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Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

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Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#371

Post by scruple »

wpietri wrote: post #211
alexose wrote: post #142

I find it very disappointing that the most reliably lucrative career arc for a programmer nowadays is to get hired by a tech giant and stay there as long as possible. And the second most is probably to go to work for a company that could get gobbled up by a tech giant. I've made a career out of small startups, and I wouldn't trade it for a thing. On the other hand, if I'd gone to work for Amazon straight out of colle…

And what kills me about this is it almost seems like the big tech companies are just grabbing up engineers to no purpose. When I hear stories about what people are actually doing at larger companies, it often seems somewhere between miniscule and just plain empty. And it's not like a lot of the people telling these stories don't understand that. But they're happy enough wasting a third of their day at that salary.

I worked for a brilliant but ruthless businessman at one point in my career who very openly "stabled PhDs" (his words) in the field (RF engineering / DSP). He'd give them some research projects to play with for years on end just to keep them away from the competition.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#372

Post by ls612 »

sudosysgen wrote: post #277
ls612 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But on average a few percent of people will be unemployed at the moment the survey week is conducted. And that is what the unemployment rate is measuring.

Let's look at this mathematically. If the average person changes jobs every four to five years, and spends two-three weeks unemployed doing so, as they already have a plan for their next job, you would expect a job-related unemployement rate of around 1% due to job changes.

In practice it makes up around 2%. The remainder in good times is people who were just fired, a few layoffs (since even in booms businesses can fail) and a few people entering the workforce.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#373

Post by andrekandre »

zby wrote: post #271
zorked wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit like saying "Here we are in 1650 under an absolute monarchy. The people are the majority, they could topple our illegitimate hereditary government and make it a democracy, but they haven't done it yet because they certainly prefer things this way".

I don't know - there are cooperatives - it is not like you need to risk your life to work at one. Somehow they are not that popular. There are also partnerships - which are kind of close to cooperatives, when they employ only the partners and for example outsource office cleaning and stuff. In some industries they do pretty well - for example in law. Why cooperatives do poorly? Maybe people usually are not very good…

cooperatives dont necessarily "do worse" but they do face unique challenges compared to non-coops, the biggest being raising capital

https://www.co-oplaw.org/finances-tax/financing/

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#374

Post by Avicebron »

kebman wrote: post #364
someguyorother wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, so the point that it is a matter of degree stands, and the point that you are not powerless in a state where you are part of the government also stands. Given those points, it is not impossible to imagine a future state deciding to use some of its resources to constructing an automated production system. Its legitimacy is backed up in two ways: once, by the consent of the governed through the democratic proces…

> Right, so the point that it is a matter of degree stands, and the point that you are not powerless in a state where you are part of the government also stands. Not really. The more people who get to vote, the less individual control you get yourself over the outcome, and so the more powerless you become. More votes do not equate more democracy, only less individual power to influence your own future or leadership t…

>If they provide no value, then they are also worthless and expendable.

This doesn't have to be the case, only the most nihilistic and privileged view of the world can produce such statements. People are not valuable because of their ability to produce capital, reducing things to these terms is a deficiency in both mental models and morality.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#375

Post by andrekandre »

bedhead wrote: post #363
milesvp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem with estate taxes (and btw estate taxes often imply death taxes in US law) that you may not see is how they effect smaller players. One of the things fueling corporate consolidation is asset liquidation upon death. If I start and own a small company that’s worth $10million, when I die, there is likely a strong desire to liquidate that company in order to allow for some inheritance to multiple peopl…

Personally, I hate the idea of corporate income taxes - they're literally stupid. You can't tax corporations, you can only tax people. At the end of the day, it's always a person somewhere that is paying the tax, whether it's an employee, supplier, shareholder...and that person is already paying their own income taxes. Also, the tax code favors big companies at the expense of small ones, it's a system that can be gam…

> Personally, I hate the idea of corporate income taxes - they're literally stupid. You can't tax corporations, you can only tax people.

but according to law, corporations are "people" arent they?

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#376

Post by JohnnyHerz »

this statement by the authors is silly on it's face...

They claim that the US has seen a falling labor share due to the following --- "the decline in worker power – as private sector unionization and union power fell, the real value of the minimum wage declined, shareholder activism increased, and ‘ruthless’ management tactics became widespread"

The authors are either locked up in their academic high tower and out of touch or they are writing to serve a political agenda.

Unions served a valuable purpose when management was truly "ruthless", however nothing in current work culture remotely approaches "ruthless" anymore.

