as a starting point for figuring out the drop in wealth, I think we should calculate things in terms of number of man hours worked to achieve a given objective: shelter, food, water. Using dollars and CPI numbers is fraught with problems due to problems in their methodologies, which are quite numerous.
The most important aspects of wealth are the basic needs of human beings: shelter, food, water and by extension transportation (because it's required to earn "money"), healthcare (because if you have an accident they can come after your shelter), and education (because it's a requirement for earning money").
Now we have a framework for identifying drops in wealth.
I think the biggest drops in wealth have occurred in shelter, medical and a little bit in transportation. if you dive into those with the methodology of number of man hours worked to achieve them, you'll see what i'm talking about. Sometimes it's not obvious. Cost per mile in transportation can decrease (progress) and you can still get a decrease in wealth, if for instance the average commute distance increases faster than the drop in cost per mile. Just an example, of where increasing capabilities over time, don't necessarily translate to greater wealth. Generally speaking don't just calculate the increase in capability/man hour but also the amount of capability required to achieve the objective.
Growing Govt:
over the last 100 years we've seen countries grow govt spend as percent of GDP from low single digits to 40 to 50%. You may be in favor of all this spending but I strongly suspect that the total amount you get back from govt, is less than what went in. example: "this is especially apparent when someone needs to pay 5K for a lawyer, just to apply for medicaid." alot of wealth can be lost in this way. solution: society needs much more efficient means of wealth transfer mechanisms.
Hypothesis:
exponential Growing human population on a finite planet with finite resources (finite amount of developal land), ore, oil, commodities, will lead to or has led to decreases in wealth which show up as paying more and more for things.
> I think the biggest drops in wealth have occurred in shelter, medical and a little bit in transportation.
But my conclusion is very different: shelter, healthcare and transport have not evaporated. If anything, we are more capable of treating people than before. We have the internet now, we should be able to educate more people.
The problem is that the cost of those things has increased significantly in the last 80 years, but salaries have stagnated. A diabetic teacher could buy a house and afford insulin on a single salary, now they barely can afford the later while they live with their parents, because they can't even rent.
As to why things are more expensive now... well I think the answer is that the difference is going to a small group of extremely rich individuals. Insurance and hospital owners in the case of healthcare, University owners on education. And lawyers in all layers.
The cost of transportation is a bit more complex. It is a finite world, yes. But we'll run of nice weather to plant crops before we run out of oil.
The most important aspects of wealth are the basic needs of human beings: shelter, food, water and by extension transportation (because it's required to earn "money"), healthcare (because if you have an accident they can come after your shelter), and education (because it's a requirement for earning money").
Now we have a framework for identifying drops in wealth.
I think the biggest drops in wealth have occurred in shelter, medical and a little bit in transportation. if you dive into those with the methodology of number of man hours worked to achieve them, you'll see what i'm talking about. Sometimes it's not obvious. Cost per mile in transportation can decrease (progress) and you can still get a decrease in wealth, if for instance the average commute distance increases faster than the drop in cost per mile. Just an example, of where increasing capabilities over time, don't necessarily translate to greater wealth. Generally speaking don't just calculate the increase in capability/man hour but also the amount of capability required to achieve the objective.
Growing Govt: over the last 100 years we've seen countries grow govt spend as percent of GDP from low single digits to 40 to 50%. You may be in favor of all this spending but I strongly suspect that the total amount you get back from govt, is less than what went in. example: "this is especially apparent when someone needs to pay 5K for a lawyer, just to apply for medicaid." alot of wealth can be lost in this way. solution: society needs much more efficient means of wealth transfer mechanisms.
Hypothesis: exponential Growing human population on a finite planet with finite resources (finite amount of developal land), ore, oil, commodities, will lead to or has led to decreases in wealth which show up as paying more and more for things.