The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore • Hacker News Board

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#241

Post by idiotsecant » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #207

mensetmanusman wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultra wealthy hired the best to win a game of financial manipulation that the rest of us didn’t even know was being played. The median salary would be six figure if the share of productivity gains was distributed like it was in 1970.

Is the average salary six figures?

That's sort of a tricky question since most of the income and wealth of the upper crust of modern society is not expressed as a salary. The simple answer is no, but the fact that it's such a complex answer is itself indicative of a systemic problem.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#242

Post by alisonatwork » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

muro wrote: post #215

alisonatwork wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to note that the good old days of a working man being able to support a family of five was only true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history, it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family. While some lament the loss of this golden age their g…

First it was "support a family of five", then "luxurious lifestyle" then "humble lifestyle". Except for the "luxurious" one, it was possible pretty much at any time in human history, including now.

The post I am responding to mentioned providing a family of five with a self-owned house, a car, a couple of vacations per year and a comfortable retirement. To many people around the world - still today - that would be considered a luxurious lifestyle.

You are right that it's possible for one person to support a family. For most people working in the tech industry here on HN they could probably figure out a way to do it. But is it realistic for all families everywhere to be able to support themselves with just a single worker? If it were so simple to achieve, we would not see child labor. We would not see any poverty at all. Clearly we are not yet at the point as a species where we can enjoy a post-scarcity or job-free utopia. We could certainly be doing a lot more to work towards that than we are, though, and I think that's a more interesting point of discussion than looking back through rose-tinted glasses on a few decades of post-WW2 America.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#243

Post by AndrewKemendo » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

nitwit005 wrote: post #152

BirAdam wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perennial nature of “kids these days” being insolent and otherwise generally poorly disciplined is that discipline is something to be cultivated within and not imposed from without. As a result, children who lack years of practice in discipline are not particularly well behaved. Adults tend to forget their childhoods, remembering only bits and pieces. In truth, every child was scolded for his/her bad behavior, an…

No, the adults remember. They get angry if you point out how they behaved when they were young. The real complaint is "young people won't let me boss them around".

As a father of three empathetic geniuses, I promise you that bossing them around is counterproductive

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#244

Post by glimshe » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:23 PM UTC

Working in most jobs sucks. Some people are lucky to have jobs they love, but that's the minority. I know that to be the prevalent sentiment even in top notch, AAA, "I can't believe they pay me to do this" companies such as Google, Apple etc.

If people had, for the sake of a thought experiment, a guaranteed 20K/month income and free healthcare no matter what they do with their life, it's very unlikely they will choose to work on regular jobs. They will instead generally pursue arts/crafts (including the craft of building computer programs in areas they are interested in), learning, exercise etc.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#245

Post by linuxftw » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:24 PM UTC

cognivore wrote: post #208

lopkeny12ko wrote: post #58

As a tech lead, the big problem I see now is that people are not hungry anymore. The best engineers I've ever worked with were consistently asking for more and leveling up the team at the same time. Now, the post-covid hires, especially the junior engineers, just do the bare minimum to scrape by, and they seem totally unbothered by it. One new hire on my team spends upwards of 2 hours per day "walking her dog." I eve…

I see this too, and not just post-COVID. 10+ years ago we used to have "Let's Learn This Now!" where the developers would agree on particular subject and then learn and discuss it on our own time, and occasionally it would lead to improvements in our development. We went through Ruby (on Rails), Angular (nope, not even) to React (meh), queuing (ZeroMQ mostly), Asp.NET MVC, Redis, Docker, Octo, NoSQL dbs - the list go…

There was a lot more interesting work 10+ years ago. All the interesting bits have been commoditized.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#246

Post by hotdogscout » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:25 PM UTC

alisonatwork wrote: post #205

usrbinbash wrote: post #53

It's pretty simple really. If the reward from working is barely enough to cover the necessities, then there is technically no difference between working as a free citizen, and being forced to work as an indentured servant, other than a vague notion of freedom, which in that case is the freedom to decide between working and living on the streets. And people don't like being indentured servants. History should have mad…

I think it's important to note that the good old days of a working man being able to support a family of five was only true for a brief period of history in a handful of elite countries. In most of the world, and for most of human history, it hasn't been the case that any single person working 40 hours a week could provide a luxurious lifestyle for a large family. While some lament the loss of this golden age their g…

This is my experience in Brazil.

Also, wasn't this golden age in the US fueled by concentrated demand for industrial goods after the second world war? Without an unprecedented imbalance in the economy I cannot see this happening.

