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Comment by ZeWaka | Hacker News Reader

Are you assuming yearly wages not increasing to match/exceed inflation every year?

The logical point here doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.

My salary has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years. The industry I am in, which is not related to tech, has undergone massive consolidation leading to 2-3% raises some years and no raises other years.

Cumulative inflation since 2019 has been 30%. More with these new numbers, I think.

What jobs have the wages gone up 30% in that same time period? I’m sure a few, but not many.

I'd say almost no one gets a 30%+ increase staying in the same company. There was a short period between 2019 and ~2022 when tech was hiring like crazy and you could just hop from job to job for huge increases every 6 months to a year.

The problem is that is now over, and so wages are back to being suppressed again.

Hourly wage for all private sector workers is up +32% since Dec 2019 ($37.54 vs $28.38)[1]. For non-management workers +35% ($32.31 in May 2026 vs $23.85 in Dec 2019)[2].

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES0500000003

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AHETPI

In the tech industry? Absolutely they have not, and in fact have likely gone the other way.

Unless you're maybe one of the few specialists in deep learning, CUDA, etc.

There's been mass layoffs and downward pressure on compensation all over.

I don't work as a specialist, nor at any "special" company in the tech industry, and my yearly wage increase has met or exceeded inflation. Nor has there been any layoffs at my large company.

Also is having twice as much money (1x from interest and 1x from income) not a benefit?

Maybe you are the strawman consumer that skeptics point to in guaranteed basic income debates, who just stops working because they get a check.

The only thing I want to spend a bunch of extra money on is a nice property and making twice the money would not get me there in what I consider a reasonable amount of time. I'm also not interested in going on an extra two fancy vacations per year or a nicer car. I'm plenty content to read, cook, learn, and enjoy the arts.

If the first 1x covers all your spending, what else are you going do with the other 1x? Invest it in even more investments to produce more income that you already cannot spend? That turns into what is essentially working for free. Why bother?

That turns into working hard so you or your descendants can eventually own the world. Jeff Bezos did it. Elon Musk did it. Bill Gates did it. If any of today's billionaires stopped when they had enough money, we wouldn't be talking about them.

Except all of the above settled for 1x, quitting their jobs (where they had one) to pursue their personal dreams. It so happens that their dreams also turned into something valuable, but that's secondary. They would have never been able to seek out their dream or turn that dream into something valuable had they accepted 2x.

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