[HN Gopher] The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
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The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
Author : latexr
Score : 270 points
Date : 2023-07-30 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (mstdn.ca)
| quietthrow wrote:
| I think this post and some of the comments confuses work with
| job. Work is a means to a kind of satisfaction that cannot be
| achieved via leisure. And people need that and need work. Job on
| the other hand is everything most of the comments is talking
| about. Job is what you end up with when you working in a
| capitalistic system where profit is the sole motive (competition
| is what drives the need to keep costs down and labor is part of
| cost. We need capitalism to evolve so that practices are more
| sustainable call it capitalism 2.0 or whatever). So unless you
| are the job creator which very few of us are we are resorted to
| having a job. This is the case generally unless you are part of
| the smaller segment of people who have been lucky enough to call
| their job also their work.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| And here we have a thread that made the rounds on Twitter a few
| weeks back, being plagiarized on Mastodon for clicks.
|
| This is the equivalent of content farming on the web, and
| absolutely sucks, how do we stop it?
| z7 wrote:
| Noam Chomsky:
|
| "For two millennia the idea of getting a job was regarded as a
| fundamental attack against basic human rights and human dignity.
| Why? Because getting a job means accepting servitude to a master.
| It means saying, 'Okay, I'll rent myself to you for most of my
| waking life and I will follow your orders during this period.'
| That was considered an utter abomination. By now it's sort of
| taken for granted. But should we take it for granted? Or should
| we go back to the ideals of working people, classical liberals,
| Cicero, all the way to Abraham Lincoln, saying that this is not a
| decent way for human beings to live, that people should be in
| control of their own work and their own destiny. One of the
| founders of classical liberalism, Wilhelm von Humboldt, captured
| the point very lucidly. He said, suppose an artisan creates a
| beautiful object on command, in a job. We may admire what he did,
| but we despise what he is: a tool in the hands of others. That
| was common belief right through the nineteenth century. We now
| accept that renting yourself into servitude is one of the highest
| goals in life - an idea that would have been an abomination for
| 2000 years."
|
| Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MU5zQwtT4&t=3540s
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| What evidence is there of people 2000 years ago claiming that
| having a "job" was a "fundamental attack against basic human
| rights and human dignity."?
| mikestew wrote:
| _We may admire what he did, but we despise what he is: a tool
| in the hands of others._
|
| Chomsky can be so full of shit at times. I'd like one piece of
| writing from before the 19th century, perhaps just a morsel of
| evidence that this was a "common belief" among anyone but the
| elite that have time to sit and write things all day.
| AntiRemote wrote:
| [dead]
| thrillgore wrote:
| For me, the issue is there's work, but nobody wants to hire me
| because I:
|
| * Have been off the job market for a while because nobody would
| interview me let alone consider me
|
| * The last job I had was a month long, and it ended with my
| termination for performance in a setting where I arguably could
| not succeed.
|
| And my run of bad luck has led to difficulty keeping work for the
| past two years. Its not fair, and I can't blame anyone for not
| wanting to do it anymore. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I often think about the stark difference in outcomes between
| American[0] and immigrant kids that I went to high school with,
| 20+ years post graduation.
|
| A big differentiating factor is that the immigrant kids - I am
| sure with a lot of influence from their parents - were willing to
| take on just a bit more work than their American peers. Try for
| the harder classes, try for the more selective college, try for
| the more rigorous major, etc. Nothing seemingly extraordinary but
| just a series of choices, at each step being willing to put in a
| bit more work than one could superficially get away with.
|
| Consequently, the immigrant kids "fell into" careers in law,
| medicine, engineering, etc. at much higher rates than our
| American friends and their lives resemble the classic American
| dream: good job, nice house, bunch of kids. To be fair, a bunch
| of the Americans I grew up with achieved the same thing - still
| impressive although they started with a ton of advantage over us
| immigrants. But the rate of immigrant kids' success dwarfed this.
|
| In retrospect, the immigrant belief in the connection between
| input and output - and perhaps this being less clear to our
| American friends - made a tremendous amount of difference. Our
| American pals had the same opportunities and could even go after
| them much easier, but they just didn't have the same motivation
| to kick their own ass to launch themselves a few rungs higher.
|
| The culture of cultivating talent and being willing to put in
| work was a "secret" weapon of these immigrant families, and
| itself was a cultural attribute of the countries we had come
| from. And of course it's also very much the historic American
| ethos although in 2023 it seems gauche to speak to the virtue of
| working harder - I am sure this post is going to be
| controversial, for example.
|
| The inability of the culture to sing the virtues of work openly
| has got to be a net negative, at least for those who take it
| seriously. The more traditional families are still teaching these
| values to their kids behind closed doors. And I am pretty sure
| that while there has always been a large group of folks not
| interested in working and certainly not in excellence through
| work, I suspect this group has a greater share of the public
| "voice" than ever before.
|
| There's a classic Futurama quote: "no one drove in NY, too much
| traffic" and I think of it often when someone says that you can't
| get ahead or afford a life nowadays. While that message is
| popular, it kinda misses the question of: who do you think is
| bidding up these houses? Why do you think there's a waiting list
| for the pre-schools? etc. Who do you think is buying these family
| sedans and minivans? People don't often talk about "actually, I
| worked hard and it paid off" but it's kinda all around us if you
| look.
|
| To be fair, there's no guarantee of success in life. You can work
| your ass off and get nowhere, especially if you work on the wrong
| thing. But there's definitely a guarantee of failure if you don't
| work, and it's sad to see people locking themselves into that.
|
| [0] when I say American, I mean kids of Italian, Irish, and black
| ancestry who were born in the US. The immigrant kids were
| Russians and Asians primarily.
| [deleted]
| mihaic wrote:
| Why would anybody want to work as a default? Work is a trade of
| your time for some financial security. It's a sacrifice that
| doesn't need to be glorified.
|
| I do understand that a functioning society needs to good work
| ethic where this transactional aspect is not in the mind of the
| worker while he's actually doing the work, since it's a
| hinderance. When we're discussing work as a topic though it needs
| to be considered as a core truth.
|
| Conflating salary work and personal activities (cooking,
| cleaning, fixing something around the house) is part of the
| definition of work as well.
| overgard wrote:
| One thing that's funny to think about is in the distant past, one
| of the big selling points of automation and industrialization was
| that we could have the same things but work much less. That
| didn't quite work out. Now we work more, for more things. The
| tragedy though is there isn't a great option for trading luxuries
| for time. You're either 40+ hours a week invested in a career, or
| you're barely scraping by on a bunch of part time gigs with no
| health insurance or retirement plan.
| api wrote:
| It's always nobody wants to work anymore at the wages you are
| presently offering.
|
| It's like concluding we've run out of oil because the price of
| gasoline went up.
| randomdata wrote:
| Of course, when you get down to the heart of the matter, it is
| really: The customer doesn't want what you have to offer
| anymore.
|
| Not having enough revenue to pay the workers a sufficient rate
| is just a symptom of that.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It's always nobody wants to work anymore at the wages you are
| presently offering.
|
| > It's like concluding we've run out of oil because the price
| of gasoline went up.
|
| I don't think that these are really perfectly analogous--there
| really is probably the same, if not greater, supply of workers
| as there ever was if the wages were right; but, no matter how
| much we're willing to pay, there's less oil available now than
| there used to be.
| svachalek wrote:
| We're very close to record highs. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pe
| t/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=m...
|
| If you're talking about oil in the ground, it's pedantic and
| not relevant to market pricing.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| Great analogy.
|
| Yes, nobody wants to work at poor wages. And these employers
| usually offer poor wages, but they'll often complain about
| unqualified people too.
|
| Sometimes it's rephrased from "Nobody wants to work" to "Nobody
| wants to work... for you"
| 23B1 wrote:
| The easiest way for leaders to mitigate the problem of 'not
| wanting to work' is to make work a more desirable place to be.
| It's not even hard to do. Some simple rules for managers and
| leaders:
|
| 1. Treat others as you wish to be treated. Remember all the
| shitty bosses you had, and be the first to break the cycle.
|
| 2. Pay people slightly above market rate. Make that your #1
| hiring message: "We pay above market rate" and watch the
| referrals flow. Turn your employees into evangelists and you
| won't need a platoon's-worth of recruiters.
|
| 3. Be very loud and very public about commonsense _balance_ of
| work and just 'life'. No emails after 5, prioritize social-
| family events like PTA meetings, or dates, or "Hey I'm gonna take
| my team bowling Friday afternoon, can I expense the chicken
| tendies?"
|
| 4. You can't _build_ culture; it 's created from within. Embrace
| what your employees bring culture-wise and make THAT your work
| culture.
| etothepii wrote:
| I disagree on #2. I think if you want to build culture you need
| to find people who value culture over money, _and_ that if you
| don 't live up to your end they can complain about the deal. If
| you over pay _and_ offer better culture when the culture
| inevitably falters people are stuck because you over pay.
| hooverd wrote:
| What does "value culture over money even mean?" I'd rather
| get paid more and work with people who are clock punching
| professionals than somewhere where "we're all a family".
| 23B1 wrote:
| Yeah I wasn't sure how to read that comment either.
|
| I think it's fine to have a familial/friendly culture at
| work, but not in lieu of fair pay - and not in any way made
| mandatory. Nothing worse than 'mandatory fun time' barf.
| darkerside wrote:
| Not that I totally disagree, but what happens if everybody pays
| above market rate?
| jrsj wrote:
| The problem is cultural rot as much as it is economic. If your
| only objective in life is to advance your career, buy things, eat
| takeout, and watch Netflix, then why bother? It's just a slow
| suicide while you keep capitalism going.
|
| The collapse of family formation and any sense of duty,
| community, or really any human relationship beyond a
| transactional one has made it mostly not worth succeeding.
|
| And it probably doesn't help that basically everyone is placed
| into 1 of 2 categories and told that either their merit shouldn't
| count because they have an advantage due to being an "oppressor"
| or that they'll never get ahead because everyone is out to get
| them and discriminating against them.
|
| Working people are becoming increasingly demoralized, and letting
| them spend half their time pretending to work from home and
| giving them a raise isn't going to change any of that.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Difficult to prove, but I suspect this complaint is one business
| owners make when they realize their business is going to fail.
| They know they could get more workers if they paid more, but they
| also know they can't afford that.
|
| It's always easier to blame the people below you.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| When did anyone want to actually work? Everybody strives for as
| much as possible of money at at least possible work needed to get
| that money.
|
| But the question has edge cases where some reforms should be
| done.
|
| 1) On one hand you have businesses that want people to do a lot
| of work for not enough money and then complain... in my country,
| that means that either the right government gives them foreign
| workers, because they "care" about the business, or the left
| government giving them foreign workers, because they "care" about
| the people (even if foreign).
|
| There are many ways to solve that (eg. minimum wage for
| foreigners should be higher than the average for local workers in
| the same field, so if local workers doing job X get paid on
| average Y amount of money every month, you shouldn't be able to
| get a foreigner unless you pay that foreigner eg. 10% above
| average Y.. so you first have to try to get a local at above
| average local pay to do it, and if there are really no locals
| available, even at above average pay, only then you get someone
| from abroad.
|
| 2) The second problem is, that in some countries (eg. mine), you
| still have a relatively large percentage of people not working
| and getting social benefits... on one hand, social benefits are
| needed to help people when there is no work available, on the
| other, with all the benefits possible, some abuse of the system
| and maybe some under the table work, you're better off than
| someone actually work 8h per day.
|
| Forcing someone to get a job at a company is impossible, since
| they intentionally act incompetent and no company wants someone
| who doesn't want to work and just wants to get fired, but
| community service could still be an option. Depending on the
| physical capabilities (if you're a paraplegic, you can't be
| picking up trash by the highway) some community service tasks
| would be given out, people who should be job-seeking (without
| that, you can't get the benefits) would calculate that an actual
| job pays more, and the taxpayers would get something back for the
| money they pay for "lazy bums", who suddenly wouldn't be as lazy
| as before, since they'd be keeping the streets clean. Sure, it's
| not a perfect system, some nuances between the ideal and
| realistic have to be solved, but social benefits abuse has been
| rampant in many many countries, not just mine (former socialist
| one), but even large and "organized" ones, such as germany (
| https://www.dw.com/en/duisburg-police-make-arrests-impound-l... )
| quelsolaar wrote:
| Historically, the working class movement, did see work as
| honourable, and the capital as less so, because they lived of
| the work of others. There was a lot of pride associated with
| doing a good job and to provide for your family.
| iambateman wrote:
| This pairs nicely with "they don't make them like they used to"
| and "kids these days don't know how good they have it"
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| There is such a thing as a longterm trend.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| It's pretty simple really.
|
| If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the
| necessities, then there is technically no difference between
| working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an
| indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which
| in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living
| on the streets.
|
| And people don't like being indentured servants. History should
| have made that clear by now.
|
| People want perspective. In the past, a working man could support
| a family of five, buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or
| twice a year, plus save enough to retire comfortably.
|
| Today people, despite burning themselves out in their job,
| struggle to pay rent in a flat shared with other working people,
| after loading themselves up with 100k in students debt, and no
| chance in hell to ever own property of their own.
|
| If the powers that be want people to be willing to work, that
| work has to pay off.
|
| If it doesn't, well...we're at the beginning of a retirement wave
| unprecedented in human history. 2 low-birthrate generations to
| follow. And our entire economic system is designed around
| constant growth.
|
| I leave doing the math on that as an exercise for the reader.
| throwaway33381 wrote:
| For most jobs real wages haven't gone up at all adjusted with
| inflation. Others have mostly gone down in wages, most
| specifically service type jobs which are critical for basic
| needs. When you can't afford to live why bother?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>a working man could support a family of five, buy a house, a
| car and afford vacation once or twice a year, plus save enough
| to retire comfortably.
|
| I would say my family history is that of a "working man" that
| closly fits that narraive..
|
| My grandfather was a WWII vet, after military service was a
| factory worker that raised 4 kids, in their own home.
|
| Let me eliminate some of that illusory rose tint from your
| worldview. That home with 2 adults and 4 kids was a 950 square
| foot 1 bathroom box on .25 acres of land, with no garage,
| basement, or luxury of any type. my family still owns this
| property.
|
| In comparison me a single man, lives in a 1300 sqft home.. by
| myself, with 2 car garage, full basement, etc. My home is
| considered "basic" by modern standards, some would even
| consider it below minimum standards for a family of 4...(I
| bought this home from such a family because they felt it was
| too small for them)
|
| No builder would ever consider building either my home (which
| was built in the 60's, nor my grandparents home (built in the
| early 50's) as today home sizes need to be 1500-2000 square
| foot, each bedroom needs it own bath, kitchens need to be near
| professional quality, etc etc etc etc etc.
|
| In short home prices are sky high because buyers would never
| consider, and probally could not legally, raise 4 kids in a 1
| bath 950 sqaure foot home.
|
| We often to not actualy compare apples to apple when we look at
| the conditions of the past. Sure a man could buy a home for his
| family in 1950... That home was about 1/2 the size of todays
| home, and had FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR less amenities and
| comforts of the modern home
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > In short home prices are sky high because buyers would
| never consider, and probally could not legally, raise 4 kids
| in a 1 bath 950 sqaure foot home.
|
| I live in a place the same size as you, minus the garage and
| the land, as a family of 3 so far.
|
| There are plenty of potential homebuyers who would kill for
| this, and I know of nowhere in the USA that it would be
| illegal. The problem is that cities limit the number of homes
| that can be built to ludicrous low density setups like "one
| house on 2 square acres", and there are _enough_ homebuyers
| who will pay for the house three times that size with a
| bathroom per bedroom that the builder doesn 't bother to
| worry about the potential buyers who are not being served and
| have to move out beyond the edges of public transit to afford
| anything. And these density limits remain because old people
| swan around moaning that it's inhumane to build studio
| apartments when everybody wants a 12 sq acre bathroom, and
| why are there people in tents on the street?
| paulmd wrote:
| > And these density limits remain because old people swan
| around moaning that it's inhumane to build studio
| apartments when everybody wants a 12 sq acre bathroom, and
| why are there people in tents on the street?
|
| Also Prop 13 in California that transfers wealth from new
| buyers to boomers who bought a home when it was cheap, and
| to wealthy buyers who can afford to buy a teardown and
| rebuild it around a single remaining wall.
|
| But really, almost all of society's current problems are
| pushed onto the public by the political power wielded by
| elderly boomers and retirees. The rest of us would like to
| do something about climate change and LGBT issues and cost
| of education but none of that affects boomers either. The
| elderly are fundamentally disconnected from the future of
| society because they will not participate in it, and
| unfortunate most people are not actually mature enough to
| demand sacrifices without an expectation they will share in
| the benefits. The meme about "old men planting trees in
| whose shade they know they will never sit" is not true, and
| it's unfair to punish the living and their future from the
| hand of the dead. To use the term a bit differently than
| usual, the constitution is not a suicide pact.
|
| We have a lower age limit on voting and there is perpetual
| talk about raising it to try and curb the political
| influence of the younger cohort (much like class war, one
| side is playing hardball, while the other side doesn't even
| know they're playing). Instead, we should keep it the same
| and add a cap at the age at which you can first draw early
| social security benefits.
|
| I have heard all the retorts, what about the good boomers
| etc. But it's just not good policy to have what are
| effectively transient participants (similar to how
| immigrants don't get to vote) without a long-term stake in
| society being the ones in political control, even if some
| of them are well-intentioned.
|
| Again, boomers keep trying to push exactly this change in
| reverse by trying to raise the voting age. They know
| there's a class battle being fought here, but as usual the
| other side has talked themselves out of even playing the
| game, like if you don't acknowledge it then it goes away.
| grecy wrote:
| Obviously this depends entirely on the country and region.
|
| My grandfather immigrated to Australia in 1948, got a job
| assembling cars at the Ford plant, and worked there until he
| retired.
|
| My Grandmother never worked. They bought a very nice house,
| had two boys, never really had any debt, plenty of money in
| retirement.
|
| A generation later my Dad was earning $10k/year as a teacher,
| and my mum and dad bought their first very nice home for
| $30k.
|
| So today how many people earning $100k/year can buy a home
| for $300k?
|
| (As reference, my partner earns $78k/year and bought a modest
| home for $480k the month before covid. Now there is not a
| single home in this small town for less than $600k.)
