Comment by slg
8 hours ago
The stats I linked above show that those “new avenues of education and communication” didn’t actually benefit the average American financially in at least the relative sense. Do you have something to counter that evidence?
8 hours ago
The stats I linked above show that those “new avenues of education and communication” didn’t actually benefit the average American financially in at least the relative sense. Do you have something to counter that evidence?
Those are just time series of wealth over time, they don't purport to establish any causal links. You can't conclude that computers didn't "actually benefit the average American financially" from these numbers, because these are measuring the total wealth of the household with all factors combined. We can't say with any certainty what effect computers had on these values; maybe without them people would have been better off or worse off.
It is interesting how the wealth concentration started in the '80s. It could be computers that caused it, though I would be more likely to blame it on Reagan's economic policies.
>You can't conclude that computers didn't "actually benefit the average American financially" from these numbers, because these are measuring the total wealth of the household with all factors combined.
Fine, I’ll include your disclaimer about confounding factors.
With all factors combined, it doesn’t appear that the average American financially benefited over the course of the computer revolution. Do you dispute that and if so, what is your evidence?
Yes, I dispute it. Firstly because it's literally not true by the numbers you're basing it off of, as the mean real family income grew by 40ish% between 1973 and 2023; and secondly because it's a very carefully-worded statement that lends itself to confusion by placing together things that are not necessarily related, like the graph comparing the number of pirates with the global temperature of the Earth. Yes, the data being presented is true (well, in your case it's not, but let's pretend you've rephrased it such that it is), but the manner in which it's being presented is communicating something other than the data.
5 replies →