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Comment by _vbnz | Hacker News Reader

Stuff like this will lead to the rise of socialism again tbh.

It's like Tucker Carlson said - it's no wonder that the young people support socialism, when they can't afford a house and face massive economic uncertainty even in professional fields, etc.

Everyone knows that the super-rich executives will benefit massively from this (or have already taken huge bonuses and dividends in prior years), and they basically run the government and will face no consequences.

They get rewarded for failure, meanwhile normal working people face mass lay-offs, high interest rates and high inflation.

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Why bring him into this? His only reason for ever admitting something like that is to warm people up to his thicket of lies.

the execs definitely miss out on a lot of money because bonus programs are typically multi year.

There are always -short term (how did we do this year, the classic everyone gets) -long term (bonus defined today, paid out over a few years if you meet the strategic goals, typically director and exec level, we are easily talking 100k+/year here in bonus money)

bonusses. So, yeah, still a financial letdown for them. But they still got paid quite a lot of money of course. The average swiss person had no stakes or no culpability at all (except maybe choosing them, clients could have walkd away)

But they've already made out like bandits in the meantime, and can move on to the next company to raid (I mean, be an executive of).

Like you can make $5 million a year now, but have things suddenly end on you at some point when things come crashing down, but probably not for several years, or you can make $1 million a year, but play it safe, and in five years get a $7 million long-term bonus.

Might as well get as much out of the company now and trust the government will bail you out (or not, what do they care, they can just move on to the next thing, and even if not, they've already made a shit ton of money, they could just retire, no big deal).

In my country it’s not illegal when you punch somebody in the face, but we have another deterrent that works very well. If you punch somebody in the face, then he pulls out his wallet and gives you $50, then presents his face for you to punch again if you’d like. Once you stop punching, he gives you $100. So you see, assailants quickly learn that face punching is an action of grave consequence and loss, and the fact that everybody here is punching each other in the face all the time is probably because of something else.

> It's like Tucker Carlson said - it's no wonder that the young people support socialism, when they can't afford a house and face massive economic uncertainty even in professional fields, etc.

What? Tucker Carlson said something sensible and actually correct for once in his life?

For real though - remember the saying "If at age 20 you are not a Communist then you have no heart. If at age 30 you are not a Capitalist then you have no brains"?

It's just the same: by age 30, the generations of my parents and before generally had a stable job with one earner earning enough to feed a family, afford to buy a house and a car. Basically, back when that quote was said, people at 30 had actual assets to their name which (at least fundamentalist) Communism would have threatened to take away... but our generation? What do we have that actually belongs to us? Our homes are rented, our cars are beaters barely road-worthy, financed/leased or we don't have cars at all, our computers are often enough simply the machines we get from work, our phones are rented from our phone providers and our "pensions" are a virtual joke - the pensions in the US are a gamble on the stock market (and heaven forbid if there is an actual correction - stocks are fundamentally overvalued by at least 50%, but correcting that downward would wipe out so many people that politicians have no other choice than to feed the beast), and thanks to medical debt being a thing and elderly care costs exploding as well we can't even expect to inherit meaningful wealth. Oh and the old tale our boomer parents told us from "you have to waste your childhood with learning and learning and learning otherwise you end up poor" turned out to result in "we are poor anyway".

So, why should we defend a capitalist system that doesn't even give us anything in return? Why should we defend the right of rich people to exist when we have to struggle to make rent and food each month? Why should we not take up the pitchforks?!

> Why should we not take up the pitchforks?!

US citizens are too lazy to consider voting for candidates other than the ones lambasted by their corrupt news sources. Picking up a pitchfork and deciding who to stick it into requires even more effort.

> Oh and the old tale our boomer parents told us from "you have to waste your childhood with learning and learning and learning otherwise you end up poor"

Well, Lenin did say “Study, study and study.”

It's not incorrect... the problem is again, that what was true for the generations before is no longer applicable for my generation. A career in academia usually means sacrificing a lot of personal life - in way too many cases also sacrificing having a family, simply because of being constantly on the move chasing whatever grants you can and working ridiculous hours all for shit wages in the end, not to mention you can't really get approved for credit to buy a house or whatever when all you have to show for your credit history is a ton of half-year contracts.

And even academic degrees per se outside of academic careers aren't a guarantee for higher paying jobs any more, not since large companies started to use having an academic degree as a proxy to legally discriminate against wide swaths of the population, including normally protected classes: it's hard to get academic degrees with a variety of mental health disorders, and many people from socioeconomically disadvantaged castes (immigrants, poor people, people of color) get filtered out by the educational system way before they can even enter university.

