Good chart. Correct adjustments. Wrong conclusion.
It shows income flows, not economic security. Those diverged years ago. Earlier cohorts converted wages into stability: pensions, employer healthcare, predictable careers, cheap housing leverage. Today’s cohorts convert comparable wages into liabilities: student debt, deductible-heavy insurance, volatile work, and permanent labour-market exposure.
CPI captures prices, not risk transfer. When retirement, healthcare, housing, and employment stability are privately borne, median income becomes a very thin proxy for wellbeing.
So yes, we are richer. We are just doing it without a safety net. Strangely, people notice.
Liberalism did not collapse from poverty but from success, when income growth was mistaken for security and the institutions that made both possible were quietly dismantled.
Both parties insist they’re rescuing you from the other side’s bad ideas, yet their economic blueprint is six of one, half a dozen of the other: more experts, more tools, more decisions made from above.
Good chart. Correct adjustments. Wrong conclusion.
It shows income flows, not economic security. Those diverged years ago. Earlier cohorts converted wages into stability: pensions, employer healthcare, predictable careers, cheap housing leverage. Today’s cohorts convert comparable wages into liabilities: student debt, deductible-heavy insurance, volatile work, and permanent labour-market exposure.
CPI captures prices, not risk transfer. When retirement, healthcare, housing, and employment stability are privately borne, median income becomes a very thin proxy for wellbeing.
So yes, we are richer. We are just doing it without a safety net. Strangely, people notice.
Liberalism did not collapse from poverty but from success, when income growth was mistaken for security and the institutions that made both possible were quietly dismantled.
Both parties insist they’re rescuing you from the other side’s bad ideas, yet their economic blueprint is six of one, half a dozen of the other: more experts, more tools, more decisions made from above.
https://open.substack.com/pub/delphicmirror/p/the-algorithmic-road-to-serfdom?r=5d3u3o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://substack.com/@delphicmirror/note/c-187261148?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=5d3u3o
Very well written, I have just posted on Hayek myself.
https://thebluearmchair.substack.com/p/hayek-government-freedom-and-the?r=5kmhkr