Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it be Gini 0?
No, that's the point. Everyone claiming to minimize Gini gets Gini 1, so in a POSIWID sense, the system that claims to minimize Gini is aiming at maximizing Gini.
Citation?
Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
261–270 of 368 posts
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assuming that the returns to talent are linear, when they are not. Let's say you're hiring a new CEO for Apple; how much is a 0.1% more talented CEO worth? My math says that 0.1% is worth 260 million per year. Even though the 'best' CEO might only be a tiny bit better than the runner-up, the 'best' runs a much larger company, and makes far more money. From this, you can see that the returns to the most talente…
The cult of CEO is deeply troubling to me. People thought Apple was going to crater after Jobs, and it was fine. It wasn't fine because it has a hyper-capable supreme leader, it was fine because it employs an army of extremely talented hard working people with a reasonably competent leader. I assure you that Apple has several Tim Cook quality employees earning orders of magnitude less. It's just so weird to me that w…
The problem is loss-aversion. Are you willing to risk losing some small percentage of revenue equivalent to many billions of dollars on the bet that Cook's replacement is as good or better? Tim Cook's salary is almost irrelevant; the important question is whether he is the absolute best person for the job.
As an example: how much value did Steve Jobs add during his second tenure at Apple? Did his compensation package make a significant dent in that?
The market for CEOs is a winner-takes-most deal. Similar to what happens with music artists, the top few albums of the year sell more volume than all the rest.
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a whole plant/shop is ram by robots then you wouldn’t need a fan first place!
Because robots are exempt from the laws of thermodynamics. They just aren't capable of overheating, phew.
Not exempt, but more tolerant. A lot of datacenters could run much hotter if not for people that have to service them.
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#264The word inequality is an oxymoron. If you were to wave a magic wand and redistribute wealth you would by definition make inequality because you would transfer wealth from those who create more value to those who don’t. Your end result would be “inequality”.
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like yet another wealth transfer from metro areas to rural areas. I understand that the US government is structured that way, by the creation of the Senate, but as a city-dweller, I'm not a fan. I'd rather pay for people to move, perhaps subsidizing housing where other services have competition and jobs are plentiful.
Having at least some distributed population is a national asset in the event of conflict. Not to mention some people need to live in rural areas due to the nature of their work. Also, what’s it worth to you to enable rural America to have a similar enough lifestyle to you that you’re both more likely to consider yourselves the same sort of Americans? National cohesion is worth something.
I think there are enough decently-sized metropolitan areas that we'd be distributed well enough.
> National cohesion is worth something
There's been this bizarre fairytale of the noble yeoman running through American history, as if that were the true national identity. It's never been less true than today. I think a healthy unemployment benefit and permissive neighborhood zoning policies are sufficient to help them transition. If they're not willing to change, maybe their children will be.
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#266Not 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.
The top decile and bottom already are below that ratio. ~90k gets you to the top 10%. 10k puts you at the bottom 10% (not a full time worker). The problem is really the wealth of the top 10%.
See the top households:
Net Worth of the 10%, 1%, and .1% Households Percentile Threshold 10% 2% 1% 0.10% Net Worth $1,182,390.36 $5,816,220.17 $10,374,030.10 $43,090,281.00
The top 1% owns 35% of the wealth in this country. the next 9% own 40%. The bottom 50% own 1.67% of the wealth. That's the problem. Most people are paycheck to paycheck with little opportunity for wealth creation / stability. Most of this is inherited wealth; the wealthy today, across not just the US, but the globe, are largely descended from the wealthy of many generations past. There's a great study on the gravity of wealth from the UK:
https://www.cnbc.com/2013/10/30/whats-in-a-name-wealth-and-s...
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cult of CEO is deeply troubling to me. People thought Apple was going to crater after Jobs, and it was fine. It wasn't fine because it has a hyper-capable supreme leader, it was fine because it employs an army of extremely talented hard working people with a reasonably competent leader. I assure you that Apple has several Tim Cook quality employees earning orders of magnitude less. It's just so weird to me that w…
The problem is loss-aversion. Are you willing to risk losing some small percentage of revenue equivalent to many billions of dollars on the bet that Cook's replacement is as good or better? Tim Cook's salary is almost irrelevant; the important question is whether he is the absolute best person for the job. As an example: how much value did Steve Jobs add during his second tenure at Apple? Did his compensation package…
> The problem is loss-aversion.
Great point.
Increased risk aversion explains both the explosive growth of CEO compensation since 1960 and America's unwillingness to do bold and risky but nevertheless profitable things.
Gone are the days of [1].
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#268It 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…
> Imagine if a single mother working for $20k a year at an office could do that work from home? Imagine if we applied this same kind of get-it-done thinking to wondering why there were so many women raising children on their own without support from the child's father?
Well, whatever the reason, the number has been falling steadily, so is there a need to do anything?
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#269TFARE (The Following Are Roughly Equivalent):
- (a) Jobs that can be done over the Internet
- (b) Jobs that require specialized education and/or high general intelligence (so not everyone can do them)
- (c) Jobs that pay high salaries
Proof: (a) (b) because both of these describe jobs dealing with information-like stuff (writing, websites, software). (b) (c) by law of supply and demand. QED
Question is, what's our society going to do with the masses of people who just aren't capable of doing the kind of job many of us have?
Re: Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're assuming that the returns to talent are linear, when they are not. Let's say you're hiring a new CEO for Apple; how much is a 0.1% more talented CEO worth? My math says that 0.1% is worth 260 million per year. Even though the 'best' CEO might only be a tiny bit better than the runner-up, the 'best' runs a much larger company, and makes far more money. From this, you can see that the returns to the most talente…
The cult of CEO is deeply troubling to me. People thought Apple was going to crater after Jobs, and it was fine. It wasn't fine because it has a hyper-capable supreme leader, it was fine because it employs an army of extremely talented hard working people with a reasonably competent leader. I assure you that Apple has several Tim Cook quality employees earning orders of magnitude less. It's just so weird to me that w…
> I assure you that Apple has several Tim Cook quality employees earning orders of magnitude less.
Sure, but do you know exactly who they are? Or are we going to take a multibillion dollar bet on someone who's only probably as good as Tim Cook?