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Comment by kukx | Hacker News Reader

The companies compete for workers, especially highly skilled ones. One company rising wages would push others to react in a similar way assuming they compete for the same talent.

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Not so sure about that. Anti-poaching agreements are supposed to be illegal but I imagine this kind of thing continues today in secret:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-...

And yet wages for highly skilled workers haven't kept up with productivity increases, cost of living increases and inflation in many parts of the country, including areas like SF or NYC where you find some of the highest paid workers.

Productivity increases create less demand for labor, so you would expect the demand for labor to drop. If two workers now can do the job of four people five years ago, it doesn't mean the two workers get paid double.

Somewhat and I think highly skilled workers actually "suffer" from the worst relative compensation. Most legitimate 10x-ish developers don't make 10x what their coworkers are making, they end up producing significantly more value for the company then they're costing with the excess value going to profits and subsidizing other employees.

I personally think a model like this is pretty fair, if somebody is making 50k a year then pulling in 1M annual is pretty silly - but it makes sense to account for that difference with taxation rather than the arbitrary choices of private employers.

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