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

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

#331

Post by newsclues » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

xapata wrote: post #314

newsclues wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The economics of subsidies are one thing but...

I grew up in a rural area with family farms.

The farms are viable businesses that feed people.

Farmers kids go away to school and few of them return to be farmers, and it’s hard to bring in workers (commute times, lack of housing) so despite there being work, people leave. Technology and automation have played a role but there is more work than people

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

#332

Post by nkrisc » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

mrunkel wrote: post #177

sandworm101 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a robot that can FIND a rusty bolt. The act of cleaning, of scrubbing away the dust and dirt from a work area, is beyond AI at the moment. If that rusty bolt has been painted over it might as well not exist.

The robot doesn’t need to see it if it has the plans in it’s head.

Woops the original installer didn't do it to plan.

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

#333

Post by throwlaplace » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #326

throwlaplace wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so now we're down to "devs move to suburbs and poor people move a little closer" in order to improve the world? and you still don't think that this disproportionately hurts poor people? do i really have to do more work to show you how this is galaxy brain thinking?

If poor people are currently living in expensive, cramped housing because they’re forced like many others to all commute every day to the same few spots on the Earth we call big cities and we replace that with a system where much more land becomes easy to use to for housing because we’re not going to worship for 8 hours every day at the work temple, I think it’s quite possible that the poor and middle class are both…

>where much more land becomes easy to use to for housing

what are these revolutionary changes that will make the wild wild west more hospitable? is it public transportation? is it more investment in local schools? is it small walkable main streets? none of these things will happen the way you imagine they will. how do i know that? can i predict the future? am i a city planner? no. you're repeating everything that everyone said ~50 years ago when rich people migrated away from cities. i've already brought this up elsewhere in this thread. like seriously just take a step back and pattern match for 2 seconds.

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

#334

Post by BurningFrog » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:33 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #321

BurningFrog wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's very hard to find any violent revolutions that improved a society. It's pretty much a long line of tragedies. I count throwing out a foreign oppressor, like the American revolution or the Czech "velvet revolution" as a separate category. Those can be good.

Communist Romania. Things improved immensely. And that was definitely not a foreign oppressor. I'm sure there are others, but yeah generally it's rare.

That's a decent counterexample.

Though maybe people didn't revolt before, since ultimately the Soviets would roll in the tanks if they ever toppled Ceaușescu.

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

#335

Post by eanzenberg » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:39 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #320

eanzenberg wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lol

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

#336

Post by Frondo » Wed, May 13, 2020, 3:40 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #329

rwmurrayVT wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very common situation in a shipyard. It always makes me a little envious to know that the trades get paid every single minute here and often work 6 days a week. I do some work items that require a start 2 hours after sunset. The pay is the same 40 hours or 60 hours. You can guess how many engineering hours are post-40....

OTOH, would you rather be paid for every single minute at $40/hour and time-and-a-half for hours over 40 per week, or paid $3000/wk no matter how many hours you actually work? There are tradeoffs on both sides.

I know it's a common refrain when people defend being salaried that they get some wiggle room if they need to take off, or something, but me? I'd prefer the trade-off on something as precious as my time being very explicitly spelled out.

I have a feeling that the trade-off works in favor of the employer vastly more than the worker, in the general case, and probably even in the case where people think they're getting an okay deal.

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

#337

Post by mnm1 » Wed, May 13, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #334

mnm1 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communist Romania. Things improved immensely. And that was definitely not a foreign oppressor. I'm sure there are others, but yeah generally it's rare.

That's a decent counterexample. Though maybe people didn't revolt before, since ultimately the Soviets would roll in the tanks if they ever toppled Ceaușescu.

Yeah, hard to say. The USSR was still alive for two more years but probably too busy by the end of '89 to care much about such foreign affairs as it was likely crumbling from the inside. But it's hard to know. I think what's more likely is that Ceaușescu would have kept going long after Soviet collapse if he hadn't been killed, probably into a multi generational cult of personality dictatorial communist state. Basically another North Korea. I'm so glad they killed that monstrous piece of shit. Best Christmas present for Romanians ever. If NK or China ever follows suit, I imagine a similar outcome. Some people are better off dead.

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

#338

Post by kwhitefoot » Wed, May 13, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #190

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 60…

> no expectation that I'd fly an airliner in my non-work time.

This is how life is for most of us in Scandinavia, specifically Norway. Overtime is frowned upon and discouraged by the state (do too much of it and you and your employer have committed an offence) and also local culture is to leave the office on time.

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

#339

Post by rwmurrayVT » Wed, May 13, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #329

rwmurrayVT wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very common situation in a shipyard. It always makes me a little envious to know that the trades get paid every single minute here and often work 6 days a week. I do some work items that require a start 2 hours after sunset. The pay is the same 40 hours or 60 hours. You can guess how many engineering hours are post-40....

OTOH, would you rather be paid for every single minute at $40/hour and time-and-a-half for hours over 40 per week, or paid $3000/wk no matter how many hours you actually work? There are tradeoffs on both sides.

I have never once been able to leave my salaried job without reaching 40 hours while still receiving the same pay.

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

#340

Post by sokoloff » Wed, May 13, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

rwmurrayVT wrote: post #339

sokoloff wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, would you rather be paid for every single minute at $40/hour and time-and-a-half for hours over 40 per week, or paid $3000/wk no matter how many hours you actually work? There are tradeoffs on both sides.

I have never once been able to leave my salaried job without reaching 40 hours while still receiving the same pay.

Conversely, I’ve never once had to punch a time clock at any of my salaried positions.

None of my employers would ever be able to tell the difference between 38, 39, 40, or 41 hours in any given week (nor has any given any indication they'd care even if I told them the difference).