Many parts of life have gone cheaper - while feeding and clothing your family used to take a full time job, now you can buy (that level+amount) of food and clothing for just a few hours of work at minimuma wage.
However, major parts of our current expense, like housing at desirable areas, are "competitive" in that if everybody earns ten times as much then the good would also cost ten times as much.
"Housing" in the sense as shelter somewhere is very cheap to make, only "housing" in an area where you (and everyone else) would want to work and raise your kids is expensive.
"Education" in the sense of simply obtaining knowledge and information is very cheap now, only "education" in the meaning of degree=certification that you're "better than average" is expensive.
I once calculated that I literally could live in semi-abandoned areas with the 1916 level of goods&services (+ a PC and internet) for 5-10 hours of work/week even if that was at minimum wage, and remote contracting often does much better. Including paying for the home - they're dirt cheap in places that people are leaving for the expensive places. However, the trouble is that I don't really want to and can afford to "do better" - and everyone else does as well.
Yes, it seems that life has generally gotten cheaper if you don't require health care, childcare, or education. The one thing that hasn't gone down in price that everyone needs is food.
When we consider that "life has gotten cheaper" then looking at 2005-2014 is rather counterproductive, since the big changes there were before 2000; at least I was talking more on the scale of 100 years than 10 years which has rather different trends.
Also, the healthcare price increase is mostly by changing the "basket" of what we mean by "healthcare" - if we compare current healthcare with e.g. 1916 or 1966, then it's much more expensive but mostly because healthcare now includes expensive procedures for ailments that simply would not be treated back then other than painkillers to ease the death.
The true answer involves looking at the basic inputs of an economy and seeing which are being regulated heavily, and how that flows through as price increases.
Land, labour and energy are the basic inputs. You could argue capital as well. Technology is a productivity multiplier. Some things are getting cheaper - much cheaper. But other things are getting heavily regulated, which drives flow-on price increases.
The problem is those flow on increases have swamped the price reductions from automation. Technology price reductions are gradual and incremental, whereas regulation can be applied on thickly at the stroke of a pen.
Where I live, heavy regulation on land use causes shortages, which drives up the price of everything. To sell tech in a shop requires silly rent, and paying someone to mind the cash register has been regulated to be high. So while the price of a 8Gb isn stick has crashed, the shop and the employee have rocketed up.
I'd add time to that, and raw materials. Knowledge is a nonconsumable input, but education, training, and skills maintenance are also factors.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has an interesting breakdown of factors contributing to wages, though he also maintains that a wage must always be sufficient to sustain not only the labourer himself (hey, this was 1776), but his wife and children, and their education so as to provide for the next generation of workers.
There are some other points I'll address directly to your parent's question.
Because technology also leads to better "things" that cost more but overall provide more value for the money.
Think of it this way: if you wanted to replicate the average life of someone who lives in the 1950's, it would be cheaper than today (I know housing kinda screws that up). No internet, a basic car without all the electronics and safety gear, no computer, smaller house, rarely flying anywhere, etc.
The trade off with improved productivity is this: you can either work less and make the same amount or you can work the same amount and make more. Most people choose the later.
It has gotten cheaper in terms of physical resources (reality), but not in terms of money.
Two of the three main goals of the money system, as stated in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, are to maintain stable prices and maximize employment.
So, not only does technological ephemeralization run counter to these explicit goals, it also cedes power from the super administrators who dictate the money supply which ultimately determines monetary prices across the globe.
The value from all of this technology/automation is being captured by a smaller and smaller number of people. When your employer introduces technology that makes you 50% more productive, they are not going to pay you 50% more or let you work 50% less for the same pay. They're going to pocket the surplus as profit.
It mostly has, but that's hard to show. Land rents/housing , education and medical care all have been subsidized, so there is more of it ( expect land - they're not making any more of it) and it costs more.
First of: compared to when? If your baseline is, say, 1870 or 1770, life is far cheaper in terms of hours of work required to purchase basic goods. There's a long literature of basic worker incomes and expenditures, reading of which is fascinating.
If the question shifts to, say, 1950 - 2000, and your focus is the US or Western Europe (and we're considering a majority ethnicity male), I'd argue that life may or may not have gotten more expensive (though I think it has), but it's become tremendously less stable.
Lifetime employment means not having to worry about losing your current job, finding a new one, and supporting yourself and dependents in the meantime. Doing all of that on a barely-sufficient income (e.g., minimum savings), or worse, an insufficient income, becomes quite challenging.
Emma Rotshchild (yes, one of those Rothschilds), a Smith scholar, notes that his liberal philosophy isn't just philosophically liberal but materially liberal. Having income surplus to needs allows making choices. Or, as Eric Ravenscraft put it at Lifehacker: "When you’re broke, the only freedom you have is to make bad decisions."
