The inequality caused by technological innovation is not a given.
Technological innovation reduces inequality, not produces it.
Half the species gets free telecoms from Zucks. Telecoms inequality is thereby reduced. Amazon has knocked 2 to 4% off the US price level. Given that consumption is income constrained at the bottom but not at the top this reduces consumption inequality, not increases it. That first great technologiocal change, spinning, weaving and knitting with machines meant stockings went for being for queens to something the factory girl had a change of. Stocking inequality fell.
Technological change *reduces* inequality, not increases it.
It’s Stress Wetting, watcha expect? Ignorant tit.
Depends dunnit ?
Ocean going ships and big cannons were technological inequalities that stood Europeans in rather good stead for some years.
And even that ended up doing the colonized a lot of good in the end.
They didn’t really need all that gold and silver.
Yet another economic neophyte, wilfully like Spud, or just stupid? I take stupid, as for many of his other ‘ideas’. It’s a pity that the replacements on offer for TTK are universally such low grade individuals.
The party has a terribly shallow talent pool to draw from.
Same in America. Radicalization of the Democrat Party has boiled off the middle, leaving Star Wars cantina characters.
Empirical evidence: Of the 20 creeps in the 2020 Democrat primary, Joe Biden was the best. Cirrusly? The best you had to offer was Joe Biden?
I don’t really remember all the potential Ds then, but I doubt he was objectively the best. The one with most useful connections and fundraising power no doubt. DJT is an outlier but I suspect the same thing applies to the GOPs in ‘normal’ times.
I like to think Republicans are more based.
Gamers, surely the GoP has been selling you blokes out almost as long as the Tories have been selling us out?
(take a look at congressional support for DJT, if in doubt …)
MAGA has been primarying those RINO losers the fuck out out of Dodge. It seems Republican rank and file can take their party back.
Over here we’re already losing Reform to the uniparty establishment.
I didn’t know that, good for them.
Still not much use tho’ if the MAGA GoPs lose the mid-terms (because of Iran?)
You’re coming down in favour of Restore?
I see Restore as being necessary to hold Reform’s feet to the fire. As such I’d like to see them do really well in the upcoming Labour-leadership by-election farce.
Agree, although ideally I’d like to see Burnham fall flat on his wannabe Clitheroe Kid face, and Restore might prevent that.
True Norman, but it might be worth it. It’s not as if that twerp is going to save Labour from itself.
Reform is reacting to Restore the same way the Tories reacted to Reform (and UKIP previously). Petty vindictives, vote splitters, extremists, etc. In fact, it’s some of the same Tories doing it. Reform are starting to act like they’re entitled to our support just because they’re not quite as twat as the other twats. Not good enough.
Corbyn showed the problem with that
?
Since Biden was pretty much the frontrunner from the start, anybody who wasn’t delusional was likely not competing.
The “Democrats” aren’t particularly democratic in their primaries.
DJT copied Alan Sugar and got a massive following among people who watch “reality TV”
The British version of The Apprentice followed on from the success of the Trump fronted US show.
He was ‘objectively’ the best according to the DNC’s objectives – taking and holding power.
But you look at his competitors within the party and you have Sanders, Warren, Harris. Yang, the guy who wanted to do a UBI equal to something like 10% of the US economy.
Its not like any of them were reasonable people with reasonable cultural and economic policies. They were all delusional.
Seriously – the others were worse than zero.
If Joe Biden had been elected leader of the minority faction *called* Bolshevik in 1917, the world would be a much better place.
“Others worse than zero.”
Well said.
I think all parties have a shallow talent pool, sadly. The rise of the SpAd was the doom of sensible politics.
You have to be politician when you say you believe everyone is equal and you receive £120,000 a year, unlimited “donations” and freebies, £200,000 tax free expenses, and a chauffeur driven car just for being an ignorant Leftie with a big gob…
I had a look at Wiki for Steeting’s ante’s. A grandfather who was a mate of the Krays & a grandmother who did a stretch in Holloway. Shared a peter with Christine Keeler. Other grandfather was a working class Tory. Streeting had all the makings of being a “proper geezer”. Then he went & graduated from Cambridge Uni. Is that where it all went wrong? So is he now a genuine socialist & leading light of the Labour Party or still an honest crook?
Being a Bertie Woofter doesn’t help.
