> We haven't seen any meaningful increase in real earnings in the last 50 years

Who's "we"? The world as a whole has experienced rapidly growing real earnings throughout the last 50 years. Real earnings worldwide have doubled since 2001 alone! [1] Of course, most of the growth has happened in developing countries (where, honestly, it's most needed) rather than in rich countries where you and I live. But even in rich countries real earnings are rising, just more slowly. [2]

> In America, go to any city and you'll see a massive number of homeless people

Only in the rich cities, not in poor rural areas. And that's because homelessness is a result almost solely of high housing prices due to political building restrictions, not low incomes (or mental illness or drug use). [3] Increasing incomes won't actually decrease homelessness significantly - higher income just means housing prices will have to rise higher before poor-er people are forced out. The same number of people will be forced out either way, because a fixed number of housing units can accommodate a roughly fixed number of people, meaning that everyone additional person has to leave.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=c... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-median-income?tab=c... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...

user:	ciphol
created:	October 28, 2021
karma:	396