> he had 5 children, a house in Daly City and 3 apartments across the street from Dolores park as well as a brand new home in Terra Linda
How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? Careers can evaporate just the same but what they leave behind is vastly different from 60 years ago.
> How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life?
The answer is that you don't do it by getting paid (as in exchanging labor for wages). You do it by finding a way to scale your wealth with other people's labor.
I would say only a few do it and they are self-selected. The ones that do it have a sense of agency that is lacking in the ones that dont do it. Some people never notice their own agency they believe it comes from outside them.
Very convenient, if you're someone who benefits from this arrangement, to be able to tell yourself that a brute numerical fact (if you profit off others labour, there must be those whose labour is profited off of) just so happens to by divine coincidence to go hand in hand with the profiteers just happening to have some nebulous quality that morally justifies the whole arrangement.
You sound like you may be lacking agency.
Agency is simply being aware that one can make decisions for themselves based on their own metrics. .
"if you're someone who benefits from this arrangement, to be able to tell yourself that a brute numerical fact".
I think this is the root of your confusion. Humans have long demonstrated the pattern of gathering in groups to survive. These groups usually worked out a way to pool resources to increase the chances of living a comfortable life.
"(if you profit off others labour, there must be those whose labour is profited off of)"
Security markets are open to everyone. There are no restrictions on who can participate. Many companies compensate workers with stock, or other retirement plans that provide ways to buy securities.
What you're describing is slavery. Our current systems are trying to move from slavery to at will labor. I find your comment out of touch with our current circumstances.
Our current timeline is no different and the security markets is the idea we manifested to create co-operation. Now certainly our timeline is FUBARed. If I wasn't so numb I would weeping everyday at the news but the world is still co-operating. Hard to believe but it could always be worse.
"just so happens to by divine coincidence to go hand in hand with the profiteers just happening to have some nebulous quality that morally justifies the whole arrangement."
What nebulous quality? Agency is well defined and a term of art in psychology.
It’s not only agency, and it sounds like you do your own thing which is great, but the pressure coming with it is not bearable by many. It’s kind of similar to competitive sport, thousands train and put the effort chasing a wild goose, but only handful make it big. That’s why it raises a question many others: is it really worth it?
And for that, I agree with you, it’s self-selected to take the suffering jounrey
That’s the answer to a different question. We were talking about a printer who probably wasn’t acing the stock market in the ‘60s but his salary covered all that. Question stands, if anyone can offer a good equivalence for something similar today.
> Question stands, if anyone can offer a good equivalence for something similar today.
Then no, it's not possible for the average worker, largely because the advance of technology raised the bar on labor, requiring more (and increasingly expensive) education, all while that 60s worker and their generation, caught in a Reaganite zeal, pulled up the ladder behind them in housing and destroyed public goods.
So labour doesn't really scale. It's measured in hours, and you only get so many of those in a week.
If you're using "scale your labour" to mean "scale your output". Well, two cases: your selling your labour as an employee, or your output directly. Either way: the market won't value them above their cost of substitution, which is just the cost of substitution of your original, non AI labour, plus the cost of the AI (an ever cheaper commodity).
> Could capital owners try to capture it all? I'm sure. But it's not a natural result of the technology,
Unless the capability to create high productivity enabling AI is in the hands of every person, or the control of the centralized means of that AI production is with a representative government (as opposed to capital-controlled government), it is a natural result of current AI technology for capital to capture all the productivity gains.
> it's just whether we choose to allow it or not.
It will probably some combination of the above. Capital will still have disproportionate but not absolute control over the technology, but popular discontent and anger, hopefully channeled through electoral process and not violent revolution, will force sharing the productivity gains with broader population.
>>Unless the capability to create high productivity enabling AI is in the hands of every person,
The capability is definitely there, the agency or education probably isn't. Those are both personal and infrastructure choices. None of those are tech issues.
Most people predict Citizens United will cause some kind of upheaval eventually. Maybe AI will be the thing that finally causes it, but if you ban that, it'll just be something else, proving my point its not a natural result of the technology but more a matter of all that is happened so far.
Very few artists earn a living in art let alone become wealthy. The art world is highly competitive, though real talent and innovation are rare. But making it big in art is more about self-promotion and marketing than artistic ability. So success is only marginally correlated with what they do with their hands, as opposed to what's done with their mouths.
