The Refragmentation • Hacker News Board

Re: The Refragmentation

#301

Post by PantaloonFlames » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:16 AM UTC

ptc wrote: post #292

incompatible wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at the other end? The popular opinion seems to be that we just need to force companies to pay higher wages, i.e., put up the minimum wage. Now those low paying jobs are illegal and people end up unemployed instead, especially when the economy is bad. I'd be willing to try abolishing minimum wages and letting the government pay a subsidy to anyone making a genuine effort to work, so that they have a reasonable sta…

There's no solid evidence that increasing the minimum wage will create fewer jobs. From Paul Krugman's review of Robert Reich's new book > Other evidence points indirectly to a strong role of market power. At this point, for example, there is an extensive empirical literature on the effects of changes in the minimum wage. Conventional supply-and-demand analysis says that raising the minimum wage should reduce employm…

> a monopsonist facing a price floor doesn’t necessarily buy less, just as a monopolist facing a price ceiling doesn’t necessarily sell less and may sell more.

The theory is that the buyers of labor in these cases will simply buy alternatives - specifically low-labor alternatives, like automation. Think of automated checkout stands at retail stores, but applied to fast food.

Time was, fuel filling stations all had attendants. Drivers didn't get out of their cars when they purchased gas. They drove up and were greeted by an attendant who operated the pump and took payment. We don't do that anymore - now that attendant job doesn't exist. There's nothing stopping that same kind of transition for many other service jobs.

Re: The Refragmentation

#302

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:29 AM UTC

gotchange wrote: post #101

A very fascinating article that I have truly enjoyed reading minus the last 10 or so paragraphs where Paul expressed it unequivocally that he's a status-quo warrior and that nothing can be done to remedy the problem of the ever widening gap of income inequality in the global economy and more specifically in the US and that it's a "natural" product of the state of affairs in our world. A classical example of « the nat…

[deleted]

Re: The Refragmentation

#303

Post by tmaly » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:33 AM UTC

something not touched upon,

1 the huge pension liabilities that have been accumulated by states

2 the excess credit/currency devaluation and excesses risk taking created by central banks.

Re: The Refragmentation

#304

Post by ghufran_syed » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:44 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #250

jusben1369 wrote: post #60

The thing to me is Silicon Valley is the place in the US that still looks like that post WWII America. Large monopolies like Google, Apple and FB utilizing fantastic profits and paying amazing perks to employees. Everyone working in and on the same mission acting as a social fabric tying people together. Glass Door and the Internet in general replacing trade unions by helping balance a knowledge imbalance so that wor…

But that only happens because automation and globalization are barely harming the US. And its not like the oligopoly is not trying - why are there so many appeals for more H1Bs? If you need skilled workers and the varying skill of a worker produces magnitudes of difference in wealth created of course you need to both be huge enough to afford them and centralized enough to take advantage of them. The article itself se…

How do you know the race and sex distribution of hacker news users? Or are you just assuming they are like you? (or unlike you? I have no way of knowing what group you might identify with)

Re: The Refragmentation

#305

Post by pravda » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:47 AM UTC

Thomas_Lord wrote: post #263

A lot of this essay seems pretty fast and loose with history to me. I hope nobody passively accepts this as an accurate account of social, economic, or governmental history from the Great Depression, through WWII, the mid-20th century, through to today. Perhaps a ycombinator readership can appreciate a telling example of the problems is in Graham's account of IBM's decision not to exclusively license PC-DOS. Per Grah…

You've got it backwards. He is right and you are the one who is wrong. Sorry.

You really thing IBM thought, "wow, we are making so much money with these PC things ... better turn them into a commodity so our profit margins will go away!"

I forget how much the original XT cost, something like $2K or so? The margins on that must have been incredible.

Re: The Refragmentation

#306

Post by PavlovsCat » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:48 AM UTC

msandford wrote: post #38

AJ007 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A full scale war today, excluding skirmishes, between two large conventional armies would be nuclear. It would be over very fast. Perhaps there is little to nothing to compare with WWII. A war in Europe could happen again but it would be quite different. The use of militarism and nationalism does not require a full scale global war. Certainly it is being used right now in several nations under structural duress. The…

> A full scale war today, excluding skirmishes, between two large conventional armies would be nuclear. It would be over very fast. The problem with this line of thinking is you assume that the enemy doesn't care if there's a world left for them to have greater power/influence/wealth/whatever in. Nobody really wins a nuclear war, some people just lose a little less.

> some people just lose a little less.

..that's how the world works already. Nobody needs a second house or car or whatever as much as some other people need food, clothes, medicine and/or shelter. Does this make the world a shitty place? IMHO yes, and the people who "win" don't really win, not in my books, because they are damaged in wholly other ways I'm not jealous of at all. But here we are, and I think you're imputing pure rationality where there is a lot of narcissism, greed and other defects mixed in. And nuclear war already nearly happened by accident, right? Also, having full control of a small pie which then grows bigger is preferable than being a part of a big pie that's growing where there are competing actors, if you're serious about power. For organizations and their zealots, that can be enough.

    Scenario A:
    you have 10000 points, the others have 5000 points

    Scenario B:
    You have one point, the others have 0 points

One way to look at it, is to say you have 10000 times less points, or 9999 points less, in scenario B over scenario A. (I submit the more intelligent way to look at it is that there are 15000 times less points in the world, or 14999 less, but that is besides the point).

