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Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

nytimes.com

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Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#301

Post by xamuel »

tomjen3 wrote: post #268
xamuel wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another perspective you might not be accounting for. Currently, people who work elite jobs tend to live around people with elite interests. If you're an upper class developer, you'll live in a neighborhood with other developers, lawyers, doctors, white-collar workers. If somehow housing were made affordable everywhere, how would that pattern be maintained? By definition, there would be nothing stopping "Cletus…

You make rules based on behaviour, call the police and if eventually he can't pay his fines, confiscates his house?

I've spent a lot of time living in poorer areas and I can tell you from experience, noise ordinances are not effective. It'll take months or years for Cletus to work his way through the court system for noise pollution, and in the meantime, he's not going to be very happy with his neighbors for reporting him. You'd better hope he doesn't do something in retaliation! Oh, and while you're twiddling your thumbs waiting for his eviction, ten more will move in down the street. You know, because you magically made all the houses $40,000.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#302

Post by kiliantics »

MockObject wrote: post #242
rock_hard wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I came to America I had nothing: no social network, no college degree, no money! But America is a place full of opportunity and so after 10 years here and a lot of work I can look back and say that am much happier than I ever was in Europe since the day I got here! The deal is simple: work hard and the sky is the limit. I started a family, have worked at Fortune 20 companies in management positions, bought a hou…

How is this wholesome content even getting downvoted?

Because it sounds like anti-socialist pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps propaganda. It's not wholesome because it's not how things work for most people. The commenter could be very lucky or (more likely) very blind to real privileges they benefited from in their story. But their story fits a narrative that allows people to feel comfortable with their wealth while poverty is rampant around them, so such people find it "wholesome".

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#303

Post by timerol »

MockObject wrote: post #242
rock_hard wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I came to America I had nothing: no social network, no college degree, no money! But America is a place full of opportunity and so after 10 years here and a lot of work I can look back and say that am much happier than I ever was in Europe since the day I got here! The deal is simple: work hard and the sky is the limit. I started a family, have worked at Fortune 20 companies in management positions, bought a hou…

How is this wholesome content even getting downvoted?

Probably due to the strong political and moral statement in the middle. "in Europe, the socialism makes people dead on the inside" definitely requires some justification. Without that digression it's a great comment about the potential upside that exists in America.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#304

Post by xenihn »

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #299
systemtest wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what is happening right now. I'm a software developer for the Dutch government and I pay about €40.000 per year in income tax. My neighbor has the same lifestyle as me. Same apartment, type of clothing, food and sports. And she even drives a car, I don't. Yet I am gone for work for about 50 hours per week and she lives on the income tax I pay. She doesn't even try to have a job because she is happy wi…

Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then? This is what I don't understand about most Europeans. All of my friends in Europe all do exactly what your neighbor is doing, almost all of them just live on welfare and it is great. They have so much money from welfare they can come visit the states and hangout regularly and have endless vacation while getting paid. All of them use this tim…

>Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then?

If everyone does that, then the system can't be sustained.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#305

Post by zozbot123 »

rock_hard wrote: post #285
Daishiman wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Statistically speaking, you're wrong; class mobility in Western Europe is equal to or better than in the US. Good thing you found a country where the culture might have helped you do things you didn't feel like doing back home, but don talk about it as though your personal experience is universal to all, because the numbers tell otherwise.

I am aware of the numbers...but I don’t think they paint the whole picture. But that’s besides the point, the point I was trying to make is that America worked much better for a person like me. Likewise I can imagine a place like Europe working better for some folks. If only people had free mobility...maybe everybody could just love in a place that works for them

> If only people had free mobility...maybe everybody could just love in a place that works for them

It would be nice to have free mobility + something like a low-level UBI, for people who really need to be helped and not fall through the cracks. A rather low UBI that focused on just ensuring the basic necessities of life would most likely be quite affordable (e.g. in terms of overall tax burden, or fraction of GDP), and probably wouldn't even be perceived as "socialism". Then we'd probably see places like Europe lose a lot of their former attractiveness as they'd be left trying to manage their unwieldly, dinosaur-socialist states, as anyone with even the tiniest shred of ambition and initiative left would immediately flee for the more open parts of the world.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#306

Post by refurb »

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #123
refurb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fair point. But as someone already mentioned, would we want someone like Elon Musk to not work?