That comment put me in mind of the 2-part doco on TV last week on the Rettendon murders in the 90s. Some Proper Geezers on there giving their take. One of them they had to subtitle because he was speaking so quickly in that particular Essex/London argot. One interesting gem – that case was probably the first time cellphone location data was used in evidence.
It might have been better for all of us if Streeting had taken the other path…
Curiously, “streeting” is argot for flogging snide gear on street corners.
It might have been better for all of us if Streeting had taken the other path…
Hur hur fnarr fnarr
Just a note to say that Tim’s comment is an example of why I come to this website: to see economic reality brought to bear on loud-mouthed gobshitters in simple terms I can understand.
Because without access to that framework of genuine economics offered by our host it’s very easy for a layman such as myself to be seduced by the vocal confidence.of the gobshitting class.
Nice bit of Schumpeter on stockings there.
Streeting supports real communism.
Somebody should remind him that innovation has made phones cheap to replace when they are mysteriously “stolen” at an convenient time.
To be a devil’s advocate for a minute though, the wealth produced by that innovation (and successful execution thereof) does tend to go to a few.
The total wealth of the nation has gone up tremendously, which makes the top amount possible for an individual go up. Since the bottom stays at zero (no you can’t go negative long-term), this means that the difference between the top and bottom will increase.
Admittedly the bottom wealth is now experienced only by a few; generally due to drugs and insanity causing the inability to claim stuff given out by the state.
If you’re concerned about equality, the Labour Party, the LimpDims, Tories,Greens, Your Party, SNP & PC are over there >>>
Up until recently that “few” were getting greater & greater until they were approaching the “most”. Until political parties became obsessed with “inequalities”. Redistribution has resulted in all but a few getting poorer.
But more of the wealth goes to consumers, albeit spread out across millions of them.
No it doesn’t. To be rich nowadays mostly means having status goods.
A good, reliable phone or car is cheap. Every song in the world for £15/month. Aldi Wine for £5 is excellent (and would be a lot cheaper without taxes).
Look at most complaints about prices. You’ve got gov ministers taking about gig tickets and football shirts. And what’s expensive is where government are involved
M’s wrong that the wealth all goes to the top, the super-rich entrepreneurs and megacorps everyone complains about generally only nab a small bit of the consumer/producer surplus they create.
But he’s not wrong that the gap from very top to very bottom is wider. Even if a lot of the rough sleepers carry more computing power in their pockets these days than NASA had in the 70s, they’re pretty much down on zero, whereas the ultra rich are living lifestyles that in many ways even the wealthiest royals could only dream of a century or two ago.
If you’re going back two centuries even a pleb like me has a better standard of living than the wealthiest royals had. At sixty eight I’m still alive and so I’m ahead of most of them straight off the bat.
Hard to compare though. Your house is nowhere near the size. You probably do more housework and gardening and food preparation and shopping etc. You don’t have people at your beck and call for all that stuff. There are more things where you need to live within your means. I take the point you might not want to trade places, but I’m not sure the hypothetical royal-meeting-a-time-traveller would want to swap either?
A modern millionaire who employs a nanny and cleaner and jets off on regular holidays around the world, even if their mansion isn’t as big as a proper palace, would be a very close call though.
Large houses were never about living. They were about where people lived and a business centre. A place to entertain guests l.
It’s why stately homes are now a burden. No one wants them. Rich people live in 6 bed houses.
For the millionaire-and-a-bit “rich” yes, 6 bedroom mansion is fine. For the ultra rich, who can live anywhere they like? They aren’t necessarily choosing an old-fashioned stately home (though clearly some are, they aren’t all deserted). Upkeep is a pain and the atmosphere is a bit off when the place is mostly deserted, you don’t need all the staff anymore.
But the ulta rich are still buying palatially proportioned residences, just more suited to modern needs and tastes. You can get a lot of real estate for a couple of hundred million dollars. Plenty of homes getting built with that spec and price point if you know where to look – not with your typical estate agent though. I’m sure a royal from a century ago would love one of them. Modern royals would too. But Joe Average’s Taylor Wimpey 4-bed “executive”detached house on a nice estate would be a massive downgrade despite 21st-century mod cons. Modern life is great but it is not in all respects better than being a king unless you’re pretty loaded.
The technological inequality here, I think, is the flushing toilet.
Decent sewage management has catapulted us well beyond even the royalty of the past and helped to extend our lives.
In terms of general hygiene yes, and water treatment too, plus vaccination and antibiotics. All that added together probably extends the average life more than modern doctors do.