But the other way to look at it is to say you have infinitely more points than anyone else, and are now God for eternity, for all practical purposes. That this seems silly or sick to you, that you would rather be a normal person in a decent world, than a ruler with an iron fist in a hellish world, doesn't make it less appealing for those who are already chin deep into things we would also find abhorrent. Never say "nobody" easily, unless it's about something that doesn't really matter.

Re: The Refragmentation

#307

Post by yummyfajitas » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:51 AM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #294

yummyfajitas wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The middle class has shrunk because more people have become rich. So it seems that today there are greater opportunities to sell expensive hardware, particularly since even the lower classes are (in absolute terms) richer than the middle class of the Apple II era. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middl... As for 5k products, like fancy drones, 3d printers or high end bicycles, was the apple II n…

> So it seems that today there are greater opportunities to sell expensive hardware, particularly since even the lower classes are (in absolute terms) richer than the middle class of the Apple II era. What has happened is instead technology allowed some luxury products to be commodized and available to everyone. I doubt multi-billionairs build their own OS-es, cell phone towers, hardware, batteries, support from scra…

75% of poor Americans own at least 1 car, and 45% own their own home. Most poor people have copious amounts of free time; only a fraction work.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf

Of course, this is tangential to curun1r's claim, which is that somehow an inability for consumers to purchase new technologies would hinder innovation.

Re: The Refragmentation

#308

Post by sce » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:54 AM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #291

sce wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr: Raise the minimum wage so that employees don't need to live off of welfare. People lose their job? Good riddance, seriously. People don't lose their job? Called their bluff. > Walmart employees are not compelled to work for Walmart; the employment contract is agreed upon voluntarily by both parties. The employees know how much they will be paid and agree to accept the terms. Walmart is operating within the leg…

Either you're trolling, or you completely misunderstand my position. Thought experiment: Let's make the minimum wage $1000 per hour. I'd like you to think through the ramifications. What would happen? > Sometime in the future I'm sure we'll be able to produce enormous amounts of wealth with minimum man power We already do! The amount of productivity possible by a single worker today was completely unheard of 50 years…

> Thought experiment: Let's make the minimum wage $1000 per hour. I'd like you to think through the ramifications. What would happen?

I'm assuming prices through the roof, companies forced to sack their workers, unemployment rate through the roof, companies go bankrupt, economy collapses.

I believe Sanders is suggesting $10/hour (and that it's around $7 now). That's just a number, but I'm assuming it's the threshold between "needing welfare" and not. So my argument is that if you're paying an adult less than that then that's less than the cost of that person to "reasonably survive", thus artificially low. (In other words, companies are paying less for labor than the actual cost of labor.)

So now instead they're getting $7 from their employer, and in practice $3 in welfare. That's the difference with your example: People are already earning $10/hour, they're just not getting it from their employer. So raising the minimum wage is not raising the cost of labor, it's simply placing the entire burden on the employer instead of subsidizing it. There might even be room for a tax break there once people start number crunching. (Although in Sanders case I'm guessing he has other things to spend that money on, but I digress.)

If raising the minimum wage to the real cost of labor is a problem, then I just don't understand why. The money is there, it's just "stuck" at the top, and minimum wage is one way to help distribute some of the wealth (which really should benefit the economy as a whole, since the incredibly rich can't possibly spend all their money like millions of middle class families would).

> What do we do now? We continue to work, even though we're far past satisfying all of our material needs. Why didn't everyone just stop working more hours than it takes to eat and stay warm?

I guess it's partly because we live in a material world (where having a nice house, car, pretty clothes etc. is rewarding in its own right), and partly because money brings possibilities, and thus freedom: Freedom to travel, to not work, to do whatever one pleases. So money ultimately brings pleasure, and what else is life than seeking pleasure? ;-)

Re: The Refragmentation

#309

Post by randallsquared » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 3:55 AM UTC

quadrangle wrote: post #213

randallsquared wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an exercise, try to think of something non-niche that costs around $5k, the price of the Apple II, for which there isn't some form of financing (auto/home/college loans and such). I'm hard-pressed to think of something and I believe it's because there's an increasingly small number of people that can afford such a product. If someone can afford something with financing, they can afford it without. The difference…

So, someone who needs a car to get to work at their new job but has no existing wealth can afford the car equally with or without financing, just based on spending and saving habits???

Cars specifically excluded by the poster to whom I replied. But the sibling comment to yours made exactly the same point about housing. Should I have highlighted the quote from the grandparent post better?

Re: The Refragmentation

#310

Post by pcmaffey » Sun, Jan 03, 2016, 4:18 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #225

pcmaffey wrote: post #134

"And as long as it's possible to get rich by creating wealth, the default tendency will be for economic inequality to increase." This seems to be the ontological point of his essay, which reads as a loosey historical narrative manufactured to defend his belief that the fight against "economic inequality" will undermine innovation by disincentivizing the next Zuckerberg. But it misses the underlying point of wealth cr…

> top 1% of the population, which owns more than the rest of the 99% combined http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf This study that I found (after just 3 minutes of googling, btw) says that top 1% own only 34.6%. Do you have a source for your figures?

http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/publications/wealth-havi...