Unions are effective at increasing pay in return for less production. it's sad but true. There are few unions left that actually have anything resembling an ethic of hard work when compared to non-union norms. These remnants of hard working union types are only found in the blue collar "gloves and sweat" industries.

That point aside, America has lost it's blue collar labor force because we have developed a technocratic, first world, entitlement culture that considers physical labor as an untenable acquaintance.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world has to fight and struggle to survive and hard work is a fact of life and a measure of worth. Consequently, Americas blue collar workforce is simply out worked by the rest of the world and if not for the immigrant work force, that bring the drive and desire to work hard with them, American labor would be in an even worse predicament.

Pricing power for the workforce does exist in America and examples abound. However, it is these unionized parts of the economy that have contributed to the downward trend in labor share by offering less production in return for extorted compensation increases.

American born workforce has lost the cultural sponsorship of physical labor and each generation laments the laziness of the next. This is the underlying reason that America's share of world labor has declined.

Academics are laughingly stupid sometimes.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#377

Post by WalterBright »

learc83 wrote: post #368
WalterBright wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts tend to take a dim view of well-monied people bullying the not-monied in courts. Larger companies are well aware of this, so are their employees, and the companies get sued constantly by those employees, and the companies usually settle because it's cheaper. I personally know of many, many cases of this.

>Courts tend to take a dim view of well-monied people bullying the not-monied in courts Even if this is true in theory, it's so completely untrue from a practical perspective that it's pointless to debate.

> it's so completely untrue from a practical perspective

Poor people successfully sue businesses ALL THE TIME.

Besides, just last week a friend of mine told me that the former boss of one of his employees threatened a lawsuit over a non-compete agreement. He simply told the former boss "see ya in court and you'll be paying my legal bill". That was the end of that.

Not only are most of these just bluster, it's not profitable to sue poor people, since poor people don't have money.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#378

Post by wpietri »

mtberatwork wrote: post #252
wpietri wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what kills me about this is it almost seems like the big tech companies are just grabbing up engineers to no purpose. When I hear stories about what people are actually doing at larger companies, it often seems somewhere between miniscule and just plain empty. And it's not like a lot of the people telling these stories don't understand that. But they're happy enough wasting a third of their day at that salary.

> But they're happy enough wasting a third of their day at that salary. Who wouldn't be with those salary levels? You basically have the golden ticket in your hand.

I wouldn't be. I like getting things done.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#379

Post by wpietri »

danjac wrote: post #245
wpietri wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what kills me about this is it almost seems like the big tech companies are just grabbing up engineers to no purpose. When I hear stories about what people are actually doing at larger companies, it often seems somewhere between miniscule and just plain empty. And it's not like a lot of the people telling these stories don't understand that. But they're happy enough wasting a third of their day at that salary.

Thankfully we have modern Agile/Scrum with all its process and meetings to soak up that time and give us the feeling of business.

I appreciate you putting "modern" in there. We tried so hard to make it people over process. Getting things done over internal BS. Alas, that's not how it ended up for most people.

Re: Declining worker power vs. rising monopoly power: explaining recent macro trends

#380

Post by milesvp »

dlp211 wrote: post #264
milesvp wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger problem with estate taxes (and btw estate taxes often imply death taxes in US law) that you may not see is how they effect smaller players. One of the things fueling corporate consolidation is asset liquidation upon death. If I start and own a small company that’s worth $10million, when I die, there is likely a strong desire to liquidate that company in order to allow for some inheritance to multiple peopl…

> My understanding is this has been a very real problem for farmers for many generations, and they have been the largest opponents for estate taxes. Your understanding is a talking point created by the Republican party and has no real basis in reality. https://www.factcheck.org/2017/09/death-tax-talking-point-wo... https://www.cbpp.org/blog/the-myth-that-the-estate-tax-threa... https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/10/news/e…

Yeah, you may be right about the republican talking point with farmers. I have no direct anecdotes with farmers, and with the one friend I have in the agriculture world, the topic never came up. The main anecdotes I have are with people who have estates that were big enough to have to worry about what would happen to their businesses when they died, since they couldn't just pass on the business to their heir. This is a hard problem even without the threat of a government wanting their cut, since companies don't have a tendency to survive their founders leaving.

Also, make no mistake, I'm not trying to apologize for people who are already extremely wealthy, who have to deal with this problem. I would love to have the problem of what to do with a company big enough to need to sell it upon my death. I'm merely trying to point out, that estate taxes do have a consolidating effect that feeds mega corporations. What I don't know is if this effect is as big as I suspect it is, or if it's simply dwarfed by other factors, like the general desire to sell out for a big payday.

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