But if you were a king it’s not like you were living knee-deep in your own crap. You had people who would take the crap away for you so you never had to deal with it. A lot of objectively poor people in early 20th century slums had flushes installed in their outdoor toilets. That wasn’t giving them a royal standard of living. But it did substantially reduce the inequality between rich and poor, which is Tim’s point.
M’s point is also correct though. The people at the very, very bottom rungs of society today still don’t have flushing toilets. Hygiene is a big issue for life on the streets, especially with so many public toilets having been shut. Even where they exist they usually shut in the evening. Leaving the homeless to face the same kind of toileting choices as the cavemen did.
Gamecock’s parents grew up in rural KY and WV in the Great Depression. They lived in poverty beyond today’s comprehension.
My point being that today’s nearly universal prosperity is less than a century old. Few today are aware of that. Without being taught, they assume things have always been great for everybody.
I knew someone from the Dust Bowl who was stationed in the UK during WW2 and decided, wisely, to stick around. Absolutely grinding poverty, and just on the edge of living memory.
M is correct that this level of poverty is still around us though, despite living in “developed countries”. Just much rarer, more isolated pockets of it. Often with a dose of addiction or mental health issues thrown in.
But if your home is that large, you need staff to run it and if you want homes in several locations, you end up running a small business. If I had a 9-digit nest egg, I’d choose a suite at Claridges.
The average person in England has a lifestyle that the wealthiest royals could only dream of a century ago.
“Court conductor. Arrange your musicians and play for me some Mozart”
“Hey Google. Play the Marriage of Figaro on Spotify”.
I’m going to get the tunes faster than the emperor. I can travel to Spain in a fraction of the time of the emperor. Pineapples? Go down to Waitrose. Health issues? I’m more likely to get fixed.
I’ve tasted Mouton-Rothschild, and I don’t particularly care that Bezos and Elon are drinking a lot more of it than I am. It’s a £400 wine that is a bit better than a £35 wine. I can barely tell the difference between that and £50 Chateau d’Armaillhac. Same as how a £30K Toyota Supra GR will go around the Nurburgring 2 seconds slower than a £350K Lamborghini Murcielago. People pay $50m for a Mark Rothko painting. I bet I could pay a kid at the local college £500 and get a pretty damn good copy, if I liked it.
There’s definitely a difference between being poor, and reasonably well-off but beyond that, improvement is glacial.
Can’t deny that modern life would be beyond their wildest dreams, it really would be science fiction as far as they’re concerned. At the same time though, the life of a historic royal is beyond what us moderns can dream of either. I can’t get the greatest artist of our time to paint my portrait, I can’t commission a musical work that will be part of the repertoire for centuries to come and is dedicated to me as patron. If I don’t fancy the cooking and turn to deliveroo, that’s qualitatively different to the most sumptuous banquet laid on by the best chefs in the kingdom. I can’t make my name live on by endowing an Oxbridge college or public school or gallery or museum.
Obviously you don’t need to be king to get all that, even today. But millionaire doesn’t cut it either. Modern billionaires come out ahead in all categories though, they can (and many do) live that kind of lifestyle if the fancy takes them. I reckon the crossover point is probably being a substantial multimillionaire.
My phone can do things that Bill Gates circa 1990 or Aristotle Onassis circa 1970 would find astounding, and medical treatment has advanced in the generation or two since then, but I’d be fooling myself if I claimed my lifestyle was was “better off” than theirs.
“I can’t get the greatest artist of our time to paint my portrait, I can’t commission a musical work that will be part of the repertoire for centuries to come and is dedicated to me as patron. If I don’t fancy the cooking and turn to deliveroo, that’s qualitatively different to the most sumptuous banquet laid on by the best chefs in the kingdom. I can’t make my name live on by endowing an Oxbridge college or public school or gallery or museum.”
All of that is about status and power. not lifestyle. There’s a whole media industry about the “best” chefs, but the difference between the best places with a Michelin star and the best places without are imperceptible. It’s more about gimmicks and that feeds into status. Like if you listen to one of these “star” violinists and then someone that leads the Belfast symphony orchestra, you can’t actually tell any difference. They’re more about people being able to say they heard Hilary Hahn.
And you are always going to have markers of status. People drinking £20K bottles of Romanee-Conti and driving Bentleys. Pop stars go and play weddings. Even though they mime. Putting Spotify through speakers would be the same. But it’s just so people can say Beyonce was there.
