this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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We already are post scarcity.
They're even further post scarcity in your average cyberpunk story, and yet the wealth gap grows, poverty grows, just like it does for us, now.
Just like, try. Try real hard to figure out why worker productivity keeps rising but worker wages don't in real life, and why a cyperpunk writer might create a world with even better technology and productivity but rampant poverty.
No we're not? Maybe with regards to food, but even that might change back with climate change.
Also oil.
Post-scarcity is a state where all basic needs can be met with minimal human labor. It is not a state where there is no scarcity at all, but rather a theoretical productivity point where, say, the average worker could produce three, four, maybe even five times more goods and services than they consume over their lifetime.
Generally speaking, GDP per working hour compared to the average wage is considered one of the best (simple) methods of measuring this. Makes sense, right? If the average worker produces goods worth five times more than the average wage, one worker could support themselves and four other people. Heck, a society should be doing pretty good with 1:2.
Would you like to take a guess at what the current GDP per working hour of the average American or average European worker is?
Hint: I'm bringing it up because it helps my case.
Not op but I would very much like to know the figure and the source, because I want as many people to know about this as possible
https://www.statista.com/statistics/418800/united-states-gdp-per-hour-worked/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
It's pretty simple math from there. The average worker produces about $220k in goods and services per year, the median individual income is about $40k, mean $60k, but, quite frankly, definitely don't want mean there because it is clearly skewed by the parasite class to a fairly sizable degree, even before they start double dipping into better benefits and such.
Now, obviously it's a very complex system being reduced pretty significantly, for example I don't believe it takes material costs into account.
But not that significantly, and if you follow the timelines back you can see it get worse. There are certainly many nations that seem to get along just fine with a far lower ratio somehow.
Definitely not enough that there's an excuse for any reasonable society to have one single homeless person who doesn't damn well want to live with his balls hanging out in the cold, or let kids go hungry, or make single moms beg for GoFundMe to pay their medical bills.
Thank you. I think this is a really important point to make re: inequality and social system.