So why should one go for an academic degree or otherwise put in unhealthy amounts of effort if you finish at 25-30 and still only get exploitative, underpaid labor? The entire "social contract" framework underpinning our societies is broken at a fundamental level and I don't see the political will to fix any of that unless the boomers are removed from society's high positions.

There ought to be legislation requiring proof that a skills earned through a college degree are strictly necessary for job openings which are strict about requiring a degree as a filter.

I would say I’m 36 and still a PhD student but as far as marginalized people in graduate programs goes I think the process of transition of power from an advisor to a student would be and is very difficult for people for marginalized groups who aren’t used to that kind of slow motion power struggle ending well for them.

The youth today have no agency and boomers are the problem. As king of the cop-outs myself I would love to be able to live in that sentence instead of doing something. May I suggest you read some historical literature to get a perspective on this magical world that must exist or somehow existed in order for you to live a happy life? Do you think minorities had it better in the 70s? People with mental health issues? You know pre 1950 young people lived in those big hotels in cities and had shared bathrooms down the hall, etc that are now treated as one step above homeless housing, right? If the youth today were willing to live like they affordability would match historical norms. I lived with my mom as long as I could to save until I had a girlfriend with a good income to share an place (and I was a software developer in the bay area in the 90s at the time). My boomer parents borrowed the money from their parents to put down on their house. I don't know what magical world is denied my kids but they sure seem to think it existed.

> I don't know what magical world is denied my kids but they sure seem to think it existed.

My father in the 90s was able to afford a SAHM with two children and a car on the salary of a low-level police officer, and by the time he was 30, to buy a large 3BR+kitchen+living room flat in Munich.

I'm as old as he was back when he bought that, and I have absolutely zero in savings, with the combined income of my s/o and me barely keeping up with rent and cost of living despite earning above average in an IT job. I couldn't afford to have a car but thankfully don't need it as public transport in Munich is actually worth the name. No, moving out of Munich is not really an option, as house prices and rents have exploded just the same in the entire area and rural areas are, as I described, absolutely left to rot in terms of infrastructure.

The world back then may indeed have not been as rosy as many of my generation paint it - but it sure was objectively better than today. Our only hope is that we can inherit something from our parents, assuming that there is something left over after elderly care will have robbed them of all their savings and assets.

>What? Tucker Carlson said something sensible and actually correct for once in his life?

No, unless you agree with what he said.

Everything you need to see why socialism only happens when people are starving in this other Fox News interview: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wVEEsgz524s

That's a really American government/welfare-based view though.

I'm in a trade union and here in Sweden we support the Left party because they support trade unions - e.g. in the 80s there were proposals for having union members on the board, having unions own a stake in the companies, etc. - these all would have helped a lot with the current mass layoffs and inflation.

I never understood unions, since all they seem to care is to force companies to keep people employed no matter what, even when they're not needed anymore.

Speaking of the US, the unionised work there is terrible: at 4PM they would drop everything and come back the next day. No overtime, no nothing. You can't do a rush job or anything, they worked at their own pace and they didn't care about our deadlines and stuff. Its like dealing with government employees.

On the other hand, working with non-union people was great. They would put in the hours with no fuss, and obviously get paid for overtime and stuff. But you could actually get them to work as much as possible in a day.

For me I never understood companies, since all they seem to care about is to force wages as low as possible instead of caring about the good of their people (and a company is nothing but a grouping of people) and to take on contracts/projects/commitments they can't meet out of greed.

When given a choice, people prefer not to be overworked due to poor management/scheduling/greed. When given a choice, people prefer to have stability in employment. This is demonstrated by the fact that when they have collective power these are two of the common items they negotiate for. Unions are created to promote their members interests. There, now you understand unions :) They represent the interest of their members not the companies interests and not letting workers pay the price for poor management/scheduling/overcommitments (I think this is where you are getting confused).

Unions don't care to 'force companies' anything, They care to represent THEIR members priorities. What you are promoting are a company's priorities which the company already looks out for and would be a strange thing for unions to form to then also promote.

Why do you think they are no longer needed? i have you seen the state of workers rights in much of the world? (e.g. working seven days a week with maybe a single day off every few months)

And which work conditions do you think are better for the employees?

Gotta say these anecdotal union stories are very far from my own lived (and yes, anecdotal) experience as a LIUNA member.

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