Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#181

Post by zo1 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #175

oneiftwo wrote: post #157

Not all work is equally valuable. Not all work is equally doable. Some work requires decades patience and sacrifice before one is competent enough to perform it. Some work is physically or cognitively beyond the vast majority of the population. It doesn't make sense to expect all jobs to have all the same benefits and privelegdes. Even if we pretend that all humans are fundamentally equal in ability, inequality will…

I really can't understand this mindset, it views the system that we have as fundamentally meritocratic and that only hard work matters. This is demonstrably false with a cursory review of how our (the US) education system, economy, and geographic distributions reward and punish people.

Of course we don't have a proper meritocracy or a significant one, and I don't think the OP or anyone advocating it thinks so. Meritocracy is an ideal to strive for and one we'd probably never fully obtain due to the nature of the universe, randomness, and plain out inequality attached to circumstance. What it does mean is that we should aim to reward based on merit in as many places as is feasible and, one could argue, fair.

I.e.: to each according to his value and ability, not purely according to his need. But do so with compassion. I think a fair bit of what goes wrong when this topic and other related ones come up, is that people that advocate for things such as meritocracy are immediately portrayed as heartless and lacking compassion because they advocate for that thing.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#182

Post by jupiter-nave » Tue, May 12, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #179

It seems from the comments that a lot of the readers here equate "let's look at socioeconomic inequality" with "let's make sure everyone has the same socioeconomic outcome by bringing down the people who earn more." This is... a leap not found in this article. The idea is to make sure that we realize the knock-on effects of changes in the workforce / society and take measures to make sure people who have the ability…

While I agree with your point, in a spirit of fairness, I think a lot of people are tired of being bludgeoned with "implication" rhetoric. "Socioeconomic inequality" is a pretty loaded term and some people use it to make others feel guilty or attempt a sweeping indictment of the society we live in. Many economists and sociologists use it more in the sense of this article, but it's not surprising that such an overloaded term sets some people off.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#183

Post by departure » Tue, May 12, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #104

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery and supermarket chains all seem to be giving significant hazard pay. Furloughs and pay cuts are AFAIK heavily concentrated in the jobs that pay more than entry-level retail.

Every grocery store I’ve heard of is getting $2 an hour extra per paycheck. That’s $320 extra per month, before taxes, if you’re working full time. That’s unlikely to cover the cost of getting tested for COVID-19, let alone any treatment or deductibles. Not sure how that qualifies as “significant.”

Funny you mention that. Krogers, the largest super market in the US, announced today they are ending 'hazard' pay. Lasted for little over a month.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#184

Post by gen220 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

intopieces wrote: post #179

It seems from the comments that a lot of the readers here equate "let's look at socioeconomic inequality" with "let's make sure everyone has the same socioeconomic outcome by bringing down the people who earn more." This is... a leap not found in this article. The idea is to make sure that we realize the knock-on effects of changes in the workforce / society and take measures to make sure people who have the ability…

I agree, we should see this for what it is: an unmet need to make WFH possible for more people and more job functions.

My two cents on how we might "use technology to raise up individuals who have been traditionally left out":

Our company employs 800-1000 "support"/"operations"-type roles, who normally commute to a call-center-esque "office" near Phoenix, AZ.

When COVID-19 happened, our (brilliant) IT team had them set up to work from home in a weekend, since our call center tech stack was based on chrome books, RBAC services, g-suite, and mostly self-hosted or non-proprietary business-specific software. This is not the typical story, but there's no reason it shouldn't be.

In the graphs shared here by the article, sales and operations-type roles are an outlier in terms of percentage of the economy, and percentage of the economy that "has no opportunity" to work from home. So, while the need for support centers is higher than ever, most call centers are letting people go or reducing their hours, because they can't fill their offices to capacity any more. This has a huge impact on those workers, because they are now either unemployed or are unable to make rent.

Call center software is really old, and its antiquity is currently holding these companies back in a way that hurts their bottom lines. If you can package this call-center-in-a-chromebook as a service, you can simultaneously reduce inequality and make the economy more efficient, by enabling a remote WFH call center job, for companies who hire support/ops roles in the 1000s+.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#185

Post by unishark » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

aabeshou wrote: post #162

unishark wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be better to say the market sets wages to maximize efficiency. With wages being price signals people are supposed to respond to in choosing and changing jobs. The "fairness" view assumes everyone is born into their jobs somehow and stuck there. If people could choose any job they wanted, fairness is irrelevant because everyone has an equal choice. This is obviously an ideal, but then the opposite extreme is…

the models of market fairness work perfectly in a world where people could simply choose not to work, and where everyone has the ability to work to qualify for any job. however in the real world people are forced to work by a need to survive, which puts disempowered people in a position to be exploited. and there is unequal access to education, to the leisure time to participate in education, and to the material secu…

I've never heard of "models of market fairness", it sounds silly. I called the extreme where fairness was irrelevant an ideal. I take it you agree with that point. Though I don't see that much of what you are saying is particularly crushing to the ideal. In "the real world" one also doesn't need to switch jobs every day like a day trader changing stocks.