He explains that:
Paying rent isn’t really a “good decision” so much as a responsibility. You don’t get a pat on the back for paying your rent. It’s great when you’re able to do it—you can’t always be sure you can when you’re poor—but it’s just treading water. You can’t choose to invest wisely or save for emergencies.
Putting yet another spin on this: a life in which you've optimised every decision and every action is one in which your only freedom, your only option, your only inconsistency, in any way, is something which will make your situation worse.
I can't think of a better argument for why a fully-optimised, fully-efficient life or existence would be hell.
Back to your question.
There are multiple elements of this:
1. What are market dynamics, and who has negotiating or bargaining advantage? Adam Smith notes that the upper hand lies with "masters" (employers), not labour.
2. What is price, and how does it relate to cost and value (and what's value, while we're at it) as well? To what extent are these givens, and to what extent are they fictions of market, ideology, or political strengths?
3. The Jevons Paradox. Another dilemma of efficiency is that making something more efficient is the same as reducing its cost, all else constant. Which means you'll increase demand, either individually or in aggregate. The things which have become cheaper (e.g., clothes) we now buy far more of (a closet full, rather than your work-day wear, and a suit for religious service).
4. Social signalling. Thorstein Veblen's contribution -- expensive information costs (both sending and receiving) make social signalling through appearance and consumption critical.
5. Price dynamics of wages, products, extractive materials, and rents. In particular, whilst some prices are drivers (higher-cost raw materials increase market prices), others follow general market prices (higher wages create higher rents). Unless supply of rented goods or services is fungible (e.g., Bay Area housing), well, you know what happens.
I've tried so many things, and most of the things I read here in the comments sounds like fairy tales (just do it, go to bed earlier, ..). I'll spare you the details (I should make a blog post about it), but here's what worked for me:
- get a dawn simulation device (doesn't work on its own, but still helps waking up more gently) // the more powerful/lumen, the better
- likewise for audio: volume going up slowly (I use AlarmDroid), for this, use a gentle non-continuous sound (knock knock, pause, knock knock, pause) the idea is that a continuous sound is too much annoying, forces you to go turn it off asap and go back to sleep. You may use a more brutal sound for your real wake-up time (so, at the end of the dawn simulation), the idea is that you'll have a gentle alarm beforehand and hopefully fear the brutal alarm and just get into a habit of getting up before the brutal alarm.
- best for the end: padlock your alarm in a solid case, and put the key in your mailbox the night before (hopefully not too close to your bedroom, in my case, I may meet neighbors, so it forces me to fully clothes on). A key-less alarm at the other side of the rooms does NOT work and you will just get up, shut it down and go back to sleep.
- bonus : use a very bright light (at least 5000+ lumen) on a programmable plug for the end of the dawn simulation (or just get a really powerful dawn simulation one, not sure if that exists though)
edit: added bonus
edit2: everyone is different, I just wanted to add my part to the overall list of ideas, please check out all the other comments, different stuff works for different people! (the coffee one sounds interesting, I would have tried it if I was a coffee drinker)
edit3: This should be common sense, but please don't use this as a way to sleep less. I use this because even when I sleep a fair amount (9+ hours for multiple days, I still struggle to wake up).
The only thing that works for me: go to sleep early enough that I'll get my full eight hours of sleep. Leave some room for those times when I'm more exhausted than usual. This means falling asleep by 10pm to wake up by 6:30am on weekdays.
Yeah, please do try this also. Everyone is different. Personally, When I try just going to bed early, I just end up fully conscious for hours in my bed not falling asleep. (edit: and yes I tried with using f.lux, not using a computer screen, reading on a passive Kindle, just listening to music beforehand).
I have a couple of suggestions for your sleeplessness for those times when you try to fall asleep earlier:
Definitely, it helps to be tired enough to sleep. But to be tired enough, you need to wake up early.. kind of circular. A heavy workout earlier in the day often does the trick too. If you're trying to make it a habit, then doing it gradually is probably the way to go: fall asleep earlier by 15 minutes each day.
There are also times when there are just too many thoughts in your head that won't go away - it helps to close the eyes, roll them up, do one of two techniques:
1) Consciously don't hold onto any particular thought. This is a meditation technique. Oddly enough, I think we do this naturally when we're really tired and sleepy.
2) Take yourself back to an activity that required total presence of mind and body: for me it's sky diving. I'm just falling, adjusting... and pretty soon I'm asleep and dreaming. I guess this is more of a visualization technique.
Both of those work to take the mind off attention grabbing thoughts and moving you to a more relaxed state.
