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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

#431

Post by moorhosj »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #372
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-...

Using just the census designated measures would be a fine start. Foreign born population wouldn't begin to address diversity in the US. In Sweden it might be the case that foreign born population is the only source of ethnic diversity. Whereas in the US, the people in northern Maine live in a completely different world than the people in Southern Florida.

==Whereas in the US, the people in northern Maine live in a completely different world than the people in Southern Florida.==

And your contention is that Stockholm, Malmo, Kiruna, Haparanda and Skalstugan are all the same?

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

#432

Post by asdff »

ZeroFries wrote: post #426
asdff wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

How does a company get bigger without providing value to their customers?

I'm sure amazon does provide value to it's customers, but it was at the expense of consuming and destroying local small business economies where the profit would have stayed and been spent there, not in Seattle, not on exotic mansions and watercraft, not on the latest Echo endeavor that may or may not ever come to fruition. Just as Nestle bottles water from local aquifers and sells that water elsewhere outside of that watershed, eventually depleting the aquifer, Amazon takes local wages away from the economy and either sits on this pile of cash or on lavish compensation for the few at the top of the company.

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

#433

Post by beefalo »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #384
athenot wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 say…

Many people can learn to program and companies that pay poorly will only be able to hire people who aren't very good and they will go out of business. Finding good teachers is very hard as well but the government will only pay terrible salaries and mostly hire poor teachers. The difference is when the teachers suck and students do poorly, the school doesn't go out of business, they just reduce the budget and it gets worse.

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

#434

Post by AnimalMuppet »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #237
normal_man wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually lower income people give more to charity than well-off people.

If you exclude Christian lower income people, that no longer holds true.

Interesting. Still, it's unclear to me why that exclusion is a valid way of doing the analysis.

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

#435

Post by AndrewKemendo »

moorhosj wrote: post #431
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using just the census designated measures would be a fine start. Foreign born population wouldn't begin to address diversity in the US. In Sweden it might be the case that foreign born population is the only source of ethnic diversity. Whereas in the US, the people in northern Maine live in a completely different world than the people in Southern Florida.

==Whereas in the US, the people in northern Maine live in a completely different world than the people in Southern Florida.== And your contention is that Stockholm, Malmo, Kiruna, Haparanda and Skalstugan are all the same?

My contention is that median variability of cultural attributes between those cities is signifcantly less than median variability of cultural attributes in US cities.

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

#436

Post by Bartweiss »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #248
CalRobert wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in tech. My wife does not. We came to the EU and I noticed that I make a good deal less, but she makes more. Even more important, though, instead of me getting lots of vacation time and her getting almost nothing, we both get a month off a year, protected by law (no bullshit "unlimited vacation" policy can take it away). We can finally take proper holidays together. Life is better here.

> protected by law (no bullshit "unlimited vacation" policy can take it away). I've worked at two places who had this policy and it was remarkable how many people just burned themselves out by NOT taking a single day of vacation. There was always pressure from management to NOT take vacation, then you add in pressure from your co-workers to continually work late, push to get projects done on time, all at the cost of…

I viewed this as a red flag too until I landed at a company where the unlimited vacation policy was sincere. It was actually a great experience.

At risk of sounding like a management consultant, it was very much a matter of corporate culture. People at upper levels took vacation regularly and actively encouraged their reports to do so. One-on-ones often included asking about recent and planned time off, and "none, none" produced real pressure to use the policy. The lack of set days did save money when people left, which probably helped it stick around, but I think the initial adoption of 'unlimited' instead of some generous allowance was basically just a matter of not wanting to formally track vacation time. (One other significant point, especially for tech: there wasn't an expectation of having grand plans, and people who weren't taking time off would even be reminded that they didn't need any "good reason" to do so. I've definitely heard of places where taking a month off to hike the Andes is fine, but taking two days to catch up on sleep and errands is frowned on.)

