Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

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1. For the n-th time: manufacturing jobs are being lost to automation. Globally, not just in America. This is true in Asia as well.

Manufacturing is facing the same fate of agriculture: machines and robots will keep displacing people. Nothing is going to stop it.

2. There is no such world where we'll choose to do things less efficiently to artificially save few jobs. And it's not about your TV being 100$ more expensive, it is about everything you touch and see being considerably more expensive, with a cascade effect on the businesses that need the equipment.

3. Average Joe in US is as much a shareholder as some imaginary person you have in mind. And a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second.

No, Average Joe (Median Joe) is not a shareholder, asset appreciation is not a meaningful fraction of his income so policies which dump labor to pump capital hurt Average Joe on net by a wide margin. Shareholders are 30/30/30 top 0.1%/1%/10%. You and I may be in those categories, but Average Joe is not.

Where are you getting these numbers? 54.3% of US households held a retirement account in 2022. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/scf23.pdf

Everything you said is objectively true, except for one thing.

> a company's duty is towards shareholders first, workers second.

This is just like, an opinion, man. There's no reason a company has to be like that.

It just benefits company management to act like it's an objective truth because their pay is stock-based.

> There's no reason a company has to be like that.

Law. Board and CEO have fiduciary duty towards shareholders.

If you search fiduciary duty on just this site you'll find hundreds of replies dating back years refuting your point.

That doesn't mean what you think it means.

Management has to act in shareholders' best interests especially when those conflict with their own.

That's not the same thing as shareholders above workers (or anyone else for that matter).

Good thing the birth rate is depressed then

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