Per Capita Income

Ben Stein in the Sunday Times trying to figure out, like I am, what the underlying trend lines are:

...from 1947 to about 1973 — from the days from the great Harry S. Truman to the great Richard M. Nixon — real hourly pay for nongovernment workers rose by about 40 percent. The peak year was the one before R.N. left for San Clemente in 1974. Since then, real wages both hourly and weekly for all nongovernment workers, on average, have fallen by about 5 percent, very roughly.

Given that we are moving into a period of extreme system shocks, this isn't good news. There's no income buffer to allow an easy transition to resilient communities. It's looking it will end up being a bare bones bootstrap against a backdrop of rapidly expanding GG action.

A world away, India (a canary in the coal mine) is feeling the strain already.

Comments

[catfish]

Has anybody calculated the typical displacement tax? You know, moving costs, and hidden costs such as building up a network of friends/family (or hiring professionals when that's not an option) to help with tasks such as childcare.

[James Bowery]

When people ask me why I don't move back to Silicon Valley now that H-1b invasion isn't quite as vicious as it was circa 2000, my response is that it cost me about $50k to get out and set up a "stop gap" local computer support business in an area remote enough that it was unlikely to be invaded soon (Skamania County, WA). However, I didn't count on so many other refugees following so soon and making an already-thin market buckle under the load.

Now I'm regretting not having moved back to "fly-over country" where people are less likely to retreat. However, I've learned an important lesson:

Look at the foreign born population density as well as median income to median house price ratio at any place you are retreating to.