411–420 of 573 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You think 50% of people don't labor?
While about 50% to 60% of the adult U.S. population are active W-2 wage earners at any given time, the percentage that relies on labor exclusively (meaning they have zero capital income or assets to fall back on) sits right around 40% to 50% of working households.
Not people then.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I do think quality of life is trending downward given the fact that housing, food, gas, medical care costs are all increasing while wages are stagnant or worse. ??? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N Note this is already inflation adjusted, so "housing, food, gas, medical care costs are all increasing" is already accounted for.
That chart doesn't make the case you think it does. Real median household income rising can be explained by things like more dual earner households (more women working since the 70s), more hours worked, etc. The household income can rise while the wages can theoretically remain flat or even fall. The more relevant statistic is that median real wages have only grown by about 29% across 40+ years (~0.6% per year) Since…
Where are you getting household income from? It clearly says "Personal Income"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most tech workers do not get compensated with stock. A fraction of the best compensated get stock. The next tier down get options with so many caveats that they are effectively worthless, and the tier below them are straight salary with no equity even entering the horizon for them. And yea, once you start getting actual capital and start reaping the benefits of that wealth you start being identified as a capitalist i…
Eh? Which tech company doesn't give RSUs to fresh grads? Startups of course give options. And how many american middle class+ (generalizing beyond tech workers) don't own equity?
I am in a lower tier of the market than Silicon Valley and after 15 years of making over six figure salary I have not been given a single stock, and none of my employees or members of my social circles that don’t work at FAANGs have either.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
defining classes is complicated. if you do it based on income percentile it will always be arbitrary and never reflect actual economic relations. the most accepted way to divide in socialist circles is based off where your income comes from, your relation to capital. if you have to work for someone else thats working class (proletariat), if you can be independent you are professional or middle class, if you own the m…
"I define things so that I'm in the good set and _they_ are in the bad set". It's also utterly deranged even when you just consider that most tech workers get compensated with stock.
You can get money from both labor and capital. This is called "middle class." Don't let it melt your brain, but don't oversimplify to "you owned a stock so are capital class" either. Just give the labor/capital percentages (ordinary income / capital gains) and note how it leans.
New grad tech worker: 100%/0%
Mid career tech worker: 50%/50%
Late career tech worker: 10%/90%
Retired: 0%/100%
Earlier quoted context omitted.
defining classes is complicated. if you do it based on income percentile it will always be arbitrary and never reflect actual economic relations. the most accepted way to divide in socialist circles is based off where your income comes from, your relation to capital. if you have to work for someone else thats working class (proletariat), if you can be independent you are professional or middle class, if you own the m…
"I define things so that I'm in the good set and _they_ are in the bad set". It's also utterly deranged even when you just consider that most tech workers get compensated with stock.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked on a lot of healthcare interoperability standards, including HL7 FHIR. Those can be part of the solution in terms of making the system operate more efficiently and cutting administrative overhead. In many cases payer and provider organizations are still doing things manually that could be automated using existing standards. But they fail to do so due to lack of vision and insufficient technical resources.…
Admin inefficiencies between orgs definitely exist and maybe better interoperability and standards is the solution, but wouldn't there also be less of a problem in the first place if there were fewer different orgs all complicating workflows? Also not saying you're wrong about many healthcare services being unnecessary or even harmful, and someone has to be the one to say no to patients asking for low value care whic…
In general though I'm just skeptical that a single payer solution is the best possible long-term approach. US federal and state governments are already under tremendous fiscal pressure. So if we forcibly route all healthcare payments through governments then there's going to be constant pressure to hold down costs through blunt measures. And decisions will inevitably become even more politicized with special favors or punishments given out based on party loyalty. Do we really want to put someone like Xavier Becerra or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of centrally planning something like a fifth of the US economy?
The current US healthcare system is unnecessarily wasteful and cruel. But on the positive side we produce far more innovation per capita than any other country. Let's find a way to incrementally fix the worst problems without killing the golden goose.
Raise the minimum wage to ~$25-30/hr Before anyone says inflation, there will be more consumer spending and thus more cash flow in the middle and lower class
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Increases in labor productivity is a curious thing to think about. Do I deserve more wages for using AutoCad instead of drafting paper? - The amount I'm working hasn't increased. Still an 8 hour day. - My job honestly is easier than it used to be; certainly less menial. - Strictly speaking, the education requirement is actually lower . It's easier and a lower bar to learn to become a decent designer in AutoCad than t…
And many laborers have retirement accounts and pension funds that are also capital owners, so they benefit from increases in capital too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is consistent with the observation that the top 10% have captured a disproportionate share of GDP growth over the past few decades. https://equitablegrowth.org/new-data-reveal-how-u-s-economic... "The past three economic expansions have largely benefitted the top 10 percent. In each, the top decile received between 47 percent and 59 percent of all income growth in the expansion."
"Top 10%" is such a misleading slice here. The guy who's at the 9.99th percentile is a normal salaried worker not doing better. The gains are entirely concentrated in the tiny billionaire slice buried inside that 10%. In fact wage growth for the top decile has been recently slower than bottom deciles [1]. Incomes still grow fast in the top decile, but mostly due to assets. And those assets are disproportionately in t…
Saying that billionaires "disproportionately" have more assets than non-billionaires is a tautology that says nothing. You might as well say that tall people have disproportionately more height than people who are not tall. Billionaire is a statement about wealth, not income.
> In fact wage growth for the top decile has been recently slower than bottom deciles
Which is a very good thing, but also doesn't address anything. The bottom deciles live from their wages. The top decile either put most of their wages into assets, are already so wealthy that their wages don't matter, or live in luxury they can't afford.
The macroeconomic purpose of inflation as a tool is to lower the wages of high wage earners - because socially you can't really lower people's wages, at best you can refuse refuse them raises. It's easy to raise the income of lower deciles to offset inflation, either through legislation or safety net. Middle-high wage earners who do nothing under inflation face an effective pay cut.
> The guy who's at the 9.99th percentile is a normal salaried worker not doing better.
He is not normal, he is in the top 10%. His income triples or quadruples a median income. He is of course not doing better than himself, but he is doing better than 90% of other people by definition.
Yikes. Good to know that labor shares used to rebound after crises, but since the 2000s and the dotcom bubble it has basically been downhill only. So don't expect any of this to get better unless we roll back technology to the last millenium.
Where do I sign this petition?
In general, though, I'd be perfectly fine with time being frozen in ~August 2001. Was it perfect? No. Was it better than where we are and looks like we're heading? Yes. Without a doubt.