I also take it you concede that pursuing fairness leads to reduced efficiency? You can't very well serve two optimals.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#186

Post by Avicebron » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #178

dopu wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, this is why the US GDP has grown by a factor of 20 in the past half century while adjusted average hourly wages haven't budged. What a frightfully naive point of view.

Life for the below-middle-class is way better than before. Maternal mortality, infant mortality, calories consumed, appliances in the home, life expectancy all trending in the right direction. Life now for the average American is stupendously better than half a century ago. Over the last twenty years (over which the ATUS was active), time spent sleeping, time spent on leisure, and percent of people engaged in sports…

Why is it a false god? "QoL Trending in the right direction" seems to be a very myopic way to view the world. When it's clear concentration of wealth has slowly eroded the dignity of many peoples lives, encouraging them to work longer and longer hours in jobs with less benefits "gigs/contracts" while being jerked around by increasingly powerful and untouchable classes of people.

I've experienced this phenomenon very prominently in the life sciences industry where short term precarious contracts are handed out to lower income lab workers. Recently it has become more obvious as all of management has moved to remotely monitoring and dictating the worker's day to day activities while becoming increasingly out of touch with the realities of the people doing the actual work. This is real and also representative.

When there is a culture of respect and dignity of all members of a society sharing similar goals, this sort of thing doesn't happen. Exploitation isn't expedited. Wages and equality are a form of that respect.

It's not a false god when it performs a function of cultural cohesiveness, you could argue that is what a god does..

Final note: Keeping you're livestock healthy doesn't alleviate them from being livestock.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#187

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

oneiftwo wrote: post #157

Not all work is equally valuable. Not all work is equally doable. Some work requires decades patience and sacrifice before one is competent enough to perform it. Some work is physically or cognitively beyond the vast majority of the population. It doesn't make sense to expect all jobs to have all the same benefits and privelegdes. Even if we pretend that all humans are fundamentally equal in ability, inequality will…

Income inequality is not intrinsically bad, but we have too much of it in the US. Let's get the ratio of income between the top decile and bottom decile somewhere below 10:1.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#188

Post by renewiltord » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #186

renewiltord wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life for the below-middle-class is way better than before. Maternal mortality, infant mortality, calories consumed, appliances in the home, life expectancy all trending in the right direction. Life now for the average American is stupendously better than half a century ago. Over the last twenty years (over which the ATUS was active), time spent sleeping, time spent on leisure, and percent of people engaged in sports…

Why is it a false god? "QoL Trending in the right direction" seems to be a very myopic way to view the world. When it's clear concentration of wealth has slowly eroded the dignity of many peoples lives, encouraging them to work longer and longer hours in jobs with less benefits "gigs/contracts" while being jerked around by increasingly powerful and untouchable classes of people. I've experienced this phenomenon very…

All societies that primarily aimed at equality have harmed their members. All societies that have aimed at top-quartile growth have their bottom-quartile more prosperous than those who've aimed at minimizing Gini.

Empirically, it has not led to happy people.

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#189

Post by callmeal » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:31 PM UTC

devcpp wrote: post #166

oneiftwo wrote: post #157

Not all work is equally valuable. Not all work is equally doable. Some work requires decades patience and sacrifice before one is competent enough to perform it. Some work is physically or cognitively beyond the vast majority of the population. It doesn't make sense to expect all jobs to have all the same benefits and privelegdes. Even if we pretend that all humans are fundamentally equal in ability, inequality will…

To add to this, forget qualifications and experience. If a job pays well, that in itself is undeniable proof that it has greater value, no justification needed. Capitalism works not because it rewards on someone's definition of merit, but because it rewards doing what people want.

The sad part is that most of the jobs that have great value pay so little. Imagine considering sanitation, seasonal farming, teaching, childcare and other jobs as "low value". Says quite a lot about our values as a society doesn't it?

Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

#190

Post by sokoloff » Tue, May 12, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

One thing that I find curious about the initial chart of data from Canadian workers (percent who worked some hours at home by income group) is that while the trend is clearly more hours worked at home with more income, I'm not so sure that's an unambiguously good thing.

"Are you able to work an entire day of your 40-hour workweek from home?" is a very different question from "Are you able to work your 45th through 60th hour of work from your home?"

Pre-pandemic, if I'd been asked whether I could work some of my scheduled hours from home, I'd have answered "yes, absolutely" despite additionally spending 40-50 hours per week in the office.

Sometimes, I think it would be refreshing to do something like airline pilot where I'd probably enjoy the job overall but that it was pretty clear there's no expectation that I'd fly an airliner in my non-work time.