The number of artists that succeed is irrelevant to my comment. No one needs to tell me about the life of an Artist or the Art world. My dad was a fine art painter, my mom was a potter, another uncle is a kinetic sculptor, one uncle made pastel's of Sulky races to get by. I have a cousin that was a pioneer in computer graphics attending the Media Lab while it was still in the architecture department.
I was raised in the art world by a multi-generational art family. None were wildly successful all managed to make enough for a good life. Farmers, bakers, masseuses, carpenters,... all work with their hands generally only artist can take rubbish and turn it into big money. The criticism of the art world you put forward is very one-dimensional.
Your family certainly has an impressive record of success in the art world. My father was a talented painter but didn't attempt to sell his work. He was an even more talented pianist but rarely performed publicly. My sister is an exceptionally talented painter and sculptor. I encouraged her to put her work out there but never did, a real shame.
I'm also an artist, primarily a printmaker. I've made my living otherwise, though my work sells at a modest pace.
I know many artists in galleries but only a few earn enough to pay their bills. Artists who do earn a living are good self-promoters of their work or build reputation through family connections to patrons. The shy ones remain unknown. Hardly a "criticism of the art world" just a summation of decades-long observation.
For every artist turning rubbish into big money there are many who only turn rubbish into garbage. Perhaps my comments are "one-dimensional", but so is implying that turning rubbish into big money is easy to achieve.
I agree with what you are saying. My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.
Making a living at art is a big sacrifice. Maybe I should have said earn a living rather than big money. The big money comment was focused on stock market returns which was really my point.
It’s hard to make big money using just one’s hands outside of the stock market.
My judgement may have been skewed by families like the Calder. Alexander Calder was a third generation artist.
My families success was much closer to middle class. The big advantage they had was time
To focus on their curiosities.
It’s true that being embedded in any societal effort will increase the odds of success for the young raised in the environment.
I never mentioned the simplicity of earning only that it was possible. I have observed this being done. It was not fast or easy but is possible.
My uncle always had good reviews but his pieces were never purchased by the art world. His work was purchased or rented by the science museum world.
I’m glad you are able to sell some prints. The most important thing is creating.
The challenge of selling art is tough. Earning a living leveraging one’s artistic training is easier then the gallery path.
My uncle worked his whole life and never sold a piece to the art world. Society did find values in his objects. One has to take success even if the form is unexpected.
I went to art school and studied industrial design a career I wanted since puberty.
> My point is mostly that artist occupy a strange spot in our culture. They are the only “trade” that I know of that can fabricate items that have a value beyond their utility.
Thank you for the clarification. You're right artistic success usually requires enduring arduous effort. Art, well, visual art, is making something out of very little. Hard to explain why the value of art is quirky. The word "value" is ambiguous, has multiple meanings.
I think paintings, prints, etc., are approximate expressions of an artist's visual imagination. Material value of painted canvas is negligible, price can be assigned by dealers and other players. Real value is individual, created when a viewer strongly resonates with an artistic expression. OTOH market/art-world value is mutable. I've often remarked that it won't be decided which of the art created today is "good" until 50 years after we're all gone.
> The most important thing is creating.
It's true, motivation to make art is more than selling art. A very successful artist in his sixties told me he feels a need to create art whether it sells or not. I've donated prints to schools, hospitals, libraries, etc. It's gratifying to know my work will be around long after I've passed on. That's more important to me than money.
I visited your uncle's website. His kinetics are superb, entertaining but also expressing visually complex, 4 (or more) dimensional ideas. Translating to concrete form is an admirable accomplishment.
BTW I think industrial design is underappreciated. Shape, color, etc., of utilitarian objects has to be determined by at least one real person. Some of these objects are endowed with subtle beauty. Working with beautiful things makes the labor less burdensome.
If you're happy to live life to a 1960s standard, it'd be quite cheap. If I'm interpreting the stats properly [0], he expected to put two children through high school and the other 3 would have been contributing a lot to the family quite early on. It'd also be interesting to check whether it's legal to build the same apartment in Daly City's current regulatory environment because that isn't a given.
Plus, the US government at the time was less than half the size of the private sector [1] so we'd expect he was contributing less to dead-weight government projects and corruption.
Obviously I’m interested in the modern equivalent of whatever that man had. If those apartments were on the outskirts of the city, then something equivalent today. If society expected the kids to finish no more than high-school then but university today, then university it is.
