We Talk Friday
(WTF)
This is a semi-regular series that I will run on Fridays to hold discussions on a topic that has caught my attention from the week gone. The aim is to keep them light and conversational, though some might be heavier - regardless of the content topic itself though, just have some fun engaging and discussing with whoever happens to put in the effort in the comments section below.
Over the last few months, there has been a trend in the Australian media to go and interview people on the street and ask them how much they earn in their profession, or what is their income. It seems that many are willing to answer and what grabs the attention are the high or the low salaries. Those in the middle tend not to get much interest. The other thing that gets attention is when old people who are retired say something like they have "two million in the bank" or something like that, and the general consensus portrayed by the media and in the comments by people assumed to be younger is;
That's not fair!
Yet, there is something that troubles me with this attitude, because while it is true that for instance the boomer generation had many factors that made it easier to generate and accumulate wealth, it wasn't guaranteed. There was possibility and potential, but it still took going against the grain of the average and doing things that the rest were not, otherwise all of the boomers would be rich, right? This would include the parents and grandparents of the people who are complaining about not having the opportunity now. Essentially, if every boomer in Australia was wealthy due to the conditions all had, there would be a country full of generational wealth.
Nearly everyone's grandparents would have two million in the bank.
Nothing has really changed in the world in terms of "Do what the average person does, get the average results" since then, and most did the average. Many bought family homes and put money into their superannuation, but most didn't add additional income to their super, and most didn't invest to create more wealth in financial products. The interest rates on savings were higher then, so most people just put the money into the bank to save, earning far less than what they could have on the stock market for instance.
The conditions are "the same" now for people, right?
What I mean is that for the average person in Australia who is lets say thirty years of age, they are facing similar conditions as others in their bracket. Yet, some of those people are barely surviving, whilst others are thriving. What would be more useful than comparing holdings against other generations, is comparing against people in the same age brackets, or from other intersects like same suburb, high school, or even from the same family. What is the excuse when one family member is doing well financially, and one is struggling heavily?
The data collector corporations like Meta, Apple and Amazon have access to a huge amount of information about us, that we never see. They use it to increase their profits, but that same information could create a "people like me" query that can answer filtered on many of my own data points so I can ask questions like,
- What do people like me earn?
- What is the (Heart Rate Variability) HRV of people like me?
- How wealthy is someone like me?
- What percentage of people like me have children?
- What is the BMI of people like me?
- How much time do people like me spend at the gym?
All of this information is available and used to extract from us, so perhaps there should be legislation made so that it is searchable (anonymous data) so that each of us can get a sense of what people like us are doing, both right and wrong. Maybe if we had more transparency on people like ourselves, we would be able to better adjust.
Over the last decade or two a lot of the identity discussion has talked about having "people like me" as role models to look up to in the media. However, it isn't actually very useful if it is only based on looks or sexual orientation, because that doesn't speak to all of the other factors that matter in order to accomplish similar things. The truth is that the majority of us are average, which means even if we have high-achieving role models, we can't do the same, because we aren't high achievers.
The high achievers aren't people like me.
We want transparency on what other people are earning, because we want to use it as a yardstick for ourselves, but it isn't useful information unless we also know about their background experience, and their current practices now. If they are doing what we are unable or unwilling to do, should we be earning the same?
Currently, the data collection companies have a full view of our lives and information, but it is a one-way glass, not even a mirror. We have no visibility of them, nor do we have any visibility on ourselves through the data they have on us.
Would you want to compare yourself to others like you?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Past Episodes:
Episode 1: Strange bedfellows
