The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore
mstdn.ca
mstdn.ca
> 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
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
literally just an empty storefront they were able to rent on the cheap. few shoddy racks of calendars.
we had to keep walking and chatting to the customers when they came in. In December. For calendars. No chairs, no cell phones. Couple of the HS kids no called/no showed so I was often the only person there for 8 hours. Exhausting.
This was retail, and for calendars. I was a seasonal hire and had no more information about the product than the customer did, nor did I get any commission or incentive if I sold or didn't sell.
aka the Law of Supply & Demand.
Your comment shows a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism and Rand. Her philosophy is particularly odious to people on the left and is especially incompatible with anarchist political philosophy. The idea that there are special super intelligent humans who should be placed at the top of society's hierarchy and be given free range to make any and all decisions for those lower on the hierarchy is outright rejected as baseline anarchist political thought.
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.
We are talking about the basics, not avocado toast or international vacations.
The juice just ain't worth the squeeze in America any longer.
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.
And the upper rungs of corporations will have to accept lower compensation.
Safety nets are needed, and typically are underfunded. With one in place, most people can rebound to their most able.
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.
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?
"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....
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.
So if i am reading the very first graph right, the top 10% wealthy in USA in 2023 held about 96Trn out of 140 Trn.
The top 10 % is not usually middle class
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.
Does it really bother you someone could be ignorant of something here?
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Does that mean no high density residential? I can’t see how individuals build apartment buildings.
I would have thought that "build to let" would be the rarer case, but like I said I might be blind to the idiosyncrasies of the US here
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.
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.
for who?
The median salary would be six figure if the share of productivity gains was distributed like it was in 1970.
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.
I assume it includes everyone regardless of age, so the average salary when only considering people working if probably $100K or above
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.
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.
What do you think would be the best way to help ensure everyone gets a fair share?
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)
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-by-ag...
median wage at 45yo (the peak) is $64k.
GDP/capita is that maximum hypothetical number where the full gross domestic production is evenly distributed to all people.
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.
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?
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Income-Trap-Middle-Class-Parents-...
We know that it isn't. Productivity of the workforce is ever increasing. The generated wealth simply doesn't make it to the workforce.
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?
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.
Some of it does - real wages in the US are higher than in the past: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
Real wages have effectively flat-lined over the past 50+ years.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We are living in the best of times as measured by infant mortality, lifespans, literacy, poverty, and technology.
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.
The ones who get to complain are the "Peters" whose futures were stolen so their parents could live high on the hog, no?
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.
Social media may cause some problems but it won't leave me with a slipped vertebrae from bending over pulling weeds all day.
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
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.)
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.
That’s £120 pm, or £1440 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.
That ignores any interest on the savings. So yeah it seems like "small" regular spending in your 20s (e.g. $100/mo total) can add up to an entire down payment in your early 30s.
Alternatively, assuming your rent would be at least $1000/month, you might live with your parents for an extra 13 months (or fewer for higher rents) before moving out on your own.
Also, what would happen to people with not so well off parents?
If someone's parents were able to provide a place to live until 18, why is 19 suddenly impossible? You don't need to be well off to let your kids stay with you a little bit past legal adulthood. Surely there's room for a couch or a bean bag or something to give them a huge leg up right out of the gate, assuming you were in a marginal position where you otherwise needed to immediately kick them out and downsize.
Some people are going to have rough situations and can't rely on a family at all. Some will need to emancipate before reaching 18. How common is that? If it is common, that seems like the real problem to address.
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.
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.
Your question is much like asking why we can't afford to feed lobster to prisoners anymore.
Yes, it seems the under 30 crowd would rather go to college/university instead these days. A degree can cost about as much as a modest home. Almost nobody attended college in the 1950s. Hobbies always come with tradeoffs.
> And yes urbanisation has increased but not that dramatically.
15-20 points, at least in the USA. That is quite dramatic. If today's cities saw 15-20% of their population leave for rural areas, prices in those cities would drop like a rock.
> What hasn't really happened though is any significant new cities forming
Very true, and fantastically increased farm profitability since the 2007 time period has driven farmland values through the roof, which has made it much more cost prohibitive for cities to expand like they used it do.
Fairly sure housing affordability is a bigger problem for those without tertiary degrees though!
> 15-20 points, at least in the USA
I'd think if there was an era where urbanisation was highest it would be in the 50-60 years prior to the 60s, and I'm not aware of house prices dramatically increasing in that time (happy to be shown otherwise though!). But in that earlier period many quite modest-sized towns grew massively to become the cities they are today (*), so arguably there weren't quite so many people all trying to crowd into the same few cities.
(*) though in Australia at least, something of the opposite has happened in the last ~75 years - many modest-size towns have lost their populations to larger cities.
US data suggests that college graduates have seen the largest decline in homeownership over the past 10 years.
That said, you are right that college filters out those with disabilities and other life challenges, and that means those without degrees are infinitely more likely to have something like a crippling mental disability which would prevent them from owning a home. Which, indeed, makes drawing any aggregate parallels between graduates and non-graduates rather useless.
> I'd think if there was an era where urbanisation was highest it would be in the 50-60 years prior to the 60s
In fact, there was a bit of a counter-urbanization movement during the period. Cities were considered to be for the poor. Anyone with means wanted to live on large estates out in the countryside. There was also that whole "White Flight" thing. All that goes back to the people not wanting the houses.
