Cafe Hayek - Latest Comments in The change in our standard of living

Re: The change in our standard of living

brotio — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 11:46:12 -0000

Sam,

You're in good company. With the exception of a question-ducking troll and a couple of others, most of the people who read this blog understand how forced redistribution of income has made us all poorer.

Re: The change in our standard of living

Sam Grove — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:36:29 -0000

I'd rather be a millionaire today, and many more of us would have been but for all the wealth wasted on various government enabled 'projects'.

HELLO! Doesn't anyone else think about this?

Re: The change in our standard of living

Swimmy — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 08:30:37 -0000

I actually had an econ teacher who presented the case to my class: would you rather make $50,000 a year now or be a millionaire tycoon a hundred years ago? I was the only one who volunteered to take the former option. After he made the same argument Coyote does, most of the class still said they'd prefer to be late-19th-century millionaires. I've always wondered if that was because of a status-oriented mindset or some sort of bias.

Of course, if I were a millionaire today, I'd probably spend most of it on videogame-related oddities, so maybe I have a little bias too.

Re: The change in our standard of living

Sam Grove — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 09:18:34 -0000

I really want to know.

One problem with an improved standard of living through technological innovation and improved productivity is that the perception of being better off than we were distracts us from how well off we could be and diverts our attention from politically enabled (unearned) consumption, which is a polite way of saying that people are unaware of how much wealth political parasitism steals from the productive.

Re: The change in our standard of living

OnlyShawn — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:05:31 -0000

projected date?

Re: The change in our standard of living

speedmaster — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 07:00:47 -0000

Sounds great, looking forward to it.

Re: The change in our standard of living

Sam Grove — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:16:40 -0000

I agree that most of us are wealthier in most regards than those that came before.

Now let us consider how wealthy we would be had we not allowed government to divert large portions of our wealth, and investment, into our global empire, the various wars (both foreign and domestic), and other wasteful boondoggles, such as corporate subsidies and extensive bureaucracy.

How wealthy would we be? Wealthy enough that there would be little demand for government provided services?

Have you given much thought to that?

Re: The change in our standard of living

Jonathan Lasater — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:10:05 -0000

Dr. Roberts,

I wholeheartedly await your next book. "The Choice" and reading Cafe Hayek religiously since then have utterly changed the way I think. For that, I thank you, and I shall order "The Price of Everything" as soon as it is available.