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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

#401

Post by ZeroFries »

phkahler wrote: post #243
habosa wrote: post #222

I am in favor of higher taxes, but that does not solve the dignity issue at all. Taking from the rich to give to the poor only solidifies the division between the two groups. It makes givers and takers, and there will be resentment on both sides. We as a society need to find a way to not only feed and clothe and house everyone but to give them purpose and a voice. Paying off half the workforce doesn't do it.

I'm beginning to think increasing minimum wage will help. You don't need to tax the rich, just make them pay their people better. But that's still at odds with two thing. 1) it will increase incentive for more automation - but that's already happening as fast as the engineers can do it. 2) it will increase the incentive to use undocumented workers who can be paid under the table below minimum wage. Before we can talk…

If an employee can only provide $10 of value to a business per hour, let's say, then employers have no incentive to hire them if the have to pay > $10/h. $8-10/h is better than no pay.

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

#402

Post by kyleperik »

I agree. I thing Americans are drifting apart because we aren't making an effort to create a social fabric that can support those less fortunate around us.

But I strongly disagree that this is a good job for the government. I think empathy exists, but we aren't going to find it in the hearts of the government or enterprises. Empathy comes from people.

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

#403

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

koheripbal wrote: post #261
habosa wrote: post #222

I am in favor of higher taxes, but that does not solve the dignity issue at all. Taking from the rich to give to the poor only solidifies the division between the two groups. It makes givers and takers, and there will be resentment on both sides. We as a society need to find a way to not only feed and clothe and house everyone but to give them purpose and a voice. Paying off half the workforce doesn't do it.

> need to find a way ... to give them purpose The idea that the government should be giving people purpose is the beginning of a dystopian nightmare. >> WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW MORE? <<

The CCC during the Great Depression put millions to work and they built some amazing and lasting infrastructure. As a kid I would go to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah Nat. Park and be amazed and thankful at the work they did. Didn't seem so dystopian to me.

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

#404

Post by ZeroFries »

asdff wrote: post #386
squish78 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would the accounts grow if they weren't doing something that created wealth, i.e. generated value for the economy? They're re-invested in other companies, to be put to good use.

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

#405

Post by dang »

maratd wrote: post #253
HarryHirsch wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if the safety net was too comfortable I doubt I’d have ever felt the need to climb out of it Americans have been conditioned into accepting a staggering amount of abuse and into perpetuating that abuse.

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.

Please keep this sort of flamebait far away from HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#406

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #396
moorhosj wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==everyone is the same ethnicity and culture== I think depends on how you define ethnicity and culture. Sweden foreign-born population - 17.0% [1] US foreign-born population - 13.7% [2] [1] https://nordic.businessinsider.com/swedens-foreign-born-popu... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-data/u-s-...

US white, non-Hispanic population: 61.3%.... Swedish white, non-Hispanic population: easily 90%+

Ok great. Now segment that further into cultural and lingusitic differences.

The 250,000 "white non-Hispanic" people in Louisiana speaking Creole Patois can't communicate easily with the 200,000 or so "white non-Hispanic" people who speak Appalachian English.

"Race" is a starting point, within which there are so many variances in the US. I've traveled a lot of places, but I've yet to find anywhere in the world as diverse at such a wide scale as that in the US. It's messy, violent, uncertain and magnificent.

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

#407

Post by Spooky23 »

arandr0x wrote: post #156

I saw this when I arrived in America, and it's the reason I left. I take the bus and seeing literally every day that there were people with families who worried and laughed and were kind who spent 2 hours a day transporting themselves to service or manufacturing industry job when I sat in an air conditioned office making 3x their wages was making me feel terribly guilty. I eventually went back to a country with a soc…

This is becoming more common, but has been true for a long time.

I remember working at the mall as a student in mid-90s, you could see that the key to being moderately successful in that environment was maintaining a car. Without a car, you couldn't move up to a management role (as you'd often have to come in early/late when bus transit was least effective), couldn't get a second job that paid more and you couldn't go to school to gtfo of retail.

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

#408

Post by asdff »

ZeroFries wrote: post #404
asdff wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would the accounts grow if they weren't doing something that created wealth, i.e. generated value for the economy? They're re-invested in other companies, to be put to good use.

Generated value for whom? The size of amazon? To be put to good use figuring out more ways to eavesdrop information for advertising? They aren't going to pay their workers who piss in bottles any more if they beat earnings, although the shareholders might have some big ticket purchases in mind. It is still money removed from consumers pockets and used to inflate the company, and only very few people in the company benefit from that ballooning.

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

#409

Post by amanaplanacanal »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #351
supermw wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My choices were nothing special: Pay attention in school, do my homework, get good grades, pick a meaningful hobby, don't drink or do drugs, don't beat up other kids for fun, read books, work in a retail store, stay away from drama, get into a decent college and choose a good major, do internships, network, pick up recommendations, get interviews at tech companies, get tech job, start paying debts, save and invest mo…

> My choices were nothing special: Pay attention in school, do my homework, get good grades, pick a meaningful hobby, don't drink or do drugs, don't beat up other kids for fun, read books, work in a retail store, stay away from drama I concede that the rest of this list is choices you made, but I wonder how much of the part I quoted can be attributed to actual, conscious choice on your part. Me personally, I'm in tec…

A lot of people think that their success was entirely by their own efforts. I'm with you, there was a lot of luck involved.

Things that contributed to my success that I had nothing to do with:

I'm white. I was born in the US. I'm male. I have a reasonably high IQ. My parents were middle class. I was raised in a medium sized town on the west coast. I was interested in computers and an early adopter. I stumbled into jobs that let me use that interest and make a successful career out of it.

Certainly I made some good decisions along the way, but in different circumstances I could have turned out completely differently.

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

#410

Post by Nimitz14 »

kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #347
why-el wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Welfare in the Netherlands is ~1200/month. If you live cheaply (e.g. in a 500/month room in a shared house) that leaves more than enough for a transatlantic plane ticket every now and then. Source (in Dutch): https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/actueel/nieuws/2018/12/19/uitke...

I cannot find the number you report on that website. Please elaborate on where you got it from. I'm 100% sure you are leaving out important additional details, like that one has to have been recently employed.
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