It's easy to forget now that we've put in incredible effort to make cities more livable, but cities were industrial hell holes during the 50s and 60s. Not to mention that crime was starting to become a big problem by the 60s. They were not desirable places in the slightest. Today's cities are entirely different.
It is true that things are much more affordable when they are considered undesirable.
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 (?).
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?
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.
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?
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.
As has productivity.
Also some industries can barely keep up. We have seen this during the pandemic. “Chip crisis” is a great example.
And can we see this in any dataset, that the post-WW2 boom eventually gave more away in charity than it produced?
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.
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.
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...
No, you can't.
People lived in smaller houses, but the vast majority of the increase of property values is _land_. If you want a house that's anywhere near as cheap as the average was 50 years ago, you get to live somewhere with no jobs. That is not equivalent.
As for everything else, the majority of the modern day luxuries we enjoy amounts to a rounding error next to the actual necessities that people also had back then. Consumer electronics are _cheap_, not having them will not meaningfully increase anyones wealth.
Want to read what did increase? Houses got bigger as I stated [2].
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/55910/farmrealestate...
[2] https://www.supermoney.com/inflation-adjusted-home-prices/
EDIT: worth noting as well that the source you cited was specifically for farm real estate, not residential.
Here is a source for land price: https://www.aei.org/housing/land-price-indicators/
On the last chart, change the indicator to Change in Land price (standardised). Note that this is only for 2012 to 2021, not even 10 years, and the _smallest_ increase is 44%, while the highest is 807%!
Some numbers from each: Feb 1954 house price $206,717 inflation adjusted. April 2023, $392,780 (the largest value). House sizes: 1950 was 983 ft^2. 2014 was 2657 ft^2 (feel free to chase down sizes for now if you like). 1950 was ~$210/ft^2. 2023 likely ~$147/ft^2.
Care to check the math? Sure seems like housing has not increased (well, it actually decreased significantly by this check) when correctly measured.
Houses cost more now because people want more, and also because they make more than in 1950, inflation adjusted.
Next, new houses in most of the country are built on new residential land as cities expand. Where do you think that land comes from? Farmland. Farmland provides a price floor on new housing, as developers buy it up and add subdivisions.
As to your oddly chosen subset of land: your list is not inflation adjusted. It's also the top 100 metro areas, not the median of house prices in the US. Of course you can pick smaller and smaller subsets to get the answer you want.
The median house in 1950 was under 1/4 acre. From the table below on price per acre, it sure would seem land is not the major factor in house costs.
So, can you provide the correct stat or not? Don't pick the highest cost subset of land. Don't pick non inflation adjusted values. And make it the median of all housing.
Here, I'll help. Here is median price per acre of land with housing on it in the US, by state [3]. It also has the median price per acre, including farmland. Use Excel, check the correlation. If you are to do it, you can also population weight these, add median house cost per state (easy to find), etc.
It's pretty clear the cost of a house is not majority the land, except perhaps in a few really dense, extreme outliers like NYC and SF.
No wonder you believe the highest component of house cost is land. You have not presented actual numbers, only picked the subsets that you like.
Try again. Also, please address the now 3 links I presented about housing costs when size adjusted.
[1] https://dqydj.com/historical-home-prices/
[2] https://www.newser.com/story/225645/average-size-of-us-homes...
>median home prices since 1950, inflation adjusted, have not even doubled since 1950
"Not even doubled" = basically flat.
Sure buddy. The single biggest purchase most people will ever make, let's call an 80% increase a rounding error.
>No wonder you believe the highest component of house cost is land. You have not presented actual numbers, only picked the subsets that you like.
If you're going to put all this effort into finding stats then you should first work on your reading comprehension. Here's what I actually said:
>the vast majority of the *increase* of property values is _land_.
They're now choosing to buy a > 200% size home. And this is because inflation adjusted median household income has gone up, tada! you guessed it! Over 200%!
And here's some real number voodoo for you - put inflation adjusted median income and median house size over time into Excel and look at the correlation. What do you think happens there?
So, here's the facts, which you don't care to address: 1) House cost is around flat per inflation adjusted sq foot for decades. 2) The main component of median house prices in the US is NOT land, as you claim 3) The reason houses now cost more is because they are bigger (and looks like a slight lower amount per sq foot than 1950), and.... 4) the reason houses are bigger is because household wages are equivalently bigger, correlating quite well for at least 70 years, so people choose bigger houses because they can afford them, as well as 2 cars, many TVs, more trips, relative food cost has declined, and on and on.
Now, I cited good data for all of these. Do you still dispute any of them?
Go ahead and cite some good data - median, complete US market, any time period, that supports any of your claims otherwise.
> Here's what I actually said:
>>the vast majority of the increase of property values is _land_.
The link where I gave you average per acre cost for housing completely blows that out of the water. Did you not look at it? Here are the steps: 1. Look at the per state average acre for housing price. 2. Look up median house acres (< 0.25). 3. Look up median house prices. 4. Multiply the acres per house (0.25) by the acre cost to get the amount of land cost per house. 5. Subtract 4 from 3. 6. Note how large 5 is compared to 4. 7. Note that it's mathematically impossible that the small amount in 3 can contribute to the inflation adjusted increase in house prices from 1950.