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>entirely on the country and region.
|
| Very true...
|
| My home when I bought it was about 2x my annual income, my
| home today is worth on the market about 2x my current
| annual income.
|
| The average factory worker (or teacher) in my area could
| easily afford to buy my home in a standard 2 person income
| situation.
|
| Now if you go into the new construction area's of this
| city, the houses there start at 2x the price of my home. I
| am a relatively high income earner though that is offsite
| by the fact I live alone so no dual income. On paper I
| could afford one of those homes, but I would never go that
| far into debt, which is why I own the home I do. I bought
| in a modest neighborhood and a modest home.
|
| Currently average home prices in my area are 3.5x median
| household incomes, which is up from 2.25x in 2016... This
| is largely drive by the new construction of these high end
| homes fueled by low interest rates.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| > This is largely drive by the new construction of these
| high end homes fueled by low interest rates.
|
| I doubt it.
|
| How many such modest houses in your modest neighborhood
| are available now? How much has the housing supply in
| your town grown, and how much has the population grown?
| Are all these buyers _actually_ making a direct choice
| between these two kinds of houses, or is only one of
| those choices actually available to buy?
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >How many such modest houses in your modest neighborhood
| are available now?
|
| In my zipcode +/- 10% of my home value... 30 or so....
|
| >How much has the housing supply in your town grown, and
| how much has the population grown?
|
| No idea on supply... We average about 1% population
| growth per year. Slight decrease during the pandemic,
| slight increase in the last couple of years.
|
| In the same zip code there are 18 New Construction
| properties for sale, all 2 - 3x my home price. Which
| would not include the homes being built for buyers under
| contract.
| vel0city wrote:
| As a percentage of income that 78/480 is probably less in
| the monthly payment than the 10/30 or at least in the same
| ballpark, since interest rates back then were probably
| _much_ higher for the 10 /30 loan, assuming equal
| percentage down payments and same terms and what not.
| grecy wrote:
| Back in the day when Dad earned $10k/year and saved 30%
| he had the full house price in ten years ($30k), so it
| was much easier to have a much larger percentage as a
| downpayment, or in fact, not get a loan at all.
|
| Now saving 30% a year of a $78k income means you have to
| save for 20 years to have the full price of the house.
| ($480k), so you're forced to get a loan, and likely a
| much bigger loan
| WalterBright wrote:
| Consider the share of the GDP sucked up and dissipated by the
| government. That inevitably results in a general lower standard
| of living.
|
| The government has grown enormously in my lifetime, sucking up
| much (most?) of the productivity increases.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Likely true. But there are plenty of large businesses that
| are effectively the same. Larger than a lot of government
| departments, holding a monopoly-like position in some
| good/service, can't be killed. These orgs are just as good as
| government at overpaying people.
|
| IMO the productivity loss is misidentified as a government
| issue, it's actually a large org issue.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| I recall a Twitter thread where a lawyer mentions she couldn't
| afford the apartment she rented as a law student now that she
| was an actual lawyer 10-15 years later.
| [deleted]
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| "then there is technically no difference between working as a
| free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured
| servant"
|
| A common fallacy. There are light-years of difference. An
| indentured servant is bound to serve a particular master. A
| free worker, even earning only enough for necessities, is still
| free to decide how to meet those necessities, and who to work
| for under what terms. That's a lot of freedom. No, of course
| they will not have as many choices as a rich person. But they
| are very far from indentured servitude.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > In the past, a working man could support a family of five,
| buy a house, a car and afford vacation once or twice a year,
| plus save enough to retire comfortably.
|
| I think this is a bit of a rose-colored rear-view mirror, and
| to the extent it's true it's a pretty brief period of time
| historically. Most people in most times had to work pretty
| hard. If you were a farmer, you worked pretty much all the
| daylight hours every day. Immigrants in the early part of the
| 20th century worked very hard, often the man running a small
| business or doing factory work and the woman cleaning, sewing,
| cooking, bookkeeping, etc. for hire. And all of that is when
| the men weren't off fighting a war as a conscripted soldier.
|
| The "working man" who could support a family on his income
| alone was a product of the post-WWII economy. And he didn't
| really have to save for retirement, he had a defined-benefit
| pension (the kind that bankrupted many of their employers in
| subsequent years).
|
| The fact that today, people can feel pretty picky about the
| terms of the work they do is a sign that times are pretty good,
| despite what people may think and say.
| majesticglue wrote:
| this is the problem of believing things are "better".
|
| it's better in terms of people not having to do brutal
| physical labor.
|
| but it's worse it's ever been in terms of mental labor and
| mental health. For older folks they may not understand, and
| we as a society as a whole not understand, how much mental
| impact growing up with social media and endless amounts of
| stimulation has an affect on the entire generation. Social
| media is still incredibly new only several decades old, with
| every year getting more and more stimulating. We have no idea
| the consequences of such over a long term impact on mental
| health.
|
| You may think "just don't go on it" but it's a whole
| different story for younger kids, when everyone in your peer
| group is on social media. If your entire social network is
| dependent on social media, "just don't use social media"
| becomes incredibly difficult, and you become exposed to
| algorithms designed to ceaselessly deliver dopamine to your
| brain.
|
| On top of that work, has become a lot more and more mentally
| draining vs physically draining, making it way harder to
| factor how tiring it is. As someone who studied Neuroscience
| in undergrad, the biggest takeaway for me learning it was
| Neuroscience is still an extremely new science, and our
| understanding of the brain is very very limited, funnily
| enough despite how much advancements we made with ai. So
| understanding people's mental exhaustion is very difficult to
| measure.
|
| Endless mental dopamine delivery, combined with rapid
| technological pace requiring younger individuals to learn
| more and more, faster and faster,
|
| I argue, that "times are not as good" as people think they
| say. There is a different kind of pain involved from working
| long hours in more natural/stable but physically arduous
| tasks in the fields or whatnot, vs 8 hours in some confined
| space indoors of having to constantly learn something new of
| an ever-changing landscape of new technology without
| stability where you can be rendered useless in a span of a
| couple years (ie artists and ai image generation). The pain
| of being in some confined space is not new to the older
| generation, but it certainly is getting worse because of how
| faster automation is rendering certain knowledge and jobs
| useless much faster than it ever did.
| nradov wrote:
| How much time have you personally spent doing physically
| arduous tasks in the fields? Most soft and pampered
| Americans have no concept of how difficult that life is.
| Many agricultural workers end up with crippling injuries
| that cause chronic pain; look how many of them seek relief
| from alcohol and opioids.
|
| Social media may cause some problems but it won't leave me
| with a slipped vertebrae from bending over pulling weeds
| all day.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| > and to the extent it's true it's a pretty brief period of
| time historically.
|
| That is true, but understandably, people are not thrilled
| about the prospect of their conditions being worse than those
| their predecessors experienced.
|
| Especially not if, at the same time, they experience an
| uninterrupted period of economic growth and ever growing
| profit margins for the corporations they work for.
| treis wrote:
| It's not worse than their predecessors. That belief is a
| combination of looking at the past with rose colored
| glasses and extrapolating the issues of a handful of cities
| to the entire country.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| By objective standards, it isn't worse. Unfortunately,
| people don't care about objective standards, once they're
| not hungry cold and in pain they mostly derive their
| happiness from how well off they are compared to other
| people they encounter. By that metric more are worse off
| now.
| thethimble wrote:
| This is what we should be discussing - the blatant
| taking-for-granted of how good things objectively are in
| favor of a cultural delusion that we are oppressed.
|
| We are living in the best of times as measured by infant
| mortality, lifespans, literacy, poverty, and technology.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Depends on your frame of reference. In America, things
| have gotten worse in terms of lifespans, maternal
| health/mortality, and generally healthcare - when
| compared to 5 years ago. Partially due to the pandemic,
| but it remains to be seen if this is the start of a
| downward spiral or if things will recover soon.
|
| Psychologically, people seem to experience less hope and
| optimism that the future will be better. That is an
| important concept as well - regardless of whether you
| think people are delusional - their subjective
| perceptions still matter.
| DropInIn wrote:
| They robbed Peter to pay Paul and now they complain that
| they're facing the penalties....
|
| The ones who get to complain are the "Peters" whose futures
| were stolen so their parents could live high on the hog,
| no?
| momirlan wrote:
| i agree 100% , but what is the solution to that ? just raising
| wages en masse erodes the power of money and leads to
| inflation.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| The economic system seem to be more than capable of plunging
| itself into an inflation with stagnating wages already...and
| still rake in money left right and center.
| vsareto wrote:
| The housing market is probably permanently ruined for
| individual family buyers as long as they are competing with
| businesses/individuals buying multiple residential properties
| as investments.
|
| Subsidies or government backed contributions won't be the
| answer. Universities have a societal function and could
| conceivable operate without profit in mind, but they still
| chose to be greedy and act like for-profit businesses once
| government backed loans became a thing. The government tried
| to fix access to education by directly injecting cash via
| students instead of fixing it through the universities.
| Taking the same approach with home buyers would be a mistake
| because real estate obviously is meant to be for-profit and
| acts that way, so they will obviously raise prices as well.
|
| So you'll probably need to fuck over a lot of banks,
| investors, construction and real estate companies to get
| housing prices accessible to the wider population and change
| economic interactions in that market. I wouldn't count on
| that though - the government will probably choose to fix it
| through backed loans or subsidies again, if they do anything.
| hollerith wrote:
| It wouldn't be Hacker News without the constant stream
| economically-illiterate ideas for "improving" our lives in
| the comments!
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| Wouldn't be Hacker News without a constant stream of
| worthless single-sentence dismissals from insufferably
| smug self-professed Economics 101 graduates
| vsareto wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean? Could you explain?
|
| Does it really bother you someone could be ignorant of
| something here?
| hollerith wrote:
| >Could you explain?
|
| Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert
| that investors are ruining the housing market for
| individual family buyers without explaining how the
| housing market or one particular housing market is
| different from all the other markets were investors are
| helpful for bringing products and services to individuals
| and families. I am sympathetic for example to the
| argument that the housing market in Vancouver and perhaps
| other parts of Canada is being distorted to the detriment
| of families by wealthy Chinese wishing to establish a
| safe trove of assets outside the reach of the Chinese
| government. But there are more barriers to Chinese
| investors (and Chinese visitors) in the US than in
| Canada, and the US is 9 times more populous than Canada,
| so that makes any particular severity of distortion cause
| by Chinese investors at least 9 times less likely in the
| US than in China. Non-Chinese investors who have an
| accurate understanding of the other investments available
| to them, on the other hand, will tend to invest in
| housing only when they seriously expect the _demand_ for
| housing to increase-- "expect" as in actually willing to
| put money on the outcome, not merely to opine on the
| outcome in internet forums--so their investment helps out
| families on net by helping to increase the supply of
| housing to meet the increase in demand.
|
| >Does it really bother you someone could be ignorant of
| something here?
|
| I'm not sure I understand the question. If you'd phrase
| your comment as a question about economics, I wouldn't've
| replied like I did (with a complaint in the form of
| sarcasm). Most humans are vulnerable to misinformation if
| it is repeated sufficiently often by a sufficiently
| diverse set of writers or speakers, and certain
| economically-impossible or -implausible arguments are
| repeated often enough on HN that I consider it worth my
| time to try to counter.
| thunky wrote:
| > Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert
| that investors are ruining the housing market for
| individual family buyers
|
| So you don't think that adding demand without adding
| supply makes prices go up?
|
| Or you disagree that prices going up makes it harder for
| a family to buy a house?
|
| Edit: I see you added to your comment...
|
| > so their investment helps out families on net by
| helping to increase the supply of housing to meet the
| increase in demand
|
| And I still disagree, because this isn't what we see
| happening.
| hollerith wrote:
| The investors entering the market today will make prices
| go up today, but have the effect of reducing prices in
| the future (either or renters or buyers, depending on how
| to investor chooses to recover his investment).
| Investment in housing in past decades has reduced the
| price families need to pay now. There a zero investors in
| housing who are not out to either provide housing for
| rent or to eventually sell housing.
|
| >because this isn't what we see happening.
|
| What we see happening has alternative explanations, for
| example: there are millions of very-high-paying jobs in
| the Bay Area, which is course is generally a good thing,
| but it has the undesirable effect of making it hard or
| impossible for families that do not have one of these
| very-high-paying jobs to live here _because_ there are
| strong barriers to the creation of new housing, which
| forces the people with the high-paying jobs to spend more
| than want to spend on housing, which (happily for them)
| they are able to do (because of their high income) but
| which sadly makes it impossible or very onerous for
| lower-income families to live in the Bay Area. Most of
| these barriers are in the form of regulations imposed by
| local governments. Where I live for example in Marin
| County, growth is controlled (kept below the level
| investors as a group would prefer to have it at) in part
| by denying new housing projects the ability to connect to
| the Marin Municipal Water District, I have heard.
| thunky wrote:
| > The investors entering the market today will make
| prices go up today, but have the effect of reducing
| prices in the future
|
| The flaw in this argument is that it assumes markets are
| perfectly efficient, when in reality they are affected by
| several factors.
|
| > there are strong barriers to the creation of new
| housing
|
| Right, this is one of those factors.
|
| Others include land limitations, interest rates,
| government incentives and backstops.
|
| Plus even if you're right that decades from now housing
| will be more affordable that's of little use today.
| [deleted]
| hollerith wrote:
| I've been talking about the helpfulness or harmfulness of
| investors' buying housing, which your comment does not
| address AFAICT.
| vsareto wrote:
| >Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert
| that investors are ruining the housing market for
| individual family buyers without explaining how the
| housing market or one particular housing market is
| different from all the other markets were investors are
| helpful for bringing products and services to individuals
| and families.
|
| So the housing market is different because housing serves
| as shelter. Investors owning multiple properties are
| eschewing the actual utility of the asset and only
| focused on its value. From the perspective of a society
| wanting to house its citizens and improve quality of
| living, it's a very inefficient use of the asset and the
| land that its on.
|
| Because investors often have more cash than ordinary
| family buyers, they are able to outbid family buyers.
| This happens regularly and is one of the core reasons for
| the argument made initially.
|
| Because investors might buy and sell housing more often
| than a family who actually inhabits a home, this
| increases the money velocity in the market and drives
| prices upwards as more sales are made. Canada is a good
| example of this: https://laws-
| lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-25.2/page-1.html
|
| All of this means that some portion of the house's price
| is only based on speculation (other parts being land,
| construction quality, location, amenities, etc.). This
| means that investors that buy houses to speculate are
| simply increasing prices with no material improvement to
| the asset.
|
| If we were talking about stocks or assets-that-
| aren't-also-necessities, these reasons wouldn't be a
| problem.
| hollerith wrote:
| I'd argue that housing's being a necessity makes it even
| more important for there to be a reliable and predictable
| supply--something investors help with, IMO, except for
| unusual pathological cases.
|
| Chinese home buyers IIRC have a cultural aversion to
| having strangers living in any home they might want to
| live in themselves in the future. But with the except of
| the Chinese investors (which IMO cannot be numerous
| enough to distort the huge US housing market) investors
| either rent out or sell the housing they own, so I don't
| understand in what sense you think investors are
| "eschewing the actual utility of the asset": someone
| still gets to live in the house, even if it is not the
| owner of the house.
|
| >All of this means that some portion of the house's price
| is only based on speculation (other parts being land,
| construction quality, location, amenities, etc.).
|
| I concede that that can be an accurate statement (though
| it is not how I would put it) on a temporary basis, but I
| point out that when an investment causes _current_
| housing prices to increase, there will invariably be a
| time in the future when the same investment causes
| housing prices to be lower than they otherwise would be
| by approximately the same amount. And the I ask you, Why
| do you care more about situation of families now than
| about their situation in the future?
| vsareto wrote:
| Those investors could move to starting or investing in
| companies that produce housing and material for them, but
| get out of owning houses themselves. This keeps them
| close to the market they want to invest in.
|
| A common sentiment is that wages haven't kept up relative
| to costs of living, so we have problems now that need to
| be solved because we are already 'behind'. If that's
| true, it will further mean that families in the future
| will have less equity due to delays in purchasing a home
| relative to previous generations who could more easily
| afford necessities and luxuries.
|
| So ideally we should give a break to home buyers now to
| help compensate for that at the expense of larger
| investors and organizations who can frankly afford the
| loss (collectively). The alternative is to keep investors
| happy and rich with profits at the expense of the
| population's needs and financial trajectory.
| mostlylurks wrote:
| You could remove all the arcane laws, regulations, and zoning
| which make constructing new houses ludicrously expensive.
| Most people would be perfectly happy to live even in a shoddy
| log cabin built by them and their family if it meant they
| would could save those hundreds of thousands or even millions
| of dollars they would've spent otherwise to improve their
| lives in other ways. This alone could be enough to shave
| decades off the career of the average person.
|
| You could disallow corporate ownership of dwellings of any
| sort, and heavily tax ownership of more than two homes per
| family unit.
|
| You could provide significant tax benefits to lifestyles that
| approach self-sufficiency, such as people in rural areas that
| grow their own food.
|
| You could mandate a quota of completely remote workers for
| many industries, encouraging the diffusion of people and
| opportunities across the country, instead of everyone rushing
| to expensive cities in hopes of finding work.
| brookst wrote:
| > You could disallow corporate ownership of dwellings of
| any sort
|
| Does that mean no high density residential? I can't see how
| individuals build apartment buildings.
| jddj wrote:
| How do individuals end up owning apartments today?
| pstuart wrote:
| I thought it was the influx of new money printed, which we've
| done in the form of Quantitative Easing, multiple bail outs,
| etc.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Which mostly trickles up.
| mtsr wrote:
| It didn't even need to trickle up, it was exclusively
| handed out to the top on the assumption of "trickle down
| economy" being a real thing.
| syockit wrote:
| You print more money because you have to give out more
| money, whether if it's in the form of handouts or in the
| form of extra wages.
| pstuart wrote:
| Employers aren't printing up more money. Yes, labor costs
| going up impact profits but what about labor costs of
| management? That has gone up significantly:
|
| "From 1978 to 2021, CEO pay based on realized
| compensation grew by 1,460%, far outstripping S&P stock
| market growth (1,063%) and top 0.1% earnings growth
| (which was 385% between 1978 and 2020, according to the
| latest data available). In contrast, compensation of the
| typical worker grew by just 18.1% from 1978 to 2021"
|
| Source: https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-
| in-2021/#:~:text=Fro....
