Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life • Hacker News Board

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#641

Post by HarryHirsch » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 8:28 PM UTC

raarts wrote: post #529

HarryHirsch wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the one-off expenses that hurt, it's the recurring expenses every month. 100 dollars for your regular family plan, that's 1200 dollars every year that you can't cut, even if the kids get the cheapest Android 8 phone you can find. Also, when your cellphone is how you access the Internet because you can't afford a decent laptop, at some point it makes sense to go for a more powerful phone.

A $150 Android would work just as well in that case.

The difference between the $800 phone and the $150 phone amortized over 3 years is 18 dollars/month. That's not what breaks the bank.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#642

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 8:31 PM UTC

clipradiowallet wrote: post #560

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do my own plumbing. I'm quite good at it. I occasionally fix issues for friends. I am about as far from being a professional plumber as the plumber who tinkers with python is from doing what I do.

The professionals have the same attitude about their trade as we do about (from your post) python. EG... no matter what required work is, I'm 99.9999% confident I can have it working in very little time. It's all that experience/confidence in the field that let's a good engineer give the warm-and-fuzzy feeling to a client. The client _knows_ you are going to knock it out of the park, because that's your level of fami…

>no matter what required work is, I'm 99.9999% confident I can have it working in very little time.

If it is your first time it is going to take much, much longer. If the only way to learn is on the job then you must have an experienced plumber by your side, otherwise you're going to bill 4 hours for a 1 hour job because you are not fast enough. Your first year is going to suck or you only ever do the same few skills you have learned by taking a risk. A botched job may have a much higher impact than a bug in a CRUD app (there are always exceptions).

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#643

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #105

fullstop wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starting conditions help tremendously, and I'm not doubting that in the least. One other thing which helps, significantly, is how much the parents value education. Most of the people I know who grew up very poor but now have money had parents that valued education, and pushed their kids to learn. They didn't have shelves of books at home, but they did visit the library weekly. It has to be extremely difficult to focu…

What you’re not counting, and what most people miss, is that not only are you at a disadvantage due to lack of resources, but there are many people in positions of authority, power, or just plain tenure who believe that accumulated wealth is a reflection of the wealth of soul. If you are below them in birth, and didn’t chance yourself to some higher strata by the time they grace your presence, they tend to believe yo…

It doesn't make sense because there are jobs that only require one person but the impact scales with the environment.

For example, there only needs to be one president at any given time. The president didn't contribute the entire population to the country but he is compensated with power as if he did.

The idea that the person is the only deciding factor into the impact they have is absurd. Send a software developer back into medieval times and his programming skills will be worthless.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#644

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 8:40 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #627

pnutjam wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Sorry, you don't get to handwave away the many places that are paying $9 an hour and were paying $7.25 last year. Some are still trying to around here.

You can look at the BLS stats. Less than 0.2% of the workforce is making minimum wage.

Half the reason why minimum wages don't work: If they are too low they do nothing.

The other half is that if they are too high they don't create jobs that pay minimum wage. You can't legislate private jobs into existence.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#645

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 8:45 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #513

ewmiller wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but read this as a kind of "let them eat cake" argument. Sure, some cars have electric starters now... how does that matter? Plenty of poor, working class people do not own cars. They're getting priced out of the cities they've lived in their whole lives. Working class wages have been stagnant for decades. Healthcare and education costs have risen much faster than inflation. A huge percentage of American…

Their standard of living is going up.

High rent is a reflection of that. The problems start when the standard of living grows faster than your income.

Edit: High rent grants you access to higher paying jobs but not everyone actually gets those.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#646

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #181

wishigotitfree wrote: post #25

Starting conditions (where one was born, levels of wealth and opportunity there, one's parents' education and jobs) are shockingly predictive about an individual's future. Hard work leading to social mobility has always been the exception, not the rule. Most will not beat the odds since if they did, those wouldn't BE the odds. A lot of us are just so deluded by survivorship bias borne of listening only to success sto…

There was an odd period of time between roughly 1820 and 1970 where economic and industrial growth outpaced loans and other passive financial products in both stability of returns and rate of returns. This period minted many wealthy individuals as well as a large middle class as starting position matters less if GDP is growing at 5-10% consistently. This isn't to say that starting position doesn't matter, I'm sure mo…

This might be what happens when inflation is too low. You can get away with a lot of money shuffling games and end up ahead without doing anything productive. If there was 5% inflation you would actually have to make sure that you are doing something useful, otherwise inflation would eat away at your wealth but workers can just switch jobs to get a raise.