Here, I'll even do a decent estimate for you: from the list Florida has the median land price of around $35000 per acre for housing. Average house land is still under 0.25 (one site said it's now 0.19). So land per house in Florida is around say $8500. Zillow says average Florida house price is ~390,000. This likely has doubled in price and size since 1950 (and if it's an outlier, then some other place in the US counters it, thanks to the magic of medians).
Tell me again that the current cost of $8500 land in a $390,000 house is the cause of the near doubling in price? Did the land cost negative $400,000 in 1950?
So, keep claiming your claim. It's so mathematically impossible as to be ludicrous at this point. If you want to continue to make that claim, show me the numbers broken down just like gave you.
Or are we done since you keep ignoring facts you dislike, and misrepresent the double prices ~ basically flat by completely ignoring that the doubling in price is also a doubling in size which was my very first point (and a doubling of incomes which is why it all fits).
[1] https://www.cbpp.org/income-gains-widely-shared-in-early-pos...
Inflation adjusted median income has gone up over 200%... what do you think inflation is?
Total braindead understanding of how productivity and labor works, but it sounds great if you own the tools.
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.
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).
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]
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 ?
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.
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.)
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
We could indeed hypothesize that GDP would increase due to poorer people having more to spend. On the other hand, in this scenario the successful business owners no longer earn outsized reward for their risk, so perhaps entrepreneurship and innovation is stumped. It’s very hard to predict the effect on GDP
Individual saving for retirement was cooked up in the 80s. You used to get your pension and be set.
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.
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_the_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.
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.
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.
What an incredibly privileged perspective. Do you think that actual indentured servants would agree with you on this?
I do agree that demographic changes are going to cause economic problems. That is basically unavoidable now.
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.
The government has grown enormously in my lifetime, sucking up much (most?) of the productivity increases.
IMO the productivity loss is misidentified as a government issue, it's actually a large org issue.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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
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?
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.
Slave/indentured servant -> live-in servant -> servant -> service worker -> self-employed service worker (contractor)
At each step along this 'evolution', the beneficiaries of the labour have freed themselves from the burden of supplying some of the resources needed by the worker (shelter, food, holidays, sick pay, health insurance, safety and other equipment, education/training, etc). In theory this has been balanced by increased monetary compensation. When that compensation isn't enough for the worker to meet these needs, what should we expect? That they become indebted?
Maybe during the 1950s, when two (2) World Wars had blasted multiple empires to dust and essentially gutted a generation of workers aka males between the ages of 18-40.
Sure enough the US, still standing after entering the wars late and not seeing huge casualties or direct combat in-country, was positioned to lead a post-war economic boom.
Now it's back to pre-war conditions, which curiously enough, resemble the Guilded Age, and its associated strikes
Because I can't help but note that in North America that there were plenty of people who couldn't do so but were of the "undesirable classes"....
And the reason those who could afford such were able was because they were effectively standing on the backs of those "less privileged".
Afaict, even when it's not racial such things still existed in most places at the time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I can site a personal experience example. In Portland, for a while, nobody would visit anywhere north of Alberta on the east side of the river. Around this time, a young person by the name of Matt was selling barbecue out of his little truck up near Ainsworth and MLK. In some dirt lot with no support beyond folks like myself writing Yelp reviews, he was selling the best barbecue in the city.
Now, they have multiple locations there and are sure to grow.
Location doesn’t fucking matter. Talent matters. People will show up and buy and fill their limited stomach space. Not for 3rd best or 2nd best but for the best. And blaming them for not wanting the best is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
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.
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.
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.
One of the smartest people I know was a Julliard instructor. I love hearing their stories about their experiences in that world, but I can easily see why their “talent” didn’t translate into real world success. Despite their genius in musical interpretation, there taste is completely non-normative. Are you really arguing that the world is wrong and they aren’t?
It doesn’t fucking matter what you think matters. It only matters what _everyone else_ thinks matters. Feel free to downvote that opinion — I might be cynical but you’re wrong.
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".
In the comment above yours someone made the opposite example of a Baker who works all day making fantastic cakes but nobody buys them because his shop is in the wrong place, and the reply was that it's still his fault because he didn't spend enough time figuring out where and how to sell his wares. Making a good decision is just as much making a "thing" as making a physical object.
I think you are also mixing up wealth and success. A very rich man whose stock portfolio does not keep up with inflation is still very rich, but he is not successful.
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
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.
Edit: Oh, maybe you meant "Ancient Rome"?
"Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BC – AD 500."
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maybe you’re not seeing them all, but there’s one quote per year from 2023 to (at least) 1940. 83 years.
The real complaint is "young people won't let me boss them around".
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
Didn’t we have this experiment during Covid where many people found themselves being paid, sometimes for 2 years, to just wait till their job comes back? I don’t think many became artists (surely, some did). But there were also a lot of stories of increased depression, addiction, and despair.
I’m not saying it’s better to do a bullshit job that getting paid to do nothing. I’m just saying it doesn’t seem to be as simple.
