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A comment on The Population Bust. Parent comment

Re:The Population Bust by philwelch on Friday August 16, 2019 @11:28PM (#20721802)
That’s actually not true. The Baumol cost disease means that people who are not actually more productive in their current roles (eg orchestral clarinetists) still make more money because of productivity growth elsewhere. You couldn’t possibly pay an orchestral clarinetist as much today as you did in 1800 because they’d just quit and do literally anything else for a living. You have to pay them more.
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Re:The Population Bust by NotSammyHagar on Saturday August 17, 2019 @02:22AM (#20722492)
On a scale from 1800 to now, we are all better off. But if you look at the past 20 years in the us, we are clearly not benefiting all of society. Arguing that the avg clarinetist is slightly better off today compared to 1970 doesn't account for the fact that many many other people haven't had an increase, but they've had a decrease in their standard of living.
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Re:The Population Bust by philwelch on Sunday August 18, 2019 @02:12AM (#20728560)
I find this claim rather incredible, if only because of the set of things that hadn’t even been invented in 1970, which nonetheless everybody seems to have today.
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