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Inflation can be combatted by taxing it out of the economy -
| the issue is _who_ do we tax. One should always tax the rich
| first - like robbing banks that 's where the money is
| bluGill wrote:
| The money is in the middle class though. Sure the rich have
| a bunch, but the middle class has far more. In real terms
| taxing the rich won't bring in enough money to count unless
| you redefine rich to cover most middle class.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| It seems like the primary consumer of our money is the
| artificial lack of housing inventory brought upon by the
| ability of folks to own more than one property.
|
| I suggest (and have suggested numerous times) that we
| disallow ownership of property for profit. Create a system
| that allows people to "buy" property short term through
| government loan structures that have very low interest rates
| and allows them to create an equity building mechanism early
| on. On paper it would have all the benefits of purchase with
| all of the benefits of leasing as well.
|
| The flood of new available property would absolutely crash
| our current economy, since it's so extended on property
| ownership, but we did it wrong and we need to correct.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| I think it's important to note that the good old days of a
| working man being able to support a family of five was only
| true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite
| countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history,
| it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours
| a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family.
| While some lament the loss of this golden age their
| grandparents experienced, a much greater number of people
| around the world have seen their living conditions improve
| markedly since the time of their grandparents.
|
| That doesn't take away from the point that ideally no one
| should have to work themselves to the bone just to afford a
| humble lifestyle, but if middle class people in developed
| countries are really asking for perspective, I think it's worth
| bearing their relative privilege in mind.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Honestly that's a valid criticism
|
| BUT
|
| I would point out the wealth distribution in our economy.
|
| If it was more equable would this luxurious lifestyle for all
| still be possible ?
| andruby wrote:
| Let's take a look at income (not wealth)
|
| The US has a GDP per capita of $80K, so if it were
| distributed equally, everyone would "get" $80K. Since in
| reality the distribution is very skewed a lot of people
| would earn more.
|
| Of course, that's if we artificially constrain this to the
| US. The world-wide GDP per capita is only $12K. So if we'd
| be really equitable with the whole world, we'd all have to
| make do with a lot less.
| Iulioh wrote:
| That is just math and does not account of what this would
| cause to the economy.
|
| Is the same old discourse, if poor people get more money
| they will put it back in the economy and consume it
| generating a bigger economy and better life quality for
| everyone.
|
| And gdp is kindaaaa useless as wealth pays an important
| role.
|
| Economic inequality in income grew since the 80' and
| that's simply a fact
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US has a GDP per capita of $80K, so if it were
| distributed equally, everyone would "get" $80K
|
| Pedantically, you actually want GNI, not GDP, here. (But
| they are close enough in practice for the US-and
| identical on a worldwide basis since there is no foreign
| income--that it doesn't materially change anything else
| in your comment.)
| hotdogscout wrote:
| This is my experience in Brazil.
|
| Also, wasn't this golden age in the US fueled by concentrated
| demand for industrial goods after the second world war?
| Without an unprecedented imbalance in the economy I cannot
| see this happening.
|
| Some people that hate imperialism also demand it's spoils
| back (?).
| coldtea wrote:
| > _I think it 's important to note that the good old days of
| a working man being able to support a family of five was only
| true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite
| countries. In most of the world, and for most of human
| history, it hasn't been the case that any single person
| working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle
| for a large family._
|
| Keyword "luxurious".
|
| People first and foremost want to be able to have a roof,
| food, some leisure time, and so on, not luxury.
|
| And people could have a lot of that for more than "a brief
| period of history in a handful of elite countries". Between
| common wrong tropes, movies, and ignorance of history, the
| past is hugely downplayed as to these aspects.
|
| The "industrial revolution" era of Marx and Dickens time,
| actually worsened (for the first 2 centuries or so) the
| working conditions and increased the working hours for huge
| swaths of the population. People had to be forced (via law,
| violence, and destruction of their prior livelihood) to go
| work in factories (and many fought hard for keeping their
| rural way of life).
| SergeAx wrote:
| Roof, food, clothes, furniture, mobile phone with internet
| plan, flat TV, streaming subscription...
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| How many streaming subscriptions do you need to forgo to
| have a down payment on a house? Could you please do the
| math?
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| A roof, food and leisure time are historically luxurious.
| Poverty is the natural default. Anything more than that
| requires a lot of hard work as a society, and has only been
| realized in the tiny sliver of humanity that is recent
| (last ~200 years) western society. Everywhere else and at
| all other times has been starvation, strife and constant
| work to subsist. And you die by 40 on average.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Studies of how remaining hunter/gatherer tribes around
| the world have/had been living suggests that's not really
| true - shelter, food and leisure time were almost always
| readily available. What wasn't was modern medical
| technology, which has been almost solely responsible for
| massively reducing deaths in childbirth and early infancy
| and giving us the average lifespans we enjoy today. Even
| among civilizations that founded around agriculture,
| there's little evidence that homelessness, starvation or
| lack of free time were the constant reality for the
| masses, even if there's no question what life they did
| have would be considered incredibly basic by modern
| developed-world standards.
| mjparrott wrote:
| There were a lot of people working very hard in the 50s and
| 60s, not having luxurious lifestyles. My grandparents had 6
| kids on a farm because they all had to work to make ends
| meet, and lived in a modest farm house. They grew their own
| food, and didn't have what some would describe as 'luxury'.
| My other grandparents had a 1000 square foot home with 5 boys
| in it. Both parents worked and a vacation consisted of
| driving 4 hours to a nearby big city once a year, not going
| to Machu Picchu or the Amalfi Coast.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| [flagged]
| gmadsen wrote:
| its also the case that people want different things. Even if
| all work could be remote, there will still be people that
| will pay most of their income to live in NYC or SF, because
| when you are living in those places you are not just paying
| for a roof over your head. You are getting opportunities
| professionally and culturally that do not exist elsewhere
| phpisthebest wrote:
| All of that is true, even in the US. It is a false narrative
| that the "middle class is collapsing" in the US
|
| There is a very narrow band, and very specific regions in the
| US where that is true unfortunately for the the rest of us
| the people and regions where this is the reality those people
| hold outsized control over the media, and government so it
| gives the appearance it is a universal reality. The World Is
| Becoming a Better Place[1]
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J5s6aZCPSg
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| You talk about the "relative privilege" of middle class
| people in developed countries as though the cause for their
| declining standard of living was other people having more, as
| if their "slice of pie" was being cut in pieces and given
| away. That's not how economic growth works. When China and
| India grow, the total productive power of the world economy
| grows. So now the world ought to be able to support
| "luxurious" standards of living for _more_ people, but in
| fact we see _fewer_ people enjoying such lives. So where 's
| the output of all our work going, eh?
| muro wrote:
| First it was "support a family of five", then "luxurious
| lifestyle" then "humble lifestyle". Except for the
| "luxurious" one, it was possible pretty much at any time in
| human history, including now.
| alisonatwork wrote:
| The post I am responding to mentioned providing a family of
| five with a self-owned house, a car, a couple of vacations
| per year and a comfortable retirement. To many people
| around the world - still today - that would be considered a
| luxurious lifestyle.
|
| You are right that it's possible for one person to support
| a family. For most people working in the tech industry here
| on HN they could probably figure out a way to do it. But is
| it realistic for all families everywhere to be able to
| support themselves with just a single worker? If it were so
| simple to achieve, we would not see child labor. We would
| not see any poverty at all. Clearly we are not yet at the
| point as a species where we can enjoy a post-scarcity or
| job-free utopia. We could certainly be doing a lot more to
| work towards that than we are, though, and I think that's a
| more interesting point of discussion than looking back
| through rose-tinted glasses on a few decades of post-WW2
| America.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > But is it realistic for all families everywhere to be
| able to support themselves with just a single worker?
|
| Yes, because a single worker today is maybe fifty or a
| hundred times more productive than a worker in the past,
| thanks to modern equipment.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I gather average productivity growth in most developed
| countries has been around 2 or 2.5% for the past 60 or so
| years, working out to at best 3.5 times what it was in
| the 50s or 60s. Which still makes it reasonable to ask
| why it's not feasible today for a single income to be
| sufficient to support a mortgage on a typical family home
| in the way it was in those times. What I'd like to know
| is in what cities around the world has housing _not_
| become so unaffordable in that period...
| bluGill wrote:
| The post you are responding to didn't have Starbucks
| coffee every day, did have internet, cable tv,
| subscriptions to streaming services, a computer with a
| monthly subscription in every pocket. They didn't even
| have that option.
|
| The above is just a short list. Live like 1955 and you
| can support a family of 5 with, a car, vacations every
| year and a nice retirement. You won't have many of the
| other luxuries people enjoy today. If you don't want to
| that us fine, but don't say it can't be done.
| fragmede wrote:
| No you can't. What does Internet and a computer cost next
| to rent and going college? Let's say $2,000 for a really
| nice laptop and another $1,800 for 3 years of Internet
| access (@ $50/month), round to $4k? Vs $40k, easy, for
| college?
|
| Before there was starbucks there was a local cafe and
| coffee shop, before the Internet there were newspapers
| and magazines to pay for.
|
| It can't be done. We've lost something. We have also
| gained things. don't get me wrong, I _like_ having the
| Internet.
|
| If only I could give up Hulu and Netflix, I could afford
| to go back to college and go on vacation every year? Let
| me guess, I also just need to eat less avocado toast and
| I'll be able to afford the downpayment on a house.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Okay, so do the math. How many Starbucks coffees should I
| abstain from to afford a home?
| wizofaus wrote:
| I wouldn't worry too much about the coffee, everyone
| knows it's avocado toast that really destroys your chance
| of affording housing.
| Tycho wrote:
| Is that actually true? Subscriptions PS30 pm Starbucks
| PS40 pm Phone contract PS20 pm ISP PS30 pm
|
| That's PS120 pm, or PS1440 annually. Doesn't seem like it
| would make that much of a dent. Probably the number one
| thing you'd need to do is cut down on food costs, which
| is doable, to be fair, as it's quite easy to spend 10x or
| 100x more than what you need to stay fed.
| bluGill wrote:
| It all adds up. If you only have a Starbucks on special
| occasions it isn't much, but some people have daily
| habits. Likewise a lot of people have the most expensive
| cable plan which is a lot more money. Phone plans can
| also get a lot more expensive if you but top of the line
| phones every couple years.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Ok, could you do the math then? Try to see how many
| Starbucks coffees you have to forgo to afford a down
| payment at a median house in the US.
| muro wrote:
| Sorry for the pedantry, but 1 coffee at Starbucks per day
| is closer to 120pm alone.
| Tycho wrote:
| I was thinking more what would a typical Starbucks
| regular spend in a month. Like I don't think they would
| but a PS4 drink every day.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _If it were so simple to achieve, we would not see child
| labor._
|
| You have it backwards. We wouldn't see any child labor if
| employers weren't trying to cut corners on wages while
| the people at the top of the economic pyramid rake in
| billions. Ownership is _way_ overcompensated in this
| society, most owners /CEOs do _not_ provide that much
| value and are just collecting economic rents because they
| occupy a position in social /economic networks with high
| bridging centrality coefficients. It may involve some
| work to get there, but culture, luck, and marketing also
| have a lot to do with it too.
|
| https://cse.buffalo.edu/tech-reports/2006-05.pdf
| throwaway47290 wrote:
| Are you a CEO? If not when are you becoming a CEO to rake
| in billions then? It ought to be easy since they don't do
| much according to you. They get compensated a lot because
| it is a lot of responsibility and stress.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Why doesn't the prime minister of UK become the king of
| Britain, even though it's less work for way more luxury?
|
| (In case you can't reason your way into it, some
| positions are gained through nonzero amount of luck
| rather than pure "hard work and grit" or whatever boomer
| nonsense.)
| kaashif wrote:
| It is funny, people somehow think that a momentary episode of
| utter economic dominance after all other economic powers had
| been bombed into dust should be the norm.
|
| And the 50s and 60s weren't that great for e.g. black people
| or women in the US either.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| This point of view is simply not true. The return on labour
| was massively much higher for previous generations outside
| of the US as well, including in countries bombed into dust.
|
| Educate yourself on history, there is a world outside the
| United States. There are struggles that have nothing to do
| with race relations in the United States.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _And the 50s and 60s weren 't that great for e.g. black
| people or women in the US either._
|
| This argument is repeated a lot anytime someone mentions
| the working conditions in the 50s/60s, but how is it any
| relevant? Is there some natural law that says that
| mistreatment of blacks for example have to always go hand
| in hand with livable wages? And that anybody that likes the
| latter from the 50s/60s must also want the former?
| optimalsolver wrote:
| People that pine for the 50s are def suspicious.
| bt4u wrote:
| [dead]
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, and anybody who disagrees is literally Hitler. The
| present is better in all aspects compared to any past.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| There are enormous amounts of study on the concept that
| the above-average lifestyle enjoyed at that specific
| point in history by white men was built on the
| exploitation of other groups. Frequently, people who name
| that specific point in time as the model for how they
| would like the world to be are simply unaware of this
| tradeoff and have no idea that simply reverting society
| to that point would make it _worse_ for some groups -
| this is why it gets mentioned when someone says "let's
| go back to those good times", to educate these people.
| Less frequently, they already know this and simply don't
| care, and it's always useful to give this group an
| opportunity to be explicit about their priorities.
| coldtea wrote:
| The "above-average lifestyle enjoyed at that specific
| point in history" came in the US because Europe was
| destroyed in WWII, and they got to easily be the world's
| producer and exporter and dictator of terms for decades.
| That plus strong unions and growing economy. And the tide
| also lifted black people with it, that's the era when the
| civil rights progress was made, for example.
|
| Oh, and Europe also ended up enjoying a similar stability
| and uplifting economy a few decades later, as the economy
| recovered there too, without having those other groups to
| exploit, and even for countries which lost their colonies
| the decades prior.
|
| The economic rise since the 60s though (in productivity,
| GDP etc) hasn't translated to similar stability, because
| the unions were left to die, and neoliberal politics and
| attitudes became the norm, while the banks and
| capitalists got a free pass to anything they wanted.
|
| > _Less frequently, they already know this and simply don
| 't care, and it's always useful to give this group an
| opportunity to be explicit about their priorities._
|
| I think it's more that people making your argument are
| with the side of capitalists, and you want to make a
| bogus argument as if livable wages and job prospects are
| racist and only feasible when combined with exploitation,
| to absolve the current neoliberal order as "the best
| possible world". So they weaselly mark anybody pointing
| to those things as pinning for the rasist aspects of
| 1950s/60s too.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| Gimme a good argument why good conditions should diminish,
| or deteriorate, despite the fact that workforce
| productivity, as well as corporate margins, have been
| growing steadily ever since.
| kaashif wrote:
| I don't know whether they should or not, but it's clear
| that there was a very unusual set of conditions and it is
| unsurprising it didn't last forever, right or wrong.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| On the contrary, it is VERY surprising these conditions
| didn't last, given that productivity only ever increased
| since then.
|
| If favorable, but short lived conditions were behind this
| sudden change, then it would affect the entire economic
| system, not just the workforce.
|
| How well people are off is a function of how many
| resources there are to go around. Since the end of WWII,
| these resources only ever increased. So did worker
| productivity, aka. the amount of resources produced per
| worker. So if people are worse off now, that leads to the
| very easy deduction that the fault lies in how these
| resources are distributed, not with a scarcity of the
| resources themselves.
|
| Or to put this another way:
|
| If the previously better conditions were just a fluke
| that couldn't be expected to last, how come that
| corporations seem to rake in ever more money as time goes
| on?
| fragmede wrote:
| The Roman Empire's prosperity as the spoils of war are
| evident even to newest student of history. Why then is it
| surprising that the US also had some prosperity thanks to
| winning wars, and that there is none of that to be had if
| there aren't wars being won? Why is it expected that
| prosperity should last?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > How well people are off is a function of how many
| resources there are to go around. Since the end of WWII,
| these resources only ever increased.
|
| This is a very US-centric view.
|
| Demand for resources across the world has increased
| dramatically as everyone's living standard increased.
|
| The situation isn't going to make sense if you continue
| to ignore the rest of the world and try to understand the
| United States as if we lived in a perfectly isolated
| bubble.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| > Demand for resources across the world has increased
| dramatically as everyone's living standard increased.
|
| As has productivity.
| jl6 wrote:
| It was only ever good conditions _for some_. If wealth
| redistributes faster than wealth grows, those _some_ will
| experience loss while society at large experiences net
| gain.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| > If wealth redistributes faster than wealth grows
|
| And can we see this in any dataset, that the post-WW2
| boom eventually gave more away in charity than it
| produced?
| pokepim wrote:
| [dead]
| SideQuark wrote:
| Good conditions didn't diminish. People now buy vastly
| bigger and more things. Want to live on one salary like a
| 1950 person, with 1950 level goods, you can.
|
| Also more classes of people now have much better things:
| women, minorities.
|
| Labor is not the only input to productivity, so there is
| zero reason labor rewards should match productivity. As
| capital expenses increased to obtain modern productivity
| gains, the reward should go towards capital, which
| enabled purchase of upgrading tooling. Also as people
| demanded more rights and benefits, some is taken from
| wages. When you track total cost to employ, which is what
| an employer pays to have an employee, you can see all the
| gains. BLS tracks this and many other related variables
| (like wages, total remuneration, and a host of other
| costs and benefits employees have gained over the
| decades.)
