Comment by jmyeet

Now consider this against the rising productivity-pay gap that has been widening since teh 1970s [1].

The big picture here is increasing wealth inequality and that has been on steroids since the pandemic.

The only shocking part to me is how people continually and intentionally don't see it or, worse, think they'll be unaffected by it so don't care. You see this on HN where so many people seem to think they'll be Jeff Bezos one day.

But even if that's true, don't you want to live in a society where you don't need armed guards at your house and you don't need armed escorts to go anywhere? Because that's what we're heading towards. One of the problems with American society (in particular) being so car-centric is that it lets people insulate themselves from the rest of society more easily. In cities like NYC you're forced to see and deal with the less fortunate. You can't hide from it so easily.

We don't need trillionaires. We need to raise basic living standards so people have food and shelter and we don't need to separate society into slums and armored compounds.

[1]: https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/