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

libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org

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

#521

Post by latency-guy2 »

win311fwg wrote: post #183
scottyah wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked up the definition of abject poverty? It is "the most severe and hopeless form of human deprivation". It's the subject of the conversation, how is that pointless?

While you are able to look up someone's definition of abject poverty, the only definition that is relevant in this context is the one held by the author of the earlier comment. It is unlikely you can look up his definition (before he replies to those who have asked for the definition in force).

If only their definition matters then their only purpose in this thread is to derail the conversation, or in other words railroad everyone else out because only they can be right.

People responding reject that, because if you're not being specific, you're not making an argument, you're just here to be an asshole.

Since you've made this point, I've gone ahead and reported that comment.

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

#522

Post by porridgeraisin »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #414
porridgeraisin wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Your incentives come from where your money comes from. This is a pretty basic concept and it's absurd to brush it off as a form of No True Scotsman. 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 i…

Exactly. The original comment in this thread asked if most tech workers here are part of the capital class themselves. Which was answered by saying that if you're employed by someone else, you are part of the worker class and thus tech workers are part of the worker class.

Introducing the fact that it's a spectrum and that equity ownership (which a vast majority of people in this industry have) makes you a capital owner is exactly my correction to that.

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

#523

Post by porridgeraisin »

lovich wrote: post #413
porridgeraisin wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You are in a bubble if you are surprised at the idea of companies not giving out stock, much less RSUs specifically. While it’s common in the big tech Silicon Valley companies there are thousands of other tech companies where the most they give are options, and I must repeat with a litany of caveats that make them effectively worthless, and even more where they only pay salary and have no way to gain equity at all. I…

Considering how my second paragraph was ignored, I assume you own stock in major companies either directly or through indices, thus making you a capital owner that makes money from other people's work (work used in the literal sense)?

Note that around half of the US stock market is passively owned, so this is not a small number on aggregate

Further see: my reply to a sibling in this same thread.

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

#524

Post by playorizaya »

mrtksn wrote: post #210
playorizaya wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love this. Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least. In the early Internet I saw this thing, no idea if it’s true but it sounds good (someone can math check it), goes something like: A person pays $2 to play basketball on a public court. Michael Jordan gets paid $2k to play on the same one. A person pays $100 for basketball shoes. Michael Jordan gets paid $100k to wear the same ones. A perso…

> Parking and speeding tickets should have income brackets, at least AFAIK in some countries this exist but my case is more capitalist oriented. Rich people obviously can pay more since they keep accumulating wealth. It is an obvious sub optimal pricing since the low and even middle class rent/mortgage and other services quickly approaching the most they can pay so they can’t actually save and make wealth.

sub optimal for who? ;)

A long time ago I was working for a mid tier founder up in Oregon.

Pipe dream of a startup, no customers, no product. Money and vision, but no direction and the main problem was that nobody would ever tell him "No" (me included) - to everyone's great detriment.

He would certainly fail at this endeavor...

He was the main investor, after all.

At some point we brought on web marketing help - he knew people at Nike. To my surprise, they actually partnered with us - Nike! He also co-owned a web design agency in Portland, so I started working with designers and marketers there.

When I would travel there, he always set me up in the same hotel. Turns out (a year later), he owned it. He owned the damn laundromat next door, too, because it was adjacent to the apartment complex he owned.

After literally 1 beer, we were now going to do a live, in person event in Portland - he knew people and could make it happen. He owned the building where the event would take place.

At the event he started asking if I'd ever leave San Francisco, if I liked Portland. We started talking about rent and stuff.

I find out he's a landlord there - owns several single-family homes (with awful cyclone fencing) and has tenants around Portland. He starts telling me prices etc. Asks me what people are paying in SF. We both laugh over how expensive SF is - sun shafts illuminating our amber beer glasses as we drink to... Idk what.

What happened was I found out that he was rich as fuck, and owned the god damn town, and everything else. His startup was a joke and failed - but who cares, it was a frame in a movie. I cared about it more than he did.

Sub optimal for who??

