The Reddit r/antiwork has been getting traction (even with the Fox News debacle) and I'm seeing more and more people talk about wage inequality amongst a lot more social classes than I have in the past decade. Fingers crossed history arcs towards economic equality.
It's happening now. Specialists around me can't find an affordable house even with their relatively high salary unless their parents can help with their initial deposits for a mortgage and ,at least for my country, it's looking to get worse with no capital gains tax :^)
I know that the only reason I left my hometown is because of higher paying jobs in other cities/countries. If I could make what I make here, while living there, I would probably go back so I could be closer to my family, plus have my taxes help my hometown and country, instead of some other country.
* You, as a native English speaker, familiar with American business culture and someone with years of experience in the field are always going to be paid an order of magnitude more than someone just learning the ropes.
* You can, if you want, outsource your tasks to other people wherever you are.
* You understand that this luck, this privilege, is not going to last forever, because ultimately these jobs will equalize out around the world. And it's right and fair that they should. So you take the advantage you have now and you parlay it into securing something for your future.
The inequality between an American who can live like a king on $200k a year working remotely in a village in Brazil, and a local kid who's learning Javascript there and making $1k a month, is going to even itself out. And that's a good thing for efficiency, equality, and the global economy as a whole. All you have to do is be on the right side of it, ride the wave while it lasts, pass on some knowledge, and by the time they're fantastic at taking your job over you'll be 20 years ahead all over again. There's no reason to feel insecure or guilty about it. The global south is not behind America because America is trying to restrict education there. America does plenty of damage to its own educational system, but it needs skilled workers abroad. The global south is behind America because it hasn't fully shifted from economies of community to economies of scale. That's a multi-generational change. Not to be blunt, but it's plenty of time to become an owner rather than a worker.
But the algorithms are already compensating for that. Many companies are paying “location differential” salaries. It will probably result in a new form of outsourcing.
The “good” news, however, is that it won’t last. Many formerly affordable areas are already seeing gentrification and median income jumps, as a result, so they are being flooded with yuppies, and driving out the lifelong residents. I’m watching that happen to Brooklyn, in New York. I know that it is almost catastrophic, in San Francisco. I’ve seen the “Google buses,” on 101.
I’m hoping that unions make a comeback, but that’s a damoclean sword; as the American system is highly adversarial, and can be corrupted fairly easily.
It’s also becoming almost impossible to get jobs, unless you jump through crazy hoops, and don’t get me started on the silly whiteboard tests. It’s resulting in things like “leetcode bootcamps,” and consultants, that will help you to “optimize” your CV for scanning algos.
Background checks are almost certain to find something wrong; especially in this age of social media. I remember, a few years ago, when a teacher was fired, because she posted a Facebook picture of herself on vacation, with a drink in her hand[0], and there’s a prominent Canadian psychologist, permanently barred from the US, because he wrote an article, where he mentioned taking LSD, while in college, in the 1960s[1].
Also, politicians almost always have something in their past, that can be used in “oppo research.”
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354515/Teacher-sac...
so, combined services for remote workers -
maintain fake address in high cost of living area, providing phone service with rerouting of calls to your real number, providing vpn service so you have an ip address from that high cost of living area.
Just for some context, the median personal income is $36k, while the median software engineer makes $110k. There are about 1.8 million of us. So by each sending back (to our employers or the Treasury) $74k, we could reduce wage inequality by $133 billion. Not too shabby!
In the US.
I thought that pensions are more common, as a matter of fact. You almost have to be a government employee to have a pension these days, in the US.
There are about 130 million full time workers in the US. Multiplying that by $36K, which is obviously wrong, but I believe gives an order of magnitude at least, is nearly $5 trillion.
$133 billion would then be a couple or three percent. Which would be good for one year's cost of living increase. Better than nothing.
I'm not endorsing your math, just taking it as given, and please don't take mine too seriously.
The way to reign in employer exploitation is by improving the bargaining position and political power of workers (via laws and unions). Taking a voluntary pay cut is as effective as voluntarily paying a higher tax rate if you believe taxes are too low.
Here's an example of how to improve working conditions - see if it includes any workers taking a voluntary pay cut to reduce inequality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28603398
So no, I don't take steps to "reduce my wages" towards the median. But I do make donations to people who are trying to improve the status quo, and I do support unions and other efforts at real power-rebalancing, even if they mean a pay cut for myself one day, because that would be for the sake of an actual positive impact.
Inequality is a very weird frame for the well-being of a society or its less fortunate. The absurdity of sending back your paycheck being an “improvement” is just one element. We can have rising living standards across the board & call it a catastrophe because those at the top are rising faster. Or we can have a collapse, and say that your schadenfreude at your neighbor’s demise makes you whole. The whole model is absurd.
Not to mention the carelessness between income and wealth. Moving income from high wage earners to the portfolios of shareholders is actually good for income and wage equality. It amplifies wealth inequality, but that gets a lot less play since we mainly tax wages.
The professional-managerial class do wield considerably more power than the working class. I don't think that's because they have money, though. I think it's because the state is a large organization. People with the skills to run a state will rarely want for white-collar employment. People who influence bureaucracies for a living will also be pretty good at getting what they want from the state.
Imagine. Who's going to win a national electoral campaign, who couldn't land a job in marketing?
"See, if you simply choose to send back half your salary to me there'll be less income-inequality between you and the janitor! Please ignore my golden throne."
There is only one possible outcome where everybody wins and that is capitalism becomes so incredibly good at eliminating inefficiencies that all possible work is automated away, leading to the collapse of capitalism itself since it depends on continuous consumption which depends on disposable income which won't exist because there are no jobs.
I'd really like to believe this is the point where the world evolves into post scarcity where there is no economy because there is enough for everybody and no need to economize anything. Realistically, the corporations will most likely literally invent new economies out of thin air based on nothing just like they did when they conjured up nonsense like copyright.
All scarcity problems since 50 or even 100 years ago are artificial self inflicted constructs.
We are post-scarcity the moment we simply decide to be.
The reason we haven't and wont any time soon is property rights and everyone who has anything to lose in any redistribution or any change to future distribution.
It wasn't that long ago that 30% of children died before age 1. Imagine having a baby and there is a 30% chance it is dead in a year? That is almost all of human history.
The complaint will remain constant no matter what. If everyone owned a BMW some people would complain there is this aristocratic class that has a 7 series while the peasants all own 3 series and that we need to make things more equal.
We are so equal that the richest man in history and a homeless person practically have the same smart phone.
You don't believe success is a combination of nature and nurture?
You're going to have to elaborate on that, because AFAIK humanity has not solved intelligence to the point that we can say it is entirely nurture. That makes it reasonable to assume that it is part nature, which means that yes. It is genetically better than others' brains. And there's nothing wrong with that.