The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess • Hacker News Board

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#271

Post by gjjrfcbugxbhf » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:04 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #240

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure the numbers for the UK include national insurance contributions? Between employee contributions (which are basically an income tax with a weird regressive structure) and employer contributions (similar to US payroll tax) i would expect that figure to be higher. Nb income based taxes are only the start anyway property tax aka Council tax is quite a burden on lower income households in the UK.

Yes, they do. (EDIT: In addition to the breakdown, look through the report I linked above, it splits out the employee and employer social security contributions in several of the tables and diagrams, which for the UK are the employee and employer national insurance contributions) The median salary in the UK in 2015 was roughly 27,500 GBP. Let's do the numbers as percent of wages first. This won't match perfectly with…

Good point. I'd forgotten how much the recent raises in personal allowance had decreased the effective tax rate.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#272

Post by whiskers08xmt » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:05 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #190

alkonaut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. This is an age old debate, and it's very hard to compare one vast continent to another. Regional differences between US cities and European cities are at least as large or larger than the difference between the avereages of US and European salaries/living standards etc. The difference between central manhattan and rural Apalachia is…

A software engineer in a startup in berlin earns maybe a median salary of 60k euros ayear at a 40% tax rate. Thats less of what interns make in the us at a 30% tax rate. An experienced engineer at google or facebook make 200k with a sizable signup bonus. As far as I know, theres no comparison between what a soft dev makes in the us and what he makes in europe. This is from someone that lives in south america, and is…

Cost of living is always important to consider. Looking at this site[0] for a ballpark figure, it would seem that someone living in San Francisco needs to be earning at least the double of someone in Berlin, to afford the same standard of living. San Francisco is still a very attractive place to work as a Software Engineer, but it's not as black and white, as the huge difference in pay might make it look.

[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#273

Post by scottishfiction » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:05 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #21

"...It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms..." "setting the terms" is a bit over-the-top here. If I want to go from here to the airport, and you have a car, and I offer you twenty bucks, is that okay? Does it somehow become bad if we meet online…

> My first wife worked a 9-5 W-2 job during her labor with our second child.

Are you confusing 'labor' and 'pregnancy'? The Lyft driver suspected she was in labor (i.e. experiencing contractions) and continued to work, operating a vehicle no less. Is the same true of your first wife?

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#274

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:07 PM UTC

Accacin wrote: post #200

alkonaut wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I look at the UK from Scandinavia, it seems to me that it's basically "50/50 continental Europe and the US". Wage inequality, parental leaves, employment security, higher education etc.are decidedly "non-european" in the UK. So yes when I talk about "Europe" in the context of "Europe vs US" I think the UK needs to be considered separately.

Wage inequality and higher education I agree with, but we do quite well with parental leave don't we (the UK)?

> but we do quite well with parental leave don't we (the UK)

No. No you don't. :)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#275

Post by vidarh » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:09 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #253

vidarh wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just semantics, but it confuses matters because most people don't include the payroll tax amount when talking about tax rates. I agree it plays into the tax pressure, but it makes it necessary to be very precise when describing it or you end up with confusion like the one above...

Indeed, that's why I tried to list it as clearly as possible. Obviously we could essentially make income tax 0% in Sweden over night, by just moving it to payroll tax. But no one would argue Sweden was some kind of tax haven. So income taxes are relevant when discussing salaries (because really what you take home is the key figure). But for tax pressure you can't discuss just income taxes. I don't know what the grand…

> Obviously we could essentially make income tax 0% in Sweden over night, by just moving it to payroll tax. But no one would argue Sweden was some kind of tax haven.

Denmark is an example of the opposite of this: Employer social security contributions make up 0.8% of total tax wedge, and they've rolled all of the employee contributions into the income tax, which makes Danish income tax look really high compared to most other European countries that have much higher employer contributions, and presumably contributes to the idea that the Nordic countries are particularly high tax, while Denmark overall is actually roughly average for OECD.

