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Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

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Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#31

Post by iguy »

hak8or wrote: post #5
selfishgene wrote: post #3

How would "productivity" be measured? And who would measure it? Assuming that additional government bureaucracy would be created for this (noble) purpose, what guarantee would we have that their decisions would be any more "rational" or "efficient" than the so-called "free market" system that currently exists in the US for determining salaries? This is not a criticism of the author's underlying arguments, just a ques…

Heck, even as a software developer, which HN heavily skews to, how would we measure productivity? Many fields are very creatively driven, it's incredibly difficult to put a number on it. Lines of code? That was shown to be a total failure years ago. Jira tickets closed? Some tickets are much harder than others. Hours of butt in seat? Well, sadly that still seems to be a bit in vongue, but is thankfully dying out. Vlu…

> Blue collar jobs are easier to put a number on

But still very far from easy. The standard story here involves a shoe factory in a communist country of your choice, who met their quota by making only left-foot size-3 shoes... You can plug any particular hole, but the general problem remains.

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#32

Post by chowells »

roenxi wrote: post #11

It remains very frustrating watching people organise against inequality as the evil of this era. Inequality isn't worth railing against and the focus of all this attention should be on living standards. If everyone doubles their living standards over 10 years, absolute inequality rises (there is always going to be someone with no wealth/income because they want to live that way, so the absolute gap in wealth increase…

The reason people care about inequality is that under capitalism, it's the measure that best tracks with quality of life in the lowest standards of living.

Why is capitalism relevant? Because the driving economic force under capitalism is that the rich (capital owners) want to get richer (earn returns on their capital investments).

Why doesn't a rising tide lift all boats, in practice? Because that doesn't maximize return on capital. The people who financed development and operation of a hospital get the best returns on their investments by pricing things out of reach of those with the least. You don't maximize area of a rectangle under an income distribution curve by making the lowest point of the curve the top of the rectangle.

Perhaps the best way to think of it is "a rising tide lifts all boats, but some of them aren't lifted by as much as the water level has risen." Not quite as snappy, is it? It does get the point across, though. Inequality functions as a measure of how many boats aren't keeping up with the rising water level.

That's why so many people care about it. It's the same thing as your goal, but bundled up as an aggregate and easy to track, instead of involving hundreds of subjective measures. No measure is perfect, of course, but it's a lot harder to game than something like the CPI is.

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#33

Post by roenxi »

smallnamespace wrote: post #16
roenxi wrote: post #11

It remains very frustrating watching people organise against inequality as the evil of this era. Inequality isn't worth railing against and the focus of all this attention should be on living standards. If everyone doubles their living standards over 10 years, absolute inequality rises (there is always going to be someone with no wealth/income because they want to live that way, so the absolute gap in wealth increase…

I'm going to speak directly to your point, which is the claim that only absolute wealth matters, but relative wealth does not . Relative wealth buys you status, position, and power in society. That status protects you when things go wrong, when the system fails to measure or optimize for the things that you care about, or when the music suddenly stops and you find that you're the one left without a chair. People deep…

> Your contention that we should only care about minimum living standards requires a large amount of faith, not just in the system as it stands today, but that the system won't slowly erode those minimums over time because the poor lack the political and social power to keep their minimums. Without the power to protect your own interests, you're at the literal mercy of those who are better off than you to throw you a bone when you're most vulnerable.

Yeah, exactly. The focus should be on stuff like that rather than on wealth/income inequality; I can see we are on the same wavelength here. The natural solution to what you are talking about is to find ways to increase the standards of people who are not well off.

The natural solution to inequality is to disenfranchise the wealthy, which doesn't put food on the table (literally, in the extreme China/Russia/Zimbabwe style cases). It works really badly & everyone important tries to migrate somewhere capitalist when it is tried, which is a contributing factor to why it generally isn't the done thing.

If the focus is on inequality, then realising that a policy is not working will take a long time. If the focus is on living standards, feedback will be quick.

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#34

Post by nugget »

michaelt wrote: post #21
caseysoftware wrote: post #10

> I think we can have a society that rewards people for productive or otherwise socially valuable contributions while also taking care of the poor and those who can’t work. I find "socially valuable contributions" to be a disturbing phrase. First, that implies there's some sort of authority - legal or otherwise - that determines "socially valuable." Second, quite often society is wrong in what "it" values or finds po…

> that implies there's some sort of authority - legal or otherwise - that determines "socially valuable." Well, we already have a system that rewards “valuable” contributions: Money. Just a lot of people don’t like that system much, as it turns out that system places little value on childcare, elder care and teaching; and huge value on executives who are fired for sexual harassment. Which doesn’t line up very precise…

Great childcare and elder care is very expensive and the people who do these jobs well are, in my experience, quite well compensated relative to other jobs available to them.