|
| And corporate margins are pretty much the same as ever,
| net profit ~10% of revenue, since time immemorial. That
| 10% is what provides cushion so businesses don't implode
| every hiccup, leaving lots unemployed. [1] has some
| 1950-now data. There's plenty more places to find more.
| Fairly constant profit is why stock returns have averaged
| what they did over 100+ years. If now had vastly more
| profitable companies, it would have vastly increased
| returns.
|
| [1] https://cdn.pficdn.com/cms/pgim-fixed-
| income/sites/default/f...
| Aurornis wrote:
| If you look at average living conditions across the
| world, they did actually increase dramatically!
|
| This is what people miss about the conversation: That
| temporary period of brief prosperity was partially due to
| some of the relative differences across the world.
| Raising living standards across the world came at a small
| price of popping that bubble.
|
| Although median disposable income of Americans is still
| significantly higher than the rest of the world.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| It's odd that this is the conversation when there was an
| extremely high top end tax and the government was taking
| that money and turning it into infrastructure and jobs.
|
| We saw this dream start to disappear as we un did those
| things in the name of freedom.
|
| Now, we produce more per capita than we ever did before
| and we get less of that pie as wages have stagnated and
| taxes go to corporate hand outs and entitlements
| (healthcare and social security), which are more or less
| a corporate hand out since they no longer provide
| pensions for people that work a life time for them.
|
| It's unclear to me why the conversation is centering
| better standards of living elsewhere as if we haven't
| added a couple billion people/consumers to the world in
| that time.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| > And the 50s and 60s weren't that great for e.g. black
| people or women in the US either.
|
| This is the usual gambit: "Back when you had it good, other
| people were oppressed -- so why should you have anything
| good now?" It's a simple trick to make people put their
| tails between their legs and shut up. And it's insidious,
| because it reinforces the idea that people _are_ in a zero-
| sum struggle. How the hell can you develop any kind of
| productive politics if that 's the underlying worldview?
| The only beneficiaries are the bosses who want everyone to
| do what they're told and stop making demands for
| "problematic" things like 40-hour workweeks.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >plus save enough to retire comfortably
|
| Individual saving for retirement was cooked up in the 80s. You
| used to get your pension and be set.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you were lucky. Many did not get a pension at all though.
| And many others had a pension that went bankrupt so they go
| nothing. The 1980s (starting before then) were reforms on a
| system that wasn't working well for many.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Time will tell whether the individual solution works
| better. I suspect 401k saving will not provide many people
| a stable retirement.
| bluGill wrote:
| Unfortunately only about a third if Americans have a
| 401k, if we subtract those young it gets a little better
| (the young can pay off student loans then redirect that
| money to retirement, at least in theory), but still
| almost half of Americans don't have one.
|
| I don't know how to find numbers, but I think that is
| better than pensions every were. It still isn't very good
| though.
| SirMaster wrote:
| Why not?
|
| At 35 i've already got ~500K in my 401K.
|
| I guess it won't work for people not saving enough into
| it and not actively managing their fund allocations over
| the years.
| jlokier wrote:
| _> Why not?_
|
| You are relatively well paid. Most people in the US
| received _total_ less than $500k cumulative post-tax
| income by 35. Median incomes don 't reach that level.
| Here are median personal income figures over the last 17
| years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_t
| he_United_...
|
| Those are aggregated across age, and younger people tend
| to earn less, so the median total income working 18 to 35
| will be lower than if you add up the age-independent
| figures. But even if that weren't true, and if people
| could miraculously save 100% of everything for 17 years,
| live on nothing but air and get totally free housing,
| most people still wouldn't have seen 500k by 35.
|
| As well, necessary expenses (housing, food, transport
| etc) take up a higher proportion of their income than
| yours, because of lower income while necessary expenses
| don't decrease proportionately. So the proportion they
| can realistically save is lower than yours. For many it's
| a struggle to save anything, but even for those who can
| and are willing to sacrifice a lot, $500k by 35 is dream
| money.
|
| Active fund management are not enough to make up the
| difference. Most people if they want $500k in a 401k by
| 35, have to earn significantly more than they actually
| do. Of course if everyone did that, prices would rise to
| compensate and $500k in the 401k wouldn't be worth as
| much.
| SirMaster wrote:
| I'm not sure I am necessarily paid all _that_ well
| honestly.
|
| I started at 50K out of college and am still not quite to
| 100K a year yet.
|
| All I have done is maxed out my 401K every year since
| 2010, and put the money into low-cost index funds.
|
| ~60% of the balance is from principal alone and the ther
| 40% is from the stock growth.
| bbarn wrote:
| I have heard the argument that a negative effect of the post
| WW2 "feminist" movement (by that I mean women in the work
| force) has had the long term effect of causing prices to simply
| adjust to the dual income household, to the point that now it
| is a necessity. It is a privileged family today that can afford
| to live comfortably on only one salary.
| fullshark wrote:
| Elizabeth Warren made that exact argument.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-
| Parents-...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Theres another level to this going on in certain places too.
| Its not enough to have both partners working. Now in places
| like the bay area if you want to be competitive in the
| housing market, both partners have to be working high income
| jobs not just working at all. Even if you have a great title,
| if your partner doesnt, you will be lapped by people who have
| vastly more buying power than either of you can ever muster
| together.
|
| I wonder if this creates some serious perverse incentives in
| the dating scene in these parts of the country. Like people
| who understand this economic situation and unfortunately
| write off what might have been great partners because their
| line of work will never afford the standards of living their
| dual high income peers are able to achieve.
| nradov wrote:
| The best thing that most younger people in the Bay Area can
| do to improve their quality of life is to move somewhere
| else. Decades of bad government and an influx of grifters
| have eroded the advantages it once had. You might take a
| temporary income hit by leaving but most regular workers
| will end up better off in the long run.
|
| We can argue about what should be done to improve the
| situation in the Bay Area, but realistically any major
| changes will take decades to work through the political
| process. That's going to be too slow to matter for any
| younger people who are trying to build a decent life right
| now.
|
| As for dating, the skewed gender ratio in "Man Jose" also
| makes things difficult in a way that transcends economics.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| > makes things difficult
|
| for who?
| [deleted]
| vsareto wrote:
| People have been choosing partners for money since forever,
| that's certainly not a new thing
| bluGill wrote:
| Rust belt cities are actually pretty nice, and you can
| escape that rat race. Maybe you don't want to live there,
| but they are nice places.
| paulmd wrote:
| Move to East Palestine or Pontiac MI and wait for this
| month's chemical spill to find you?
| lokar wrote:
| I think piketty would disagree. Productivity per worker has
| gone up but the share of profits going to workers has gone
| down. This is not some kind of inflation driven by scarcity.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The ultra wealthy hired the best to win a game of financial
| manipulation that the rest of us didn't even know was being
| played.
|
| The median salary would be six figure if the share of
| productivity gains was distributed like it was in 1970.
| adrianN wrote:
| Is the average salary six figures?
| 93po wrote:
| No
| eek2121 wrote:
| Salary != Wealth.
|
| There are billionaires that don't make a single penny a
| year, and broke folks pulling in 6-7 figures.
|
| Looking at some type of combination of income + net worth
| is probably better in most cases.
|
| That being said, most folks in the US make less than
| $100,000/year and have less than a $100,000 net worth.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| That's sort of a tricky question since most of the income
| and wealth of the upper crust of modern society is not
| expressed as a salary. The simple answer is no, but the
| fact that it's such a complex answer is itself indicative
| of a systemic problem.
| andruby wrote:
| GDP per capita in the US is $80K [wikipedia]
|
| I assume it includes everyone regardless of age, so the
| average salary when only considering people working if
| probably $100K or above
| stevezsa8 wrote:
| I think focussing on salary alone isn't a great strategy.
|
| If you doubled everyone's salary, the gain would almost
| certainly be absorbed by real estate or some other
| necessity.
|
| Regulations on maximum working hours, access to fair
| housing, education, healthcare etc might work better.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| I agree with you that gains in income will be absorbed.
|
| Providers of necessities can demand large portions of
| people's income due to lack of supply. It's a basic
| monopoly. We see that in real estate, health care,
| education, elderly and child care.
|
| They can't charge endlessly because at some point people
| are priced out. Homelessness, lack of education, delaying
| medical care until an emergency and relying on laws that
| non-payers cannot be denied treatment.
|
| But they can travel up the supply demand curve and take
| from everybody that can still afford it, because the
| supply is constrained. TVs are cheap, because of
| competition from overseas. Land or health care prices are
| not.
| andruby wrote:
| GDP per capita is $80K in the US.
|
| I suspect this includes people of all ages, so if we
| distribute this only to working age, that's probably
| close to $100K (six figures)
| jiveturkey wrote:
| GDP != salary.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-
| by-ag...
|
| median wage at 45yo (the peak) is $64k.
| polynomial wrote:
| Of course not, it's driven by ability to pay.
|
| And while I'm not a professional economist it does seem
| that you are correct in that demand-pull based inflation
| (cost of goods) tends to only happen in periods of economic
| expansion, while cost-push inflation (size of money supply)
| tends to be the driver in slower times.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Except that with machines doing more of the on the job
| labor at the same time that women are entering the work
| force en-mass, there was more competition for fewer jobs
| which depressed wages.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| There is always an infinite amount of jobs. Whenever too
| few people hoard too much wealth is when economic
| activity slows down and some jobs are no longer worth
| doing.
| usrbinbash wrote:
| That argument, like all arguments that somehow equate wages
| with inflation, would hold water if the productivity of the
| workforce was constant.
|
| We know that it isn't. Productivity of the workforce is ever
| increasing. The generated wealth simply doesn't make it to
| the workforce.
| kaashif wrote:
| > The generated wealth simply doesn't make it to the
| workforce.
|
| Some of it does - real wages in the US are higher than in
| the past: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
| thedragonline wrote:
| Let me contextualize that "some" for you:
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17rEg
|
| Real wages have effectively flat-lined over the past 50+
| years.
| Levitz wrote:
| Doesn't it?
|
| And I don't, by any measure, mean that _all of it does_ ,
| but nowadays we have luxuries we simply didn't have before,
| are these not fruits of that increased productivity?
| usrbinbash wrote:
| > but nowadays we have luxuries
|
| Who's we?
|
| I know I am living a privileged comfortable life, yes. I
| am certain many people in my chosen profession as a
| software dev do.
|
| But I also know that there are alot more people
| struggling to provide basic necessities for their
| families, despite working 40+h per week. And I am not
| talking about cellphones here. I am talking about a roof
| over ones head, clothes on ones back, food on the table
| and medical services.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| For this theory to be correct you'd need the total work hours
| being provided to employers to have doubled accordingly.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Why put feminist between quotes?
| gagged_s_poster wrote:
| [flagged]
| supertrope wrote:
| Women entering the formal workplace and gradually more and
| more jobs becoming available to both genders has also
| inflated traditionally "female" occupations like teachers,
| nurses, and childcare. When someone who could have trained as
| a lawyer had to instead become a teacher that kept teacher
| salaries lower. Nuns serving as teachers made Catholic
| schools affordable. Now many Catholic schools have a one two
| punch of the economic opportunity cost of becoming a nun
| being higher than ever and declining enrollment.
| eggy wrote:
| Privileged? I worked very hard to get that point of
| "privileged" to have had two single-job families. In the
| beginning I worked at different jobs out of necessity and in
| part, to see what suited me and what suited the work. I
| learned many different skills that helped me in my personal
| life - construction, housebuilding, coding (since 1978),
| electronics, welding, machining, technical diving, industrial
| rope access, organizational risk management, and leading
| large teams on world-class, one-of-a-kind projects. I was
| raised just below or at the poverty level.
|
| I believe the level of lifestyle you may want precludes you
| from making a single-income household. I am very content with
| few things even when the times are good. A hike or walk with
| the family outside doesn't cost much unless you're shopping
| and eating out all the time while sipping $5 lattes. Plus
| childcare would cost a pretty significant chunk of rhe second
| household income, so why not let one parent be with the kids
| fulltime?
| xeromal wrote:
| I wouldn't take the word privileged personally.
| tjr225 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| That would only make sense if productivity divided by half.
|
| On the other hand, people's requirements have simply inflated
| to much higher standards, while technology semi-automated
| some of the housekeeping stuff - washing clothes, dishes,
| making food, heating, cleaning.
| paintman252 wrote:
| "If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the
| necessities, then there is technically no difference between
| working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an
| indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which
| in that case is the freedom to decide between working and
| living on the streets."
|
| What an incredibly privileged perspective. Do you think that
| actual indentured servants would agree with you on this?
| nine_zeros wrote:
| This. I don't understand why this is up for debate. Working
| hard does not buy a house, a convenient apartment, a promotion
| to higher income, equity at low prices, a lifestyle where one
| can find partners and settle down, kids, kids education.
|
| We are talking about the basics, not avocado toast or
| international vacations.
|
| The juice just ain't worth the squeeze in America any longer.
| rdudek wrote:
| It's not up for debate. The ruling class is making it a valid
| point without offering a solution to the problem. It's a lot
| easier to whine and complain versus actually tackling the
| issues at hand.
| BirAdam wrote:
| I would make two observations here. First, costs are up. Not
| just housing and school, but also cars. Additionally, people
| are required to have smart phones. Most clothing is of poor
| quality and will need to be repurchased. Food is of poor
| quality if it's cheap and therefore health costs get higher.
|
| Second, in a low interest rate environment, any crazy idea
| gets funding. This squanders time and resources as many bad
| ideas get funded which would otherwise be laughed away. The
| low interest rates also encourage monetary inflation which
| first pushes up asset class prices, and later filters into
| retail prices. Wages are always the last segment to see price
| rises as pressure must be put on businesses to raise the
| price of labor. Essentially, when a company cannot get
| employees they will begin raising pay for open positions or
| they will go out of business. This pressure takes time to
| build. We see it now in fast food and groceries, and we saw
| it some time ago in the blue collar trades.
|
| The major fix for this is higher interest rates...
| significantly higher. People would need to be willing to
| accept a slower growth rate in exchange for more predictable
| and more stable long term growth.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > The major fix for this is higher interest rates...
| significantly higher. People would need to be willing to
| accept a slower growth rate in exchange for more
| predictable and more stable long term growth.
|
| And the upper rungs of corporations will have to accept
| lower compensation.
| qaq wrote:
| Or maybe people need to start taking responsibility for their
| choices and stop blaming the world. The average Owner Operator
| Truck Driver salary in California is $179,185 as of June 26,
| 2023, but the range typically falls between $160,471 and
| $200,083. So if you have 100K on a degree and can't afford
| anything maybe it's kindah on you?
| throw9away6 wrote:
| You just need to own a million dollar truck, have no life and
| be at risk of bankruptcy if the economy goes wrong. Also work
| 12-14 hrs and get paid for 8.
| qaq wrote:
| Median semi price is 150K
| supertrope wrote:
| Is that gross revenue before paying for diesel, the loan on
| the truck, the employer side of Social Security tax, health
| insurance? If it's as simple as you say to earn $160K-$180K
| why isn't everyone doing it? In an efficient market arbitrage
| opportunities usually close quickly.
| logifail wrote:
| > If it's as simple as you say to earn $160K-$180K why
| isn't everyone doing it?
|
| It might be 'simple' in the sense of 'straightforward', but
| not in the sense of 'easy'.
|
| Hard work plus long hours won't appeal to everyone. Self-
| employment might not be everyone's cup of tea either.
| qaq wrote:
| Because it's really hard job?
| randomdata wrote:
| _> why isn't everyone doing it?_
|
| Assuming the figures are accurate, perhaps because most
| everyone doesn't want to? Some love it, but sitting in a
| truck day in, day out, far from civilization while only
| infrequently coming back home to see your family is not for
| most.
|
| You could say the same about programming. Any five year old
| can program, but most people have absolutely no desire to
| do it, thus it takes a whole whack load of money to
| convince the general population into the industry. The HN
| crowd who see it as a fun hobby, who like to spend their
| evenings writing open source code for free, are outliers.
| brazzy wrote:
| >And people don't like being indentured servants. History
| should have made that clear by now.
|
| History has also made it clear that people can be made to
| endure living conditions they don't like or a very long time.
|
| I submit that, historically, life for the common people was
| far, far more often barely tolerable or even intolerable, than
| agreeable.
|
| We like to hear about peasant and slave revolts in history
| classes, but overall those were few and far between.
| afpx wrote:
| A lot of people echoing each other online isn't much of a
| revolt, either.
| welshwelsh wrote:
| A working man can still support a family of five, buy a house,
| a car and a vacation once or twice a year. He just needs to be
| realistic.
|
| House: you can still find houses with plenty of room for
| ~$100k. It just needs to be in an affordable area: think
| McKeesport, not San Francisco.
|
| Car: for $5k you can get a 2005 Ford Focus or Honda Civic.
| They're reliable cars that will get you from A to B perfectly
| fine, easy to repair and fuel efficient.
|
| Education: a Computer Science degree from WGU costs $18k for
| the average student, and can be as low as $4k if you
| accelerate.
|
| Career: plenty of remote software jobs paying above $100k,
| which can fund a good life in most of the US.
|
| I get it though, the average person wants a nice house in a
| wealthy area with good schools and low crime and two new cars
| and gets a degree from a school they can't afford in a field
| without high paying jobs, and they cannot even code. That's
| completely their fault, no sympathy from me.
|
| For those people, there's an easy solution: just don't have
| kids. Kids are crazy expensive, and not required for a good
| life.
|
| I hope what you say is true- mass retirements followed by a
| plummeting birthrate. We surely do not need so many people,
| when the overwhelming majority are useless. Robots will be here
| soon anyway to replace most of the workforce
| pram wrote:
| Now this is some "folksy wisdom"
| mstipetic wrote:
| A society that views children as cost has things very
| backwards. They are the prize and the whole point of this
| game.
| nradov wrote:
| Progress on robotics has been extremely slow. I doubt that we
| will see a robot that can repair a broken air conditioner in
| our lifetimes.
|
| But I agree that a lot of the whining is due to expectations
| that are decoupled from reality. A recent survey of college
| students showed that they expected to earn an average
| starting salary of $103K. Most are in for a rude awakening.