Status and power are elements of lifestyle, I think. But even putting that to one side, they get family portraits painted and I get group selfies on my phone. To be honest sitting for a portrait sounds like a massive faff – but if it was more widely available I think most people would like to have it once or twice in their lives, especially if the quality of the artistry is excellent. Similarly, a private concert, like the rich and famous will pay for on significant birthdays and the old royalty had access to whenever they liked, beats my tinny phone speakers. And forget the Belfast Symphony Orchestra, I couldn’t even get the local amateur band round my gaff for a live performance. And maybe royalty didn’t have the ear to truly appreciate the benefits of being able to have whoever they liked, but you’d take a bit of Mozart wouldn’t you?
I like my dishwasher, but if I had someone who just took my dishes away when I’m done then it doesn’t matter greatly if they’re washed by machine or by hand. Running hot water is great but I still need to fill my own bath, it isn’t sitting there at the right temperature ready for me in the morning because someone else has sorted it. And kept it topped it up with hot water if I have a lie-in that day. I don’t even care if they had access to a hot tap or if they had to lug up hot water from over the fire. It’s convenient I can reheat food in a microwave but it would be more convenient if someone else could do it for me, or just cook me a fresh meal.
My point is that the tech only gets you so far, really. Otherwise we’re arguing that a single mum in a council house is doing better than billionaire from just a few decades back because she’s got TikTok and a music library on her phone, and access to the latest cancer drugs on the NHS. Yes she has some things that the billionaire could not buy because at the time it did not exist… But aspects of his lifestyle are a world beyond hers, too. I doubt it’s the billionaire who’s more likely to say yes to swapping places.
“Otherwise we’re arguing that a single mum in a council house is doing better than billionaire from just a few decades back because she’s got TikTok and a music library on her phone, and access to the latest cancer drugs on the NHS. Yes she has some things that the billionaire could not buy because at the time it did not exist… But aspects of his lifestyle are a world beyond hers, too. I doubt it’s the billionaire who’s more likely to say yes to swapping places.”
I’m not arguing about single mothers on council estates vs billionaires. I’m talking about generally well-off people vs billionaires. A single mother might not be able to afford a car, but reasonably well off people can afford a 3 year old Skoda Octavia (£14K) which will transport them as safely, reliably and quickly as a £100K Mercedes S Class. £90K extra gets you new car smell, nicer upholstery, prettier girls at reception when you get it serviced and the Merc badge.
I was given a Ralph Lauren shirt (£120+) and there’s no difference in quality between that and a £30 Charles Tyrwhitt one. There is from £10 Asda to Charles Tyrwhitt. But the bulk of that expensive shirt is shit that isn’t the shirt.
A £5000 Rolex keeps time about as well as a £60 Swatch. A £300 Apple Watch keeps time better than a Rolex as it’s synchronised to atomic clocks. And yeah, it probably gets you more quim than a Swatch, but as I say, there’s always going to be status stuff. Once upon a time it was good seats at the opera, now it seems to be getting good seats to Taylor Swift.
Plenty of single mums outside London run a car, even if it’s an old banger or a motability jobbie. As you rightly say this marks a substantial reduction in inequality between different segments of society, just like the widespread availability of spices, tea, plumbing, heating, computing power, airline tickets etc. Even the old banger is in many ways objectively better than a horse and carriage. All I’m saying is that doesn’t make her clearly better off than a 19th century royal or industrial baron. A ten year old Ford Focus has a lot of features that the best cars of the 1970s lacked, and it doesn’t mean she’s better off than Aristotle Onassis.
The point I was trying to make by bringing billionaires-gone-by into this is that your examples of why “The average person in England has a lifestyle that the wealthiest royals could only dream of a century ago”, while all true, look at particular material aspects of lifestyle where improvements in tech and logistics have both raised the playing field and levelled it up. They would apply on the “look at all the things they couldn’t do, even with their wealth and power” side to Onassis and mostly, at a push, to Bill Gates circa 1990. And on the “modern life is good, actually” side even quite far down the UK socioeconomic spectrum. Yet we probably wouldn’t describe the latter as having a better lifestyle than the former – at least, we wouldn’t expect the latter to flatly refuse a swap and the former to desperately say yes if offered the chance – so there’s clearly something else going on.