And I want to understand if there’s any chance to do it the same way with salaried work, not with clever investment over decades, or winning the lottery, or getting an inheritance. Which are all valid ways to have a lot of wealth but don’t tell me the value of salaried work in the US today.
The modern equivalent to what the man had is what the man had. You'd need to be paid maybe a bit less to support a family like he had because everything has gotten slightly more efficient over the years. If you want to define things by means and medians, the median worker had a median lifestyle then and a median lifestyle today.
If you want much more than he had, you're going to need to pay much more for it. Bit of an obvious one.
It really isn’t though. The median person in 1963 didn’t need say internet or computers or smartphones, because no one expected them to have one. Good luck even applying for a job today without at least a computer and internet, and possibly a smartphone capable of running very specific apps.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my computer, but as the GP indicated the rest of society expect very different things from you today – more equipment, more education, etc. Those things aren’t just increased living standards, they are increased job requirements.
Sure. There is no way that old mate in 1960 could have afforded all that stuff and thread ancestor is pointing out that people around today can't afford a 7 person family and have all that stuff in 2026.
So we've moved from a world where it was impossible to afford all that stuff and a 7 person family to a world where ... still can't be done. People have raised their standards to the point where they can't afford 5 children, savings and a lifestyle that they think is reasonable. Not much of a mystery there to interrogate. There has never been a generation that could afford the lifestyle they want and it appears there still isn't.
I think you misunderstand my point. The ancestral post to this thread is pointing out that a normal worker in 1963 -- with probably just one income -- could support 5 children while owning 2 houses and 3 apartments. Then someone argues, more or less, that this is not possible only because we prioritize different today -- most likely referring to things like more education, more technology, better healthcare, etc.
My post, and the GP post I'm agreeing with, are saying that most of those aren't optional "lifestyle upgrades" that you choose instead of 5 children and 5 homes. Much of it, like education and technology, are requirements for getting and holding a normal job.
It's true that society has changed, but we are allowed to lament some of those changes without turning Amish. For example, I don't think that our technology and education is the main driver behind not being able to afford children and houses. Part of it is incompetent management of the housing market -- as someone once said, a house can be affordable or a good investment, but not both. Another part is that median income per person has not grown proportionally to GDP per capita since the 1960s, leading to a more extreme accumulation of wealth at the top, which is in turn entirely down to politics (e.g. an overcomplex tax code with plenty of loopholes).
If you're outside the US (like myself), the graphs arguably look a bit better, but there's still a lack of housing due to increased regulations on construction -- how energy efficient new houses should be, where you are allowed to build them, which old houses you are allowed to destroy to make room for new ones (for historical reasons), etc. In addition to the welfare states becoming less efficient over time, leading to less real income with less benefits from the state. (Which are not much better than inefficient monopolies in less socialist countries, to be fair.)
I’m aware of your argument and disagree. I know plenty of people who are unhoused and have no intentions on becoming housed anytime soon.
Whether or not you agree with that philosophy or not living by yourself in a tent in the forest is absolutely an option
“My post, and the GP post I'm agreeing with, are saying that most of those aren't optional "lifestyle upgrades"”
My disagreement is that they are optional, like everything else in life
You aren’t willing to take the tradeoff of not having indoor plumbing or whatever but the claim that using modern technologies and living according to capitalism isn’t an option is incorrect
How much wealth? Not really that much if you move to the middle of the country. You're thinking of San Francisco (well, Daly City) of the 2020's, which San Francisco absolutely was not in 1963. Nice place, sure, but still heavily working class, blue-collar and union. You could have 5 kids and a few apartments on a reliable, but not spectacular, income today in many cities (and suburbs of such) in the US.
Go become a plumber or union carpenter in Lansing, Michigan or Birmingham, Alabama or Utica, NY. Median home prices well below $300,000. You must be supremely arrogant to not know cities like these and jobs like these exist.
OP mentioned 5 properties and 5 children. Taking your suggested budget as reference today we’re talking close to $1.5-2m just in properties alone. That’s 10-20 times the median wealth per adult in the US while supporting a very large family by today’s standards.
How well would you need to be paid now in any career to support a family like that one while accumulating that wealth already early in life? Careers can evaporate just the same but what they leave behind is vastly different from 60 years ago.