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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

#381

Post by avgDev »

malvosenior wrote: post #357
lghh wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 probably >3x more difficult to find someone with your skills to employ. It may be easy to you but to someone who doesn't know how to program, your work is unimaginably difficult.

I would also argue that writing code is a grind. I would enjoy writing code maybe 2-4 hours a day tops but when you want to get something done and code for 7 hours straight it is really tough to do.

Learning new concepts all the time, emotional waves, errors that can impact companies on a large scale. Programming is really difficult and requires constant engagement in the industry.

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

#382

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Daishiman wrote: post #277
systemtest wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A safety net should not become a hammock.

Why not?

If "hammock" means a place you just comfortably rest in, then why should it?

Or, turn it around: Why should you take the results of my work and give them to someone who won't (not can't) work? Why should someone who deliberately chooses not to try be considered entitled to me supporting them?

Someone who needs help? Sure, let's help them. Someone who just wants to be lazy? It's really unclear why they are more entitled to my money than I am.

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

#383

Post by ameister14 »

dmode wrote: post #325
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.

Per capita basis, I believe EU countries take on more immigrants than America

I thought that was interesting, so I just checked - the EU as a whole has about 52.5 million people living in countries they were not born in (including other EU countries) and a total population of about 512 million. So that's about 10%. The US has about 44.5 million foreign born in it, with a total population of about 328 million. So that's about 13.5%.

So no, the EU does not have more immigrants than the US per capita. If you remove European citizens moving to other European countries, they don't have as many immigrants by sheer number, either.

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

#384

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

athenot wrote: post #378
shanusmagnus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure. What his story underlines is that teaching young human beings about navigating life is rewarded 3x less than churing out code that fits some business objective. The market doesn't care about people, it cares about profit. In that system, human life is only important to the degree that it helps market dynamics.

The main problem with teaching is that there's many people who can do it. If you compound the issue with paying teachers $150k a year, not only would the cost of education skyrocket, you would be running into more and more people unemployed but with a degree specifically meant for teaching.

I'm not saying everyone can teach equally. I'm saying most everyone can become qualified to teach. Please don't accuse me of saying teaching is easy. At the very least, a much larger subset can learn to teach than can learn to code.

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

#385

Post by athenot »

linkmotif wrote: post #278
lghh wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Teaching is a straw man. Teachers get paid poorly because (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make, and (2) it’s a government-based monopoly that prioritizes “benefits” and graft (tenure, etc) over salary

> (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make

Americans care very much about education but the system we're in doesn't. Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power (or influence on purchase power). In a highly inequal society that means very fancy private schools, for those who can pay. And neglected public schools for the rest. The outlook of a market economy is not 18 years, it's 1 year (and often quarter-to-quarter).

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

#386

Post by asdff »

squish78 wrote: post #233
baroffoos wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The $150 billion sitting in bezos bank account does very little for everyone. If it was distributed among the population of America, most of it would be spent very quickly and there would be huge benefits for everyone. Preventing hoarding would do a lot of good for society.

Bezos doesn't have $150 billion sitting in a bank account. Net worth != liquid cash. Roughly $120 billion of his worth is Amazon stock.

Fine, 30b in his bank account and 120b in his portfolio. All of that money was at one point in a consumers pocket and now sits removed from the wider economy in one of Jeff Bezos accounts for the sole purpose of furthering future growth of these accounts by further extraction of money out of the wider economy.

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

#387

Post by rock_hard »

softawre wrote: post #365
rock_hard wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 you are so inclined, can you explain what the whole picture shows?

You always need to augment your quantitative data with qualitative data.

I intended to provide more of the later

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

#388

Post by jeffdavis »

jedberg wrote: post #2

There are two solutions: Part one, a more educated populace. Education will help those that can work in the "good jobs" get the good jobs. Part two, tax policy. Wealth needs to be redistributed so that there are masses to buy the products that the wealthy are creating. Edit: I just watched this post go up to 10 points, down to 3 and then back to 5. Clearly this is controversial. I find it interesting that wealth redi…

Once you start redistributing wealth, it turns into a grand 300-million-person argument over who gets what.

Immigration arguments because each immigrant would be entitled to something, often more than they contribute for some period of time.

Childbearing arguments, for essentially the same reasons as immigration.

Arguments about drugs and other vice, becasue everyone would want to make sure you are contributing as much as you can, and many feel drugs prevent that.

Arguments about education and career choices.

There are no absolutes, but as long as people basically believe that they have what they create, then they will focus on creating and not worry about what other people create (or not). When they believe they have what they can get through the political process, they will focus on political fights.

Fundamentally, freedom and large-scale socialism don't mix. In a socialist system, there are just too many other people who have a vested interest in what you do (and don't do). It may work in small countries or on short time scales, but these arguments eventually result in authoritarian policies.

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

#389

Post by AndrewKemendo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #317
maratd wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europeans have been conditioned to depend on state support to the point of being unable to function without it. Not during times of duress. At all times. This creates dependency. You become a slave to the state. When you are a slave to the state, your only recourse for redress is violence. Paris is burning. New York is not.

> Paris is burning. New York is not. And Occupy movement happened on Mars.

Did you actually go to Zucotti park?

I went back in 09 and it was effectively equivalent in my mind to a big swap meet or a hippie craft faire. Light years of difference between that an firebombing riots.

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

#390

Post by tziki »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #284
svantana wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easily disproven statement by looking at real stats [1], where most western european countries are ahead of the US. If you're suggesting those immigrants are not "poor", consider the Syrian crisis, Germany and Sweden were by far the largest takers of syrian refugees in the west, while the US hardly took any syrians at all. In fact, I read somewhere that Sweden in 2015 was the largest taker of refugees per capita from…

If you look at immigration rates over the past 50 years, the US comes far far ahead. The US look a majority of its immigrants in the 90s and early 2000s, while Sweden took near-zero immigrants until 10 years ago. Additionally, many Western European 'immigrants' are actually just people moving between different Western European countries.

You're so far off it's not even funny.
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