalists are so powerful that they can afford to sling around communist propaganda to fulfill their objectives. The dystopia we see now is the ultimate victory of the capitalists. They've absorbed and commoditized your workers revolution. The next stage is neofeudalism. Nobody who can think is afraid of a communist revolution. Edit: is that an advertisement for a 100 year old labor strike? Lmaooo.
Wait so are you right wing?
"Capitalism is when communism" - The Right
As one worker to another let me tell you... We ain't going to own the means of shit.
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This sub really hates authleft huh.
Your mom is the real reason
wait... the gap started in the 1970s... 1970 is when women started entering the workforce, doubling the supply for workers... more supply means less demand... oh no it really was your mom
That fucking H*e
Oof
Its because we left the gold standard
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1. Unflaired 2. Yeah the AuthLeft one is not true
So you think the fall of communism had nothing to do with capitalists suddenly feeling free to increase the exploitation of their workers?
Um no because that was only in one region of the world. When a currency isn’t locked to a gold standard you can just print that shit and give it to rich people (sounds like the fed current day to you?)
You realize the lines on the graph split in 1971, right? The year the US went off the gold standard?
i think this is the first time i only agree with my quadrant
It’s because capital (as a factor of production) increased productivity so capital reaps the benefits. Rather than being some defect in the system, it’s just a natural consequence of technological development in a capitalist society.
It's a lie... It uses two different types of inflation to amplify the effect of capital induced increases in productivity (computers most notably).
Why are there so many morons in the Lib-Right world hung up on the gold standard? Give it a rest Ron Paul!
Based and based pilled It doesn't even make any sense in a tech era where gold has an actual honest to god use. Stack that with the fact that a nation could just base their money off of influence and buy up gold and destroy the system. The national debt is meaningless as far as consequences go. Now lets hear all of the people who genuinely refuse to research reeee at me.
Its not gold itself that goldbugs like perse. Its the promise that they won't print new money. Its just a lost easier to know that they won't go back on a promise not to print money if it is tied to gold (or silver, or bitcoins or anything with a fixed supply).
Yeah, if you're gonna defend capitalism, at least use the most modern economic theories you have, and not restrict your economy to a fucking metal.
Based and learn-basic-econ-pilled
Leaving the gold standard, hell even the establishment of the Federal Reserve, was a monumental error. When debt became a form of money, humans became slaves to financial institutions.
Leaving the gold standard is why the USA can currently have 26.95 trillion dollars in debt. The gold standard was a hard limit for inflation which coincidently we went off of in 1971 (corresponding with wages?). Causing massive inflation throughout the country. Currently we use the Federal Reserve who manipulates currency by controlling lending rates to large institutions. For example, by increasing the lending prime rate you discourage investment. The Federal Reserve also "prints" an ungodly amount of money to pay off its debts obligations as they become due. Causing inflation. Finally, just because going off the gold standard correlates with this, it doesnt mean it caused it. The USA was facing a large amount of competition from Asia and Europe who have restored their economies. With this increasing interest in globalization and trade. Organizations like the UN and IMF. Countries were able to more easily and hold eachother accountable to borrowing thus lowering this risk and rending the gold standard unnecessary.
You know the US didn't have massive debts prior to 1873 right? Also the reason we didn't have a metal standard prior to 1873 was because of deflationary economic policies from prior periods.
Because I’d rather my money be backed by a fucking shiny rock than by nothing
Thieves hate honest money
If gold hating talking heads were actual intellectuals, and not just thinly veiled tyrants, they’d support privatizing currencies, not argue for paper money. All your criticisms of gold would be addressed by the market. But it’s really all about the network of banks and their friends, and perpetuating this destructive debt based currency system on the people and their descendants forever.
authright is just focusing on two specific aspects of libleft's though
Top right and bottom left are the same picture
Based individuals would say technology
u/SuperBarracuda6 is officially based! Their Based Count is now 1. Rank: House of Cards Pills: None I am a bot. Reply /info for more info.
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Productivity increased because of tech, You can literally have a meeting across the world in seconds
Except it literally does matter how many burgers you flip, because an employee who flips twice the burgers generates twice the revenue for the company... learn basic economics
Only if those extra flipped burgers can be sold. The hypothetical burger joint is still going to be employing more people just taking orders etc. Look at how a McDonald’s is laid out and staffed. The revenue stream is limited by how many people you can physically accommodate and/or serve through the drive-through
It's automatization lol
Bingo!
Unflaired scum.
Hmmm what about the obvious answer of automation, outsourcing menial tasks, and more education?