I did not understand how much my 45min x 2 commute was draining my stamina before I stopped commuting, e.g.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
i don’t even know where to begin with this… so many people absolutely do not have an in home office, do not understand networking, don’t cool their homes/turn their heat down when at the office, don’t use home electricity while at work, etc…
I think WFH is an option, not something that is enforced?
... but still got paid.
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.
Don't you have vacations? A whole month away from work or school every year should have given people that same perspective.
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.
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).
even in my free time i have so many projects that take work but i absolutely love them.
i just wanted to chime in that people feel genuinely energized by work if it’s something they care about, something that matters to them, feeds their soul or whatever phrase you prefer. again, sorry to be the obnoxious pedant.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I literally don't see where I said such a thing.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Obviously rich people provide inspiration to many miserable workers to improve their conditions, doesn’t mean it’s achievable for most
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.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
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.
What do you do for a living?
As opposed to what? Works was always like that.
I think there's a drug for that.
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.
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.
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.
Socrates 400BC
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-th...
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...
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.
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
Found this quotation on Wiki earlier today, attributed to Jonathan Sudholt:
"In the Jacksonian era of antebellum America, class inequality was a major concern as fiscal downturns and the economy's transition from guild-based artisanship to private business sharpened socioeconomic disparity."
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.
* 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.
It's like concluding we've run out of oil because the price of gasoline went up.
> 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.
If you're talking about oil in the ground, it's pedantic and not relevant to market pricing.
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"
Not having enough revenue to pay the workers a sufficient rate is just a symptom of that.
Rule of thumb says that a company needs a 10% margin to be considered healthy. This suggests that while they are in a good place at current wages, there isn't a whole lot of wiggle room.
People will take anything if you give it away for free, but it is doubtful that their products would still remain desired by the customers if wages went up and they retained a healthy margin. Fashion products aren't exactly inelastic.
It's not 12%, it's 18% as a whole company. 12% is 20 year average.
Louis Vuitton owns many companies, I'm specifically talking about bags but you also have things like:
> LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton Société Européenne's operated at median gross profit margin of 66.6% from fiscal years ending December 2018 to 2022. Looking back at the last 5 years, LVMH Moët Hennessy - Louis Vuitton Société Européenne's gross profit margin peaked in June 2023 at 68.7%.
68.7%...
> LVMH doesn't break out individual brands' financial results, but analysts say Vuitton's profit margin came in at around 50% last year[1]
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/louis-vuitton-bernard-arnault-a...
So, 12%. Got it. One successful year doesn't paint much of a picture. Especially when you remember that employees don't usually take pay cuts when business is not doing so well. In many jurisdictions, it is even illegal to see employee pay cuts.
> I'm specifically talking about bags
General coffers. Even if the margins really are 90% on bags, they're losing money elsewhere. That money is gone no matter how you slice it. They don't magically still have it to offer the workers. Business is hard.
> but analysts say Vuitton's profit margin came in at around 50% last year
Gross margin, yes. There is more to running a business than COGS, however. Especially a business of their nature.
It's 50% more compared to that number. And for last 5 years it was only going up, it's not one successful year. So it's not 12%. Got it? I don't know of anyone talking about margins and talking about 20 years average, they had 0% in 2001, it's counted in that ~20 years, don't you see how stupid this is to include that into discussion? profit margins from 20 years ago.
Labor and material are the lowest costs on bags, highest is marketing. Why I need to pay more to workers if I can build new corporate HQ? When I can pay for bonuses of people at the top? or get ~20% profit. I have 50% of the company profits anyway and I make all the decisions[1]. You want me to tell that he (Bernard Arnault) can't pay people that make these bags more because he don't have money? come on, this is such a naive view. Some products/industries indeed can't but this is not one of them, software also with average of 25-30% NET profit margins.
1. At the end of 2017, the only declared major shareholder in LVMH was the Arnault Family Group, the holding company of Bernard Arnault. The group's control amounted to 46.84% of LVMH's stock and 63.13% of its voting rights.
You can't forget the past. Louis Vuitton aside, it is well understood that even wildly successful businesses haemorrhage money for the first 5-10 years before reaching profitability. You're saying that as soon as a business does reach profitability, all the excess profit should go to the workers, even when they haven't asked for it, and not pay back the lost opportunity? If so, why would anyone take the risk?
> Labor and material are the lowest costs on bags, highest is marketing.
Indeed. As you recognize this, and as marketing is not included in COGS, I find it strange that you pointed to their gross profit margin earlier. What was meant to be the significance of that?
> You want me to tell that he (Bernard Arnault) can't pay people that make these bags more because he don't have money?
He did pay them more. Said workers went on strike last year because they wanted more, and shortly thereafter he responded by paying them more... Ask and you shall receive, as they say.
What are you expecting, exactly? Is it that you are appalled that workers have to make it known how much they expect to be paid? Do you want Bernard to walk the streets and surprise offer $100 bills to random passers-by?
If so, what about you? Everyone on HN can spare a a few hundred dollars (you couldn't afford to be here otherwise), and more likely, given how much the audience is generally worth, can spare tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars. How many $100 bills did you unsolicitedly hand out today? Or are you one of those people who never pays more than the asking price even though you can afford to pay more?