Low interest rates are an indicator that something is going wrong. Companies stopped hiring people and they already have done all the investments they could possibly do. The quick hack is to just let the government "steal" all the low interest money and spend it to generate inflation.

What we are seeing during this pandemic is that businesses are waking up. They are realizing that they actually have to work or else their paper wealth is going to disappear into nothing.

Fundamentally the problem is that cash is a low risk asset and the risk of actually doing work is too high compared to risk free money.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#647

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

missedthecue wrote: post #627

pnutjam wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong. Sorry, you don't get to handwave away the many places that are paying $9 an hour and were paying $7.25 last year. Some are still trying to around here.

You can look at the BLS stats. Less than 0.2% of the workforce is making minimum wage.

[deleted]

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#648

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

traveler01 wrote: post #508

kaladin_1 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahahaha If you said you were Nigerian, I wouldn't be surprised at all. Politicians are the real big shots with few exceptions of course.

I'm Portuguese. It's an European country but sometimes doesn't look like it. We get fed the notion that if we work hard, study, pay our taxes in time and etc we will be good in life. Absolute lies, a big percentage of poor people in Portugal actually have jobs and these jobs are stable... We also have licensed workers receiving minimum wage (640€)...

Isn't portugal's economy growing? It's just a matter of time.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#649

Post by buntru » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

the_lonely_road wrote: post #559

buntru wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Artificially’ works but I think ‘maliciously’ is more apt; regardless of the color of your collar. Also, this comment echoes the same issue as the original maxim and just moved the ‘hard work’ to the ‘find’ing part.

What’s malicious about only being able to cut 50 heads of hair per day or being government mandated to only watch 5 kids per adult? Nothing. The reality of cutting hair curtails the first mans ability to be a billionaire and the needs of the tiny humans out way the desire of their watchers to maximize their income (which would still be far below billionaire status because the ability to watch a kid is limited by natu…

Your haircuts are a strawman response, but a fine point independant of my own I suppose if you like to tell coal miners to "Just Learn to Code". I guess I'd like to see the hair dresser demanding they become a billionaire from cutting hair.

Here's the quotation's context:

> You need to find a way to work hard such that your rewards are not capped artificially. Startups were you get equity. Large companies where you can progress to high salaries if you are able to rise. Starting your own business and being competent at it. Working on commissions in an area where the commissions can be large -- true sales, or real estate. Being a professional, e.g. doctor, accountant, lawyer, has traditionally had high wages and you often run your own business.

I read the artificiality being the fact that CEO salaries are XXX% in excess of workers' pay, or workers getting unlivable wages requiring multiple jobs while Csuites getting bonuses in excess of an entire division's wage budget, or the fact that HN recommends quitting your tech job every 2 years because your yearly bonus will pale in comparison to the % increase over your salary a new hire in your divisioin will get, or the many documented effects of systemic racism, or unjust tax laws, or any miriad of heinous shit that goes on in our current economic system.

> I would argue the very existence of the tech giants prices there is no malicious entity out there holding down the little people. Just the facts of life.

Bozos 'committing' 1B$/y to a space pissing contest with some dude he worked with a lifetime ago while the people who enable that wealth are peeing in bottles and lying dead and unnoticed for 20 minutes are 'facts of life' to you?

Makes me wonder if your chicken tea addiction is actually politically motivated.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#650

Post by buntru » Tue, Jun 15, 2021, 9:22 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #416

buntru wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Artificially’ works but I think ‘maliciously’ is more apt; regardless of the color of your collar. Also, this comment echoes the same issue as the original maxim and just moved the ‘hard work’ to the ‘find’ing part.

The rewards are capped due to supply and demand. There is no artificial or malicious intent due to the color of one’s collar. Also, the past couple decades have white collar workers getting automated away.

> The rewards are capped due to supply and demand.

Is this what your CEO tells you from their private flight when you ask for a raise?

If you think there is a lack of malicious intent informing reward caps then I have a bridge to sell you.