Since then 500 million people or more have been taken out of poverty. They are competing with you for resources. That's why what was going on in the US in the 50s is no longer possible.
Wouldn't you wonder why then that it seems, at least according to you, society have went backwards and not forward in this time frame?
"We have to have a collective look at what 1st-world governments, the media, and most "ordinary" people have been focusing on since the late 60's." still applies. Fixing the everyday problem is part of the problem-set to get to the "civilization advancing" goals.
I'm 100% with you about fixing fundamental societal problems first. But we still have to ask why we can't do that anymore with a single breadwinner in a household.
After the super-basics like hunger, homelessness and violent crime, the next item on the list should be this problem of the value of a human's labor (As to how, I'll leave open for discussion). I believe it's been going down since the 1950's because we've transitioned away from manual labor and onto more "knowledge based" labor, of which most people are not keeping up. And of no fault of their own necessarily. We're simultaneously not assisting them with schooling and training, but we're also trying to insulate them from the negative effects of their falling-behind by not promoting a meritocracy.
All fair points. If we could even get an honest dialogue of this issue in the mainstream maybe we could start fixing it. At this point all I hear from politicians are catchphrases and an insane amount of effort has to be undertaken just to get breadcrumbs. I saw this when Bernie Sanders lost the primary, he and his people worked to push the Biden white house to adopt some policies to help working families...it took a lot of effort and we got some tiny wins but with those wins, the elites got hoards of goodies as well.
Most economies are not meritocratic and/or capitalist but mixed economies where the state direct good % of gdp towards political goals. in these societies the ones who makes real money are in proximity of the "printing press", usually finance, banking, real estate and generally incumbent megacorps; all actors that can take full advantage of low interest rates & stimulus programs that end up inflating assets (cantillon effect) further devaluing the value of labour. We need real meritocracy and capitalistic competition to put back power int the hand of labour.
But the 50s were a big historical anomaly that should not be taken as benchmark due to a lot of factors, first of all being an overheated economy, the only country with serious industrial capacity post WW2
You are explaining a symptom of the problem. Solve the underlying problem. If humans are to become a space faring civilization and all the other things this cannot be an insurmountable problem.
>But the 50s were a big historical anomaly that should not be taken as benchmark due to a lot of factors, first of all being an overheated economy, the only country with serious industrial capacity post WW2
Why is it that society should be expected to solve these extremely difficult problems to go into space and to do all these other sci-fi things but when it comes to the standards of living that humans were once capable of, its "oh what you had were a big historical anomaly that should not be taken as benchmark due to a lot of factors".
I'm sorry but I don't buy it. If you want the magic of the future that you see in the comic books get the fundamentals right first!
investing on cutting edge tech has historically been more beneficial to society in large than similar (tiny) amounts in welfare projects. Increasing workers productivity also makes similar levels of taxation less burdensome. lets say you need 10k a year per capita to finance welfare for everyone. if gross income doubles, tax burden halves.
