The good old-times weren't always good ...

... and today ain't as bad as it seems.

Talk or read politics or current events long enough and you are sure to run into someone discussing the current crisis in incomes. That is, that incomes have stagnated. People make roughly what they made in the 1970s. It's a travesty, suppposedly. It's blamed on the decline in union power, the meany corporations, globalism, global trade. It's blamed on pretty much an boogey man that can reasonably be dug up.

But as this article points out, while wages may have stagnated, the purchasing power of those wages has increased.

Today, cars cost roughly what they did in 1970 ($20,000ish) but last twice as long. Cars in the 1970s would never have made it to 200,000 miles, which a reasonably cared for car can make these days. And this ignores the mandated safety devices that make these more valuable cars even safer.

Meanwhile, computers, televisions, refrigerators and music playback devices are all cheaper, more convenient and for the most part, built better than in 1970. Back then computers were unobtainable, televisions staticy, refrigerators needed defrosting, and record players and 8-track tapes offered poor quality and limited lifetimes. Meanwhile, computers are now sub-$300 playthings, televisions are low-powered, HD-bulging devices five times larger than their 1970s relatives, plenty of people have two refrigerators, none of which require taking all your frozen goods out of them to defrost them.

Progress.

Differing opinions; but please, make it factual

I don't want to get into this too much or too deeply. There are certainly two viewpoints as to which direction the United States and more specifically U.S. industrial might is headed.

This guy takes one more aligned with my outlook. Its that things aren't as bad as they are sometimes portrayed. And while he makes some good points, he misses the obvious: If we make 15% more than 20 years ago, but are 50% more productive, we need less workers in manufacturing. As the economy grows and adds new kinds of jobs, workers in manufacturing jobs make up less and less of the workers around us.

I'm not going to rant. I'm just pointing that out as my stance. Trying to give a reasoned outlook for why I believe what I do. As I said, you can certainly have a differing opinion, and I'm sure there are stats to back you up.

There is no way to link to the comments to taht article, but you can scroll to the bottom and see the first group. Its worth scrolling through the 5 or so pages of virtrol and spittle-flying anger. Maybe the commentators (well, 95% of them) are right. Maybe the U.S. is doomed.

But their arguments whining isn't convincing me in the least. My guess is that they don't even see the holes in their arguments. Meanwhile, at least one of commenters, while supposedly arguing against him, makes the author's point from the second and eight paragraph.

Friday Fun Links

Some nice light reading for a sunny Friday and hopefully what will be a nice weekend...

A neat story on why Google won't kill book authors ...

The Personality Forge: An interesting artificial intelligence chat bot site where you can create your own chatting 'bot or chat with bots created by others (the ones I tried out don't pass the Turin test) ...

A story that could help with breaking a writer's block, if only you could/would put it use: Walking backwards ...

Cisco sees the light at the end of the economic dark tunnel...

... but some warn that it might just be a firefly and that the mess could continue for a while

0 = 0 = Zero

from slate.com: Obama's Change-o-meter is at... drum roll please ... 0. That's zero. As in Z-E-R-O. Not as in no change in the number, as in no change in politics.

If it wasn't so sad, it'd be funny.

Meanwhile Obama is blasting away at AIG for handing out bonuses that may have been required by contract. Here's a thought, if we hadn't bailed them out, this wouldn't be an issue. At the very least, government oversight has (once again) failed the American people.

And if we hadn't bailed them out, where would we be, exactly? Bad economy, check. High unemployment, check. Bank sector in the toilet, check. AIG in the dump, check.

Keep in mind, the bailouts were supposed to give AIG time to sell off assets to allow for payback of the bailout. Assets sold to date: 0. Again, zero.

I'm not defending the bonuses, which many would say should also number zero. You can certainly find fault, and many, many will. But isn't it slightly more egregious that our four or so "bailouts" later we still have a bum economy, no asset sales and no indication that an asset sale is on the horizon.

Bankruptcy, while it would have been a shock to the industry, wouldn't have shocked it much more than the Dow at 12 year lows and it would have resulted in a forced, and managed and manageable break up and sale.