What? You mean VC backed businesses only? So like 0.0...1% of all businesses? and btw LV is not one of them. You think that successful restaurant owner "haemorrhage money for the first 5-10 years"? He would be out of business 10 times by then.
> He did pay them more. Said workers went on strike last year because they wanted more, and shortly thereafter he responded by paying them more... Ask and you shall receive, as they say.
In France, after strike. What about Asia? where there are no unions and strong labor laws, did he pay them too? No he didn't.
> What are you expecting, exactly? Is it that you are appalled that workers have to make it known how much they expect to be paid? Do you want Bernard to walk the streets and surprise offer $100 bills to random passers-by?
> If so, what about you? Everyone on HN can spare a a few hundred dollars (you couldn't afford to be here otherwise), and more likely, given how much the audience is generally worth, can spare tens, even hundreds, of thousands of dollars. How many $100 bills did you unsolicitedly hand out today? Or are you one of those people who never pays more than the asking price even though you can afford to pay more?
Sorry but what the hell are you talking about? Do you remember the topic of conversation still? Because I'm replying to what you said "Not having enough revenue to pay the workers a sufficient rate is just a symptom of that.", which I proved is not the case in my specific example (because THERE IS ENOUGH REVENUE to pay workers more, he did it in France where labor laws and unions are the strongest on this planet) and it's also not the case in software industry and you talk about me handing out 100$ to random people on the street??? What?
I don't really know on which world are you living, but the reason most of businesses do not pay workers more is not "not having enough revenue" but because they choose to hoard money to themselves out of greed. I have many business owners in my family and they are driving porsches while paying their staff minimum wage, I assure you that they have enough revenue to pay their workers more. I'm not here to offer solutions, I was writing this to show that the problem exists and that what you wrote is not true in majority of cases.
What about it? Are the workers there currently off the job while they wait for more money?
> Because I'm replying to what you said "Not having enough revenue to pay the workers a sufficient rate is just a symptom of that."
Oh? Are you sure? You have offered nothing to suggest Louis Vuitton is struggling to find workers. The closest we got was me mentioning that their workers were on strike last year, which was followed with more pay to compel the workers back. That shows that Louis Vuitton is, in fact, quite prepared to pay more when they can't find the workers they need.
Here I was convinced you were just going on some mindless "workers are victims" rant, not realizing that workers don't show up when they are not paid enough. If you don't believe in that, you need to go back to the original comment in this thread – the one before my first – and reply to it instead. As you know, as you surely read all the words before replying (haha), my comment merely followed the premise established there.
> Sorry but what the hell are you talking about?
It was suggested that head of Louis Vuitton is too greedy to randomly pay people more than what they asked for. I then asked if you go around randomly paying people more than they ask of you. If not, it would be strange for you to expect others to do so. Everyone here has money to spare.
No they aren't because it's Asia? You don't work then you starve. There is so much poor people there that you can pay whatever and you will find workers, no labor laws, no unions. So he pays them pennies because as you said "THERE IS SHORTAGE OF REVENUE"? That's not the reason and everyone knows that. Just admit that they are not paid because of greed and we can finish this discussion instead of framing it like poor business owner would need to charge higher price or they would be starving. That's NOT the case.
> Here I was convinced you were just going on some mindless "workers are victims" rant, not realizing that workers stop showing up when they are not paid enough
Ye, all of these people without education can choose to do whatever they want.. so they can just quit and then they eat air and pay for rent and their children school etc with air, with almost zero savings (because cost of living eats everything) especially in Asia without labor laws and unions. But ye live in your alternative world where workers can choose whatever they want, but it's not only Asia where its really bad or Africa, lets look at the richest country in the world where 57% of Americans can't afford a $1000 emergency, I guess these people with kids can't wait to just quit their jobs and be homeless.
> It was suggested that the guy at the head of Louis Vuitton is too greedy to randomly pay people more. I asked if you randomly pay people more as well. If not, it would be strange for you to expect others to do so. Everyone here has money to spare.
Difference is that these are not random people but people that do work for him, see the difference? It's the fruit of their labor. That's why again, WTH are you talking about?
I would never say such a thing as "shortage of revenue" is completely nonsensical. A shortage occurs when an external mechanism, such as government regulation, prevents price from rising. Revenue may be impacted by a shortage, but revenue fundamentally cannot be in shortage itself.
The original comment that set the stage for the thread stated that certain businesses are struggling to find workers because they don't pay enough to attract workers. That is true, but the reason they aren't able to pay enough to attract the workers they need to keep going is because the customers aren't interested enough in their product to want them to keep going. Not everything is worth doing.
It is not clear how you think Louis Vuitton fits into that. They seemingly have no trouble hiring workers, and when the workers do leave over concern of not being paid enough they demonstrably offer more to win them back. They have sufficient customer interest.
> Difference is that these are not random people but people that do work for him, see the difference?
No. You also have people working for you. Everyone, save those who have gone completely off grid (which you clearly have not), does. That is how an economy functions. The question stands: How often do you pay your workers more than they have asked of you?
> No. You also have people working for you. Everyone, save those who have gone completely off grid (which you clearly have not), does. That is how an economy functions. The question stands: How often do you pay your workers more than they have asked of you?