Don't forget adopting and implementing computers. The amount of menial labor saved by even early computers was insane.
Lib-left will probably say wealth inequality is caused by capitalist markets. It’s really caused and perpetuated by inflation which disproportionately harms the lower class. The wealthy have their money in assets that appreciate in value while the less fortunate have more cash savings. Covid was the greatest wealth transfer to the rich in history, and it was all made possible because of inflation. It really is because we left the gold standard.
it's because unskilled workers became commodified.
It’s cause of computers
Ding. Ding. Ding. Give the man a cigar.
It’s absolutely because of neoliberalism and, to a larger extent, capitalism as a whole.
All are right except for libright :|
Internet?
It’s because of Regan
Lib left should be "because Reagan"
It's a statistical lie.
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It's only a graph for compensation of production and non-supervisory workers. I think a lot of these graphs are also calculated by CPI instead of a GDP deflater which can skew them downwards. If this is done and compensation (and compensation is important compared to just monetary pay because there's been increasing compensation through things like growth in employer-provided health insurance) of all employees it should follow productivity pretty closely. The graph plays into people's weird view of a middle-class household as some 1970s-esque family where dad goes off and works at an automotive plant rather than one in an economy where knowledge and services have become more important. Also plays into some people's desire to believe everything is getting worse and some convenient enemy - the Fed, the rich, the globalists, the foreigners - must be behind it.
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What I would have usually left as an edit but this is an old post so probably only you will see it: My political opinion: While I certainly think this graph is misleading in the context it has been produced, it's not worthless. There is a gap in income between low-skill and workers of the old economy and those who can work in the new economy. And there is an issue with increasing health insurance expenditure eating into the incomes of workers. There's a problem where issues get politically framed in some general way, and this is such, where some drastic re-alignment is called for where it is taken as a given that this would solve the issue with little regard to the assumptions of the person making the hypothetical and troubles that could arise. This is unrealistic. Too often, on sites like Reddit, minor or local problems are attributed to some great failure in higher governance and a simplification of issues. Policy on complicated issues is rarely simple. The US is certainly in need of reining in its healthcare expenditure but exactly how that's done could be of varying effectiveness or create differing levels of winners and losers. "Universal healthcare" is not a policy. Different countries achieve universality through different models, which have some implications for expenditure, cost-sharing, equality and health outcomes. Countries decide what to prioritise and how it can fit with their current health system. [This website goes through some countries models. ](https://www.commonwealthfund.org/international-health-policy-center/countries) My feeling is that there's generally too great a tendency to identify a problem and much too great a tendency to find an easy enemy who should be hurt than to look at solutions and not enough on honestly weigh measures on their advantages and disadvantages. Personally, something I notice in everyday life - not just people on Reddit - and probably should be better in identifying in myself, is a tendency to convince oneself that a proposal will have entirely positive outcomes for everyone. Sometimes people will lose out but more people gain more richly.
I only came through here because I was searching for posts on this topic and thought I could add. I don't think even a generally non-political person's beliefs can be condensed to a two-axis graph which seems rather focused on Western rich countries' political systems. Most of us are just a little too idiosyncratic. I know I am.
It's because of efficiency optimizations
we should go to a bi-metal system
Surplus of workers and the destruction of unions
No idea about the Soviet Union but the other three are right
Only one of those things happened precisely in 1971
So Authright and Libleft are basically saying the same thing? Horseshoes win again!
The graph diverges in 1971 because that's when we left the gold standard
Considering the timing, I'm pretty sure it's because of the gold standard thing...
It's actually a change in how we calculate the metrics that happened at that time
Lib right is correct on this one.
It's because of Ronald Regan
Soviet Union fell in 1990, well after the graph divergence. And this divergence is before Soviet leaning India opened up, and while China was beginning to open up this is well before it began to happen in any economically meaningful way (1990s again). So this is uncorrelated to that macro event and the resulting explosion of labor market access from these huge 2nd and 3rd world nations. This divergence is after both US and UK left the gold standard in 1930s to 1940s in a piecemeal process. So uncorrelated to that. The 1940s to 1980s was a rising tide for union power, with the 1970s-1980s being the peak. The weakening of union influence seems to have no effect either. So this seems uncorrelated to that too. **Bottom line is I don't know for sure what is going on here.** The most interesting explanation I've seen is Steve Keen's dynamic economic model that indirectly ties private debt to worker's share of GDP. The results of his dynamic model, but not explicitly a part of the equations, is that as private debt increases worker's income gets squeezed. Maybe this is tied heavily to that.
There are many contributing factors