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Remote work can also be a source of socioeconomic inequality

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

#311

Post by xmprt »

taurath wrote: post #309
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Gary, Indiana has a lot more room. In addition, the new well-off people will need coffee, and cars, and groceries, and be able to pay for them. This will rejuvenate other jobs. With more people with money who can now afford tickets and buy merchandise, maybe more bands will start playing in Gary, Indiana, improving the music scene. With more people with more disposable income, maybe some of them will be intereste…

How is it different than trickle down economics? Won’t those coffee shops just be starbucks and grocery stores be Whole Foods and all the profit from them returned to shareholders?

What's the alternative? Everything stays the same? How would that help their economy?

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

#312

Post by TFYS »

marcusverus wrote: post #105
baron816 wrote: post #32

This is a pretty awful, clickbaity title. The implication is that remote work is bad for low-income earners, but that’s not the case. Inequality isn’t bad by itself. If some people are doing better without others being impacted, how could that be bad?

Inequality is only bad for low-income earners if you've been convinced that the economy is a zero-sum game. Nobody actually believes this, it just makes good copy for purposes of rabble-rousing. If you think that wealth inequality is, itself, a bad thing, then ask yourself a simple question: If you create a software company that employs 200 employees making a median income of 125K, is that a good thing? But how can i…

Inequality itself is bad for many reasons. It creates a rift between people, causing feelings of envy and unfairness, increasing crime. It concentrates powers into fewer hands, and concentration of power rarely results in something good for the general population.

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

#313

Post by xapata »

epicureanideal wrote: post #305
xapata wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

What in particular do you disagree with about the idea of the noble yeoman? I'm not saying I think every rural person fits this image, but there's some percent that do, at least as I think about it.

That it's relevant, given it's such a tiny portion of the population, or that it's an ideal at all. To me the national identity is a 2nd generation immigrant living in a large metro area. That's what I think of as an American.

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

#314

Post by xapata »

newsclues wrote: post #302
xapata wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it mean to suffer from a shortage of labor? As an economist, it's hard to understand that phrase. I usually take it to mean that an employer doesn't want to pay the prevailing wage, or dislikes the trend of wage increases. Given that understanding, there most intense "shortage" is where labor is most expensive. That means in the city, and for highly skilled workers. As for your teeth, I suggest an early mor…

Not enough people to do they available work. If the youth leave and don’t come back, rural areas slowly die.

I think the cause is the other way around. The villages disappear because there's no work to do, not that there's no people to do work.

Modern agriculture, mining, and manufacturing don't employ many people. We already subsidize farmers to not grow so much that they flood the market. It's reasonable that production capacity should shrink and prices rise. Some prices are currently propped up by regulation.

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

#315

Post by epicureanideal »

xapata wrote: post #313
epicureanideal wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What in particular do you disagree with about the idea of the noble yeoman? I'm not saying I think every rural person fits this image, but there's some percent that do, at least as I think about it.

That it's relevant, given it's such a tiny portion of the population, or that it's an ideal at all. To me the national identity is a 2nd generation immigrant living in a large metro area. That's what I think of as an American.

According to the statistics [1], second generation immigrants are only about 11% of the United States. (6% adult second-generation, 5% still children.)

About 19% of the population lives in rural areas [2].

https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/02/07/second-generation...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_Stat...

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

#316

Post by fragmede »

It's a highly political angle though, and the dynamics of HN (both the culture, but also the technology here - threaded with a simple up/down vote and a low engagement reply mechanism) don't handle those sort of discussions well.

There are three levels on which to have an honest disagreement. Other than 0) plain misunderstanding (which I'm not counting), there's 1) a difference in philosophy, a 2) difference in information, and 3) difference in interpretation of said information. (Eg two people observing an interaction; one person could say it was rudely handled, and the other could say that it was totally fine.)

In having a text input free-for-all, all 3 of those disagreements happen at once, as well as the 0th, plain misunderstanding.

I've noticed that perceived or projected disagreement over fundamental philosophy seems to drive low-value threads (Eg "Covid-19's just like the flu."), with responses that are very, very hard to read charitably, dead comments, and snarky/throwaway/drive-by replies.

There are half-baked experiments I wish I could run in order to fix it (like comment required to downvote; or downvoting requires a reason, eg: "-1; unnecessarily insulting." or "-1; trolling"), but; this isn't my forum to run those experiments on.

Ultimately what I'm saying though is moderating this forum must be tiresome work sometimes, so thank you, Dang for the work you do trying to promote thoughtful discussion, especially during these unprecedented times. Especially since being a moderator doesn't scale!

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

#317

Post by missedthecue »

taurath wrote: post #309
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Gary, Indiana has a lot more room. In addition, the new well-off people will need coffee, and cars, and groceries, and be able to pay for them. This will rejuvenate other jobs. With more people with money who can now afford tickets and buy merchandise, maybe more bands will start playing in Gary, Indiana, improving the music scene. With more people with more disposable income, maybe some of them will be intereste…

How is it different than trickle down economics? Won’t those coffee shops just be starbucks and grocery stores be Whole Foods and all the profit from them returned to shareholders?

"Trickle down economics" is just an internet slur for supply side economics. It certainly can work out well. A job at Whole Foods would pay a currently unemployed resident of Gary, Indiana a good amount more than he is making at present.

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

#319

Post by onemoresoop »

vostok wrote: post #310
onemoresoop wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the jobs would go to the most capable and there are capable people everywhere, but not all are willing to relocate to such places ad California or New York. You do see a lot more smart people in these areas because this is where they were all attracted to like magnets by high paying jobs. If a bit less high paying jobs become available no matter where one lives how many people would be willing to relocate? I…

I think a lot of smart or upper middle class people would still want to live near other smart or upper middle class people even if jobs were remote. Humans are social animals and I think it's common for people in privileged positions to want to associate with others like themselves.

People do cluster like that, but organically with more options could always be better. The US has a few large places, Cali and NY for example, and these are already more expensive than they’re worth

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

#320

Post by mnm1 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #238
Avicebron wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This idea is false. Intra-generational mobility in the US is quite strong. Half of people in the 1% are not in the 1% a decade later. About 50% of people move up 1 quintile from their starting quintile of income. I don’t have stats on how this compares to EU or other countries, but this shows a majority American people can move between income quantiles in their lifetime. [1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/in…

It's not as strong as western Europe or Canada so what are you comparing it to? China? Brazil? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_th...

Also, moving up a quintile is not that great of a move when you have to be in the top 10% to have a nice life in the US.

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