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2022/05.
| ..
| bt4u wrote:
| [dead]
| monsieurbanana wrote:
| You forgot those damn avocado toasts
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > For those people, there's an easy solution: just don't have
| kids
|
| I think most people have started to notice that this is the
| actual purpose of all these insane policies against workers
| in the industrialized world. Every vise imaginable is being
| used to squeeze young people. From rent and real estate
| extortion, taxes and tributes, to inflation. Then the
| solution given to them is "Oh just don't have children. You
| don't deserve to procreate since you have to keep working for
| us to be comfortable."
|
| There is another word for the kind of policy being supported
| by you.
| benreesman wrote:
| You're going to get a bunch of static because of the
| objectivist leanings of all the "temporarily impoverished tech
| billionaires" on HN and pg's rare miss of an essay about the
| scarce reagents of the United States manufacturing economy
| during the Cold War.
|
| But you're fundamentally right. It's really easy to manipulate
| indices like the CPI (and oh boy do they have some interesting
| ideas about what people need in life), and it's really easy to
| exploit summary statistics like the arithmetic mean to drag
| "average standard of living" metrics around with a few
| categories of goods (mostly consumer electronics) to push the
| absurd notion that anyone outside the investor class is doing
| as well as they were 10, 20, 30, 40, ... years ago.
|
| The United States burns 45% of its corn and smaller but still
| ridiculous percentages of its other big agricultural outputs as
| ethanol at a net disaster on carbon emissions. We let poor and
| homeless people interact with courts and ERs in vast numbers
| who need housing assistance, basic medical care, and
| _sometimes_ substance abuse treatment at (people debate this
| exact number) somewhere in the hand-wave 10-100x range of a
| markup. Cops and judges and the amortized cost of lawsuits
| against police departments and ER doctors and ER nurses and ER
| equipment have a cost structure closer to a military than
| cheap, tax-subsidized housing and registered nurses.
|
| The United States has absurd surpluses of arable land,
| exploitable energy, deep-water harbor capacity, riverine
| transport capacity, exploitable mineral resources, _highly
| desirable and massively under exploited coastal real estate_ ,
| you name it, it's easier to list things that are in any way
| intrinsically scarce here...Coltan maybe?
|
| The United States is in a position unique in history in which
| its sovereign debt is denominated in its own currency _and_
| that currency is the world's reserve currency and that
| sovereign debt is the "risk-free return" r-nought embraced by
| modern global finance. This means that we can tailor the money
| supply _exactly_ to the level of productivity that it's used to
| represent, which means that being a politician or economic
| regulator is as easy of a job (if your goal is the public
| welfare) as it definitionally can be.
|
| The United States is basically the only developed nation with
| no intrinsic demographic challenges (the ones that are ravaging
| all the other developed nations) because there is a seeming
| boundless supply of (statistically) young, law-abiding,
| productive people who still have kids wanting to immigrate here
| across a porous land border.
|
| Scarcity or want of really any kind is a very, very, very
| expensive "luxury" (it's not quite a Veblen good but it's
| certainly conspicuous consumption) that we as a society seem
| prepared to spend whatever it takes to get.
|
| Once you strip the paint jobs off of either Foucault-style
| postmodernism or Randian objectivism (a challenge that Noam
| Chomsky describes as a real feat of linguistic manipulation)
| you're left with effectively the same actionable value system
| of there being 2 kinds of people in this world: for the lefty
| kleptocrats the individual is robbed of agency and identity
| because they are the product of constructed forces external to
| them (I mean, except for _us_ of course), for the righty
| kleptocrats the individual is robbed of agency and identity
| because they aren't smart or motivated enough to invent Reardon
| Metal and therefore insignificant (I mean, except for _us_ , of
| course).
|
| The action item that falls out is the same in both cases: drive
| capture to keep the "right people" running things.
|
| The result is the same in both cases: if you do a halfway
| honest plot of productivity and genuine standard of living
| against the decades, you get divergent lines that seem to be
| training for an Olympic gymnastics qualification.
|
| The most dangerous man in the world isn't a Navy SEAL or a
| Zeta, the most dangerous man in the world is a man with nothing
| to lose, which is why we're up to 4 mass shootings a day (by
| Mother Jones's definition but pick one), which is per-capita
| more than Syria.
|
| This little brochure is a bit hand-wavy on the math and takes a
| bit of poetic license, it's not meant to be the book that
| someone needs to write about this. So it'll be a trivial
| exercise to pick it apart in that god-awful ">"-prefixed bad-
| faith style, but it's not going to be a fundamental
| intellectual or epistemological or ethical error that's going
| to motivate people to do so, it's that this is not a
| comfortable thing to see in the mirror.
| sebastos wrote:
| I'll bite:
|
| > The action item that falls out is the same in both cases:
| drive capture to keep the "right people" running things.
|
| This rings true, and seems an insightful point. But I lost
| the plot in the following:
|
| > The result is the same in both cases: if you do a halfway
| honest plot of productivity and genuine standard of living
| against the decades, you get divergent lines that seem to be
| training for an Olympic gymnastics qualification.
|
| I don't really get how this "result" follows, or what
| prescription you're hinting at. Are you just saying we're
| very productive but fail to distribute among the citizens?
| That seems like a garden variety left talking point, which is
| a bit.. anti-climactic. Not that I even agree or disagree
| overmuch, but the tone of your post made me think you were
| building towards a more heterodox take. Am I missing
| something?
| benreesman wrote:
| Yeah, that's a fair point I suppose. It's kind of a
| limitation of it bot being the aforementioned book someone
| needs to write.
|
| Establishing the financial economics of productivity and
| its relationship to the Western Liberal Enlightenment
| conceptualization of the public good along a non-
| differentiable surface of capture from WWII to the present
| is a masters thesis alone.
|
| The level of ambient violence in a surveillance kleptocracy
| with a nascent domestic security apparatus breaking through
| that of a country in the grips of a 7-sided civil war, this
| being the tip of the iceberg because the non-violent people
| with no hope are suiciding with fentanyl at some staggering
| multiple of that, and this being caused by capture is hard
| to prove but easy to see absent an agenda.
|
| I don't want to see a climax more intense than how far
| we've already traveled down that road.
| m0rissette wrote:
| I mean maybe I have work ethic or am lucky. But I don't
| struggle to pay mortgage, buy cars, or go on vacations and I am
| the sole breadwinner for my family... but I also started
| programming in 3rd grade in the 90s, didn't go to college so
| have no debt, and live a pretty non materialistic punk rock
| life.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > but I also started programming in 3rd grade in the 90s,
| didn't go to college so have no debt, and live a pretty non
| materialistic punk rock life.
|
| Likely luck then; would you be in the same place if you
| didn't happen to be interested in a field that makes big
| money with no formal education needed?
| mordae wrote:
| Take care of yourself. One burnout because of an unreasonable
| boss compounded with illness and good luck.
| pluijzer wrote:
| ... In America
| lezojeda wrote:
| [dead]
| Vespasian wrote:
| And you happen to be in a field that boomed (several times)
| during your career and was (and to some degree still is) a
| quite dynamic environment.
|
| I'm glad it worked out for you (and me) but we must
| acknowledge that luck is indeed a significant contributor.
|
| Let's imagine that instead of getting into programming you
| began working odd jobs in a field that is generally low
| income. Some would make it to the top but most will not move
| forward despite working hard.
|
| From a personal anecdote I have a close relative who is an
| incredible hard worker in a job adjecant to elder care. As
| far as I can tell their work ethic is higher than my own (no
| time for water cooler talks or "code is compiling") but
| unless things change drastically they will never make more
| than minimum wage.
|
| It's fair to say that natural skill plays a big role. Despite
| best effort they wouldn't be abel to get a programming or
| othe office job because just finishing their apprenticeship
| took increadible effort and diligence.
|
| In their mid twenties their parents still support them (a
| little bit) and being anything close to a sole bread winner
| is highly unrealistic.
|
| There are economic reasons why some people are paid better
| but I'd say "pure luck" is a larger portion then most of us
| would like to admit.
|
| Some people get a yacht and a nice holiday home for their 12
| hours shifts and some get to pay their rent.
| tomrod wrote:
| That's part of it. But yeah, say you got massively unlucky,
| like a ministroke or a really bad car crash, affecting your
| ability to bring in cash and that took much of your savings.
|
| Safety nets are needed, and typically are underfunded. With
| one in place, most people can rebound to their most able.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| What is freedom if you are working for a top down authoritarian
| hierarchy ? Be it legal person or a real one. Do we get to
| enjoy any democracy at work ?
| nradov wrote:
| Here's some perspective. In lower cost areas of the country
| it's still totally possible for a single worker to support a
| family of five, buy a house, a car, and afford a vacation. But
| in that idealized version of the past that you're describing
| the normal standards of living were much lower. The typical
| worker's house was small with everyone sharing one bathroom.
| The car was unreliable and dangerous. The vacation was a road
| trip to go camping. Now it seems everyone's expectations have
| risen.
|
| I do agree that demographic changes are going to cause economic
| problems. That is basically unavoidable now.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A big part of this seems to be the idea that a highly-
| educated urban professional ought to have a better life than
| a journeyman plumber in a rural area. The reality is that
| there is a lot more supply of educated professionals and a
| lot more demand for city life, so it should not be surprising
| that wages in formerly-elite jobs are being depressed and
| cost of living is shooting up. In the meantime, the plumber's
| economic situation has largely improved with the booming
| economy and the dwindling supply of plumbers.
|
| If you want a high quality of life today and aren't worth
| $10+ million, the best way to get it is to get out of a city.
| skrebbel wrote:
| My theory is that this is all true, and it's fantastic.
| Generally, over the last century, in year X, nobody wants to work
| anymore compared to year Y (Y < X).
|
| This is a success of social democracy and it is a success of
| technology. We can afford to have people work less hard and still
| be richer than we ever were. It's _the_ success story of western
| progress and the rest of the world is going through the same
| steps as we speak. That a few old-fashioned managers are
| surprised they can't get people at the same bad terms as before
| is just a symptom of a very positive development.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Interesting opinion. I'll need to think on that for a bit.
| Thanks for offering it.
| sneed-oil wrote:
| It might also be due to demographics in Western countries. If
| the ratio of workers to total population decreases while the
| demand for work remains the same, there will be less
| competition for jobs and workers will be able to demand higher
| pay. It also depends on how many can be replaced by machines.
| ChoHag wrote:
| Correction: It's the success story of western progress at the
| expense of the rest of the world, which must find its own way
| because we've ripped up the steps.
| grecy wrote:
| FWIW, we haven't just ripped up the steps, we're actively
| standing at the top pointing a gun down.
|
| Do you know why Switzerland exports the 2nd most processed
| coffee of any country in the world [1] while Ethiopia (where
| coffee was "invented" remains extremely poor, only exporting
| raw beans? Because the IMF and World Bank would send them
| back to the dark ages if they attempted to do anything
| different.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1096413/main-export-
| coun...
| virtuous_sloth wrote:
| Look at @paulsci's post history including on X-Twitter. He's
| done dozens of these tours through the newspapers on many
| similar subjects.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| To be called "Long History" i think it should to extend beyond
| the current generation.
| MattRix wrote:
| His Twitter version of this thread goes back to 1912, I think
| the Mastodon one just got cut off somehow?
| https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1682459194589433857?s=20
| shapefrog wrote:
| Kids these days.
| randomdata wrote:
| ...are great! I employ a number of teenagers and they are
| absolutely wonderful. The future is bright.
|
| It's really just the late 20/early-to-mid 30-somethings who
| don't want to work. We have assumed it is because they are
| the "everyone gets a trophy" generation, but whatever it is
| there is a markable difference among the hires within that
| group as compared to those younger and older.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt
| for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter
| in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the
| servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders
| enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before
| company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and
| tyrannize their teachers.
|
| Socrates 400BC
| parrellel wrote:
| I dunno, he goes back to 1940. That seems far enough back to
| make the point with newspaper clippings. Definitely more than a
| single generation.
| afandian wrote:
| From the 'long' in the title I was expecing this to be more
| like 200 years not 20 years. There's good form for this kind of
| literature.
|
| https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-th...
| wredue wrote:
| 2 Thessalonians 3:10
|
| The odd suggestion that "nobody wants to work anymore" somehow
| just appeared this generation.
|
| It's in the bible dude, and undoubtedly has sentiments dating
| back millennia.
| sjducb wrote:
| I was expecting lots of outraged Victorians lamenting the
| decline of modern work ethics
| cableshaft wrote:
| Scroll down slightly and someone else has posted an image with
| quotes that go back to the 1800s.
|
| EDIT: Not sure how to link the direct link to the reply, but
| you can see it on this article on Snopes too:
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nobody-wants-to-work-anymo...
| swayvil wrote:
| Modern work is weird. All your energy goes into it. But at the
| end of the day there's no satisfaction. Just emptiness and
| exhaustion.
|
| So you invest your remaining time in entertainments, drugs and
| shopping. Frantically groping for a scrap of joy.
|
| My friends in carpentry call it "feeding the monkey". The monkey
| must be fed, one way or another.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > Modern work is weird. All your energy goes into it. But at
| the end of the day there's no satisfaction. Just emptiness and
| exhaustion.
|
| As opposed to what? Works was always like that.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>But at the end of the day there's no satisfaction.
|
| If that's the case then you need to find a different job.
| Plenty of people are really satisfied with what they do at
| work. I've accepted lower salary for years because the job I
| did was _really_ satisfying and I 'm still glad I was part of
| it.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Blaming workers for their poor conditions is elitist and
| fragile advice. There are not "good jobs" available for all
| or most. Your cushy PMC role is contingent on miserable labor
| supporting it. See the contractor/full time divide at Google
| or Meta for instance
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Blaming workers for their poor conditions is elitist and
| fragile advice
|
| I literally don't see where I said such a thing.
| swayvil wrote:
| You literally told the worker that his misery is his own
| fault for having chosen the wrong job.
| gambiting wrote:
| I said if there is no satisfaction then you need to find
| a different job. The misery part was added by you.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Assuming good faith, we can easily determine that OP was
| suggesting the working a job that provides no
| satisfaction would be misery. Considering satisfaction
| and misery are subjective, quibbling over the word choice
| is pedantic at best.
|
| If you're incapable of seeing how someone might describe
| working in a job that provides no satisfaction as misery,
| I suggest taking time to understand how that can be the
| case, as your ignorance in this area does you harm.
| gambiting wrote:
| All of that is reaching some conclusions and arguments
| that I didn't make and didn't use. All I said is that if
| your job doesn't bring you satisfaction then find another
| one. Everything beyond that is your own interpretation -
| I can of course see how you reached that interpretation,
| but I don't agree with it. There can be a job without
| satisfaction that isn't "misery". But that's not really
| relevant to my original point.
| mahogany wrote:
| > I said if there is no satisfaction then you need to
| find a different job.
|
| In this is the implicit assumption that there are enough
| jobs to give everyone satisfaction - that is what people
| are taking issue with. Do you believe that assumption is
| true?
| gambiting wrote:
| I think people are coming up with this assumption just to
| have an argument for no reason - I'm replying to an
| individual comment on HN, not giving advice to every
| single worker out there
| tristor wrote:
| There's a difference between blame and prudence. It's not
| blaming him to suggest he is empowered to change his
| conditions. If someone eschews prudence once aware of it,
| then they do bear some accountability for their outcomes,
| but even accountability is not blame. The confusion of
| the two has become commonplace as our society tries to
| avoid any conception of accountability.
| mordae wrote:
| Why must the burden of getting a job that is not shitty
| always seem to fall on the worker and never the employee or
| the state?
|
| Why don't we have a law that says "if the boss is
| disrespectful to the worker, they pay the worker the average
| of their hourly wage for every such incident" while being
| rude to your superior would be considered a breach of conduct
| that, when repeated, would be grounds for dismissal?
|
| Stop adoring the hierarchy and licking the boot.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Why must the burden of getting a job that is not shitty
| always seem to fall on the worker and never the employee or
| the state?
|
| What makes you think that my arguments precludes the
| latter? Equally, do you think that you as an employee have
| no agency in your own choice of employment? I understand
| there is a lot(probably even a majority) of people in the
| world who don't have that - but my comment isn't addressed
| to those. It's addressed to the specific HN comment.
|
| >>Stop adoring the hierarchy and licking the boot.
|
| ...what? I think you've constructed in your own head what
| my position is and are arguing against that, and not
| against what I actually said or believe.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Sure but these can be hard to find.
|
| Let's suppose the factors that make people like their jobs
| are a sense of ownership, applying skills, having friends, a
| high level of trust, and a sense that they're contributing
| something useful (the classic example is the construction
| worker isn't laying bricks, he's building a house).
|
| The hyper-financialized economy we find ourselves in loves
| meaningless Goals and OKRs, then does mass layoffs for no
| apparent reason besides investors like it.
|
| This is a pretty stark misalignment in values and incentives.
| Of course people are unhappy with it.
| constantly wrote:
| Speak for yourself, I know many people who derive a lot of joy
| from their work and find it energizing, myself included.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I've enjoyed my work before (especially working on games I
| enjoyed), but I've never found it energizing.
|
| Any mentally challenging work at the end of the day has alays
| left me feeling pretty low energy afterwards.
|
| Also physically challenging (I remember working 10 hour days
| in a warehouse and then going home and having a quick bite to
| eat and then immediately sleeping for 10 hours, I didn't even
| have the energy to watch tv).
|
| Also not physically or mentally challenging jobs either (as
| if just having to be present and 'on' during that time is
| enough to drain the energy).
|
| The only times I usually still have energy to do something
| are in the mornings before work or on weekends, and that's
| pretty much when all the chores and errands and personal
| project work has to happen.
