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.
Interesting chart. I don’t disagree with the facts. However this is a false equivalency;
> This is why Bernie can promise wealth taxes higher than any developed country has had. It is also why Trump can play around with disobeying supreme court orders.
One person is suggesting a policy that you don’t like and the other is actively trying to subvert democracy. Please don’t imply these are equally bad.
You’re making two pretty bad faith assumptions to suggest this is a false equivalency.
First, where’s the equivalency? Saying two bad things originate from the same misunderstanding does not suggest they are equally bad. Saying the Holocaust and Russification are both results of racial supremacy ideology doesn’t suggest they are equal in scope or evil.
Second, the point about both politicians is quite clearly that they can _get away_ with these actions. It is not an explanation or attack on the politicians themselves per se, but an explanation of why they can propose stupid things and maintain their supporters.
> “Suggest” is the important word here. The author “suggests” they are equally bad by not saying otherwise.
No, he doesn't. This is why I said you were in bad faith. This is nearly a textbook example of bad faith, in fact, since your assertion only makes sense if everyone who does not state something explicitly is implicitly communicating something for which you wish to condemn them.
This is also a particularly silly and egregious accusation, as listing two examples of a phenomenon (in this case, policies resulting from voters who have ceased to understand the fragility of prosperity) does not imply that both policies equally share in some third quality (being morally reprehensible).
In this particular case, both examples are actually pretty strong evidence of the underlying trend. In that sense, they are equivalent. It's poor criticism to attack an author for an argument they didn't make, rather than pointing out flaws in the one they did.
You have a good point, but what Hayek meant by "liberalism" is what most people would now call "austerity" or even worse (Hayek, after all, called Pinochet's torture state "economic freedom") . The same argument was made by JK Galbraith, with the American definition of liberalism - which is what Europeans call "social democracy". As someone grateful for public education and vaccination programs, I find Galbraith more convincing.
If you look at the equivalent graph for Couple sharing units from the original working paper it tells a quite different story. Incomes much more similar between cohorts throughout their 20s.
The difference I suspect is that more of younger generations are living at home with parents who are now richer than they used to be and that is being thrown in together at the household income level. Fairly misleading chart.
Security and prosperity aren’t guaranteed by “liberaliam" or "democracy” or institutions. They come from freedom, property, and voluntary cooperation. Our “prosperity” is an illusion, conjured by Central Banks pumping money at will. Each artificial boom sows the seeds of the next bust, creating the endless boom-bust cycle. Real wealth—rooted in savings and production—is sacrificed for temporary, engineered gains.
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.
Interesting chart. I don’t disagree with the facts. However this is a false equivalency;
> This is why Bernie can promise wealth taxes higher than any developed country has had. It is also why Trump can play around with disobeying supreme court orders.
One person is suggesting a policy that you don’t like and the other is actively trying to subvert democracy. Please don’t imply these are equally bad.
You’re making two pretty bad faith assumptions to suggest this is a false equivalency.
First, where’s the equivalency? Saying two bad things originate from the same misunderstanding does not suggest they are equally bad. Saying the Holocaust and Russification are both results of racial supremacy ideology doesn’t suggest they are equal in scope or evil.
Second, the point about both politicians is quite clearly that they can _get away_ with these actions. It is not an explanation or attack on the politicians themselves per se, but an explanation of why they can propose stupid things and maintain their supporters.
> Saying two bad things originate from the same misunderstanding does not suggest they are equally bad.
“Suggest” is the important word here. The author “suggests” they are equally bad by not saying otherwise.
In a purely logical realm, you’re correct and no equivalency is explicit. However, the implicit equivalency is screaming loudly to me.
> “Suggest” is the important word here. The author “suggests” they are equally bad by not saying otherwise.
No, he doesn't. This is why I said you were in bad faith. This is nearly a textbook example of bad faith, in fact, since your assertion only makes sense if everyone who does not state something explicitly is implicitly communicating something for which you wish to condemn them.
This is also a particularly silly and egregious accusation, as listing two examples of a phenomenon (in this case, policies resulting from voters who have ceased to understand the fragility of prosperity) does not imply that both policies equally share in some third quality (being morally reprehensible).
In this particular case, both examples are actually pretty strong evidence of the underlying trend. In that sense, they are equivalent. It's poor criticism to attack an author for an argument they didn't make, rather than pointing out flaws in the one they did.
You have a good point, but what Hayek meant by "liberalism" is what most people would now call "austerity" or even worse (Hayek, after all, called Pinochet's torture state "economic freedom") . The same argument was made by JK Galbraith, with the American definition of liberalism - which is what Europeans call "social democracy". As someone grateful for public education and vaccination programs, I find Galbraith more convincing.
If you look at the equivalent graph for Couple sharing units from the original working paper it tells a quite different story. Incomes much more similar between cohorts throughout their 20s.
The difference I suspect is that more of younger generations are living at home with parents who are now richer than they used to be and that is being thrown in together at the household income level. Fairly misleading chart.
Security and prosperity aren’t guaranteed by “liberaliam" or "democracy” or institutions. They come from freedom, property, and voluntary cooperation. Our “prosperity” is an illusion, conjured by Central Banks pumping money at will. Each artificial boom sows the seeds of the next bust, creating the endless boom-bust cycle. Real wealth—rooted in savings and production—is sacrificed for temporary, engineered gains.
Forget Hayek. Read Mises and Rothbard
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