>> most of the things I read here in the comments sounds like fairy tales (just do it, go to bed earlier, ..)
They don't sound like fairy tales, they sound like things that work for them and perhaps others. It's OK that some tips are not practical for you, it doesn't make them any less useful.
You're right, I should have written it as « sounds like fairy tales to me ». Everybody's different, and I just felt this way because that's the kind of suggestions I often read while I had trouble waking up and made some research, and it obviously didn't work for me.. That said: please, do try as many things as possible and see what works for you, start with the easy stuff.
I'm sorry you feel this way, as brudgers wrote, there is still a small link at the bottom to download without subscribing.
Getting some subscribers is very important to me because I make this tool in my free time, and the only way I can justify spending more time on it is if I have some users who care about the tool. If I shall burn in hell for this, then so be it.
I only took a quick look for now, but this doesn't seem to give you musical note names? MeloCraft is mainly aimed at musicians, not really for general-purpose spectrogram analysis.
Also, no Windows binaries available? I understand it's open-source, but that's not very user-friendly imo.
Hello, I made this tool when I started learning the violin and wanted to correct my pitch despite not having a musical ear. I figured it might be useful to other people (:
So, has it helped you "tune" your ear? i.e., are you able to correct your pitch without the tool now that you've spent time practicing with it? I've often wondered about that. I learned guitar at such a young age, that I don't have a good recollection of the process of learning to have a reasonably good ear, or if it was something I already had and had to just learn to listen to.
As an adult, I've often gone years without seriously practicing music, and yet the basic ability to hear notes and tune instruments remains strong, no matter what. The ability to name notes and recognize chords on demand (so-called "relative pitch") does require me to refresh my memory with practice whenever I take a long break from music, but recognizing when things are sharp or flat, and by how much, seems to be permanent and require no practice no matter how long it's been. So, I theorize (and have read about science on the subject) that there may be a variety of parts of the mind that handle these subjects. But, I don't recall reading if they're all in-born skills or are acquired. Perfect pitch may be teachable to the very young...but not adults, so maybe my tuning ability simply developed and "stuck" because I was young. I dunno.
Hard to say, I feel it helped a little, as in, when I'm playing with my teacher (without MeloCraft), I more often get the feeling « oh, that doesn't quite sound right, I should move my fingers a little bit ». But that's N=1 and I didn't do any meaningful before/after tests.
That said, even if the tool doesn't help for the musical earing directly, it can still help to correct the position of your fingers, and that's very important for muscle memory. So instead of training for hours on the wrong finger position because I don't have a musical ear, I can correct myself and properly train my muscle memory correctly.
Well, you're very lucky to have a relative pitch, I think you can still train for it as an adult, but it may require more time and still might not be possible for everyone. Don't take my word for it thought, I don't recall any solid research on the subject.
Relative pitch is definitely learnable as an adult. So-called perfect pitch is the ability that has been thought to be something you're born with, or not, but more recent research indicates that kids can have it "turned on", or at least, kids can develop relative pitch that is good enough to be indistinguishable from perfect pitch, for all intents and purposes (the listener just has to refresh their pitch memory with a reference pitch now and then...maybe once a day).
For violin, I would recommend placing your horizontal guide lines to correspond to a just scale rather than 12-tone equal temperament.
Another type of tuning visualization that only works with just-tuned instruments is to have something like an oscilloscope, with the vertical axis connected to a microphone or pickup and the horizontal sweep set to be the same frequency as the root of your key. An interesting thing that happens is that, for any note that makes a whole-number ratio with respect to the horizontal sweep rate, you get a standing wave. If it's drifting to one side, it's sharp, and if it's drifting the other way it's flat.
I experiment with just-tuned guitars, and this is what I do with an old analog oscilloscope to check if my intonation is right.
Hi, nice tool. I just gave it a go and it seems reasonably accurate. I've recently been developing something similar - I'm detecting singing pitch for use in a game. I wonder did you use any particular method for detecting the pitch?
It's FFT-based. Then I do some basic computation to try and guess the « best » peak, taking the harmonics into account. Still need lots of work and I suck at math.
Not sure about OP, but I've always loved the simplicity of counting the zero cross-overs in one direction (E.g. positive to negative) with some gutter. With raw PCM this is trivial to implement in any language -- I last did this in bash. Then you just do a look up from frequency to note and you're done. It's also not very CPU intensive, and you can even sample less frequently and get pretty great results.
If you have some musical knowledge or experience it's pretty easy to tell which tunes are wrong even if you've never heard them. Assuming you have knowledge of the western musical tradition, e.g. modes, major/minor keys, etc, it's usually pretty clear where a melody should be going even if you haven't heard it (i.e. it will probably remain in the tonal centre of the piece).
