The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level • Hacker News Board

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#501

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:16 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #331

digitaltrees wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark a…

I would fully get behind us paying service providers far more than we do. To wit, it baffles me when people are upset about how much we allocate to pay for services that go to older people, but then we don't do any effort to make sure the services are provided by younger people. Indeed, we seem to go out of our way to make sure the people providing these services are, themselves, low income. It is baffling. But even…

I had an employee that was homeless last week. We were trying to figure out what to do. We’ve been looking into buying apartments to convert them to condos for a first time home buyer program, but the economics are hard to make work. We have considered buying a camper that can move around

The reality is that when 40% of your income goes to rent, how many days of work can you miss before you can’t pay rent? If your car breaks down, how many days will your employer tolerate while you try to get it fixed, assuming you have the money to fix it.

You don’t have to believe me, just look up the state on the percentage of Americans living pay check to paycheck.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#502

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:17 PM UTC

HEmanZ wrote: post #290

digitaltrees wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark a…

Median income in the US is much higher than $12-18/hr, it is about $30/hr. 25th percentile make $20/hr. 10th percentile make $15.58. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/wkyeng.htm So, the people you are mentioning making 12-18/hr, are literally below 1 in 4, to less than 1 in 10. These are not “average middle class Americans” except maybe in that higher end. These are low wage earners and are far below “average”. I mean…

They are within 25% of the of the median. So they are the lowest range of 50% of the bell curve.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#503

Post by micromacrofoot » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:17 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #142

micromacrofoot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the top 1% have nearly as much income as the bottom 80% https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...

>the top 1% have nearly as much income as the bottom 80% >link for "Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989" income =/= wealth

the only difference is whether or not its realized, no? they're using wealth to avoid that

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#504

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:20 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #258

digitaltrees wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark a…

Someone could interpret that as a lack of capitalism rather than the opposite. That is, Henry Ford changed the world because he deployed capital to make workers so productive that they could afford to buy the cars they make. A person paid to do child care in an organization with overhead, who has to pay taxes, etc. is not productive enough to put their own children in child care. So child care fails to revolutionize…

Innovative companies at the beginning of growth cycles are always generous to employees. Look at all the perks showered on staff for a long time. They are starting to pull that back as they get monopoly market power.

I would agree with you that more capitalism would be better but only if you acknowledge that monopolies are not capitalism; they are the logical end and death spiral in unregulated and unmanaged capitalism.

They are the black hole that a dead star collapse into.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#505

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:28 PM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #277

PaulHoule wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone could interpret that as a lack of capitalism rather than the opposite. That is, Henry Ford changed the world because he deployed capital to make workers so productive that they could afford to buy the cars they make. A person paid to do child care in an organization with overhead, who has to pay taxes, etc. is not productive enough to put their own children in child care. So child care fails to revolutionize…

> Someone could interpret that as a lack of capitalism rather than the opposite. In Capitalism surplus economic value goes to the Capital class, so it seems like it is working as designed.

But if that capital accumulation is unchecked it destroys the very market forces such as competition and price setting functions through supply and demand necessary for capitalism to work. So capitalists should want to prevent monopolies and concentration of wealth.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#506

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:29 PM UTC

logicchains wrote: post #186

digitaltrees wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers, who earn $12-18hr which is higher than minimum wage, absolutely struggle. We have created food banks and housing assistance because even working people are a few sick days or one car repair away from homelessness. I would encourage you to go work with average Americans in average towns. The facts on the ground are stark a…

>I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers There's an extreme selection bias there. If you run an agency that works with low income families you're not going to see a representative sample of the overall population.

We have a private pay arm as well, so the other extreme. I also have a roofing company. And I look at the data.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#507

Post by vannevar » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:32 PM UTC

9x39 wrote: post #483

vannevar wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And employees are working at companies that provide robots, etc. Just as are the top executives. And the shareholders that have put money into companies that provide "robots, etc.". All these people, including labor, are stakeholders. If there was 5% GDP growth that got reflected as 5% growth in net earnings for the company, one would expect that all the stakeholders would see roughly a 5% increase in their personal…

They didn't make the rising tide analogy, I read it as how much could be captured by labor if we increased leverage. In any case, it doesn't follow that wages grow with earnings. Wages have historically been a lagging indicator.

>They didn't make the rising tide analogy, I read it as how much could be captured by labor if we increased leverage.

Fair point, though it's not completely clear from the comment.

>Wages have historically been a lagging indicator.

Of course, companies don't know in advance that they're going to have GDP-assisted growth. My point was that growth on the back of GDP growth is a collective windfall, and you'd expect it to be evenly distributed. But it clearly isn't.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#508

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:32 PM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #308

jancsika wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an extreme selection bias there. Maybe. Unfortunately, what digitaltrees wrote here is ambiguous. It could also be read as this: Our caregivers serve low income families. Those caregivers, who are our employees, earn $12-18/hr which is above minimum wage. Our employees absolutely struggle. Our employees are the ones using food banks and housing assistance because many are one car repair away from homelessne…

I think the latter interpretation is correct. As in digitaltrees runs a business that does not pay its employees a living wage, who then have to rely on food banks and housing assistance.

We don’t set the Medicaid reimbursement rate so we have no control over wages either. We work to be very disciplined about unit economics and fixed costs so as much money goes to caregivers as possible but if Medicaid pays $22hr you can’t pay $20 because you won’t cover the payroll taxes, workers compensation insurance, or required clinical and other admin expenses.

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#509

Post by colechristensen » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:33 PM UTC

taiwan_num1 wrote: post #497

colechristensen wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just tax corporate owned vacancy. In a slump there will be apartment buildings that are mostly empty because they refuse to lower the rent as lowering rent triggers property re-valuation. Office buildings sit mostly empty for the same reason. Tax the owners to punish the bad bets and eternal growth expectations of banks to force them to use the space to the benefit of the community or be forced to sell when they run…

We already don't have enough housing and you want to increase the cost of entry to build? This would just reduce competition and new builds even further. Hard to see this kind of policy coming out ahead if any increased utilization of existing buildings is cancelled out by the lack of new ones.

No, I want to crash the price of real estate, bankrupt the incumbents, and realign incentives to be focused on resident quality of life.

Percentage return on investment has nothing to do with the basis. Investors will have to serve a lot more people to get the same absolute return. The percentage return won't change all that much for actually building and operating. The year over year growth in valuation and rent is what needs to go (buildings go through several sets of hands over the first decade or so anyway).

Re: The labor share of income in the US is at its lowest post-war level

#510

Post by digitaltrees » Tue, Jun 30, 2026, 11:35 PM UTC

mrWiz wrote: post #307

logicchains wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I own a Medicaid home care agency in 13 states. We serve low income families and our caregivers There's an extreme selection bias there. If you run an agency that works with low income families you're not going to see a representative sample of the overall population.

If you read the rest of the comment you’ll find it’s about their employees rather than their clientele.

It’s both. The clients are more impoverished but the caregivers also struggle.

I got into this to build software to lower admin expenses and improve operations for an otherwise under served industry. We are making progress and have supported thousands of people in having stable careers. The horror stories I could tell of other agencies exploiting people due to incompetence or malice are shocking.