Universal Basic Income

[wufwugy]

It's pretty obvious that compared to the baby boomer generation, we're completely fucked economically. I don't know enough about economy to know exactly why, but on the surface it looks like the masses are paying for the mistakes of a few powerful idiots. So I'm very hesitant to blame the current economy on the lazy. I don't think people were any less lazy in the 60's. It was the environment around them that was conducive to productivity.

Economists have two prominent issues when it comes to addressing this idea: (1) measuring category change is VERY hard. It's so hard that the most sophisticated methods used are obviously bad and economists know it. Which leads us to: (2) economists rarely discuss this and rarely impart this information to others.

I say that to say this: An economy is better thought of as "stuff" rather than money or jobs. Money and jobs are a way of measuring "stuff." We use those measurements because of the aforementioned difficult time economists have when it comes to measuring category change of "stuff". Category change can be thought of as an evolution. Like how the evolution of film consumption has done things like go from drive-in theaters for small number of people to on-demand home theaters for substantially more people.

Economists do not know how to accurately measure this sort of evolution. The standard tools are super conservative, meaning that they grossly underestimate the real value gains. The idea that we are worse off than the baby boomers bases on using the grossly underestimating measurements.

Why do we use those measurements if they're so wrong? There are multiple reasons, an important one of which is that even though "stuff" is what economics is about, it's not the only thing economics is about. Another base concept is happiness (also known as utility). In those terms, even a super accurate measure of the category evolution of "stuff" would not give a clear idea of the impact.

This distinction is illustrated by the following: the home theater system that we use today would have cost millions (billions?) of dollars in the 50s, so in those terms, people who have it today are unfathomably richer than their grandparents. Yet are people today consuming things that would have cost millions a few decades ago better off (happier) because of it? That's the question. We don't know the answer to that. You'd have to be a zillionaire in the 50s to consume the stuff you do today for thousands of dollars, yet you (the general you) are probably worse off today than if you were a millionaire in the 50s and consuming the remarkably less "expensive" stuff millionaires of the 50s would consume.



Adding to that, in simple inflation-adjusted compensation terms, the boomer related data changes. The data that show boomers better off essentially compares all boomer compensation to a portion of others' compensation. When all compensation is compared across the board, boomers don't have it any better.