| op00to wrote:
| Taking too much joy in anything that can be ripped from you
| is hazardous to your mental well being. A well rounded
| individual is much more resilient than someone who lives for
| work.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| I think those people are typically called the "clueless":
|
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| constantly wrote:
| "Losers" according to that, I think, as it calls "losers"
| "happiness seekers." But still taking joy in one's work
| seems orthogonal to the link presented, which is more about
| corporate lifecycles.
|
| To expand slightly on my situation (and the anecdotal
| others I'm talking about): I'm happy with my job because it
| gives me an opportunity to have a real impact on the world,
| helping real people, and seeing the direct results of my
| labor. It's energizing.
| javcasas wrote:
| No, those are the losers. The clueless are clueless that
| the pychopaths are using them as a shield against the
| losers.
| darkclouds wrote:
| Are you an AVN winner then?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| "Not all men" type argument
|
| Obviously rich people provide inspiration to many miserable
| workers to improve their conditions, doesn't mean it's
| achievable for most
| constantly wrote:
| Not really. First, it's unfair to extrapolate one persons
| toxic mindset to work in general. But aside from that, what
| I'm saying is that there are plenty of examples of people
| who are happy at their jobs and if one wants to be happy at
| their jobs they can follow those examples or use them as
| inspiration.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I'm sure there were some happy servants in the past as
| well.
| constantly wrote:
| Your weird strawman aside, servants rarely or never had
| the same career and life mobility as hacker news posters.
| mordae wrote:
| I don't think that's relevant unless you state your age and
| it is well above 30. Until then you are inevitably clueless
| and usually sought after by the employers because you are
| full of energy and cheap to rent, chow and spit out when you
| burn out.
| OO000oo wrote:
| Karl Marx insisted people need to relate to the product of
| their labor.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The mastodon items are modern American but isn't this
| alienation ala Marx or Hegel?
| reocha wrote:
| What swayvil described sounds almost exactly like alienation
| in the Marxist sense.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| To be honest, people generally don't want to work. In what way is
| this surprising?
| goda90 wrote:
| I think people do want to work when they can enjoy and feel
| pride for the fruits of their labor. But often the fruits of
| labor in our economic system either don't pay the bills, aren't
| worthy of pride, or are almost entirely enjoyed by someone else
| in exchange for a small wage.
| ChoHag wrote:
| [dead]
| IMSAI8080 wrote:
| I think the spirit of the original comment is people don't
| want to do enforced work at someone else's behest in order to
| live. I agree a lot of people would choose to do some kind of
| work voluntarily even if they didn't have to. Many people on
| here are probably coders. They may grudgingly drag themselves
| out of bed to go and code whatever their boss says in their
| day job, but then go home and code whatever they want to code
| purely for the joy of building something. It's not that
| people don't want to do work, they just don't want to do work
| someone else prescribes. Sometimes prescribed work and work
| you want to do intersect, then great, but often that is not
| the case.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I think most jobs just aren't the sort that elicit pride in
| their worker. They still need to be done though.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Source? I don't find this true at all. People simply don't want
| to do meaningless, consuming or alienating work.
| SalmoShalazar wrote:
| I think this depends on what your definition of "work" is.
| I'm going to assume the poster you're replying to means your
| typical office, service, or labor job - most of which are as
| you said, meaningless, consuming or alienating.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| The term "work" may not be sufficiently precise. And that's
| how "Nobody wants to work" can be both simultaneously true
| and false at the same time, depending on what is meant by
| "work".
|
| To say "Nobody wants to to engage in drudgery anymore" is
| true and always has been. To say "Nobody wants to be employed
| at a job that's meaningful and rewarding" is false (for most
| people at least; there may be exceptions).
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Unfortunately unless you are doing something like working on
| your property or helping a neighbor, thats most work in this
| country.
| michaelteter wrote:
| It comes down to how you define "work". People seem to want to
| put a lot of energy into doing stuff, sometimes stuff which is
| very hard labor or mentally challenging. The key is that they
| are most happy and willing to do this when they have a passion
| or a goal.
|
| But when the "work" you are being asked to do seems pointless,
| or it seems like the vast majority of the benefit of your work
| is going to people who are already wealthy and powerful,
| there's much less motivation.
|
| One of the most demotivating things is seeing your work thrown
| away. In the software world, we experience this often.
| Sometimes you can even finish a big project, really being proud
| at having built something great, but then something will change
| and render that product pointless (at least based on the
| current business plan).
|
| After a few situations like that, one becomes more cautious.
| Performing heavy tasks on the whim of leader is less
| attractive.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Similarly ...
|
| The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
| authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in
| place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of
| their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room.
| They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up
| dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their
| teachers.
|
| 400BC
| [deleted]
| mihaic wrote:
| What if people have always been complaining about this because
| it was always a problem that popped up and neede to be handled.
| Maybe any change in society meant parents can't use the same
| techniques to raise their children, and neede to evolve.
|
| Overall, not sure how a complain popping up all the time means
| it's invalid. People have always complained about injustice,
| and it's not like that's ever gone away entirely.
| fbdab103 wrote:
| Here I am just wondering why crossing of legs was
| inappropriate.
| arp242 wrote:
| This is of course the famous quote from Socrates, and I
| absolutely hate this "argument". "Socrates was wrong in 400BC
| and it's wrong today" is one possible scenario, but it's also
| entirely possible that:
|
| - Socrates was right in 400BC.
|
| - at multiple points in 2,400 years there was a problem with
| "kids these days".
|
| - Socrates was wrong in 400BC, but it's fair today or at other
| points in history.
|
| It's just a complete non-argument.
|
| _Edit: and according to a sibling comment it 's not even a
| genuine quote, but that doesn't matter: it's a non-argument
| whether it's a genuine quote or not._
|
| The same applies to this "list", which is not a "long history"
| but just 19 quotes from the last 19 years from random people.
| Maybe some had a point and some didn't? Maybe none did? Maybe
| all did? That 19 people about of several hundred million
| complained about something (fairly or unfairly) in the last 19
| years is just a non-argument.
| taneq wrote:
| "No, it's always been the children that are wrong." -
| Skinnecrates.
| [deleted]
| Hizonner wrote:
| It's a non-argument in response to a stupid assertion
| generally made with zero meaningful evidence...
| dsr_ wrote:
| You missed the big one:
|
| If you can find reliable evidence across time, space and
| cultures that humans have complained about the same X, then
| complaining about X is part of human nature in, at least,
| cultures that leave durable evidence.
| arp242 wrote:
| Two datapoints is hardly enough for that, and out of the
| billions of people who have lived in the last 2,500 years
| an infinitesimal small percentage have complained about
| roughly the same thing, so "any and all arguments that
| touch on this must be invalid" seems just as much of an
| invalid non-argument to me.
|
| You can pick almost any topic and find people unfairly
| whinging about it "across time, space, and cultures"
| because if there _is_ something that 's part of human
| nature then it's that some people will unfairly whinge
| about stuff. That on its own says exactly nothing about any
| specific argument that's presented: it's just vague
| heuristic pattern matching at best, and bad faith dismissal
| at worst.
| wheybags wrote:
| > out of the billions of people who have lived in the
| last 2,500 years an infinitesimal small percentage have
| complained about roughly the same thing
|
| I'm willing to bet that the majority of people have
| complained about being hungry, at some point in their
| lives. I would guess this practice began some time before
| the invention of language. Some things really are
| universal.
| whitexn--g28h wrote:
| It's specifically dismissing the idea that the problem is
| new. That this is the first time kids have been
| different, that workers wanted better conditions. Nobody
| wants to work "anymore"... The kids "these days"
| happytoexplain wrote:
| "Any more" and "these days" only imply an arbitrary
| amount of novelty. They are correct phrases whether we're
| observing a problem this year that wasn't present last
| year, or this millennia that wasn't present last
| millennia.
|
| Regardless, novelty is a straw man. The implication that
| it's wrong to complain about something because it's not
| new is fallacious.
|
| Yes, a person may compare younger people unfavorably to
| their own generation at the same age on some property
| they observe to be different when in fact it's only their
| perspective/memory that is different. But demonstrating
| that a complaint is not new is not evidence of that.
| pineaux wrote:
| Definitely not a non-argument. Its a circumstancial argument,
| that does not prove a whole lot, but its perfect against a
| unsubstantiated claim like the one its used against. It
| doesnt even have to have happened to be a good argument,
| because the counterparty does not give any facts either. Just
| a hollow statement. I love the Monty Python sketch on this
| subject: https://youtu.be/VKHFZBUTA4k
| latexr wrote:
| > which is not a "long history" but just 19 quotes from the
| last 19 years
|
| Maybe you're not seeing them all, but there's one quote per
| year from 2023 to (at least) 1940. 83 years.
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| Belphemur wrote:
| Always wondered if it was an actual Ancient Time quote.
|
| Doesn't seem like it :
|
| > It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his
| Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim
| that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of
| anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the
| complaints directed against young people in ancient times.
|
| https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/?amp=1
| mandelbrotwurst wrote:
| What is "Ancient Time"? Is that capitalization intentional?
|
| Edit: Oh, maybe you meant "Ancient Rome"?
| miltondts wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_history
|
| "Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans
| in the period 3000 BC - AD 500."
| taneq wrote:
| Wait, you mean 'ancient history' doesn't cover all time
| between the invention of pottery and the invention of
| node.js?
| xeromal wrote:
| I don't know why the invention of node.js tickled me so
| much but here we are. Thanks for writing this comment.
| Paired perfectly with my morning coughey.
| BirAdam wrote:
| The perennial nature of "kids these days" being insolent and
| otherwise generally poorly disciplined is that discipline is
| something to be cultivated within and not imposed from without.
| As a result, children who lack years of practice in discipline
| are not particularly well behaved. Adults tend to forget their
| childhoods, remembering only bits and pieces. In truth, every
| child was scolded for his/her bad behavior, and each generation
| tends to have the same bad behavior as the one before it. If
| each generation of kids were perfectly well behaved there'd be
| no need for raising, and there'd be no statements from old
| people such as "children are to be seen and not heard" or as
| "do not speak unless spoken to" or even as "get your elbows off
| the table". That such statements are uttered and remembered by
| multiple generations proves that kids have made roughly the
| same "mistakes" over the course of those selfsame generations.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| No, the adults remember. They get angry if you point out how
| they behaved when they were young.
|
| The real complaint is "young people won't let me boss them
| around".
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| As a father of three empathetic geniuses, I promise you
| that bossing them around is counterproductive
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Not sure if anyone will see this but here is my advice if you
| really don't want to work and are smart: get a high paying job
| like programming or data science, work for 6 years, save up a ton
| of money by being frugal, then quit and go live somewhere cheap
| while working part time for 2-3 hours a week.
|
| There are plenty of places where you can get a cheap house or a
| cheap apartment and work on passion projects to pay the bills.
| mike10921 wrote:
| As a long-time software engineer and related positions. When
| covid started it felt as if the world said "We worked enough we
| need a collective time off"
| rightbyte wrote:
| More like, people realized how nice their life's were if they
| spent less time at work.
|
| I did not understand how much my 45min x 2 commute was draining
| my stamina before I stopped commuting, e.g.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > More like, people realized how nice their life's were if
| they spent less time at work...
|
| ... but still got paid.
| jwells89 wrote:
| The mental and financial toll of long commutes was (and still
| is, to a reduced extent) consistently underestimated. Doubly
| so if that commute is driven, where one must remain focused
| on driving and deal with associated frustrations the whole
| time.
| sneed-oil wrote:
| I don't mind my 75 minutes x 2 commute, but 55 minutes are
| spent on a half empty train and the rest on bikes (mostly
| on bike lanes or empty roads), so I get to eat a snack, use
| my laptop and do some mild cardio. I've done the same
| commute a couple of times by car and it was much more
| stressful.
| mike10921 wrote:
| Yes, the commute removal definitely added a new perspective
| to many people who have been working in offices for many
| years. I ended up renting a small office near my house
| because working and being in the same place without any
| change felt dismal.
| cmilton wrote:
| Agreed. I will never work a job with a >10 minute commute
| another day in my life. On top of the time lost, you don't
| even get paid for it. It costs you time and money to go to
| work.
| jader201 wrote:
| I wonder if workers, at some point, will be able to start
| demanding compensation for commute to work, when there it
| is perfectly possible to work from home? E.g. these tech
| companies that are starting to require employees to return
| to office.
|
| On the other hand, we don't get compensated (fully [1]) for
| the utilities cost from working from home.
|
| [1] Some reimburse things like internet, but that's about
| it. We can't even claim taxes on expenses from WFH unless
| we're independent.
| Borg3 wrote:
| Dude really? The cost of working from home is absolutly
| minimal. You gain much more than you loss.
|
| You do NOT waste time and money commuting. You can eat
| healtier food. You can take break when you really need
| it. People who say that they need to get compesation for
| WFH cant do basic math...
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Work from home is literally an employee subsidized
| office. Who pays for the internet? You do. Who pays for
| the electicity? You do. Who pays for water? You do. Who
| pays for the ac during the heat of the day? You do. Who
| pays for square footage dedicated to a desk? You do. Who
| fixes networking it related issues? You do. Who is the
| custodian and building maintainer? Also you.
|
| Companies save money hand over fist by shoveling all the
| above costs that they previously paid for onto your lap.
| If you think this is all free then you need to reevaluate
| what your employer is really asking of you in a work from
| home situation.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Did you get paid for your commute?
| jader201 wrote:
| Yes, this was my point, but not articulated as well.
|
| I think it would be hard to expect compensation for the
| expenses when coming to the office, when the savings (for
| them) by working from home aren't also passed onto us.
| jack_pp wrote:
| You already have those things. Network rarely like maybe
| once a year goes down at home, if your company doesn't
| provide food then you either order and the cost is the
| same or you can cook and it's cheaper.
|
| You are right, companies save money and you save commute
| time. It's win/win.
|
| That's if you like working from home which I don't.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _You already have those things._
|
| That depends. Many people, especially those who live in
| cities, do not have the square footage in their home for
| a home office, or even a desk.
|
| When you think about it, having a dedicated office
| building is likely to be a more efficient use of space
| than everyone dedicating a portion of their home to
| office space.
|
| I wouldn't give up WFH, but let's not pretend it doesn't
| add costs to the employee. Sure, it can also _remove_
| costs, but the result isn 't always a net positive.
| topaztee wrote:
| by law, in israel we get compensated each month for
| travel costs its called "The Right to a Travel Allowance"
| swayvil wrote:
| School, homework, part-time job, college, study, full-time
| job... it never ends.
|
| For many of us, covid is the first taste of freedom we ever
| got. It was eye-opening and delivered some serious perspective.
|
| This "not working" could be called a sane response based on
| good information.
| cesarb wrote:
| > School, homework, part-time job, college, study, full-time
| job... it never ends. For many of us, covid is the first
| taste of freedom we ever got. It was eye-opening and
| delivered some serious perspective.
|
| Don't you have vacations? A whole month away from work or
| school every year should have given people that same
| perspective.
| cmdialog wrote:
| I will never work to make money for someone else ever again
| DANmode wrote:
| Mercenary, then?
|
| Or looking to start your own thing?
| dinom wrote:
| The corollary is, of course, no one wants to pay anymore (-:
| kfk wrote:
| We will see what statistics say and what the trend will be in a
| few years, but if labor goes up for the same output then
| mathematically productivity has to go down, which has a variety
| of consequences, but I can think of 1) less capital market
| yields; 2) less tax income from governments. Both 1 and 2 have
| nasty impacts on pensions. I am not saying one way of thinking is
| better, I am just pointing out the obvious fact that there is no
| free lunch. Workers might get a better deal now, to be handed a
| bad one when they retire. Unless technology comes to the rescue
| and helps us keep increasing productivity, but it's not realistic
| to rely only on tech.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not
| _hungry_ anymore. The best engineers I 've ever worked with were
| consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same
| time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers,
| just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally
| unbothered by it.
|
| One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours _per day_
| "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal
| performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all. (Work-
| from-home abuse is another component of this observation.)
| almost_usual wrote:
| > One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day
| "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal
| performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all.
| (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this
| observation.)
|
| Good for her, it takes confidence to do this.
|
| Overworking engineers into burnout isn't a healthy career path.
| bluefishinit wrote:
| I was going to say, she sounds like someone I'd want in
| management. Confidently putting life _before_ work in the
| work /life balance is the way to avoid burnout, maximize
| creativity and hire amazing people.
| itsboring wrote:
| Whoa, is this why The Bobs wanted to promote Peter?
| A_non_e-moose wrote:
| > As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are
| not hungry anymore.
|
| What incentives need to be aligned and how, to starve them a
| bit more and make them hungry again?
| JoshuaEN wrote:
| What's the point in being "hungry"? To fill the pockets of some
| soulless corporation and hope they'll pass down some scraps
| while making record profits?
|
| I have worked at the same place for 5 years; worked hard,
| continuously received great/exelecent reviews, several
| promotions, but I have only just kept up with inflation the
| past few years (and am probably net negative accounting for the
| timing of the rases), and before that it was 2% effective (for
| top marks). Plus "post-COVID" forced RTO, with all the costs
| associated with that.
|
| All in all, I am paid around the market rate (for the area) for
| my prior role, despite having performed at my current role for
| 2+ years now (with continued high marks).
|
| I still put in an honest 8 hours of work, but no more (mostly).
| Sometimes I wish I could be like those who work a little as
| possible and likely get paid almost as much (or more if they
| joined after), but that's not who I am.
| nxx788 wrote:
| [dead]
| DanAtC wrote:
| So what?
| cognivore wrote:
| I see this too, and not just post-COVID. 10+ years ago we used
| to have "Let's Learn This Now!" where the developers would
| agree on particular subject and then learn and discuss it on
| our own time, and occasionally it would lead to improvements in
| our development. We went through Ruby (on Rails), Angular
| (nope, not even) to React (meh), queuing (ZeroMQ mostly),
| Asp.NET MVC, Redis, Docker, Octo, NoSQL dbs - the list goes on
| (even custom mechanical keyboard building). It was a lot of
| fun, and it was nice to have all the perspectives and
| interesting ideas shared.