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

#525

Post by dribbiy8 »

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…

[flagged]

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

#526

Post by mmooss »

PaulHoule wrote: post #499
mmooss wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In European football, relegation is a zero sum outcome for society: One team is relegated and another promoted. On average, equal numbers of fans are happy or sad. Acting is about art, which brings up different issues and value. But looking at broadcast sports, the marginal value of doing that work is still zero: If that person didn't play football, someone else would and the entertainment benefit would be the same (…

Well in American football we have the problem of teams that lumber on playing terribly for years and years. Like we have three teams in New York state and the Buffalo Bills (upstate) are good and the two in the city (the Giants and the Jets) are awful year after year. If there was some accountability those teams would be better or would be playing at a different level or not at all. So I'd argue pro/rel is a net plus…

> So I'd argue pro/rel is a net plus because it leads to better play.

From a sports perspective, sure, I agree. I've often thought that the only non-competitive position on a sports team is owner. If anyone else, coach or player, performed for one year like the some team owners do for decades, they'd be out of a job. Owners won't agree to losing their jobs (fire the bottom 5%?), but relegation ... but would the other owners want the biggest market, for example, relegated?

But this discussion is about societal value. Whoever wins and loses, every game is net zero in entertainment value (whatever that is worth): 1 win and 1 loss. Every relegation is net zero: one team promoted, one relegated. Every championship: 1 team wins, another finishes 2nd, etc., no matter who it is.

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

#527

Post by ETH_start »

saghm wrote: post #374
ETH_start wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health care costs across the developed world have skyrocketed for exactly the same structural reasons. Yes, implementations have been different in their details, but the larger structure is the same no matter where you look in the developed world. Government intervention has increased. That means more top-down management and less bottom-up self-organization based on private property and individual incentives. This is…

> This is not some spurious speculation. That market-based systems drive down costs enormously is replicated across dozens upon dozens of industries. It's one of the most replicable results in economics to the extent that economics can be replicable. As for why the costs in other countries are not quite as high as the U.S., it's because health care costs also increase as per capita GDP increases and the U.S. has high…

What I'm saying is not spurious speculation is the idea that the healthcare industry across the developed world has gotten more expensive because it has become less market-based and more top-down controlled. That's an extrapolation from the observed patterns across dozens upon dozens of industries.

As for the difference between the U.S. healthcare system and healthcare systems in other developed countries, if they had the same output of health care services, I would agree, but the US has far more diagnostic equipment per capita and more advanced treatments. It has the best neonatal facilities in the world. These are extremely costly and some of this expenditure doesn't actually produce that big of a difference in outcomes because it's really just dealing with end of life care, or a relatively small number of patients (e.g. premature infants). But when people are free to spend their money as they wish, this is what they prioritize. I'm also not ruling out that the U.S. healthcare system has less efficient government intervention than the healthcare systems of other developed countries. This is not mutually exclusive with the idea that, more broadly speaking, the structural change towards more government intervention has raised costs across developed world healthcare systems.

The more important question in my opinion is why health care spending across the entire developed world has skyrocketed over the last 40 years. It can be fairly inferred that the cost increase is directly related to increased administration and a lack of the kind of cost-cutting innovation seen in every industry that is substantially more market-based / consumer-driven, i.e. less top-down regimented, than healthcare.

Even cosmetic and laser eye surgery has seen costs come down over the last 40 years. That's what we should be seeing in the rest of the healthcare industry. And the reason we're not is because they operate under very different economic forces than cosmetic and laser eye surgeries, on account of government encouraging people to be covered by either public insurance or private insurance.

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

#528

Post by wolvesechoes »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #180
vannevar wrote: post #139

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."

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.

Nah, it is just capitalism at work. Winner takes all.

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

#529

Post by wolvesechoes »

missedthecue wrote: post #314
rsalus wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> amount of labor being generated per person has not really changed not true, labor productivity has been steadily increasing: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OPHNFB workers are simply capturing less of the economic value generated by their labor.

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…

> Increases in labor productivity is a curious thing to think about. Do I deserve more wages for using AutoCad instead of drafting paper?

Please...

> But it's also true that in spite of this, my output is higher. Should I capture the increased output or should the innovators of the tools? What about the firms that invest in procuring these tools and production technology? Should the customers capture the increased output through lower prices? Or should the innovators, firms, and customers all get less, and instead my wages should get bigger?

No, only your boss deserves to gain from you productivity increase, that's obvious.

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

#530

Post by wolvesechoes »

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…

> Someone could interpret that as a lack of capitalism rather than the opposite.

Only someone blinded by ideology.

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