zz1000zz's messages

For the record, I kind of hate you. I finally decided to get the Frantic 3 impossible badge. I got through 29 levels and was at the final boss. Flash then crashed and I lost all my progress.

I should never have listened to you!

By the way, the reason I could get the Cell Warfare impossible badge is it isn’t a bullet hell game. I didn’t have to make tons of minute movements in specific patterns, knowing if I went a millimeter too far at any point I’d lose.

I’m good at shooters because of good reflexes and intuition. I’m bad at bullet hells because I’m I’m bad at micromovements and memorization.

It isn’t really bad that you had to do that. If nothing else, it at least shows you were willing to consider your position rather than blindly defend it.

Unfortunately, you are still wrong. I’m not going to question the numbers you provided, though I don’t really trust them (I trust you got them from a valid source, I just don’t trust how those numbers get calculated). First off, the increase you listed is not a “5000% increase.” It is only an increase of 363%. Minimum wage increased by 16%, meaning GDP per capita only increased 23 times as quickly as minimum wage. The overall point remains the same, but I like getting the numbers straight.

The real problem is GDP per capita isn’t a measure of the standard of living. The standard of living for the average person doesn’t go up when a rich guy gets richer, but the GDP per capita does. To use GDP per capita to look at the average standard of living in the country, you would have to account for any change in the disparity of wealth in the country.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean you are wrong; it just means you haven’t shown it to be true. I don’t know one way or the other. I just know it usually takes more than a quick search to deal with all the uncertainties when talking about changes in economics over 50+ years.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I did screw that one up. I’m not sure where my head was as I was typing the numbers there, but looking at it now, it’s very obvious that it’s not a 50fold increase. It’s possible that I had meant it was approx. 500%, which would be considerably closer to the mark, bu I’m really not sure.

Granted, the GDP isn’t the best indicator of standard of living, and considering the growing polarization of wealth in America, an average annual income really doesn’t tell us that much. Unfortunately, the only way I can think of to get a better idea of how disparate the standard of living and minimum wage are would be to get the raw data, and analyze it myself. For the sake of time constraints, I decided against trying that route.

I agree that a 10 minute internet search isn’t really enough to properly answer the question of whether or not the changes in the economy have benefited the minimum wage worker over the last half-century. I have no problem leaving this particular argument at this junction, as I fear that to continue it would take the majority of my Christmas Break, and probably a good chunk of January to boot.I think we can safely leave it at an agreement that while I may not have proved I’m right, I’m not entirely wrong either.