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Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

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Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability Is it like tech or any other industry has ever focused (directly or indirectly) in something else? Maybe they just realized their superpowers are waning and they can’t keep hiring with obscene salaries indefinitely.

I’m not sure I follow your cynicism: I celebrate ICs making 500k or 1M working for a company in the US instead of making “the same with a PhD in physics as an assembly line worker at Volkswagen”. If an IC delivers 100MM in cost savings for a company because his software scales almost arbitrarily and gets paid highly: that’s a win for the working class population.

Its probably a case of crab in bucket mentality

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

Inflation benefits people in debt and light labor markets benefit people who earn a wage. It hurts people who already have accumulated capital in the form of bonds and stocks. The Fed acts to protect the interests of the very rich, at the expense of the lower and middle class. It is a balance. The government is a democracy and corporations need customers, but the wealth gap must be maintained, lest you lose the suppo…

I think I would argue inflation benefited those who were wealthy the most in the past. But keep in mind that the increase in asset value was not factored into that inflation math. So: assets got more expensive because of inflation; net wages went down because of inflation that wasn’t recognized as such; the rich paid the same for labor but benefited from an increase in their asset prices.

Bonds were a really bad investment in that respect…

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#73
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to reduce wage inflation, at least not for the majority of the population.

I wasn’t talking about wage inflation. I don’t want to age either. Nobody does.

> I wasn’t talking about wage inflation.

But you were, because inflation includes wage inflation.

> I don’t want to age either.

This is a non sequitur.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability Is it like tech or any other industry has ever focused (directly or indirectly) in something else? Maybe they just realized their superpowers are waning and they can’t keep hiring with obscene salaries indefinitely.

I’m not sure I follow your cynicism: I celebrate ICs making 500k or 1M working for a company in the US instead of making “the same with a PhD in physics as an assembly line worker at Volkswagen”. If an IC delivers 100MM in cost savings for a company because his software scales almost arbitrarily and gets paid highly: that’s a win for the working class population.

But that does not take into account VC-powered startups, like Uber, which never turned profit in their history, so that 500k-1M compensations for ICs are directly financed by VC money, which is unsustainable. I think that's what GP meant: the "superpower" to raise VC money is waning, and Sillicon Valey unicorns need to start operating like any other company, hence the layoffs.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#75
post #3

To me the headline says it all. Those workers, being in demand, asking for higher wages. What about our profits! We need a level of desperation in our work force, at least that caused by 4% unemployment, if we can expect to maintain the wealth gap that has been built up over the last years! (If it's not clear from the above, personally I am in favor of low unemployment and higher income equality.)

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

The Fed wants to control inflation sure by raising interest rates. They see a strong labour market as a driver of inflation, as workers can negotiate higher wages when they are in shorter supply.

In terms of income equality, I don't think the OP was advocating that people should all be paid the same. Merely that lower paid workers would be in a strong position to gain relatively more, thus narrowing the gap. I don't know if that is true; it's merely what I understood from the post.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

Inflation benefits people in debt and light labor markets benefit people who earn a wage. It hurts people who already have accumulated capital in the form of bonds and stocks. The Fed acts to protect the interests of the very rich, at the expense of the lower and middle class. It is a balance. The government is a democracy and corporations need customers, but the wealth gap must be maintained, lest you lose the suppo…

[deleted]

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#77
post #3

To me the headline says it all. Those workers, being in demand, asking for higher wages. What about our profits! We need a level of desperation in our work force, at least that caused by 4% unemployment, if we can expect to maintain the wealth gap that has been built up over the last years! (If it's not clear from the above, personally I am in favor of low unemployment and higher income equality.)

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

"The shift towards profitability" that made facebook lay off 11,000 people to save 1.5 billion to spend 40 billion on buybacks.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#78
post #35

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% of these stocks. Most of you reading this are in the top 10%. Stock prices are a game among the wealthy who haven’t demanded that workers should be paid more to lower the absurdly high corporate profits.

Context, for those that were interested like I was. According to Investopedia, based on SSI data. Top .1% is $3,212,486/year 1% is 823,763 5% is 342,987 10% is 173,176 I am waaaaay under that. Education is a joke.

It looks like you're sharing income distribution, not wealth.

This is a bit hard to parse - you might have to multiple the distributions by population and/or total national wealth to get household amounts: https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

This is interesting, as it shows wealth inequality with a breakdown by educational attainment: https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/december/has-weal...

2019

> To be in the top 10%, a family needed $1.22 million or more (slightly less than in 2016).

> To be in the bottom 50% meant a family had less than $122,000 in wealth.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the article? It’s the anticipation of higher interest rates by the stock markets that send stocks down. And the Fed may do so because they want to raise them “just so much to counter inflation without drifting into a recession”. For Tech that may mean that the focus will shift towards profitability which may increase pressure on the workforce. What do you mean by “higher income equality”? E.g., people ea…

> Isn’t income equality (government interventions in some aspects aside) a mere reflection of people’s contribution to a economy and their ability to negotiate? So, are you assuming/applying everyone more or less has the same contribution or do you want everyone to be paid the same irrespective? Sure, the heirs from Rich Kids of Instagram are living off their rentier expropriation as a "reflection of people’s contrib…

So you are mainly talking about passive income inequality? I was talking about income that is earned.

Well, what do you want me to say: the country I live in we have a high tax on inheritance, capital gains etc.

But to me personally: I am grown up enough to not care how many Porsches my neighbor has. How does this matter? There are resources that cover basic needs such as health, living, education and food. But in Europe you get all that for free irrespective whether you work or not. Health coverage is as good for an unemployed family not speaking the language as it is for two full time working parents. As is schooling as is university.

Re: Astonishingly strong US jobs report sends stocks wavering

#80
post #35

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own 90% of these stocks. Most of you reading this are in the top 10%. Stock prices are a game among the wealthy who haven’t demanded that workers should be paid more to lower the absurdly high corporate profits.

Context, for those that were interested like I was. According to Investopedia, based on SSI data. Top .1% is $3,212,486/year 1% is 823,763 5% is 342,987 10% is 173,176 I am waaaaay under that. Education is a joke.

That’s income. Regarding wealth (“net worth”) [1]

  Median:   $121,411
  p90:    $1,219,126
  p95:    $2,584,130
  p99:   $11,099,166
  p99.5: $17,557,208
  p99.9: $43,207,732

[1] 2020 federal reserve data https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-net-worth-percentiles/
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