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America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

fortune.com

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Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#91

Post by inigyou »

anonym29 wrote: post #60
isoprophlex wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention school shooting drills. Teaching kids how to behave when someone tries to shoot up your school, because it happens more than once a decade... And then not doing fuck all to fix the root cause, besides thoughts and prayers, because muh freedom. Incredible that this is the country that has been the dominant global exporter of technological innovation, pop culture and economic policy for so long.

Training kids how to respond to school shootings is like training kids how to respond to dual engine failures on an airplane. It happens, it's just statistically so unlikely to ever happen to your kid, that the drill essentially serves as ideological propaganda reinforcing fear of the idea of the threat far above and beyond the statistical risk actually posed by the threat itself. And as a reminder, Europe sees more…

School shootings in America are not statistically unlikely, they are a regular occurrence.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#92

Post by watwut »

cyberjerkXX wrote: post #61
simianwords wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic reply to this is that inequality reduces the agency of people to make decisions in the society - IOW it causes _power_ inequality. But the reply to that is that it is orthogonal to the discussion. Power should be distributed in a way that increases efficiency and not just for the virtue of doing so.

All human relationships have inequalities. Attempting to use the government to destroy hierarchies is utopian bullshit. It always leads to worse outcomes than intendent because humans are imperfect. Intentions should never be the measure of success, only outcomes.

Those hierarchies are the result and consequence of goverment being captured by super rich.

Removing it and weakening sociopathic predators is correct. They will cauase less damage when they are not constantly given advantages.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#93

Post by inigyou »

Arodex wrote: post #77
anonym29 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Training kids how to respond to school shootings is like training kids how to respond to dual engine failures on an airplane. It happens, it's just statistically so unlikely to ever happen to your kid, that the drill essentially serves as ideological propaganda reinforcing fear of the idea of the threat far above and beyond the statistical risk actually posed by the threat itself. And as a reminder, Europe sees more…

As a reminder, the heat killing Europeans right now is caused by America pumping ungodly amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere with virility-signalling cars and air conditioning set to 60 fahrenheit everywhere. You are literally mocking Europeans for being killed by your waste.

Right now? Or a few weeks ago? Fewer weeks ago, America suffered the same heat wave but worse, so they got karma.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#94

Post by inigyou »

mlrtime wrote: post #56
throwaway27448 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth inequality itself causes a great number of ills in this country. We should absolutely aim to lower this gap as a goal in itself.

You missed the point, If the floor and the medium are rising, why does the gap need to narrow? Why is this better factually, not ideologically.

Because the gap is the percentage of society's resources that are controlled by wealthy stupid people. Think about all the power companies that are cutting off power to homes to power AI data centers. That couldn't happen if the DC owners had less wealth and the homeowners had more.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#95

Post by krapp »

dzonga wrote: post #65
DarkNova6 wrote: post #2

As somebody living outside the US, I would find moving to the states highly undesirable even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens. To me, it would mean a significant reduction in quality of live and I am low-key scared of all the ingredients and additives in food that are pretty much banned everywhere else. Not to mention all risks regarding healthcare.

yeah the hostility started recently with trump and his ilk - fighting for nationalism of a bygone era. if you can afford it - the US has excellent healthcare, you can also get organic food and dare I say better housing, private infra. what the US could/should improve on is have public clinics ie for preventative and quick care. public hospitals in the long run have many problems. in the U.K for example - I used priva…

>yeah the hostility started recently with trump and his ilk - fighting for nationalism of a bygone era.

It definitely didn't start with Trump, it just became policy under him.

Trump would never have had a chance if Americans didn't already blame immigrants for the effects of neoliberalism rather than the billionaires who put it into practice, and if the rural white populace weren't already afraid losing the cultural power of their demographic majority and identity. People forget how much of a joke candidate he was until racists took him seriously.

>if you can afford it - the US has excellent healthcare

If you can afford it, anywhere has excellent healthcare.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#96

Post by saghm »

stavros wrote: post #64
mlrtime wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has some of if not the best hospitals in the world. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean equal access, but those are facts not ideology. We can argue if that is fair or not, but if you have a well paying job with good employee provided HC, America is [one of] the best places to be for medical care.

So basically you're saying "if you can afford it, the US is one of the best places to get medical care". Well, if I can afford it, why wouldn't I just fly to the US to get that care then? I don't have to be living there.

"If you can afford it" also conveniently glosses over the fact that a private insurance system means that the costs for paying out of pocket tend to be insanely high, since that an insurance company pays the hospital is basically entirely unrelated to the price that you'd get charged as an individual. Even if you're making a decent software engineering salary in the US, which would put you in a much cushier financial position than most of the country, you'd better hope that you don't ever have any major accidents or develop any uncommon medical conditions or you'll be eating into your savings at an alarmingly high rate.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#97

Post by arthurofbabylon »

I believe Americans are naive to the bad deal they're currently sitting with. It is the most materially wealthy place on earth, yet with terrible distribution – this is not a technical problem, it is a cultural problem.

My favorite example is to describe a suburb. A lot of people in the world do not know how dystopian an American suburb is: many residents do not know their neighbors, acquiring food requires driving a car or paying someone else to drive, there exists a strict separation from nature/outdoors, depression and other preventable illness rates are high, life expectancy in some regions is declining, there is no plaza/piazza/"downtown." And yet, there are all of these buildings with concrete and glass (and vinyl siding) and more, with plumbing and electricity and often natural gas. The suburb despite its immense resources is simply not subject to a design process and not well-implemented.

This is the deal that Americans unwittingly signed up for. It is not a very good deal, and if we were willing to more intelligently engage our political processes we could — as the article suggests — have a much more favorable arrangement. However, if Americans writ large remain ignorant to how good it could be, the healthy political engagement will not materialize.

So here is a contrasting perspective, shared in hopes of spurring some healthy negotiation from my fellow Americans -> Imagine walkable residential neighborhoods with cafes/restaurants/shops where neighbors interact and by interacting reduce premature mortality, education is not just free but comes with a humble stipend, more than half the population commutes via passive transit, retail businesses are allowed to operate at almost any size, there is a guaranteed basic income for anyone disabled or simply unlucky, neighbors share resources like food and tools, police are trained and police officer candidates are screened to prevent those with exceptionally low IQ's from entering the field, administrators go to prison for violating laws, traffic systems are routinely redesigned and upgraded for safety and efficiency... And if any of this sounds like a pipe dream then I urge the skeptics to travel – every example above has been successfully implemented somewhere, in Thailand or Switzerland or Japan etc.

Naivety is the common trait that currently holds America back from what it really quite easily could accomplish.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#98

Post by inigyou »

logicchains wrote: post #39
frotaur wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out https://arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-wage-natural-exper... , very good post comparing states with minimum wage and without, that seem to go against this often repeated argument.

Then why not raise minimum wage to $100? Obviously there's a limit.

"we should make murder illegal"

"then why not make sleeping illegal? obviously there's a limit"

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#99

Post by inigyou »

gadders wrote: post #24
charcircuit wrote: post #10

>If the U.S. changed some policies – such as increasing the federal minimum wage – 46 million people could earn enough to rise above that fair pay line. You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage and then those newly unemployed people will depress wages for other jobs since there is more labor on the supply side.

But if they made the minimum wage $1m/year then we would all be rich! /s

I know on Reddit this sort of thing earns you karma but it doesn't work like that on HN.

Re: America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD

#100

Post by anonym29 »

Arodex wrote: post #77
anonym29 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Training kids how to respond to school shootings is like training kids how to respond to dual engine failures on an airplane. It happens, it's just statistically so unlikely to ever happen to your kid, that the drill essentially serves as ideological propaganda reinforcing fear of the idea of the threat far above and beyond the statistical risk actually posed by the threat itself. And as a reminder, Europe sees more…

As a reminder, the heat killing Europeans right now is caused by America pumping ungodly amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere with virility-signalling cars and air conditioning set to 60 fahrenheit everywhere. You are literally mocking Europeans for being killed by your waste.

CO2 emissions have been consistently declining in both the USA and Europe for over 2 decades now. The bulk of the CO2 increase over that time period comes from China and India.

Americans also invented the solar photovoltaic panel. You're welcome.

Also, since we're playing this game right now, I'd be remiss to not remind you that American individuals do over an order of magnitude more charitable giving than the entire EU combined, on a raw dollar basis.

Speaking of giving - since 2014, the EU has purchased approximate €700-€900 billion worth of oil and natural gas alone from Russia (total EU imports from Russia exceed €1T in that time period), while offering less than €300 billion in support to Ukraine.

The EU is responsible for funding Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and has given more than twice as much money to Russia than it has to Ukraine.

America, on the other hand, has appropriated nearly $200B to Ukraine (over $100B in direct aid), yet paid only a tiny fraction of that to total Russian imports since 2014.

In other words, America is a net economic supporter of Ukraine, while the EU is a net economic supporter of Russia.

You are not "the good guys" that you think are.

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