Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two • Hacker News Board

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

#461

Post by donaldknuth123 » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

mcherm wrote: post #159

toomanybeersies wrote: post #27

The problem is that as a society we believe that people need to work 40 hours a week to survive. We replace people with robots and retain the same output. We are more productive than ever before, yet work the same amount. Physical and uneducated work is being replaced by automation, yet we expect these people replaced by robots to find jobs to survive where there are now none. I don't believe in Universal Basic Incom…

But I DON'T work just 40 hours a week. I work more like 50-55 hours most weeks. I LIKE my work, and I don't want to do less. I agree that the belief that we must work 40 hours a week in order to be a good person lies at the root of many of society's problems. And I do think that people ought to contribute to society. But somehow that does not lead me away from the idea of a Universal Basic Income, but instead leads m…

>But somehow that does not lead me away from the idea of a Universal Basic Income, but instead leads me to believe that something roughly that shape is what we need to save society.

The fascination with UBI is so strange. You are basically admitting that you think the system is so broken that the only way for it to continue to operate is to give people free money. How you come to that conclusion and not that the current system is completely broken and likely needs to be replaced confuses me.

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

#462

Post by HarryHirsch » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

crowdpleaser wrote: post #422

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.

At least people can overcome abuse and thrive off of it. I don't know a single person who had an extremely cushy childhood who is 'on fire' for anything or striving for greatness. You need adversity to be great. Not all adversity is abuse. The American dream is about overcoming and flourishing to the limits of your will power, taxing people who have succeeded to provide succor to people who don't care about themselve…

And yet despite all the talk about the American Dream, social mobility in the US is uncommonly low amongst the Western democracies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#/media/File:Th...

The US is right there with deindustrialized Britain and Italy with its massive North-South divide. These are not exactly models to emulate.

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

#463

Post by Bartweiss » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

ghobs91 wrote: post #368

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.

The issue with most of the studies that say this is how they measure mobility. If the focus is on the ability to move up in income percentiles, then it's an unfair comparison. Why? Because while it sounds nice to say "avg german child moves from top 50% to top 65% while avg american only moves from top 50% to top 55%", American salaries are much higher, and cost of housing is on par or lower than Europe, so top 55% i…

Huh, I'd actually never noticed this.

Now that you say it, I see a lot of these comparisons talking about odds of a person born in one quartile/quintile ending up in a different bucket as an adult. Often, it's specifically cited as the chance of a person moving between the highest and lowest buckets. Which on reflection is actually a composite measure of income variability, inequality, and societal wealth.

Running those stats alongside a Gini coefficient would help somewhat, since lower coefficients imply more similar gaps between adjacent buckets. But even that's not enough on several levels. It wouldn't distinguish where inequality falls, particularly patterns like the US and Singapore with large variation inside the outer buckets, so a Lorenz curve would be more useful. It also doesn't clarify the raw size of the changes - position in society matters, but it also matters whether a ten-percentile jump is a 10% gain in purchasing power or a 100% gain.

I'm a bit embarrassed, really. That's a massive gap in the utility of those stats, and I never even considered how many different things the same numbers could mean.

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

#464

Post by sigi45 » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:49 PM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #380

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 not about how hard you work. It's about how many people can do what you do. Don't sell yourself short, in tech you have skills that only a small percentage of the population are capable of doing. We might all say "Programming is easy" or "I really only work half the day" but for many people Programming is seen as witchcraft, and for many what would take a skilled developer an hour would take a whole day (or wors…

I think very similiar to ighhh.

It doesn't make it fair that in theory 'everyone' could get into it or that it takes probably much longer for someone to do my job than the other way around (like yes i think i would be able to sell things).

I don't know how we should incentive instead but it doesn't make it fair.