I still don't take "unlimited vacation" seriously when I see companies advertise it; I'd want an account of the real policy, minimally from Glassdoor reviews or preferably from an employee I knew. But I almost never see US companies advertise 20+ days of paid vacation as a starting allowance, so if the goal is to maximize time off I suspect searching for 'real' unlimited might still be the best bet.

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

#437

Post by ethbro »

CodeCube wrote: post #282
ethbro wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parent (and the article, although it fails to clearly draw the obvious link) could more accurately be said to be referring to a post- labor scarcity society. In other words, a society where there is more labor available than we actually need to fulfill demand (caveat: in high-productivity industries). To illustrate, take the article's example: the shift from an agricultural to industrial economy. Someone walks off a…

This gets even more "extreme" when we talk about digital artifacts ... once the initial labor of creating a piece of music, or film, or game, or program is expended, the cost of infinitely reproducing copies of those approaches zero in many cases.

Good point. Especially as we move towards digital distribution.

Film reels required manufacturing, assembly, installing, and operation, even if the content was already paid for.

Digital video? Revenue goes directly to the owner, minus some capital costs, but critically almost no labor cost.

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

#438

Post by 52-6F-62 »

hoaw wrote: post #309
52-6F-62 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unti…

I think I get what you're saying, now. Sounds like more of a critique of North American/protestant work ethic coupled with our acclimating to convenience.

I think that's probably a whole other subject to be tackled.

Aristotle's core point above would be along the lines of:

Relaxation (in order to) -> Work (in order to) -> Leisure (the goal, for its own sake)

Leisure and relaxation being entirely different activities, or lack thereof.

Maybe think of leisure in this case being the activity of passion/deep interest or communal good or else that might not come in returns that pay for any other aspect of your life directly. Work being the activity (that you may well enjoy enough, or have interest in) that pays for everything and allows you time and/or resources for leisure. Relaxation is what helps you essentially stay sane and healthy in order to follow through with the rest.

So it seems like you aren't taking on peoples' ability for leisure, but NA society's values that prevent it [for most people].

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

#439

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tomjen3 wrote: post #289
gotocake wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they riot and rebel. The surest way to see how violent people can be is to offer them no choice in the matter. This is a country with a lot of guns, tons of space, and a poorly paid police and military. It’s not hard to imagine how the prospect of a quiet, ignominious death would go over. There are already militias and preppers, and I for one want those movements to do something other than flourish and expand.

If they rebel, then either there is a use for some of them for guards, or those we can hire for guards are better (and will win). The US indeed have a large amount of land and many guns, but that land is already termed "fly-over" country, do you think most people on the coasts care if somebody runs around up in the Apalachian mountains with a gun shouting down with the rich? If (which I do not believe) those persons…

There's quite a few poor in the Bay Area, or in the LA Basin, or in the East Coast megapolis. Some of them are within a day's march of Silicon Valley, or Beverly Hills, or Downtown Manhattan (though it might be more defensible against those not already on the island).

Just being "not in flyover country" isn't going to save the elites if the poor seriously rise.

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

#440

Post by GVIrish »

systemtest wrote: post #240
GVIrish wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if that really makes sense. By that logic, the more miserable we make life for poor people, the more motivation they will have to get out of that life. A good social safety net means that poor people are not so busy trying to survive that they actually have the opportunity to improve their lot in life if they so choose. If you're not burning up 4 hours a day commuting and several hours a week washing clo…

A safety net should not become a hammock.

Sure, you don't want to design a system that lays benefits on so thick that it creates a strong disincentive to work. But any worthwhile safety net is going to have some level of abuse, which is a tradeoff that has to be managed with rules/enforcement/management. On the flip side, any system that allows unfettered capitalism will be abused by the unethical. So you create a system of regulations to ensure a fair market, while knowing that some people/companies are going to find ways to abuse the system anyway.

The point of the safety net in my opinion is to ensure equality of opportunity, not equality of ends. So you want to strive to ensure that children have an opportunity to learn and become productive members of society, in spite of the circumstances of their parents. You want to make sure that people who experience bad luck such as unplanned illness, economic downturns, natural disasters, etc. are not left totally destitute.

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