> I don't know what the grandparent poster was trying to say "employer pays $1k payroll tax so you make $9k"? Just shows how confusing this is (apparently)

He clearly misinterpreted you and though $8k was your gross salary, rather than gross salary + payroll tax, hence my original comment to him.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#276

Post by theparanoid » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:10 PM UTC

eatplayrove wrote: post #226

mnx wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats are on average poorer than Republicans, so, there may be some inversion, but the general principle still stands

Is that still true if you take African Americans out of the equation, I am genuinely curious?

If you take out African Americans and Hispanics then no.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#277

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:11 PM UTC

scottishfiction wrote: post #256

J-dawg wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whereas in Europe it's normally free While we're correcting misconceptions, in the UK it's most definitely not free. But I believe it's still a lot cheaper than the US. The universities are capped on the fees they can charge, and your student loan is regulated by the government (you only start paying back when you're earning over a threshold).

While we're correcting misconceptions... it is most definitely 'free' in Scotland.

Even though I'm swedish I did go to Scotish uni (Strathclyde!) for a while. It was probably paid for by magical EU funds though. I do remember registering and my peers talking about student loans but I thought they were like my student loans (which were for rent, food and books) and thought almost all tuitions were paid by govt. grants, not loans. I know at least a part of my friends had grants, not loans, paying their studies at least.

What is the political situation now in the UK wrt. free higher education? It seems like one of the biggest social justice/social mobility issues a society can have. Is that not a top issue for Labour?

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#278

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:11 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #269

alkonaut wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of the Nordic countries have taxes as high as the ones you outline above for average earners, though it is possible in some instances if you're earning substantially above average. Yes, I'm above average income for Sweden. Roughly my employer pays 1/4 payroll and 3/4 to me as gross salary. I pay 1/3 tax on gross salary and keep. 2/3. That means the net share of the employers' expense is roughly (2/3)x(3/4) whi…

> (Which is surprisingly close to the figure you had there of 42.7%) I've cross checked the OECD numbers many times, and they are very precise. Any discrepancy tend to be year to year changes in deductions etc. > Oh: A source of great injustice in Sweden is that renters (predominantly low income earners) don't deduct interest rate expenses of those who own property (their landlords) while those who own their property…

That's the stated purpose of the US mortgage interest deduction too.

It's pretty obviously a failure.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#279

Post by 15charlimit » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:11 PM UTC

prolly_a_moron wrote: post #191

kamaal wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't have a debate from the position of exceptions. The point he and Mr Graham are trying to make is simple. People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. The fact is that this inequality manifests itself in far more different ways before it appears as income/wealth inequality. Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything fo…

> Far before some one is rich and poor, they are good and bad at playing the piano, writing a book, programming or anything for that matter. You attribute far too much of a person's wealth accumulation with skill. Is Bill Gates the best programmer of all time? > People are not same, and by that definition are not equal. It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions.…

>>People are not same, and by that definition are not equal.

>It's hard to argue with this, but I don't see it coming up much in the gender or race discussions. I wonder why.

Because in "modern" society it's not politically correct to recognize, let alone discuss, any differences whatsoever between age, race, sex, education, skill, etc. If you have the gall to try, you'll immediately be torn apart by the howling "progressive" masses.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#280

Post by whiskers08xmt » Thu, Mar 23, 2017, 1:12 PM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #241

probably_wrong wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really). I think it boils down to whether you want to take care of yourself, or if you let the state do it for you. I would definitely take the 60K if it includes awesome public transport, unemployment money, afforda…

If you end up choosing the US, and go to an at will state, keep in mind that your employer can fire you for wearing the wrong color of socks, even if they never told you which color is the right one (no, really). Getting new hires up to speed is expensive enough that they'd be pretty stupid to actually do this. Sure a few do, but it isn't common. Also, a couple minutes with google turns up this: https://stats.oecd.or…

It's not all of Europe which has strict laws about firing people. For an example, the Danish concept of "Flexicurity"[0], where the state protects the worker against the financial trouble of getting fired, but not getting fired itself. Of course, this tend to lead to a rather high tax rate.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity