The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker • Hacker News Board

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#91

Post by xhkkffbf » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #90

xhkkffbf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be on the plane tomorrow. If you're really committed to living under the beautiful Communist dream, it can be yours within 24 hours. Do you really think that it's going to just be Mamdani victory after Mamdani victory going forward and that in 10-20 years you'll be living in paradise? And, btw, the youth are also time constrained. Sorry to burst your bubble.

I’m committed to universal healthcare, living wages, heavily subsidized or no cost education, affordable housing (even if it’s public or social, like the Vienna model) and high progressive tax rates. Call it whatever you want, but it’s certainly not communism. It’s less brutalist capitalism. I expect it to take 5-10 years to see progress, at least. I’m prepared for a long haul. > Do you really think that it's going t…

That's a big if. Maybe you'll be right. But the odds are you'll find yourself like Germany as it watches Poland blast by it in GDP. Or maybe you'll be like England where recently 30k++ people were kicked off the National Health waiting list. Why? Because they died before the doctor could see them.

And, hey, you've got low cost education already. It's called YouTube and Udemy and Coursera, but I'm sure you've got some nutty dream that only includes huge leafy campuses and aging Marxist professors like Donald Sutherland in "Animal House." It's some old vision of what "education" might be. But I'm here like the Mayor in "Wizard of Oz" to tell you that you and your cohort already has the power thanks to the Great Capitalist engine of Silicon Valley that built the Internet.

One of these days the public housing projects in Vienna will get the Internet. I'm sure.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#92

Post by Herring » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #56

theoreticalmal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d revolt? Against what?

America’s flavor of Capitalism, through politics and policy, to center the human over capital. (Socialism support is ~62% of the under 30 cohort, and 2M voters 55+ age out every year, progress is a function of time and electorate turnover, with progress visible via observing outcomes at election milestones) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529387 (citations)

I don't know how much I really trust polls when it comes to Americans and socialism. Look what happened in 2008

https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx (first graph)

Democrats saw what seemed like a massive opportunity, took it, got punished very hard for 20 years.

Issues of culture are sticky. I think it could take many decades for Americans to unlearn their brand of toxic individualism. Maybe centuries.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#93

Post by toomuchtodo » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

Herring wrote: post #92

toomuchtodo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America’s flavor of Capitalism, through politics and policy, to center the human over capital. (Socialism support is ~62% of the under 30 cohort, and 2M voters 55+ age out every year, progress is a function of time and electorate turnover, with progress visible via observing outcomes at election milestones) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46529387 (citations)

I don't know how much I really trust polls when it comes to Americans and socialism. Look what happened in 2008 https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx (first graph) Democrats saw what seemed like a massive opportunity, took it, got punished very hard for 20 years. Issues of culture are sticky. I think it could take many decades for Americans to unlearn their brand of toxic individualism. Maybe centu…

Kiros is a good sign so far outside of NY, winning against a 30 year centrist incumbent in Colorado.

Democratic socialist Melat Kiros poised to become the first Gen Z woman in Congress - https://www.npr.org/2026/07/01/nx-s1-5876122/colorado-primar... - July 1st, 2026

Arizona is up next for testing and observing via election.

Democratic Socialists are winning elections nationwide. Is Arizona Next? - https://www.azfamily.com/2026/07/04/democratic-socialists-ar... - July 3rd, 2026

Paul Krugman: There Are Very Few Socialists in America, but most of us are social democrats - https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/there-are-very-few-social... - July 2nd, 2026

> Issues of culture are sticky. I think it could take many decades for Americans to unlearn their brand of toxic individualism. Maybe centuries.

Strongly agree. Much work ahead to change the dysfunctional American culture around hyper individualism. I hope it can be done in only a generation or two. My mental model on this is US religiosity decline.

This is Not Simple Generational Replacement - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/can-millennials-save-t... - April 23rd, 2026

When Are Half Your Members Going to be Dead? - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/when-are-half-your-mem... - January 29th, 2026

The Generational Collapse of American Religion - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-generational-colla... - January 19th, 2026

Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World - https://news.gallup.com/poll/697676/drop-religiosity-among-l... - November 13th, 2025

Some fun YC history I think is tagentially related to this topic of culture:

Interview with Mr. Money Mustache - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15348384 - September 2017 (284 comments) ("Don't start a blog, start a cult.")

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#94

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

DiskoHexyl wrote: post #69

lotsofpulp wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it is explicitly wealth redistribution, from the young and healthy to the old and sick. It is still called an insurance premium because it is more politically palatable.

Unless you don’t intend to age, you too will become old and sick. As will, hopefully, almost everyone else. How is it wealth redistribution when most people will start as recipients, then move to being the donors and will then become the recipients again?

Because there is no guarantee that the donors now will receive the same benefits when they are older. It's almost the opposite, given demographic trends. For example, 20 to 30 years ago, getting consultation by a doctor was easier, but now you often have to get consultation from a physician assistant, if you're lucky, or more likely a nurse practitioner, who are far less qualified than doctors.

Also, ACA started in 2010, so all the people receiving the most healthcare now (age 50 to 65) had a good chunk of working years where they never paid into the system, but they received a lot of benefits. Also, there is no mandate to pay the premiums in the US, so many people don't pay into it at all, until they need the healthcare.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#95

Post by lotsofpulp » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

smitty1e wrote: post #54

> In 1980, 38 percent of private-sector workers had defined-benefit pension coverage. By 2023, that number had fallen to 11 percent. [15] Government workers, who have the political power to maintain the old arrangement, still have pensions at a rate of 75 percent. [15] The private sector abandoned the model because it could. I wish I’d known when I was young what I know now about government jobs. I wish I'd had bette…

The argument has no heft at all, because it ignores the laws that require actually funding a defined benefit pension plan, such as ERISA 1974 and PPA 2006, which exempt taxpayer funded pension plans from any and all funding requirements.

The private sector abandoned the model because the promises only made sense with fantasy accounting, and once that was reigned in, they didn't have the power to tax future generations, so they naturally went away. Also, the government pays under market for labor, because the government employee unions prioritize not being able to be terminated today and deferred compensation over higher, market rate compensation today.

It's a moot point anyway, since nearly free target date mutual funds and index ETFs exist where you can get all the benefits of stock market gains without any of the agency risk and cost of pension fund managers and employees. They have been obviated.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#96

Post by noman-land » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 10:27 PM UTC

htunnicliff wrote: post #34

I do not know what comes after the recognition. The broader public directs its outrage at whatever the algorithm surfaces […] while the structural rearrangement of their economic lives proceeds without organized resistance. I wish I knew the answer to this question: What shape would organized resistance have in this day and age, especially with the fragmentation of reality caused by social media? Myself and almost ev…

We need a new citizen run internet whose physical infrastructure is distributed and owned by people not companies.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#97

Post by aleqs » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 4:39 AM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #85

aleqs wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to build open/cooperative products and services to replace anything that is run/owned by less-than-moral entities, while boycotting those entities as much as possible. We need better open, fair and secure methods/protocols/tools/platforms for cooperating/organizing as well.

https://ilsr.org/ https://www.fulu.org/ https://www.usworker.coop/directory/ https://atproto.com/

Thank you!

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#98

Post by simianwords » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 5:45 AM UTC

This article is the usual self victimisation rut but it comes with an interesting irony.

The article states the often quoted Wages vs Productivity gap. But wages didn't track productivity for the simple reason that the top 10% of people were paid much higher and consume disproportionately higher.

Who do you think the top 10% mostly comprises of? White collar people. So the article mourns for the same people who were responsible for and benefactors of the wage vs productivity pay gap LOL.

Hard to take this seriously.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#99

Post by wmorgan » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 6:13 AM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #95

smitty1e wrote: post #54

> In 1980, 38 percent of private-sector workers had defined-benefit pension coverage. By 2023, that number had fallen to 11 percent. [15] Government workers, who have the political power to maintain the old arrangement, still have pensions at a rate of 75 percent. [15] The private sector abandoned the model because it could. I wish I’d known when I was young what I know now about government jobs. I wish I'd had bette…

The argument has no heft at all, because it ignores the laws that require actually funding a defined benefit pension plan, such as ERISA 1974 and PPA 2006, which exempt taxpayer funded pension plans from any and all funding requirements. The private sector abandoned the model because the promises only made sense with fantasy accounting, and once that was reigned in, they didn't have the power to tax future generation…

Yeah, it’s hard to reconcile the assertions by the author, that he has contributed in a "disciplined" way to his 401(k), and he’s 41, and he doesn’t think his savings will replace his income. The S&P 500’s total return over the past twenty years has been around 11%, annualized. That’s on track to millions, maybe even tens of millions for him by retirement age.

Maybe he's nervous comparing the top-line number in his retirement account to his expected expenses, but (a) he's got 25 years of compounding ahead, and (b) anything else he manages to save in the meantime -- including on his mortgage -- is going to help as well.

Re: The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker

#100

Post by Hfuffzehn » Sun, Jul 05, 2026, 9:04 AM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #36

> The demoralization of the American white-collar worker is not a universal condition of modernity. Workers in comparable economies face the same global pressures — inflation, housing costs, technological disruption — and they are not demoralized in the same way, because their systems absorb the shocks that American workers absorb individually. This seems like the core claim, and I don't think it's true? The author r…

Agreed.

Demoralization in e.g. Germany has reached insane levels.

This is a problem of the direction things are going. Things are getting worse and that is causing the demoralization, not the absolute level of "how good things still are".