I don’t think that “something else” is just status and power. Fwiw I’ve known a number of people from billionaire families. Ignoring all the gaudy stuff – and these people weren’t gaudy at all actually, would be of zero interest to a tabloid newspaper or celebrity lifestyle magazine – they really did live lifestyles on a different level to most of the rest of their fellow mortals. Often in very subtle ways, rather than having all the shiny new things. But they weren’t all that different in lifestyle to the multimillionaires I’ve known. If anything, the latter were more into the gaudy stuff. Private jets make a bit of a difference, though not all billionaires run them and multimillionaires are still quite capable of getting around the world in comfort. The biggest difference is probably the houses. Billionaires may also have hideaways around the world, whereas millionaires might have a second home. But more importantly, a house that costs a couple of million is not in the same league as one that costs a couple of hundred million.
Having said all that, I agree the super rich don’t generally daily drive their supercars. From experience plus the various press coverage I’ve seen about it, they might keep them in their garage for special occasions but their daily will be much more mundane. Let’s be honest about it, they are not typically down at the £14k level, but you’re right that what they do have isn’t especially better. I’m fully signed up to the premise that this shows inequality is smaller than commonly believed, and that the marginal effect of all that extra money on your wellbeing would be pretty small. But there are real differences between the well off and the super rich, and I don’t think a historic royal would find modern lifestyles that much of an upgrade unless they swapped for a position reasonably high up on the socio-economic ladder – I reckon they’d want at least a butler and a chef, and the teams who work under them.
I think Fake or Fortune demonstrated that 3D printing can produce a very close facsimile of a masterpiece painting – not simply a photographic reproduction, but one with texture closely resembling the original. So why doesn’t the Louvre offer copies of the Mona Lisa for €10k? I bet they’d sell plenty (and presumably they have the necessary rights) – they could even make one that wasn’t discoloured by 500yo varnish.
I wouldn’t want one myself, but I’d certainly pay $10k for a near-perfect reproduction of my favourite painting – View of Toledo by El Greco (in the Met) – to hang on the wall.
Yes, you can go negative long-term – we get recurring sob stories in the Grauniad and elsewhere about it.
Anecdata – my paternal grandfather was a small shopkeeper in South Wales in the 20s and 30s (with hindsight not a good choice) *and* he wasn’t particularly good with money, so he went bankrupt, then worked hard and he paid his creditors 20 shillings in the pound. Later he was bankrupt again: when he died, my father paid of his father’s debts.
Here’s Sam Altman’s plan to make AI profitable
The IPO for Open aI:
The stock market went a big mad on SaaS stocks today. Because it turns out, people are still using Salesforce at £25/desk rather than hiring someone to lash together a vibe coded alternatives.
Who knew? 😉
The future belongs to those prepared to harness change in the service of justice.
Lol, no.
It’s nice that Wes Streeting can impress midwits with his midwit sentiments. But as a great lawyer once said:
“Your Honor, everything that guy just said is bullshit”.
They still think they can solve the multiple demographic, social, economic and political crises they’ve created with words. Wes Streeting opens his mouth, words come out. Then Two Tier says more feeble, dishonest words. Words don’t stop boats, or prevent feral judges from releasing migrant rapists to run wild in our country, or stop your bills going up every month. The magic spells aren’t working anymore, so they’re trying to cast them twice as urgently. Because these are deeply unserious, yet superstitious, people with a fatally misplaced confidence in the power of their own mouth noises.
The future belongs to those who are prepared to show up and fight for it.
In other news, Ferrari announces a daring bid to reduce car inequality.
“Technological innovation reduces inequality, not produces it.”
I’m not so sure about that. My feeling is as society gets more and more technologically advanced, those at the bottom of it get further and further away from the rest of us. Technology means that you need an ever increasing amount of IQ to be able to function in modern society, and an ever increasing proportion of society is falling below that IQ level. For example, it used to be that a person on benefits, or who lived in a council flat could rock up at the council offices and talk to a human being about whatever problem they were having to deal with (usually caused by the crapness of State employees and systems). Now its all dealt with via remote call centres who do SFA and emails that go unanswered and AI chatbots. And the mentally challenged are increasingly falling through the cracks. Same goes for employment – technology permeates ever the most basic jobs, the days of broom pushers and ditch diggers are long gone. And there will always be people for whom that was the best they could do.
The question is whether a ‘richer’ society in which a significant minority are written off from birth is actually a better one.