Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Soviet Russia you get even more. Not kidding. Do you want to move there?
I have no idea what you are talking about.
Maybe he is referring to the fact that the Soviet bloc also gave you a job and a flat to live in.
To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
261–270 of 694 posts
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#262Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
What incentive would anyone have in making more then 400K a year if you were going to be taxed at 90%?
Well. After they've already taken in 400k they could continue to take in money at about 40k per year. If you want to know why people are willing to work for 40k a year, there are lots of people you could ask in our society.
Have you ever thought that while you're looking at 400K a year as excessive, there are millions of people like the janitors who think our $130K+ tech salaries should also be taxed more heavily and redistributed?
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#264Earlier 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 ?
"need" is besides the point.
The point is incentives. People doing work and providing value is a good thing that we don't want to discourage.
There is zero point in doing extra work if it will be taxed at 90%. People would just work for half a year, then take the rest off.
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe we should stop thinking taxes are the solution to inequality. "Cutting all the high trees so the forest looks even".
Sure, I should have stated my assumption: there will always be inequality in a capitalist economy. But you can have varying levels of inequality and the extremes are probably not healthy. My suggestion above wouldn't create perfect equality, it just fixes the broken incentives we currently have that reward us for hoarding wealth and penalize us for earning it.
I would suggest that we currently don't do nearly enough saving as a nation, on average, and probably shouldn't further disincentivize that.
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mimnimum wages, mandatory health insurance / vacation, ... All the things every country in the world does except one.
Are you trying to claim the United States doesn't have those? Because it currently has 2 of those (minimum wage and a health insurance mandate) at the federal level.
The United States have both of those implemented in exactly the wrong way: the minimum wage is livable nowhere, and there is still people without health insurance in the US today.
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#267We should tax wealth, not income. [1] The majority of income the top 0.1% make is from investments and gets taxed as capital gains, only about 15% of their income is taxed as ordinary income. [2][3] We have an economic system where it's dramatically easier to make money the more money you already have. If you have $50M, you can park it in an index fund to get 4% returns and make $2M every year just off of your invest…
Wealth tax is a good idea that’s very hard to implement effectively. Many countries have tried it only to give up on it (Germany, Sweden). France has a comprehensive wealth tax but it raises less than 2% of total tax reciepts, suggesting it’s not doing much. It’s very difficult to prevent the wealthy from finding ways to hide wealth.
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought the people that left Europe for USA did it for a different life, not to get socialism and get back in line with the herd. But it seems that the people in California had afterthoughts about this and decided to go commie. Not kidding, Hacker News commenters are very much biased towards socialism - take it from a guy that was born and lived in a socialist country and had the chance to feel it the hard w…
I was also born and lived in a socialist country, not sure I get your point. If being "in the herd" means that janitors get vacation, medical leave, and don't have to work from 6am to 2am like the janitor in the article, it's an alright herd I'd say.
Not sure if "6am" was a typo, or if you decided the janitor in the article was working 20 hours a day. :)
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#269Fantastic article, we've truly been seeing a bifurcation of the workforce, and the development of a plutonomy. The interests of capital and labor are inherently opposed because the incentive of the employer is to reduce costs, and capital has been winning out. I think there's a false tendency to blame Apple for this predicament. It's not Apple's responsibility to provide for the welfare of our country's citizens, it'…
Do you know the history of Speenhamland? The empirical results of that experiment in a basic income was that it acted as a subsidy to employers, enabling them to pay below subsistence wages that were made up for by the government-funded UBI. There's a parallel to how food stamps and other support enable large corporations today to pay less in wages, as the difference will be made up through taxpayer funding. I don't…
So if I understand correctly, the Speenhamland System was a wage supplement system, not a UBI system. That is, if people stopped working, they stopped getting the extra money. This means that employers are free to slash wages and let the supplement make up the difference.
With UBI, people get the money regardless, so employers have to compete with what people can get without working. If you only offer them a meagre income boost for a gruelling work week, you're going to struggle to attract people.
Re: To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
Coding is a very particular case, though. You can't self-study your way to becoming a lawyer or a doctor. And even in coding, more companies are slowly requiring formal education as a prerequisite for even applying for jobs. We know someone like you can be just as productive as someone from a great school, but that won't matter if you're cut from the selection process.
Agree on both points. It's ironic, my pay is the same or less today than it was 5 years ago and it was lower then, than it was during the dot com boom.
You sound underpaid. Have you considered going to work for one of the big 5 tech companies?
The interview process is intimidating, but many people would likely be able to get through it if they did a couple months of intensive interview prep beforehand.
Also, consider moving to the Bay Area, or another major city.