|
| Now there is only a few of us that still attempt this, as the
| rest are not interested in anything beyond their job
| description. Honestly in the last 10 years the phrase "That's
| not my job" has entered the company's phraseology when
| previously it was perceived as an opportunity for growth or
| even just cross training. Hell, that's 90% of how I advanced up
| the ranks - taking on new responsibilities.
|
| A dev manager we had a while back, who has been managing
| developers for 20 years, told me that a lot of the problem is
| passion vs money. Many recent developers are in the industry
| because they heard that software development is good money, so
| they got a CS degree. But they're not as interested in the
| continuing education that is a necessity for the career, and
| only those with a passion for it thrive. He sees them dev'ing a
| few years, realizing it's not for them, and then trying
| management, and then dropping out of industry because they're
| not interested in the effort to excel.
|
| But if you have a passion for software development, love tech,
| and the whole 9 yards, work is just doing what you like, and
| you enjoy it (well, when your company isn't screwing it up -
| that's a different problem).
| linuxftw wrote:
| There was a lot more interesting work 10+ years ago. All the
| interesting bits have been commoditized.
| itsboring wrote:
| I hate to say it, but I think we (as in, developers) did
| this to ourselves, or we were at least complicit. People
| like to think that these massive piles of abstractions
| we've built are for the benefit of future developers, but
| I'm starting to look at the software landscape more like a
| landfill with layer upon layer of waste output.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Couldn't have said it better myself!
| itsboring wrote:
| As a kid, when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew
| up, I always said programmer. So that's what I did.
|
| The money vs. passion thing rings true, but at the same time,
| I've found that channeling passion to my employer doesn't
| really reward me in the way I want. When I go "above and
| beyond" my job description, the reward is actually a
| punishment: more of the shit I don't want to be doing.
|
| Instead, I set aside some time to work on open source stuff.
| I actually feel a sense of ownership then. I'm not working to
| make somebody else rich, and I can do things my way and in my
| own time.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > do the bare minimum
|
| That's doing their job. You are complaining you aren't getting
| free labor. They are meeting the requirements.
|
| > people are not hungry anymore
|
| People aren't willing to do things for free.
|
| > One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day
| "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal
| performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all.
| (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this
| observation.)
|
| Sounds like bad management/leadership. If you are complaining
| about how she spends 2 hours of her time rather than on the
| results, and you are complaining about people not giving you
| free work...
|
| I never had this problem. I had the opposite, encouraging
| people to work only the hours they should so they don't burn
| themselves out.
|
| But hey, prove me wrong. Work for free. Let me know, I have
| stuff I can shovel your way and you can do it for free. Prove
| to me that you practice what you preach.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| I've seen the same thing in others and in myself, but I'd put
| it as pre- and post-Agile/Jira. The industry used to be full of
| enthusiasm but now it's like Office Space.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| I think it's because we've realized we're not building a
| better future but rather Yet Another Online Ad* System.
|
| * "online ad" can be replaced with "gig economy" if you like
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Interesting observation, it hadn't occurred to me but I think
| you're right. My dissatisfaction with software work started
| right around the time that agile practices became popular.
| The work changed, and started feeling like less of a craft
| and more like flipping burgers.
| itsboring wrote:
| At least flipping burgers you don't have to have a morning
| call where you say, "Yesterday I flipped burgers, today I'm
| going to flip more burgers. No blockers."
|
| Or a Jira user story titled "As a burger eater, I want to
| eat a burger that's been flipped so it's cooked on both
| sides."
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are
| not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with
| were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at
| the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior
| engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem
| totally unbothered by it.
|
| Because they see management not pulling their weight for the
| pay they get. Why should lowly paid junior engineers work
| harder than management who are just sitting back, dumping poor
| decisions on them?
|
| > One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day
| "walking her dog." I even called this out during a formal
| performance review and her behavior hasn't changed at all.
| (Work-from-home abuse is another component of this
| observation.)
|
| Wow, blame someone for having a healthy life.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in order
| for them to contribute at the capacity they're expected to?
| Our fresh college grads are paid a total compensation higher
| than $200K. Is that not enough to expect working, _at
| minimum_ , 8 hours a day?
| m0rissette wrote:
| Well then I guess you should offer me a 400k salary bc I
| can run circles around your junior engineers, and get paid
| less than 200k
| djangelic wrote:
| I think the distinction being drawn here is that there is a
| disconnect between hiring managers and workers.
|
| A hiring manager has an expectation that 200k will
| incentivize someone to work for 8 hours a day consistently
| and constantly where work is the point, not the tasks
| themselves. They expect the worker to figure out what
| additional tasks are to be done for that price and work at
| the upper limit of the time expectations (8 hour a day).
|
| Whereas the average worker is coming to the workplace to
| complete a set of tasks defined by the manager, not to
| figure out more tasks to do in their free time. They expect
| the manager to know what tasks needs to be done and
| understand that their results need to be tracked.
|
| As jobs become more and more compartmentalized it becomes
| less of an advantage for an employee to be hungry for more
| work, when their chance for promotion diminishes the better
| they are at their job, as in my anecdotal experience,
| management is loathe to lose that efficient cog in the
| system in that specific point. Which then reinforces the
| employees becoming jaded and resorting to the least amount
| of work possible.
|
| I believe it's because in todays corporate world more often
| than not, most employees have no skin in the game. That is,
| they are not privy to the more long term planning for their
| companies and are not usually compensated based on
| performance (outside of sales anyway).
| nine_zeros wrote:
| This is on point for me. I don't come into work to
| "invent" my own work. Management is expected to know what
| workers should work on, make sure it has the right ROI
| for the company, and that the rewards of that work flow
| to the workers.
|
| At many FAANG-like companies, engineers are supposed to
| find "scope" themselves to keep their own job? Are you
| crazy? What the fuck is management doing in these
| companies?
| djangelic wrote:
| I believe management has in many cases lost focus on
| strategy because they are either not driven as well since
| they also are not fully invested in the company's overall
| vision or are so overwhelmed with meetings that they
| simply don't have time to even understand what their
| subordinates actually do in technical terms, much less
| strategize.
| nxx788 wrote:
| [dead]
| stravant wrote:
| I would dare to say that the person your consider your best
| engineer probably only had ass on chair 4 hours a day and
| your don't even realize it.
| redgreenshoe wrote:
| Pay = hour expectations isn't reality, and we only pretend
| it is when we want to abuse juniors. Effort and time _are
| not_ strongly connected to pay, in office jobs. It 's not
| even clear that they should be (but if so, and we made
| effective reform that direction, oh boy, it's not the
| _juniors_ who are gonna feel the most pain).
|
| These juniors are savvy if they've realized this without
| having to experience work getting easier, more pleasant,
| and more laid-back the more money they make, directly.
|
| [EDIT] Oh, your pay may actually be connected to this, now
| that I think about it. If you're leetcoding and such
| (guessing, based on $200k+ for juniors) you're selecting
| for a certain culture and set of expectations. "Play the
| game, get the fat paycheck". Effort not connected to
| playing said game is just wasted, with the way rewards are
| dolled out in that world. Not laziness, just rational
| behavior based on hiring & such being batshit crazy and
| favoring a rather "prep for the test, the most efficient
| way possible--the score is all that matters" mindset--which
| _isn 't the fault_ of these folks, they're looking at the
| system and doing exactly what it demands they do for
| maximum reward. If they're coming up through prestigious
| universities, they may well have lived their whole life
| like that. Check the box, get the reward, prep for checking
| the next box, and you'll go absolutely nuts from over-work
| if you don't optimize each step (if you try to do it all in
| the _spirit_ of the thing, rather than the minimum required
| by the _rules_ , explicit or implicit). Results focused,
| just not the results you want... but the ones you're
| accidentally asking for!
|
| If they're smart, they're doing as much as they need to
| keep the job, while planning their next, career- and comp-
| advancing move. Try framing things in terms of the "impact"
| they'll get to claim if they complete steps X, Y, and Z,
| and see what happens, LOL. I bet they'll jump at it--that's
| exactly what they want to be able to talk about when
| they're looking for the next job in 18-24 months. May be
| hard to frame, say, maintenance work and minor bugfixes and
| such that way, though. You probably need to change how
| you're hiring, if you want people who'll be happy to do
| those things.
|
| If you're seeing these folks leave for better (higher paid,
| if nothing else) roles, after a short time, and shaking
| your head in confusion because you thought they were bad at
| their jobs--I'd say the above is exactly what's happening.
| You're getting what you're selecting for. Worth
| considering, perhaps.
|
| [EDIT EDIT] Above section most-relevant if they're also
| _underperforming_ according to what you expect. If they 're
| actually getting stuff done but just taking walks... then
| there's no real problem.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in
| order for them to contribute at the capacity they're
| expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total
| compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to
| expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day
|
| No good lead assumes hours per day is equal to quality of
| output.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Software engineering isn't like manual labor. Only results
| should be measured. A programmer in a flow state who is
| completely focused will get more accomplished in 2 hours
| than they would in 8 if they were feeling uninspired and
| disengaged.
|
| Our job is foremost to think and solve problems. She might
| very well be thinking about solutions to her coding issues
| while walking the dog. You are not a very deep thinker if
| you think butt-in-seat time = results.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| I wonder why those managers who think butts in seats ==
| productivity aren't fired first. They literally don't
| understand the business of managing Software.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > What do you consider a fair pay for junior engineers in
| order for them to contribute at the capacity they're
| expected to? Our fresh college grads are paid a total
| compensation higher than $200K. Is that not enough to
| expect working, at minimum, 8 hours a day?
|
| I consider fair pay = $200k + a management that makes $600k
| pulling their weight by solving cross-team problems instead
| of pushing everything down to engineers.
|
| Juniors want "leadership" to act like leaders and take
| responsibility. Get laid off first for your own poor
| decision-making.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| How do you connect the available rewards to extra effort made?
| -- do your team members trust that you'll follow through?
|
| In my experience, that behavior happens when rewards aren't
| clear and/or don't happen: when you fail to reward or even
| punish an animal for putting in effort, they stop. If being
| "hungry" is exploited by businesses but doesn't result in
| rewards, why would sane people continue? -- there's productive
| areas of their life they could invest that same effort.
| quasarsunnix wrote:
| I walk my dog two hours a day.
|
| I just work around my meetings (sometimes can take the meeting
| whilst walking) and ensure I still work 5-8hrs on tasks.
|
| Is your gripe that you think she should be glued to her desk
| 9-5?
|
| I don't know what her role is, but as a software engineer I
| can't say I'd ever be interested in a job where someone wanted
| to micromanage me like that. As long as the work gets done why
| care?
| cognivore wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet that the problem is the work isn't
| getting done. I've seen this many times now. No one is going
| to care how much you time you spend walking your dog if
| you're getting your work done - you only draw attention to
| yourself when you're lacking, and then your manager starts
| looking for reasons, sees you work 20% less than expected,
| and then what would you say? You'd call them on the carpet,
| too. I'd give them a part time job since that's what they
| seem to be capable of.
|
| I've religiously filled out time-sheets, in various forms)
| for 30 years, and I don't think they have been looked at more
| than a few times by my managers since my work gets done, and
| more. But I know for damn sure the laggards get scrutinized.
| xwdv wrote:
| It's not "work from home" abuse.
|
| You're not _really_ paying people to be at a computer working
| exactly 40 hours a week. You're paying people to solve problems
| and create value. There is not a 1:1 correlation between time
| and results in this field. Most days I only need maybe 3 or 4
| hours to take care of work related stuff.
|
| As long as people do what is asked, why should they worry about
| burning out the extra time that remains?
| jen20 wrote:
| I work for a pretty successful company (by any measure), and
| have had multiple startup exits before that, and I would know
| it was time to retire immediately if I started thinking like
| you.
|
| > One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day
| "walking her dog."
|
| I once came up with the idea for a product which has generated
| several hundred million dollars in revenue on a dog walk in the
| middle of the day. This morning while on a dog walk (on
| Sunday), I came up with the solution to a problem which has
| been vexing a team of 8-9 people for many months and will
| unblock millions of dollars of potential.
|
| The very notion that someone is not working because they are
| not in front of their computer screen marks you as someone who
| is wholly unfit to be a manager of people. 80% of the job of a
| software engineer is thinking.
|
| > Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers,
| just do the bare minimum to scrape by
|
| The entire industry would be better off if people just DID
| LESS. Complexity abounds because people want to be seen to "be
| doing something" to impress people like you. Again, 80% of the
| job of a software engineer is thinking.
|
| > Work-from-home abuse is another component of this
| observation.
|
| If you think people don't work at home, you should see what
| they do at an office when they can make small talk with other
| incapables.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| A low of people get jealous when you work smarter. They think
| that results don't matter as much as self inflicted
| sacrifices. Many of them work in the C suites
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Yeah... I used to go for walks to think. There is much
| evidence that it helps people in general, but I know it does
| for me.
|
| I got dinged on my performance review for being away from my
| desk. Didn't stay long at that company.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > got dinged on my performance review
|
| I thought performance reviews were supposed to focus on
| performance, that is on whether you got the job done on
| time!
| MattPalmer1086 wrote:
| Maybe I'm cynical, but in my experience, performance
| reviews have very little to do with managing employee
| performance. They are a bureacratic ritual that lets the
| company demonstrate they have been managing your
| performance.
|
| This is useful to the company if they want to let people
| go, to mitigate any legal risks. They have a record that
| your performance was being managed. Even though 9 times
| out of 10 there was no actual management throughout the
| year.
| FBISurveillance wrote:
| Good for her! Taking care of personal well-being and spending
| time with loved ones while being productive enough - otherwise
| you'd have left her go, right?
|
| Why the default assumption that everyone wants to participate
| in a rat race and play office politics to get a chance to be
| promoted?
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| This is not a simple issue of wage inadequacy.
|
| There is work for survival, work for wealth and work for
| satisfaction.
|
| Worker availability varies greatly in different cities and
| regions.
|
| The drug epidemic today impacts the workforce to a greater extent
| then decades ago.
|
| The kinds of low-skill jobs that compete favorably against
| welfare (eg. manufacturing) were mostly exported to Asia; though
| this trend may be easing if not slightly reversing.
|
| A rush to college for liberal arts and social science degrees has
| produced several generations of workers whose skills are highly
| sensitive to economic & political; cycles, and to an impending AI
| replacement. The same may soon be true for several tiers of web
| and software engineers.
|
| Small business in America, the largest employer, faces costs and
| challenges that leave little room for investment in new workers.
| I'm talking small business - not Verizon, Costco or Yellow
| Freight.
|
| Government has grown substantially at the federal, state, county
| and municipal levels in many parts of America - competing with
| business for workers.
|
| Boomer retirement.
|
| Etc., etc.
|
| As tempting as it may be to sloganize the issue and blame
| employers - the reality is nuanced and complex.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Nobody wants to work anymore [at terms that are only beneficial
| to me]. The worst jobs pay the lowest salary. Employment rate is
| low enough many don't have to put up with it. So we now have
| immigration, legal and otherwise. Jobs have to be done, so either
| raise pay, hire desperate immigrants or go out of business.
| kelnos wrote:
| I do enjoy things like this, but from a statistical standpoint, I
| don't think this really tells us all that much? I'm sure if you
| search hard enough through news archives, you can find at least
| one person saying something every year that validates your
| position.
|
| But it does matter if only one person is saying that thing in a
| particular year, or thousands of people.
|
| As an aside, I also find the idea that work is somehow virtuous
| to be pretty gross. That's something humanity has invented, not
| some natural truth. Sure, basic survival does require some amount
| of work, but beyond that, it's all unnecessary. Some people may
| _want_ to continue to work more and more, in order to make it
| possible (in today 's capitalist system) to do more than just
| survive, but we shouldn't look down on people because they've
| found a particular lifestyle or quality of living that works for
| them (as long as doing so isn't negatively impacting others).
|
| Beyond that, I think choices like working toward financial
| independence early are fantastic, and I wish more people could
| have the opportunity to achieve that. The idea of working for
| even the old-school expectation of around 45 years (starting work
| after high school or college, and then retiring in the mid-60s)
| sounds awful to me... and these days people Not only are there
| plenty of ambitious people who want to work and build new things
| (to compensate for those who don't want to), but there are so
| many bullshit jobs that just don't need to be done, but exist
| mainly just to feed the self-imposed fiction that work is a
| virtue.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Basic needs seemingly get more expensive over time. Luxuries get
| cheaper over time. If basic needs become affordable they turn
| into perceived luxuries (food, clothes). At once point a good
| quality handbag was a piece of equipment.
| pelagic_sky wrote:
| To be fair, I've never wanted to "work".
| cmilton wrote:
| This. When I started my career it wasn't just "work", I
| actually enjoyed it quite a bit. That passion seems to be
| fading, and it was put into overdrive by the lockdowns. I can
| see a day in the very near future of giving up in this whole
| "work" thing.
| swayvil wrote:
| You clearly lack "passion".
|
| I think there's a drug for that.
| m0rissette wrote:
| Adderal
| yosito wrote:
| Passion fruit?
| somenits wrote:
| On this, the communists and paleo-conservatives can agree:
|
| _The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an
| end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has
| pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
| his "natural superiors", and has left remaining no other nexus
| between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash
| payment". It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious
| fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism,
| in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved
| personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
| numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
| single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade._ Preamble, The
| Communist Manifesto
|
| (Of course, Marx had no love for ancien regime, while the
| conservatives did.)
| coldcode wrote:
| One of my favorite old songs: Big Rock Candy Mountain
| (https://genius.com/Harry-mcclintock-big-rock-candy-mountain-...)
| covers it well. The last verse ends in:
|
| There ain't no short-handle shovels No axes, saws or picks I'm
| a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day Where they hung the jerk
| that invented work In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
| BirAdam wrote:
| I really like the Restarts' version of this song.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| I found 2011 to be the most enlightening quote:
|
| > _Man, what a weird week. Unless it 's on their own terms, it
| seems nobody wants to work anymore._
|
| It's the only one with any acknowledgement that agreeable terms
| may actually be needed in order to attract people to work. It
| doesn't take a PhD to figure this out!
|
| Utah Phillips, one of my favorite storytellers and all-around
| anarchist and hobo has a line I was reminded of:
|
| _That's when [Fry Pan Jack] told me - you know, he'd been
| tramping since 1927 -he said, "I told myself in '27, if I cannot
| dictate the conditions of my labor, I will henceforth cease to
| work." Hah! You don't have to go to college to figure these
| things out, no sir! He said, "I learned when I was young that the
| only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it's true
| the only real life I have is the life of my brain, what sense
| does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day
| for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of
| the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?" Fat
| chance!_
|
| From the track _Bum on the Rod_ off the album _The Past Didn 't
| Go Anywhere_ with Ani DiFranco https://youtu.be/-rw4sd4AuJE
| shove wrote:
| IF I CANNOT DICTATE THE CONDITIONS OF MY LABOR I WILL
| HENCEFORTH CEASE TO WORK
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| Yes, thank you! That's the related one I could not think of :
| )
| WalterBright wrote:
| > agreeable terms may actually be needed in order to attract
| people to work
|
| aka the Law of Supply & Demand.
| shove wrote:
| In a similar vein, this poem by Pedro Pietri: Telephone Booth
| (number 905 1/2)
|
| woke up this morning feeling excellent, picked up the telephone
| dialed the number of my equal opportunity employer to inform
| him I will not be into work today Are you feeling sick? the
| boss asked me No Sir I replied: I am feeling too good to report
| to work today, if I feel sick tomorrow I will come in early
| influx wrote:
| I read that in Mitch Hedberg's voice.
| irrational wrote:
| My company would call that taking a mental health day, which
| is considered a legitimate reason for not coming into work.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| Easy to do as a knowledge worker, but I've had plenty of
| jobs where you get in trouble for resting.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| I had a coworker who would say that they were having eye
| problems -- as in "I just can see coming in today".
| shove wrote:
| Mine too, but I've not always had the pleasure of working
| for the enlightened
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| This Utah Phillips quote sounds like it came right out of Atlas
| Shrugged.
| wslh wrote:
| If we only take the title without a context and that and this HN
| thread we can go far from the employer and employee
| relationships. There are political and cultural systems where
| lazyness exist even at a high pay.
| projektfu wrote:
| From a small business perspective, turnover is a lot higher, and
| a lot more of it is because the employees are simply not doing
| their jobs and have to be let go. I think this is the tight labor
| market at work, actually. Good workers are being retained because
| there is enough demand for them. If they move, they are not on
| the market, they're recruited and cherry picked. The available
| ones responding to ads have usually been let go before for cause.
|
| A single example of people complaining each year does no more to
| debunk the observation than the complaints do to affirm it.
|
| This forum frequently talks about the 10x performer, the 1x
| performer, the 0.1x performer and the negative performer. In
| other industries, maybe you won't have a 10x, but you can
| definitely get ranges from impressive performance to destructive
| interference in your employees.
|
| What we really need is to study engagement and effectiveness in
| various industries to determine whether there's trends of more
| hard work or more slack, but in lieu of that we will find
| journalists interviewing the guy at the diner for the story, and
| that will become the zeitgeist.
|
| I personally feel like things are more hectic and busy than ever
| before, and I don't know how much of that is due to the increased
| distraction power of all of our "tools". Or whether it's a
| symptom of aging or long COVID or whatever.
| javcasas wrote:
| > a lot more of it is because the employees are simply not
| doing their jobs and have to be let go
|
| You are trying to find a cheap and good employee at the same
| time. Those tend to be scarce. Yet you keep scrapping the
| bottom of the barrel, and finding low quality.
|
| Have you considered a change of other parameters of your
| search? For example, the budget or the availability required.
| projektfu wrote:
| Yes, the only way to hire is to ask people who have jobs to
| come work for you. And to raise prices to keep the lights on.
| spamizbad wrote:
| > From a small business perspective, turnover is a lot higher,
| and a lot more of it is because the employees are simply not
| doing their jobs and have to be let go.
|
| Many of these small businesses were tying up a ton of talent.
| During COVID, their workers left to go work for larger
| companies and (in the case of the service industry) took office
| jobs.
|
| To add to this, a number of these small businesses engaged in
| PPP fraud by taking out loans to designed to keep payrolls
| going but ended up "spending" it on an owner's draw. This was
| not the intention of the program: It was to stabilize the
| workforce. But by shedding headcount, these businesses handed
| over a ton of labor to white collar employers. They're likely
| never getting those workers back.
|
| And I will also say, especially among younger people, small
| business owners have earned a reputation for being difficult to
| work for. So you're right, in a sense, but the other factor at
| play is that small businesses scare away good workers.
| projektfu wrote:
| Maybe, so it kind of sucks to be the business that reduced
| hours (=revenue) during COVID and used the PPP loan to keep
| paying full time employees while they're working part time.
| Being an essential business, we didn't close. Now that things
| are back, it's hard to find employees, even with increased
| wages.
| mercurialsolo wrote:
| Beyond the usual rationale of I don't want to work for pennies, I
| think hard work as a cultural vibe has fallen out of the times.
| It's also what we have designed our reward systems around.
|
| Today's reward systems are tuned not around hard work, but around
| being smart. The disintermediation of media makes it feel like we
| are all in a celebrity lottery and we just need a lucky break. We
| don't need to compound our skills or put in the grind.
| commonlisp94 wrote:
| Finding historical quotes seems like a gotcha, but stating the
| actual conclusion that's implied makes it appear much less
| plausible:
|
| > The level or kind of work ethic in the population has been
| about the same over time.
|
| Or
|
| > Children have been about as well behaved over time.
|
| Can anyone justify why these things should remain identical? That
| would suggest that environment is not an input into that
| equation.
| cs702 wrote:
| _Brilliant._
|
| It should be memorialized forever somewhere easily accessible by
| everyone.
|
| That way, when silly people complain that "nobody wants to work
| anymore," they can quickly be shown how uninformed and unoriginal
| they are.
|
| The more things change, the more they stay the same.
|
| Or, as _The Who_ succinctly put it: "Meet the new boss, same as
| the old boss."
| fnord77 wrote:
| I found something from 1936. heh
| ddmichael wrote:
| I really think we are modern slaves in a pseudo-liberal
| capitalistic wrapper. It's going to become clearer to future
| generations looking back, similar to how we are now able to
| detect and understand mistakes of the past. Male toxicity and
| patriarchy for example only recently began to surface as a
| mistake.
|
| While we still jobs and offer our services to society there are a
| number of things that need to fix and delete from our collective
| consciousness. All these stem from the same root of evil: the
| office. Similar to plants, we, the workers are gathering there,
| under some occult organizational umbrella which sometimes
| resembles a "family". We need to be there on a specific time, do
| specific things, we are being monitored and controlled. We need
| to behave in a certain way and leave our true self at home. We
| need to blindly obey a person called "the boss" or "the manager"
| and act under some military discipline executing commands. We
| need to climb some ladder of promises, most of which fail to
| deliver. This is a dark place full of lack of trust, insecurity
| and control.
|
| Diversity, flexible working, remote working, shared vision and
| mission are some of the things that we have realized and applied.
| I am glad that we did but there is still a lot of work to be
| done. Working needs to be more like the freelancer/consultant
| type where possible: get the job done and you're paid attitude,
| rather than a weird let's have you around stand-by just in case.
| Similar to how an electrician comes to your place fixes the
| damage and immediately leaves, where possible workers need to do
| the same. Can you imagine your electrician spending her day at
| your place, 9-5? Sitting there just in case? And you will get to
| threaten, trash talk, be the boss and give orders.
|
| We are still in the Palaeolithic era when it comes to how we
| work, with some improvements indeed but with also the heaviest
| pressure from the most powerful people globally.
| catlifeonmars wrote:
| Cherry-pick the data to prove a point? There are better ways to
| prove a point than this.
| mrighele wrote:
| This post on Twitter (pardon, X) [1] by the same author goes back
| for longer (at least 1912). I guess he crossposted on both and
| somehow the Mastodon version got truncated.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1681790405615173632
| calibas wrote:
| In general, people want money, they've never wanted to work.
| quelsolaar wrote:
| I want to live in a world, where no one have to work in order to
| live a decent life, but I dont want to live in a world that has
| forgotten how fulfilling work can be.
|
| I live for my work because it is engaging, challenging, and is my
| way of contributing to society. I want to live a life that
| contributes more to the world then it consumes. The Anti-work
| movement has a lot of good criticism of our capitalist society,
| but also throws the idea of work as way of contributing to
| society under the buss. People who work long hours arent suckers.
| nxx788 wrote:
| [dead]
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I wonder what this dude does for a living. It is definitely not
| running around ten hours a day - not self-determined, but
| externally determined - and in the evening the feet literally
| bleed. And that for 8.50 net an hour. That is what I did and
| since then, I admit, I do not want to work anymore.
| coldtea wrote:
| One problem with such disprovings is that they don't get into the
| actual case of what's happening, just stay on what people say.
|
| People could say the same thing for 200 years, but they might not
| say it at the same numbers or with the same intensity over those
| 200 years - and of course even if those were stable, the thing
| might or might not be actually happening during some of those
| years.
|
| As an example (not making a X-to-Nazi comparison, so Godwin has
| no power here): People have been complaining about fascism from
| 1920 all the way to 2023. But there are still periods with hugely
| more actual fascism, say 1993-1945.
| adr1an wrote:
| To be fair, employers never stopped extracting surplus.
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| This reminds me of the romanticism of the Medieval Peasant I've
| sometimes seen online. The thinking is yes they worked hard, but
| at least they got guaranteed housing and a wife, etc.
|
| America really is the land of opportunity, but if you don't end
| up in a higher bracket, life is really really difficult.
| winternett wrote:
| The gig economy has worn many out... The promise of services like
| social media, Uber, Political Parties, and airBnB that promised
| to create wealthy entrepreneurs fell flat on it's face after
| making the people at the top of the pyramids very wealthy.
|
| I think that social media really tipped the balance of fairness
| in the working world... With social media, suddenly Trust fund
| Babies could fake success, and promote schemes that helped them
| to profit. The Social Media model was set up to raise Trust
| Funders and Popular individuals far above everyone else, and it
| killed hopes of upward mobility for people who didn't fall into
| any fame or wealth category unless they became famous for
| negative reasons or for ridicule.
|
| It's not that no one wants to work anymore, it's that people are
| tired of weak work schemes, and being used and then thrown away
| in order to elevate others. It's not until real opportunity for
| growth, entrepreneurship, and excellence returns that things will
| begin to get back to normal.
|
| Talking about is as "Nobody wants to work anymore" is an
| injustice... Millions of people are working very hard every day
| on content creation that rivals TV programming and others are
| regularly posting their best and fully composed and edited work
| on Internet sites daily, most without any pay in HOPES of being
| discovered for their work, as proof of that.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| If someone isn't successful in making money on that work,
| though, it means it isn't very good. I know it's not a 1:1
| result, but in reality, if you put in the hours and you make
| things people want, you will be successful.
|
| The problem is everyone who works on something they're
| passionate about (even if they suck at it) thinks they ought to
| be compensated, even if their contributions amount to exactly
| Jack shit.
|
| Meanwhile, I do decent carpentry on the side and am hit up
| _regularly_ for it, simply because I'm willing to show up. And
| I make as much per hour as I do in my day job.
|
| The work is out there to be passionate and make things and be
| successful, but you 1) have to show up and work and 2) have to
| not suck at it.
| winternett wrote:
| You can be a baker and make the best cakes in the world, but
| if your shop is located in the wrong place (like a dark alley
| with no foot traffic) where no one knows it exists, your
| business can fail if you don't also learn marketing, and
| possibly move to a better positioned (but more expensive of
| course) spot. A better spot, and marketing lessons though,
| are hinged on having the money to make that happen... Many
| people can't pay for advancement because they aren't
| profiting off of their work to fund expansion and growth.
|
| The ideal that people don't succeed because of the quality of
| their work is a fallacy... Many people who do succeed who
| have a shoddy/marginal history of work is also yet another
| example of why that ideal is not accurate.
| bryan_w wrote:
| > You can be a baker and make the best cakes in the world,
| but if your shop is located in the wrong place (like a dark
| alley with no foot traffic) where no one knows it exists,
| your business can fail
|
| Who's responsible for deciding where it's located? Maybe
| that person didn't work hard enough at thinking through the
| ramifications of their location. You can come up with a
| 1000 excuses but I guarantee the person more likely to
| succeed has answers for every one of them.
|
| Not to say that luck doesn't come into play, but it's not
| the dominant factor and in a lot of cases can be worked
| around with hard work or extreme talent.
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| >if you put in the hours and you make things people want, you
| will be successful.
|
| What thing does a landlord make? What are the hours on the
| job of owning dividend-paying securities? Being successful in
| this economy has literally nothing to do with "making things
| people want" and "putting in the hours".
| pmulard wrote:
| I disagree with your premise - just because someone doesn't
| make money on their work doesn't mean it's not good. We live
| in a capitalistic society, where the laws of supply and
| demand rule.
|
| You're able to make good money in carpentry by simply showing
| up, because there aren't many carpenters left. Just like my
| cousin is able to do the same with landscaping. It's all work
| fewer people are doing.
|
| Other friends of mine, some of the most talented and
| hardworking people I know, have tried their stints on
| broadway, television, journalism, etc. and are struggling
| massively. Is it because they aren't good? Of course not.
| It's because there are 1,000 people lined up behind them who
| are just as good. And there's another 1,000 behind that group
| who aren't quite as good but are willing to do it for poverty
| wages.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| But you see, you're kind of making my point for me. Being
| good isn't the same as being good enough. And this is only
| a problem if every industry is saturated with people who
| are good enough.
|
| This isn't the case, and if I'm not good enough at playing
| guitar to make a living at it, I go elsewhere. I don't ask
| the world to make me a spot.
|
| We need more carpenters and plumbers and a whole host of
| other industries. It feels very strange to me that people
| look at the world and say "it's so unfair that society
| doesn't value the thing that I do that isn't particularly
| unique or contributive." Why should that ever be the case?
|
| Even in some perfect utopian society where everyone gets
| everything for free, am I supposed to read some mediocre
| book just because the person who made it wishes they were
| important? Even in such a society, people would still want
| notoriety, but they wouldn't get it because they're not
| good enough. For this reason I don't see capitalism as the
| problem, I see them as the problem.
| pmulard wrote:
| Ok let me rephrase this - the people I referenced aren't
| good - they're amazing. They have the credentials
| (Juilliard, S.I. Newhouse, etc.) and the work experience
| (lead role on broadway, ESPN and sports illustrated) and
| it's still a massive struggle in their industries.
|
| Compare that to being a warm body at a landscaping job,
| where the bar is "I showed up to work today" and it's not
| even a comparison.
|
| It's the laws of supply and demand. Simple as that.
| Everyone wants to be a movie star.
| overgard wrote:
| I don't think that's true. Think about musicians -- someone
| can create incredible music and never make enough to support
| themselves, it happens all the time. Same with visual art. It
| has much less to do with quality and more to do with social
| trends, having a certain "look" or identity, etc. Sure, hard
| work and not sucking are the prerequisites, but they aren't
| enough on their own.
| tetris11 wrote:
| I think you've really hit the nail on the head there. People
| are absolutely happy to work dog hours on something they're
| passionate about, or something that is meaningful (to the
| world, or to a company, or anything higher than themselves).
|
| But to take those same people, use them up, and then discard
| them... it makes them lose hope that their work is meaningful.
| Why try, when the world tells you repeatedly that it does not
| need or value you?
|
| The only people I can see being happy with this arrangement
| might be more libertarian minded, where the goal was never
| outside the scope of their own self betterment.
| xyst wrote:
| Some quotes appear to be from agriculture sector. A sector known
| for hiring immigrants because of the long hours, low pay, abusive
| environments (threats of ICE detention, ...)
|
| Some quotes appear to be from the service industry and during the
| pandemic. In the US, the minimum wage is STILL $7.25/hour. If you
| are a server the minimum wage is $2.13/hour. No shit, nobody
| wants to work. No way I am risking dying because a Karen does not
| want to mask up or get vaccinated for minimum wage, no benefits,
| no prospects.
|
| All in all, when a business owner or hiring manager says "people
| don't want to work anymore". That's really code for: we abuse our
| employees, pay is shit, hours are probably long.
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Guarantee you will earn more begging on a street corner in any
| liberal city.
| glimshe wrote:
| Working in most jobs sucks. Some people are lucky to have jobs
| they love, but that's the minority. I know that to be the
| prevalent sentiment even in top notch, AAA, "I can't believe they
| pay me to do this" companies such as Google, Apple etc.
|
| If people had, for the sake of a thought experiment, a guaranteed
| 20K/month income and free healthcare no matter what they do with
| their life, it's very unlikely they will choose to work on
| regular jobs. They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts
| (including the craft of building computer programs in areas they
| are interested in), learning, exercise etc.
| laurels-marts wrote:
| > They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts (including the
| craft of building computer programs in areas they are
| interested in), learning, exercise etc.
|
| I always hear this argument about UBI and it almost sounds too
| good to be true. Like utopian. And I wonder what segment of
| population will actually become artists and craftsmen with
| renewed sense of purpose and fulfillment vs. the folks that
| will accelerate even further into melancholy and feelings of
| deep meaninglessness.
| lanecwagner wrote:
| Some might. Most would watch TV, hang out with
| friends/family, scroll TikTok, workout, and play videogames
| carlosjobim wrote:
| They would rather gamble away all money or and use it on
| drugs.
| wetpaws wrote:
| [dead]
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