Earlier quoted context omitted.
Work widens inequality whether or not it’s extractive. Any time you’re creating value, someone else is not, and the difference between the two of you grows.
That's not true. We can both be better if I work for you and you pay me right. It's not a negative sum game and can be positive and equal value for both. The value of your cash to me and my product for you.
The Real Class War
581–590 of 634 posts
Re: The Real Class War
#582Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not OP, but my personal belief is that all work is valuable, otherwise it wouldn't be desired. I don't think it's a good exercise to decide how much it is worth, except to say that work that requires X unit of time should provide at a minimum an amount of compensation that allows a person to obtain a standard of living above the poverty line.
> my personal belief is that all work is valuable, otherwise it wouldn't be desired. This rather begs the question. In the absence of a market mechanism for determining what work is desired, how do you determine what work is valuable?
If a person desires work but doesn't value it high enough to sustain a person whose time is wholly consumed by it, I would question the necessity of that piece of work. If it's not critical to your business maybe it shouldn't be done. If it is critical then it sounds like it's worth the compensation.
Re: The Real Class War
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
> my personal belief is that all work is valuable, otherwise it wouldn't be desired. This rather begs the question. In the absence of a market mechanism for determining what work is desired, how do you determine what work is valuable?
I'm not making a distinction of how valuable a particular piece of work is, just that work in general is valuable and should be valued such that whoever is employed by it should be able to be sustained by it. If a person desires work but doesn't value it high enough to sustain a person whose time is wholly consumed by it, I would question the necessity of that piece of work. If it's not critical to your business mayb…
Careful what you wish for. This is awfully close to arguing that millions of people should lose their jobs.
Re: The Real Class War
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's always a bit funny and sad when statements like these happen. Most people seem to have _no_ idea how much money Engineers/Product Managers can make at certain companies.
Seems like the author knows exactly how much they can make, he states that the median income is 81k/yr. Now you could argue that that's deliberately missing the long tail nature of this, but if anything, the theme of outliers of the industry just reinforces the point.
Re: The Real Class War
#585Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of that is due to automation? Profit margins are also important, especially in a global economy.
Profit margins take a backseat to citizen welfare in questions of ethics.
Re: The Real Class War
#586UBI now, please
Re: The Real Class War
#587Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you never heard of the labor movement? The grassroots activism by working class people that forced the federal government to develop an entire arm of federal law, with its own Cabinet-level agency, to protect them from the professional managerial class? How have you spent your career working in public policy circles and come away with so little understanding of what grassroots activism is, and the impact it has…
M&P are workers also and any one who works in tech is by definition are in "the professional managerial class" I think you are confusing stunts with long term sustained lobbying. For example I got several k people a substantial improvement to their pensions, passed a motion at a union conference got it put on bargaining agenda and successfully changed the companies mind.
Re: The Real Class War
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are there many examples of that happening? The biggest counter example I can think of was Occupy Wall Street. AFAIK nothing ever came out of it, not even a small organised group. Most protests I've seen have actually been the other way around. They were organised by pressure groups or unions and the protesters were already members of those groups. They existed primarily as a chest-beating exercise to show politicians…
You're missing the forest for the trees on Occupy. Loads of people and groups active today found each other through that or got their start there.
Re: The Real Class War
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a very tricky problem. My awareness of false consciousness is more from feminism. So what if a woman aspires to being nothing more than a good housewife? But what if she's been brought up in a culture where she has been told from early childhood that being a good housewife is all she every should aspire to? I don't think you can tell that person that their desires are wrong but you can point out what other optio…
I think the way you portray Brexit is rather telling. There's actually a ton of very informed analysis that could be boiled down to "leaving the EU will result in increased NHS funding". Some of it is academic and wonkish, some of it is intuitive and working-class. But it's there. If you aren't aware of it that says more about how much you tried to expose yourself to such arguments, I think. A simple version goes lik…
My belief that Brexit will lead to lower NHS funding is as follows: assuming Brexit results in higher trade barriers with the EU, our biggest trading partners, it will dent trade, which will lead to lower growth, which will lead to lower tax receipts, which will lead to lower funding available for the NHS (and other things). The unknowns are by how much trade with the EU is affected and how quickly trade with other countries grows to fill the gap. Given current trading patterns [8] I feel justified in thinking it'll take some time. The other points are basic macroeconomic principles.
Leaving aside the factual points addressed below, your belief is based entirely on how you think Brussels thinks, how the UK elite think and how they will respond to some hypothetical event. It's basically playing out a possible sequence of future political events. I would be interested in links to the informed analyses you mention (I'm not sure what search terms you think I should use).
What's interesting about it is that it's not falsifiable. It's your political opinions, which can't be proven either way, and playing out a hypothetical, which is unknowable. My belief can be disproven easily by demonstrating how Brexit won't harm overall trade or some plausible offset that I haven't considered. Your belief is correct if your reading of the entire EU and UK political classes is correct and you correctly predict their intentions. My belief is correct if we have a correct understanding of how trade affects growth. Do you think that both beliefs are equally robust?
On factual points, recent data [1, 2, 3] shows that the UK is actually underperforming the Eurozone in growth, including Germany (though it's also experiencing negative growth). In addition, this is from a bad start as the UK has recovered very poorly from the GFC [4], especially relative to other major economies [5]. On your final point it is at best highly questionable [6, 7] that fewer EU migrants will lead to higher funding for the NHS.
The fact that this is considered "obviously true" in the face of evidence to the contrary is a very good example of what I'm talking about. I agree we should challenge our own views. In particular, I worry that the argument that EU migrants are a net benefit overall is all well and good on paper but ignores the localised impact in places that experience high immigration and don't see a corresponding increase in central government funding. That said, given the evidence of the relative economic consequences of austerity and EU migration I feel justified in saying that people "should" direct their anger at the government that mishandles migration, not migrants themselves.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/gdp-annual-growt...
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locat...
[4] https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13302
[5] https://blog.euromonitor.com/the-recovery-from-the-global-fi...
[6] https://fullfact.org/europe/eu-immigration-and-pressure-nhs/
[7] https://www.niesr.ac.uk/blog/migration-and-public-finances-l...
[8] https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/internationa...
Re: The Real Class War
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gay people can get married in America, which was completely unthinkable a generation ago. 100% due to activists, many who risked their lives to make it happen.
I think a good litmus test for a political issue to gain brownie points on is this: Does it affect the politician, themselves? If a politician is straight, what does two gay persons marrying have to do with him? It’s thus a brownie point issue, same goes with pot. Once it start affecting their bottom line, i.e. there’s money involved, watch them and the media skirt around the issue carefully.