Some people that hate imperialism also demand it's spoils back (?).

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#247

Post by thunky » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #233

vsareto wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean? Could you explain? Does it really bother you someone could be ignorant of something here?

>Could you explain? Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert that investors are ruining the housing market for individual family buyers without explaining how the housing market or one particular housing market is different from all the other markets were investors are helpful for bringing products and services to individuals and families. I am sympathetic for example to the argument that the housing ma…

> Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert that investors are ruining the housing market for individual family buyers

So you don't think that adding demand without adding supply makes prices go up?

Or you disagree that prices going up makes it harder for a family to buy a house?

Edit: I see you added to your comment...

> so their investment helps out families on net by helping to increase the supply of housing to meet the increase in demand

And I still disagree, because this isn't what we see happening.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#248

Post by cesarb » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

swayvil wrote: post #24

mike10921 wrote: post #8

As a long-time software engineer and related positions. When covid started it felt as if the world said "We worked enough we need a collective time off"

School, homework, part-time job, college, study, full-time job... it never ends. For many of us, covid is the first taste of freedom we ever got. It was eye-opening and delivered some serious perspective. This "not working" could be called a sane response based on good information.

> School, homework, part-time job, college, study, full-time job... it never ends. For many of us, covid is the first taste of freedom we ever got. It was eye-opening and delivered some serious perspective.

Don't you have vacations? A whole month away from work or school every year should have given people that same perspective.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#249

Post by hollerith » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:32 PM UTC

thunky wrote: post #247

hollerith wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Could you explain? Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert that investors are ruining the housing market for individual family buyers without explaining how the housing market or one particular housing market is different from all the other markets were investors are helpful for bringing products and services to individuals and families. I am sympathetic for example to the argument that the housing ma…

> Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert that investors are ruining the housing market for individual family buyers So you don't think that adding demand without adding supply makes prices go up? Or you disagree that prices going up makes it harder for a family to buy a house? Edit: I see you added to your comment... > so their investment helps out families on net by helping to increase the supply of…

The investors entering the market today will make prices go up today, but have the effect of reducing prices in the future (either or renters or buyers, depending on how to investor chooses to recover his investment). Investment in housing in past decades has reduced the price families need to pay now. There a zero investors in housing who are not out to either provide housing for rent or to eventually sell housing.

>because this isn't what we see happening.

What we see happening has alternative explanations, for example: there are millions of very-high-paying jobs in the Bay Area, which is course is generally a good thing, but it has the undesirable effect of making it hard or impossible for families that do not have one of these very-high-paying jobs to live here because there are strong barriers to the creation of new housing, which forces the people with the high-paying jobs to spend more than want to spend on housing, which (happily for them) they are able to do (because of their high income) but which sadly makes it impossible or very onerous for lower-income families to live in the Bay Area. Most of these barriers are in the form of regulations imposed by local governments. Where I live for example in Marin County, growth is controlled (kept below the level investors as a group would prefer to have it at) in part by denying new housing projects the ability to connect to the Marin Municipal Water District, I have heard.

Re: The Long History of Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

#250

Post by vsareto » Sun, Jul 30, 2023, 4:34 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #233

vsareto wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean? Could you explain? Does it really bother you someone could be ignorant of something here?

>Could you explain? Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert that investors are ruining the housing market for individual family buyers without explaining how the housing market or one particular housing market is different from all the other markets were investors are helpful for bringing products and services to individuals and families. I am sympathetic for example to the argument that the housing ma…

>Someone who understood basic economics wouldn't assert that investors are ruining the housing market for individual family buyers without explaining how the housing market or one particular housing market is different from all the other markets were investors are helpful for bringing products and services to individuals and families.

So the housing market is different because housing serves as shelter. Investors owning multiple properties are eschewing the actual utility of the asset and only focused on its value. From the perspective of a society wanting to house its citizens and improve quality of living, it's a very inefficient use of the asset and the land that its on.

Because investors often have more cash than ordinary family buyers, they are able to outbid family buyers. This happens regularly and is one of the core reasons for the argument made initially.

Because investors might buy and sell housing more often than a family who actually inhabits a home, this increases the money velocity in the market and drives prices upwards as more sales are made. Canada is a good example of this: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-25.2/page-1.html

All of this means that some portion of the house's price is only based on speculation (other parts being land, construction quality, location, amenities, etc.). This means that investors that buy houses to speculate are simply increasing prices with no material improvement to the asset.

If we were talking about stocks or assets-that-aren't-also-necessities, these reasons wouldn't be a problem.