Just because you don’t have to work doesn’t mean you wouldn’t want to anyway - perhaps money is not the only motivation for working when your basic needs are met.

But this theoretical Elon Musk would need to raise capital, correct? Would people who provide the capital still be taxed so much they don't find it worthwhile?

If not, you've just created a class who is going to be making a ton more money than anyone else.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#307

Post by shanusmagnus »

lghh wrote: post #267
aantix wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without incentives, there is no innovation. And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.

Trust me, I don't work 3x harder than most of the people I make 3x of. My wife is a teacher and I am in tech, I make 3x her salary. She works way more and spends more of both her physical and emotional labor on her job. I work hard and I do good work, but what she does is not even in the same stratosphere as what I do. I'm not innovating anything, I'm just writing decent code. She's finding new ways to help kids lear…

It's worth asking why your wife doesn't switch to your job, to make 3x the salary. Either

a) she couldn't do it, in which case by extension it boils down to supply and demand, or

b) she doesn't want to do it, because she gets a whole bunch of joy from the job which is invisibly priced into compensation (and which indirectly goes back to supply and demand.)

I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#308

Post by AndrewKemendo »

moorhosj wrote: post #260
sol_remmy2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Western European countries hardly take immigrants. When you live in a homogenous, solely middle-class country like Sweden/Denmark/Norway, of course everything seems nice and comfortable. But America accepts some very poor immigrants and allows them to make money and be lifted up. Those are many of the people you saw on the bus.

==solely middle-class country== Isn't it possible that the reason their middle-class is so large is due in some part on political decisions they've made? I think it is at least worth exploring before we jump to the ethnic breakdown of the country. Political choices are something we can change relatively quickly compared to demographics. The US has a higher GDP per capita than Sweden and Denmark which implies that the…

Yes however the demographic diversity in the US makes it less likely for people to want to "spread it" around.

If your entire country is the population of one large US metro and everyone is the same ethnicity and culture, there are fewer cognitive impediments to being empathetic at scale.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#309

Post by hoaw »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #228
hoaw wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done similar things and it generally isn't. Or it is getting very hard to make it so. Western society has become much more hierarchical in recent years. It is harder and harder to find any "cracks in system" on a fundamental level. Even if you would consider leisure to be neutral, and not in need of meaning, most people aren't even starting from a neutral point. So if you do something else you end up being und…

I think you misunderstand what I mean by classical definition of leisure. This kind of runs through it: https://www.academia.edu/17614838/Aristotle_Leisure_and_the_... or https://blogs.harvard.edu/nobleleisure/aristotle-on-work-vs-... Bonus material (wider in scope, though): http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html

Not unlikely, which is why I wrote somewhat vaguely. Ironically I don't have time to read your resources at the moment. My point is that there just isn't that much room for other things these days. So many things, from a $5 coffee to housing, is based on the idea that everyone is working all the time. You can of course quit working, pay the same rent and lock yourself in a room trying to forget the outside world until you can't. But I am not sure that is a road to happiness either. I mean, many people can barely achieve "weekend glory" these days.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#310

Post by why-el »

threwawasy1228 wrote: post #299
systemtest wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what is happening right now. I'm a software developer for the Dutch government and I pay about €40.000 per year in income tax. My neighbor has the same lifestyle as me. Same apartment, type of clothing, food and sports. And she even drives a car, I don't. Yet I am gone for work for about 50 hours per week and she lives on the income tax I pay. She doesn't even try to have a job because she is happy wi…

Why don't you quit and work on your own passions and projects for free then? This is what I don't understand about most Europeans. All of my friends in Europe all do exactly what your neighbor is doing, almost all of them just live on welfare and it is great. They have so much money from welfare they can come visit the states and hangout regularly and have endless vacation while getting paid. All of them use this tim…

> They have so much money from welfare they can come visit the states and hangout regularly and have endless vacation while getting paid.

This sounds too good to be true. Do you have any numbers? The welfare systems in EU are shrinking.

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