The prices of goods in the reach of the bulk of potential consumers always conveniently remains enough that they have to work their whole lives to buy those goods. There's no real reason that for most people in the US a loaf of bread costs half an hour, and yet here we are. That's about how much it cost in 1950, too.
Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#22I realized it some years ago that real estate in Switzerland and Germany is unattainable for younger workers without inheritance. Especially in Germany not only wages didn't keep up, the tax and security deduction kept increasing.
Either I try a slow life (which many do), emigrate to the US, emigrate to a cheap country and work as freelancer and/or start a B2B SaaS business which would give me the most freedom. I always enjoyed building something cool, so of course I chose the entrepreneurial path.
Side note: After over a year of nights + weekends and 96k SLoC later I'm finally ready to launch in the next 2 months, joining you lads :) tbh wealth isn't a motivator anymore, I just wanna help customers getting the most value if they use my SaaS.
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#23Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#24This is the main reason that Western society is radicalizing. Workers are fish in a smaller and smaller pond. Long term it is unsustainable, but like bubbles it is very difficult to predict when it will melt down. A healthy society needs to be fair. To work hard just to continue being poor, a part from cruel, will have long lasting political consequences. Some people will go to Communism, other to Fascism as left or…
Also, the population decreasing will see fewer and fewer people to work those crummy jobs.
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The threat of industrial action is a great motivator for employers. Unionising your workplace makes that threat possible.
This is why truckers (unionised) make a lot of money while software devs (nonunionised) scrape by
How do you put on pants in the morning?
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#26This is the main reason that Western society is radicalizing. Workers are fish in a smaller and smaller pond. Long term it is unsustainable, but like bubbles it is very difficult to predict when it will melt down. A healthy society needs to be fair. To work hard just to continue being poor, a part from cruel, will have long lasting political consequences. Some people will go to Communism, other to Fascism as left or…
I wish this were true, but is it? One of the most stable societies in human history was ancient Egypt which was ruled by a god-king and remained relatively unchanged for thousands of years. Democracies, on the other hand, tend to be much more volatile. I think equal societies may be more unstable than unequal ones.
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
The threat of industrial action is a great motivator for employers. Unionising your workplace makes that threat possible.
You obviously don’t have my sucky union. The idiots let our agreement lapse over the pandemic and can’t their act together for a new one. (I’d suspect they were being union busted but I’m in Australia where unions are normal.)
There are heavy limitations on union industrial action in Australia that make this sort of thing much more likely to happen. It's a tremendously contrived system and as a result Unions often up very chummy to the employer as elements which may be more amenable to confrontation can get frustrated with the immense complexity and difficulty that brings. Any kind of industrial action used for bargaining is almost impossible to get authorized. I'd say the Australian union system is one of the worst in the world, and most Australian unions are structurally busted.
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#28>Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
This is by design.
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#29I realized it some years ago that real estate in Switzerland and Germany is unattainable for younger workers without inheritance. Especially in Germany not only wages didn't keep up, the tax and security deduction kept increasing. Either I try a slow life (which many do), emigrate to the US, emigrate to a cheap country and work as freelancer and/or start a B2B SaaS business which would give me the most freedom. I alw…
At least in Switzerland, they try to keep the rents under control, one of the motivators for me to move from the UK was out control rent increases
Re: Workers’ Pay Globally Hasn’t Kept Up with Inflation
#30This is the main reason that Western society is radicalizing. Workers are fish in a smaller and smaller pond. Long term it is unsustainable, but like bubbles it is very difficult to predict when it will melt down. A healthy society needs to be fair. To work hard just to continue being poor, a part from cruel, will have long lasting political consequences. Some people will go to Communism, other to Fascism as left or…
I wish this were true, but is it? One of the most stable societies in human history was ancient Egypt which was ruled by a god-king and remained relatively unchanged for thousands of years. Democracies, on the other hand, tend to be much more volatile. I think equal societies may be more unstable than unequal ones.
One of the key things about democracy is the peaceful transfer of power (between internal elites). Thus policy direction can change, perhaps radically, without the violence of a civil war.
This is particularly important in the face of change (technological, external, resource etc). Probably ancient Egypt survived in that form for so long because everything pretty much stayed the same - relative to our tumultuous modern world anyway.