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

#465

Post by linkmotif » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

lghh wrote: post #458

linkmotif wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won’t shame me. You can’t make me feel ashamed of my father, who got my family out of poverty and didn’t even know how to order a beer or a meal at a restaurant until he was 55 because that’s just not how we spent money. Your perspective is rooted in the heights of privilege and entitlement, wherein first world people can live cozy secure lives, entitled to leisure and “hobbies” on the backs of second and third w…

> You can’t make me feel ashamed of my father, who got my family out of poverty and didn’t even know how to order a beer or a meal at a restaurant until he was 55 because that’s just not how we spent money. I never asked you to feel ashamed for that. I'm asking that you don't require everyone go though the same struggles as revenge. Get this... I also think the people who are working to create the things that you are…

No I’m saying that things don’t fall from the sky. People make everything, and basic human dignity and justice demands that no one is just entitled to the fruits of someone else’s labor.

The revenge tack you take is also misguided. This is all about basic human dignity and people feeling like they deserve all this stuff from workers the world over, just because they live in a first world country. Or just because they live period. Being alive doesn’t entitle you to anything, and that’s probably where we disagree, because my guess is you think being alive entitles you to health care, and food and housing. But if that was true, and everyone took that entitlement, then where would all the actual stuff come from? Where? As I said, it’s the height of privilege to act like these things are human rights, because in doing so, you deny the workers who actually produce things common, basic dignity and equality.

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

#466

Post by sigi45 » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

avgDev wrote: post #381

malvosenior wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes its work. But you know what is also work? Cleaning shit from others the whole day.

I also can imagine selling stuff is draining or catering for others.

I'm valuated more because i'm more needed and a company can make more money with me than without me. This still doesn't make it fair.

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

#467

Post by toasterlovin » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

moorhosj wrote: post #428

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

==Swedish white, non-Hispanic population: easily 90%+== Not only is this contention wrong [1], it is completely arbitrary. Ethnicity isn't just how you want to draw lines to prove some point. Sweden has multiple ethnicities within what you call "Swedish white, non-Hispanic". This is observed, most obviously, through different dialects and cultures. Swedes that border Norway are different than Swedes that border Finla…

And white people in the U.S. are also not homogeneous. So what?

The U.S. has multiple metropolitan areas that each has a larger population and more ethnic diversity than the smaller European countries. And that's before you even consider the country as a whole.

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

#468

Post by normal_man » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

rland wrote: post #454

normal_man wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (created more wealth/benefit) For whom?

For society, by making the distribution of goods/services more efficient. Amazon enriches our lives (compared to no Amazon) every time anyone uses it. The resources we all save, the delta, go partially to Mr. Bezos and owners of Amazon stock in the form of profit. They are rewarded for having allocated their capital efficiently. They can spend the money on whatever they want, but it is mostly allocated back into maki…

> Bear in mind this is the extremely idealistic neoliberal take.

Yeah it certainly is

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

#469

Post by ghobs91 » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:56 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #463

ghobs91 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with most of the studies that say this is how they measure mobility. If the focus is on the ability to move up in income percentiles, then it's an unfair comparison. Why? Because while it sounds nice to say "avg german child moves from top 50% to top 65% while avg american only moves from top 50% to top 55%", American salaries are much higher, and cost of housing is on par or lower than Europe, so top 55% i…

Huh, I'd actually never noticed this. Now that you say it, I see a lot of these comparisons talking about odds of a person born in one quartile/quintile ending up in a different bucket as an adult. Often, it's specifically cited as the chance of a person moving between the highest and lowest buckets. Which on reflection is actually a composite measure of income variability, inequality, and societal wealth. Running th…

It's something I didn't realize until recently myself. There are several things Europe does better than the US in, but earning power is not one of them.

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

#470

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

lghh wrote: post #446

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is true, but it's become a partisan issue, at least in the U.S, to talk about testing teachers in some way. I believe a huge problem is finding a way to differentiate a good teacher from a bad teacher if you're not allowed to look at grades/some kind of standardi…

Part of the problem with doing that, especially in younger grades, is that so much of it depends on variables outside of a teacher's control. A lot of reading at a young age comes from life experiences. For instance, someone who has never been outside of an inner city is going to have more trouble reading a story about someone sailing on the ocean because they are so far removed from even the most basic plot elements…

I would say you'd have to compare them to similar schools in the area or similar areas in the U.S. Between income range in the surround neighborhoods and population density you should be able to come up with a decent comparison, I would think.