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

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

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 238 posts

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

#131

Post by Hikikomori »

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…

His ilk is the Heritage foundation, and not just nationalism, some fascism with a bit of 18/19th century great white man imperialism. They're arguably even the cause of this article as Raegan implemented many of their proposals that has lead to this.

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

#132

Post by snapplebobapple »

I would expect fortune to be able to understand basic economics, but I guess not. I can't verify because it is a paywalled article, but if this article isn't about oligopolies abusing labor market power, then it is intensely wrong headed. Paying workers less is a good thing to a point, it means less dead weight loss to the economy from labor abusing market power (which is basically the worst thing you can do in economics). If it's about abuse of monopsony power in the labour market by oligopolies then I apologize, that's the one case where paying people less is bad, but it's also kind of rare these days.

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

#133

Post by gadders »

danbruc wrote: post #103
logicchains wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth inequality doesn't cause ills, envy does. Envy should be regarded as a character defect, a sin, not something to be elevated to policy. You're not poorer because someone's richer than you, and indeed policies aimed to reduce wealth inequality will actually make you poorer, that's why average European salaries are much lower than US ones.

Envy is the completely wrong framing, it is about fairness. If you design widgets and 99 people build them and everyone works the same number of hours, then the fair share is 1 % for everyone. One percent of the work, one percent of the profit. If you take 2 % [1] while everyone else only gets 0.99 %, that is unfair. And look, the difference for each individual is tiny, 0.99 % or 1 %, that makes it easy to dismiss de…

What about the chap that mortgaged his house to rent a factory and buy a widget maker and employs these people? What % should he take?

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

#135

Post by Hikikomori »

anonym29 wrote: post #100
Arodex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Prime example of American exceptionalism, laughable.

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

#136

Post by stasomatic »

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.

I live in the US. I disagree about the hostility towards non-citizens. If you are talking about ICE, it's more about racism. They are not gunning down Brits, Germans or Australians.

Agree about the rest. Can I come live in your country? :)

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

#137

Post by rudolftheone »

philipallstar wrote: post #15
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.

> even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens. The US welcomes more people legally than any other country in the world[0], and half of its politicians think welcoming illegal immigrants is a good idea too. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/migration?tab=line&coun...

Now look at the same metric per capita - USA immediately loses its 1st place.

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

#138

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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.

Uh huh. And Europe is carbon neutral, and has been for the last couple of decades?

The head killing Europeans right now is caused by everyone pumping CO2, including Europeans.

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

#139

Post by FeloniousHam »

krapp wrote: post #95
dzonga wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

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

#140

Post by tstrimple »

freedomben wrote: post #35
thatwasunusual wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 [...] This way of thinking is what's wrong with USA (among many other things). You don't (or at least shouldn't) hire lots of people because it's cheap.

If that way of thinking is wrong, why not just make the minimum wage a million an hour and let everyone be mega wealthy? What do you think would happen if we passed that? Edit: to the down voters, what is your answer to the question?

> “Oh water is healthy for you? Why don’t you drink a hundred gallons a day? Checkmate atheists!”

Brilliant argument you have there.

Post reply on HN