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#35

Post by xkcd-sucks »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #13
caseysoftware wrote: post #10

> I think we can have a society that rewards people for productive or otherwise socially valuable contributions while also taking care of the poor and those who can’t work. I find "socially valuable contributions" to be a disturbing phrase. First, that implies there's some sort of authority - legal or otherwise - that determines "socially valuable." Second, quite often society is wrong in what "it" values or finds po…

> First, that implies there's some sort of authority - legal or otherwise - that determines "socially valuable." Not necessarily. I agree that having values dictated by fiat is a recipe for disaster - such arrangements are bound to get corrupted over time. But on the other end of the spectrum, there is some sense of social value - a sense in which e.g. garbage collectors, firemen and doctors do more socially valuable…

Yes, but even these particular values embody subjective urbanist bias. For example, some towns run very effective volunteer fire departments, where the "payment" seems to be mutual aid and masculine pride. In some towns garbage disposal is mostly burn barrels and composting, which is bad for the environment but is not a service which can fail. And personally, having the privilege of education in biology, I feel like manufacturers of drugs and diagnostic equipment manufacturers are infinitely more valuable than doctors who are merely technicians trained in the use of these tools.

Perhaps the concept of "social value" is only useful in the context of societies small enough so that all participants can agree on values?

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#36

Post by noonespecial »

nugget wrote: post #34
michaelt wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that implies there's some sort of authority - legal or otherwise - that determines "socially valuable." Well, we already have a system that rewards “valuable” contributions: Money. Just a lot of people don’t like that system much, as it turns out that system places little value on childcare, elder care and teaching; and huge value on executives who are fired for sexual harassment. Which doesn’t line up very precise…

Great childcare and elder care is very expensive and the people who do these jobs well are, in my experience, quite well compensated relative to other jobs available to them.

>Great childcare and elder care is very expensive

It's hard even to find a way to buy "Great childcare and elder care". Mostly you end up paying as much as such a thing should cost but the money just goes to people who "administer" minimum wage workers delivering care that is mediocre at best.

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#37

Post by iguy »

smallnamespace wrote: post #16
roenxi wrote: post #11

It remains very frustrating watching people organise against inequality as the evil of this era. Inequality isn't worth railing against and the focus of all this attention should be on living standards. If everyone doubles their living standards over 10 years, absolute inequality rises (there is always going to be someone with no wealth/income because they want to live that way, so the absolute gap in wealth increase…

I'm going to speak directly to your point, which is the claim that only absolute wealth matters, but relative wealth does not . Relative wealth buys you status, position, and power in society. That status protects you when things go wrong, when the system fails to measure or optimize for the things that you care about, or when the music suddenly stops and you find that you're the one left without a chair. People deep…

> Relative wealth buys you status, position > pecking order

Some of this can't really be fixed: the top 10% of status only has room for 10% of the people, by definition. The pecking order, by definition, orders people.

> and power in society.

This seems like a better focus. How much extra power you gain by being on top varies a great deal between different societies (including earlier and later versions of any one country). This seems like the relevant variable.

I'm not sure that this inequality of power is very well measured by monetary inequality. There is some correlation, because power can usually be turned into material comfort. But I'm not sure how much higher taxes or whatever remedy like that is proposed for moving money around, will move power around.

> the best guarantor of social and political power is to be necessary

I hear what you're saying, roughly about changes in the last 50 years in western countries. But it is also easy to think of large classes of absolutely necessary workers who had very little power, in many places and times. So I'm not sure that that's enough.

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#39

Post by [deleted] »

roenxi wrote: post #33
smallnamespace wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to speak directly to your point, which is the claim that only absolute wealth matters, but relative wealth does not . Relative wealth buys you status, position, and power in society. That status protects you when things go wrong, when the system fails to measure or optimize for the things that you care about, or when the music suddenly stops and you find that you're the one left without a chair. People deep…

> Your contention that we should only care about minimum living standards requires a large amount of faith, not just in the system as it stands today, but that the system won't slowly erode those minimums over time because the poor lack the political and social power to keep their minimums. Without the power to protect your own interests, you're at the literal mercy of those who are better off than you to throw you a…

[deleted]

Re: Valuing Productivity, Not Profession, Could Reduce U.S. Inequality

#40

Post by sdfin »

noonespecial wrote: post #36
nugget wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great childcare and elder care is very expensive and the people who do these jobs well are, in my experience, quite well compensated relative to other jobs available to them.

>Great childcare and elder care is very expensive It's hard even to find a way to buy "Great childcare and elder care". Mostly you end up paying as much as such a thing should cost but the money just goes to people who "administer" minimum wage workers delivering care that is mediocre at best.

Aren't there childcare and elder care agencies that aim at families of different socioeconomic levels? I guess that the rich hire expensive nannies at expensive agencies.

What you comment sounds unlikely to me.

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