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To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

nytimes.com

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Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#91

Post by kazagistar »

scarface74 wrote: post #67
princekolt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the simple knowledge of this fact is so scarce that it makes almost no difference. And since most schools don't care about coding (or, where I'm from for example, about anything not related to get the most students to pass the equivalent of SATs), this is not going to change soon. I was so surprised when my father told me that back in the 80s, in a small city in the interior of Brazil, in a public school, he was…

I went to a small town public school in the late 80s and early 90s and we had an AppleSoft Basic course. I'm amazed that schools don't have that now.

Not many people are qualified to teach programming in any way and also willing to work for abysmal school teacher salaries.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#92

Post by legendiriz68 »

tnzn wrote: post #72
scarface74 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?

Why would anyone need more than 400k a year for himself in the first place though ?

To buy(/invest in) stuff? Not your or mine business anyway.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#93

Post by wallawe »

scarface74 wrote: post #64
mathiasben wrote: post #36

The underlying cause of this whole issue is the changes in tax policy instated in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, previously income was taxed at higher rates unless deductions were utilized which forced those earnings back into the economy creating jobs funding research, etc.. As it's become easier to retain more earnings there's little incentive not to optimize an entire corporation solely with the purpose of generating…

What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?

This is the correct answer, I don't know why you're being downvoted. This would cause people to either (a) leave the country or (b) work until they made their 395k and then stop working for the year.

It's actually quite terrifying that people would advocate for taking up to 90% of someone's income. We need to work on solving inequality but this simply isn't the answer.

Edit: It's also important to remember that taking more money away from the rich, and feeding it into an already broken and inefficient system (our government) does not equate to lifting people out of poverty.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#94

Post by aswanson »

tnzn wrote: post #72
scarface74 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?

Why would anyone need more than 400k a year for himself in the first place though ?

To invest in 2 hippies starting a personal computer company in 1976. To invest in 2 guys in starting a search engine in 1996. To invest in a kid in Harvard making a social network in 2004....

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#95

Post by Spooky23 »

cmiles74 wrote: post #14
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #3

>Focus on core competence and outsource the rest. The approach has made companies more nimble and more productive, and delivered huge profits for shareholders. It has also fueled inequality and helps explain why many working-class Americans are struggling even in an ostensibly healthy economy. That is the outsourced companies causing inequality. They are the ones paying people terribly, not the company contracting wi…

I disagree. Large wealthy companies are working hard to directly employ as few people as possible. Part of what they gain from this is the ability to pretend that the companies they hire to perform this "non-core" work are entirely separate black boxes. It would be embarassing to Apple to be treating their employees this way so they hire an outsourcing firm to do it for them. As large companies, like Apple, race to s…

Not at all. The value is being captured by the contractor and middlemen.

Generally speaking, outsourced staff make around 15-20% of the billing rate.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#96

Post by vadym909 »

FLUX-YOU wrote: post #12
eof wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh.. that's like saying "Can't blame me for cruelty to animals, the people I buy the meat from treat the animals cruelly; not me."

You can hold multiple people accountable, but I'm pretty sure Google should be less accountable than the outsourcing companies. If you want to hold major companies accountable for the outsourcing companies they hire, fine, make a regulatory push for that, but you have to fix the outsourcing companies first before you can seriously argue for that or you're just making major companies pay for the problems of outsourcin…

The regulations already exist. Companies aren't allowed to classify contractors if they do work similar to a fulltime employee or what would be considered full-time work. Like work long term at the company site. The outsourcing happens by finding and taking advantage of loopholes with contracts, firing contractors after 18 months and betting the costs to settle a lawsuit is cheaper than paying benefits to 10s of thousands.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#97

Post by tcbawo »

fatjokes wrote: post #35

It sounds like the real reason for inequality is that the pay for "janitorial work" has simply decreased. The article makes a point to say that the pay is the same, accounting for inflation, but it's disingenuous not to highlight total comp, which Ramos had significantly less of than Evans.

Lack of a medical safety net and sick days hits low income workers very hard. Every unpaid day sets them much further back.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#98

Post by mistersquid »

princekolt wrote: post #31
newforice wrote: post #11

"If you’re educated, you’re in command." I'm not college educated, I've made a comfortable living as a coder. It took over ten years of self-teaching in my 20's while working a FT job but I knew this is what I wanted to do. So I agree with the statement but there's more than one way to become educated. Academia is just one way and possibly not the best way.

But the simple knowledge of this fact is so scarce that it makes almost no difference. And since most schools don't care about coding (or, where I'm from for example, about anything not related to get the most students to pass the equivalent of SATs), this is not going to change soon. I was so surprised when my father told me that back in the 80s, in a small city in the interior of Brazil, in a public school, he was…

In the US, K-12 jobs teaching are neither prestigious enough nor well-compensated enough to attract/retain people who know how to code, which is different that teaching to code but an educator must know high level concepts to teach effectively. Anyone proficient enough to teach code is either working or consulting in the private sector.

I do wish US K-12 teachers were better compensated.

EDIT: readability.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#99

Post by winstonewert »

mathiasben wrote: post #36

The underlying cause of this whole issue is the changes in tax policy instated in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, previously income was taxed at higher rates unless deductions were utilized which forced those earnings back into the economy creating jobs funding research, etc.. As it's become easier to retain more earnings there's little incentive not to optimize an entire corporation solely with the purpose of generating…

Income inequality has been increasing since the 1970s, so I submit the underlying cause cannot have been a policy change in 1986.

Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors

#100

Post by vadym909 »

andrewksl wrote: post #55
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hold multiple people accountable, but I'm pretty sure Google should be less accountable than the outsourcing companies. If you want to hold major companies accountable for the outsourcing companies they hire, fine, make a regulatory push for that, but you have to fix the outsourcing companies first before you can seriously argue for that or you're just making major companies pay for the problems of outsourcin…

I think they're both equally culpable; the customer for making pricing a race to the bottom and the service provider for choosing to play said game. The customer could choose to consider the treatment of the workers a priority in selecting service providers, and the service provider could choose to refuse to exploit their workers just to secure deals, but neither of them have any real incentive to do so. It's not ill…

This problem happens when a leading company decides to use contractors to lower its cost. All other companies that are competing with it now have to do the same or they operate at a disadvantage. The workers then lose any leverage because they now can only pick between multiple contract jobs.
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