You seem to be fixated on deflecting the conversation away from the real issue at hand. Let's be clear: the topic of this discussion is not about me or whether I have people working for me as a customer. It's about addressing the widespread problem of companies underpaying their workers and prioritizing excessive profits over fair compensation.
While it is true that in everyday transactions, as a customer, I interact with employees at various businesses, that is not the crux of this debate. The main concern is the mistreatment and underpayment of workers within companies, especially those that are highly profitable.
As for the question of how often I pay workers more than they ask for, it is irrelevant to this conversation (but actually often I pay more, I tip people etc but I don't want it to be discussion about me). The focus should be on corporate practices and the need for businesses to recognize the value of their employees and provide fair wages.
So, let's get back on track and concentrate on the real issue – advocating for fair treatment, fair wages, and better working conditions for workers within companies.
Honestly, you're so focused on nitpicking and avoiding the real problem that it's frustrating to even continue this discussion. Stop defending the indefensible and open your eyes to the reality of the situation. Workers deserve better, and it's time for businesses to stop being so damn greedy.
Are you replying to my original statement or not? This has nothing to do with the original discussion.
But let's run with it: To underpay a worker ultimately means that you have an outstanding debt to that worker. Are you suggesting that Louis Vuitton has outstanding debt to its workers and that the workers continue to stick around only because they think "If I keep working hard enough I am sure that good guy Louis will eventually settle up!"
I can believe in the short term workers will really hold that view. Indeed, unlike robots which stop working the minute you hold back on pay, humans are a lot more forgiving. But, at the same time, only for so long. If the debts aren't eventually settled they will give up hope.
Louis Vuitton has been in business since 1854, so unless this is something that has only started happening in the past few months, I expect that isn't really the case. I expect the workers are actually paid up in full. Workers don't like to be banks. You won't last long if you treat them as such.
> You seem to be fixated on deflecting the conversation away from the real issue at hand.
Well, I tried going down your weird rabbit hole. Then you told me that you were actually talking about what I said originally. With us back to the original discussion, now you're telling me that you were still in the rabbit hole...? Pick a lane.
> So, let's get back on track and concentrate on the real issue – advocating for fair treatment, fair wages, and better working conditions for workers within companies.
Let's not. Advocacy requires presenting opinion, and presenting opinion is bad faith participation. Good faith participation limits itself to exploring the way things are. One can always use that information to form an opinion, if they so choose. And, frankly, if you are not familiar enough with the way things are in order to be able to contribute in good faith, you most certainly are not in a position to have a well considered opinion.
Yes, I am addressing your original statement, which implies that some companies underpay workers despite making massive profits. My point was that this is an issue we should consider in our discussion about fair wages and workers' treatment.
> To underpay a worker ultimately means that you have an outstanding debt to that worker. Are you suggesting that Louis Vuitton has outstanding debt to its workers and that the workers continue to stick around only because they think "If I keep working hard enough I am sure that good guy Louis will eventually settle up!"
No, I am not implying that Louis Vuitton or any other company has outstanding debt to its workers. The point is that if a company is making substantial profits but not adequately compensating its workers, it raises concerns about fair treatment and the distribution of wealth within the company.
> Louis Vuitton has been in business since 1854, so unless this is something that has only started happening in the past few months, I expect that isn't really the case. I expect the workers are actually paid up in full. Workers don't like to be banks. You won't last long if you treat them as such.
I agree that businesses must pay their workers adequately to retain a skilled workforce. However, the issue is not whether workers are currently owed back payments, it's about ensuring that workers are paid fairly for their contributions and that companies prioritize fair wages alongside their profits.
> Let's not. Advocacy requires presenting opinion, and presenting opinion is bad faith participation. Good faith participation limits itself to exploring the way things are. One can always use that information to form an opinion, if they so choose. And, frankly, if you are not familiar enough with the way things are in order to be able to contribute in good faith, you most certainly are not in a position to have a well-considered opinion.
I disagree. Good faith participation involves discussing issues with the goal of seeking positive change and improvement. While we explore the way things are, we can also advocate for fair treatment and better conditions for workers based on ethical and moral considerations.
The real issue here is about recognizing that some companies may not prioritize fair wages for their workers, even if they have the means to do so. By discussing this, we can raise awareness and foster a better understanding of the challenges faced by workers in various industries.
It's evident that your approach to the discussion has been selective and avoiding certain aspects that do not fit your viewpoint. It's disappointing to see you ignore crucial points about the challenges faced by workers in various regions, especially those with low wages and inadequate labor protections.
Addressing only parts of the conversation that align with one's narrative while disregarding significant aspects of the discussion limits the potential for a constructive and well-rounded exchange of ideas. This behavior not only hampers progress in finding solutions but also fails to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of issues related to fair wages.
Again, had you taken the time to read the full context, you would know the statement was made with respect to not being able to find workers to hire. How can you underpay, let alone pay at all, workers which do not exist? You can't. This has nothing to do with the original topic.
> The point is that if a company is making substantial profits but not adequately compensating its workers
If the workers are not adequately compensated then there must be debt. You fundamentally cannot withhold something in an exchange without accumulating debt. Perhaps you mean the workers have voluntarily forgiven any debt that was outstanding? Indeed, that is an option available to them, but not something workers usually take kindly.
> it's about ensuring that workers are paid fairly for their contributions and that companies prioritize fair wages alongside their profits.
What is fair is established when to exchanging parties reach an agreement on what they both consider to be an equal exchange of value. Until such an agreement can be made, a transaction does not begin. If, later, one party does not fulfill their end of the agreement then that would be unfair, but debt is also created. When there is unfairness, there is debt. They are intrinsically linked. Debt is literally a measure of how far one party has been unfair to another.
> Good faith participation involves discussing issues with the goal of seeking positive change and improvement.
You can't meaningfully seek positive change and improvement without understanding the current state of the world. Once you do understand it, that change is a natural consequence. It doesn't require drawn out discussion.
Jumping straight to pushing your agenda of what you think is the positive change and improvement is bad faith participation as it robs other parties from the understanding of why it is the change they too want to see, and is typically done so because the message wouldn't be compelling if the other parties had that underlying understanding. Even where intentions are pure, it is a self-centred position, and self-centredness is not faithful to the other participants.
> You can't meaningfully seek positive change and improvement without understanding the current state of the world. Once you do understand it, that change is a natural consequence. It doesn't require drawn-out discussion.
While understanding the current state is crucial, meaningful change often requires open and constructive discussions to explore various perspectives and potential solutions. Engaging in dialogue allows us to gain insights from different viewpoints and fosters a deeper understanding of the issues at hand.
> Jumping straight to pushing your agenda of what you think is the positive change and improvement is bad faith participation as it robs other parties from the understanding of why it is the change they too want to see, and is typically done so because the message wouldn't be compelling if the other parties had that underlying understanding.
Advocating for positive change can also involve presenting well-considered ideas and supporting them with evidence and reasoning. Engaging in open discussions allows us to better comprehend the underlying issues and work towards consensus on positive improvements for all parties involved.
> What is fair is established when two exchanging parties have reached an agreement on what they both consider an equal exchange of value. Until such an agreement can be made, a transaction does not begin. If, later, one party does not fulfill their end of the agreement, then that would be unfair, but debt is also created. When there is unfairness, there is debt. They are intrinsically linked.
Fairness in the context of business goes beyond just an initial transaction. It involves ongoing relationships between employers and employees. While formal agreements are crucial, there is also a moral and ethical dimension to consider in how workers are treated over time, especially in light of the company's profits and growth.
There is important additional context that needs to be considered when discussing fair exchanges in the labor market. In many cases, especially in poor countries or among economically vulnerable individuals, the concept of "equal exchange of value" might not be applicable in the traditional sense.
For many people in these situations, they may not have the luxury of multiple options or the bargaining power to negotiate for fair wages. When individuals are in desperate need of employment to survive, they might accept any job opportunity presented to them, even if the compensation is not sufficient.
In such cases, the power dynamics between employers and employees are significantly skewed, making it challenging for workers to demand fair wages. This imbalance can lead to underpayment and exploitation, and it may not be a result of an equal and voluntary agreement between the parties.
Recognizing this context is essential to understanding the complexity of labor issues and the intrinsic link between unfairness and debt that you mentioned earlier. It highlights the need for greater attention to workers rights, social safety nets, and the role of governments and businesses in ensuring fair treatment and better opportunities for economically vulnerable individuals.
In discussions about fair wages, we must consider the broader socioeconomic context and work towards addressing the root causes of inequality and exploitation in the labor market. By doing so, we can foster an environment where all workers are treated fairly and have the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their socioeconomic background.
There is no rush.
> Fairness in the context of business goes beyond just an initial transaction.
Well, sure. The world certainly isn't static. What is fair can change over time. And to be sure, one can negotiate at every turn to stay on top of that, but that's not terribly efficient for long-term engagements, so workers usually seek a long-standing agreement and renegotiate only as needed, like the Louis Vuitton workers did as discussed earlier.
Indeed, the workers we like to subcategorize as contractors often try to renegotiate at every turn, seeking opportunities in trying to stay current with what is fair. While it can be beneficial, the growth in what is fair has to exceed what is given up to navigate the inefficiencies, which often doesn't happen. We'd all be contractors if it was always a better deal. Usually the worker is better off when the agreement is long-standing.
> For many people in these situations, they may not have the luxury of multiple options or the bargaining power to negotiate for fair wages.
While this doesn't make sense, what I think you are trying to say is that some people are not worth as much as other people and that those people worth less will not be able to negotiate terms as favourable as someone worth more? If so, certainly. Everyone is different. Similarly, I expect your greed, as you call it, prevents you from paying Ferrari prices for a Chevy Trax as well.
After all, the whole reason for attaching a price to something is to deal with scarcity. The cost is supposed to scare you away. The higher the cost, the more scared you should be of using up the resource. But if someone has nothing else to do with their life, why would you want to be scared of them? Are they not best utilized to the betterment of themselves and humanity as a whole, not tossed aside out of fear?
On the flip side, you should be terribly afraid of hiring someone like a doctor to sew handbags. You want to see that they are tossed aside so that they can work as a doctor instead. They and all the rest of humanity is better off when you toss them aside. This is why they must carry a much scarier price.
Yes, long standing agreements can provide stability for both workers and employers. However, the ability to renegotiate and advocate for fair wages periodically is essential, especially in dynamic economic environments where factors like inflation, cost of living, and company profits may change over time. Workers seeking better conditions and wages is not an unreasonable expectation, as their contributions contribute to a company's growth and success.
> While this doesn't make sense, what I think you are trying to say is that some people are not worth as much as other people and that those people worth less will not be able to negotiate terms as favourable as someone worth more?
The point is not about devaluing individuals or considering certain people as worth less than others. It's about acknowledging that economic disparities and systemic challenges can limit the bargaining power of certain individuals, making it difficult for them to negotiate for fair wages and better working conditions.
> After all, the whole reason for attaching a price to something is to deal with scarcity. The cost is supposed to scare you away. The higher the cost, the more scared you should be of using up the resource. But if someone has nothing else to do with their life, why would you want to be scared of them? Are they not best utilized to the betterment of themselves and humanity as a whole, not tossed aside out of fear?
It is important to recognize that the labor market is not a perfect representation of resource allocation. The concept of "scarcity" in this context does not equate to the value of human labor or the potential contributions individuals can make to society. People should not be devalued or discarded based on their circumstances, but rather, they should be provided with opportunities and support to enhance their skills and contribute meaningfully to the workforce.
The goal is to ensure that all individuals have access to fair opportunities and can be compensated appropriately for their work, regardless of their background or circumstances. Empowering workers to improve their skills and capabilities benefits not only them but also society as a whole. By promoting fairness and addressing economic disparities, we can create a more inclusive and equitable labor market that benefits everyone.
It is never difficult to negotiate a fair wage. Tricking someone into paying an unfair wage, where you see greater value than you give back in return, is a lot harder. But that questions: Have you actually tricked them, or was the agreement fair all along? The reality is that any offer that is considered unfair, by either side, is rejected and a transaction never takes place. When an agreement is made, it is always considered fair. You, fundamentally, cannot work for someone for an unfair wage.
That is, assuming involved parties are holding true to the agreement made. If someone is not holding up their end of the bargain then that would be unfair, but that also introduces debt...
> It is important to recognize that the labor market is not a perfect representation of resource allocation.
There is no importance to that statement at all. It is a true statement, but it doesn't have any bearing on the conversation.
> The concept of "scarcity" in this context does not equate to the value of human labor or the potential contributions individuals can make to society.
The perception of scarcity is what drives the perceived value of human labour. If I think I can put out a job ad and see a thousand great people line up for a chance at the job, I'm not going to find much value in the work. If I think there is only one person in the world who can suitably do the job, and every other company wants to hire them too, I know it is going to take one hell of an offer to compel them in my direction.
Which brings us back to the first comment in this thread (the one before my first). That is exactly what they stated. If you think they mischaracterized the state of the world, you should take it up with them. These circles you keep us running around in are pointless.
Sure, you keep harping on about not tricking someone into accepting an unfair wage, but the reality is far from your idealistic view. Many workers, especially those facing economic vulnerabilities, have no choice but to accept whatever is offered, even if it falls short of fair compensation. And don't give me that "transaction never takes place" nonsense, exploitative agreements happen all the time, whether you care to acknowledge it or not. And don't use words like NEVER and FUNDAMENTALLY, unless you think that labor relation between slave and master in slavery period was a fair transaction, do you?
As for your dismissive attitude towards the importance of the labor market's representation of resource allocation, it just shows your lack of understanding. While it might not fit neatly into your narrow worldview, it's crucial to recognize the market's influence on labor value and the allocation of resources. Don't believe me? Here, educate yourself by reading these two reports from OECD and ILO with data and sources to research:
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---relco...
https://one.oecd.org/document/DAF/COMP/WD(2019)43/en/pdf
Things like economic disparities and systemic challenges in context of labor that I mentioned so many times and that you dismissed are discussed there and supported by data.
And don't even get me started on your skewed perception of scarcity. Yes, supply and demand play a role, but that doesn't negate the fact that unfair practices can still arise, leaving workers struggling while companies rake in massive profits. But I guess it's too much for you to grasp that concept.
You keep going in circles, pointing fingers at the initial comment as if it's some holy truth. Well, newsflash: discussions evolve, and we're addressing a broader issue here. If you can't keep up and insist on your one-track mind, then by all means, spare us your pointless circles and let those who are genuinely interested in understanding the complexities have a meaningful conversation.
> 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.
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."
America really is the land of opportunity, but if you don’t end up in a higher bracket, life is really really difficult.
Or looking to start your own thing?
"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."
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.
It's always easier to blame the people below you.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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... )
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.
This is the equivalent of content farming on the web, and absolutely sucks, how do we stop 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.)
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.
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.
No good lead assumes hours per day is equal to quality of output.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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?
> 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.
I got dinged on my performance review for being away from my desk. Didn't stay long at that company.
I thought performance reviews were supposed to focus on performance, that is on whether you got the job done on time!
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.
Good for her, it takes confidence to do this.
Overworking engineers into burnout isn’t a healthy career path.
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.
* “online ad” can be replaced with “gig economy” if you like
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.”
Why the default assumption that everyone wants to participate in a rat race and play office politics to get a chance to be promoted?
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.
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?
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.
What incentives need to be aligned and how, to starve them a bit more and make them hungry again?
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).
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.
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.