Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 573 posts

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

#511

Post by grumpy_coder »

WarmWash wrote: post #453
bluefirebrand wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I've seen a lot is claims about individuals being self made, climbing the ladder from grit and ingenuity and such. Look at Bezos, he's an example of climbing the ladder! Or Zuckerberg! And when you dig a bit more, you kinda find out this isn't really true? I mean look at this AI summary of asking "Was Jeff Bezos born into wealth" > Jeff Bezos was not born into wealth; his mother was a 17-year-old student an…

The question is how many people get $250k from their family and lose it all. Everyone's life is a mix of skill and luck, so to discredit skill, you would need to quantify the luck. An easy example is a lottery winner, a hard example is a Bezos. Any investor with the foresight to see what Bezos could do with grans money, would jump past her in line and give him triple.

You have to have access to far more than $250k to be willing to blow that creating a startup. I may give my kids $250k for a house to live in. I do not have enough for them to yolo it on a dot com startup.

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

#512

Post by taeric »

digitaltrees wrote: post #501
taeric wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

The stats on "living paycheck to paycheck" are notoriously rough. With some people that make 300k a year claiming they fit that category.

Don't get me wrong, I sympathize with your given scenario. I actually lost my car when I was younger. Was a rough few months while I got used to commuting without one. And I was lucky to have a roommate that kept my cost of living down.

And I remain a proponent of increasing pay to service providers. As well as finding ways to provide cheaper living conditions. First time home buyer programs are great, but seem unlikely to be relevant for the workers we are talking about? I see the median age of home care nurses in rural areas drifts up to 51-53. Which, granted, I see the median age of first time home buyer is drifting up. I don't think it is as high as those workers, though.

I do think there is a problem here. I just don't think it rises to "half the nation lives in abject poverty."

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

#513

Post by smt88 »

contagiousflow wrote: post #24
smt88 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. There are plenty of non-wealthy people who make money from things other than their labor. Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.

> non-wealthy > landlord If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.

> you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble

My bubble of... not-ultra-wealthy people? Are you saying I need to talk to more ultra-wealthy people? This makes no sense.

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

#514

Post by smt88 »

tancop wrote: post #395
smt88 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not. There are plenty of non-wealthy people who make money from things other than their labor. Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.

im going to be controversial and say no one should have anything other than labor as their main income until they retire. anything you can do thats useful to society counts as labor (but not vice versa, you can work as a robber or corporate lobbyist). from line cooks to wall street ceos to open source volunteers and stay at home moms who dont get paid but still work. landlords and executives count because management…

> no one should have anything other than labor as their main income until they retire

No one should start a business and pay salaries to their employees instead of themselves?

What if I see that a biotech startup is working on mRNA cancer vaccines, and I want to invest in that? And then it pays off and I make money off of it?

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

#515

Post by hash872 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #482
hash872 wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit skeptical that you absorbed these 3 pieces in the time it took you to respond (they are 27, 29, and 63 pages, respectively), but they find a range of effect sizes here- the other two a bit more strongly. I feel comfortable with my original statement, though I suppose there's always room for nitpicking

No, I completely read the first article. It was quite clear in what percentage of the decline in labor's share that it attributed to differences in statistical assessment of sole proprietors. I then looked at the abstracts of the other two. The third one basically completely agreed with the first ("We find that reallocating activity to the form it would have taken prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 accounts for 30%…

You read a 63 page paper today?

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

#516

Post by afavour »

elhudy wrote: post #96
afavour wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the core issue is the health insurance companies stealing money, it's the deep inefficiencies that come from the position the insurance companies hold. How many man-hours are spent dealing with insurance paperwork? How much do hospitals and doctors spend each year just dealing with that interaction, rather than treating patients? > Plus they have enormous problems with fraud, waste, and abuse. I'd say "…

>I'd say "enormous" requires some evidentiary proof. Obviously there is fraud and waste. But almost all large scale systems have that. We should certainly try to minimize it wherever we can but I don't think "waste and fraud exist" are a reason to not pursue a path. Are you living in the same country as the rest of us? There is plentiful evidence of the enormous fraud and waste. It’s not even a point of debate anymor…

[dead]

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

#518

Post by throw0101a »

digitaltrees wrote: post #505
throw0101a wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> So capitalists should want to prevent monopolies and concentration of wealth.

Why do you assume that Capital class has an ideological loyalty to the capitalist system? If they can get rich without having to compete or do any kind of effort, don't you think they'd prefer that to actually 'working' for the money? Once they've got theirs, do you think they care about what happens after?

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

#519

Post by SideQuark »

stymaar wrote: post #284
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note: Labor share has declined similarly across OECD countries for several decades. Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share.

> Automation, robots, software etc. they are all capital share. I highly doubt automation and robots are a meaningful factor here, but IP and outsourcing have the exact same as automation.

There’s plenty of papers showing exactly this. What do you think has driven productivity? People simply bring smarter?

The fact is capital expenditure from company or investors has bought machinery, compute, pipelines, transport, and massive investment to make those workers more productive for decades. As such, the returns to capital as a share has increased. Those places able to deploy capital to add productivity win over those that don’t.

And real total remuneration across all quintiles has increased significantly. BLS among others has all historical data to check.

If/when there’s a period where there isn’t more gains to be had by more investment per worker, and workers become more productive via their own skill (education, diet, genetic implants,…), then more returns will flow that direction.

This is all well known, and easily checked.

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

#520

Post by fsckboy »

newaccountman2 wrote: post #471
fsckboy wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say the boomers are a problem simply because they are old and the young hate the old (ageism), and because they have money and you want it, now. Boomers created everything you like about this world, including youth culture itself, "don't trust anybody over 30". Their predecessor generations, their parents and grandparents, believed comprehensively in things you despise. I know this because I hated the boomers whe…

They are a deeply selfish and immoral generation on the whole who make excuses for evil and denigrate anyone tryin to do good. Just looking at their voting patterns makes it quite clear. Such a lame attempt to defend them by you lol--what makes you think money has anything to do with it? That's Boomer logic; IME, Boomers and right-wingers believe everyone is as self-centered as they are.

the conceit of leftists is that they are godd and pure... but they never are and it NEVER works out, just makes them insufferaby sanctimonious along the way. I was raised completely leftist btw, by good people, but I saw the craven insides of all their friends.

I didn't say the boomers weren't the way you describe, I said you're just like them, lofty ideals, all too human boundaries and self control.

Post reply on HN