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Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

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Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#71

Post by WalterBright »

janalsncm wrote: post #56
SoftTalker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the median house in 1950 with one today.

It’s not hard to do. A lot of them are for sale today and will sell over asking, no contingencies.

A housing development nearby my home was built in the early 1960s (I think). If you look closely at the homes, they are all of two designs, made into four by mirror images.

But it's pretty clear that over time the homes were remodeled, gut remodeled, extended, garages added, and so on, so they are significantly improved over the original. I've been in a couple, and the hallways are pretty narrow and everything is very cheaply built.

If you want to see what they were like originally, see the old Bob Hope movie "Bachelor in Paradise", filmed at a just-built suburban community.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#72

Post by hparadiz »

i000 wrote: post #36
RugnirViking wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pretty consistently improved I can accept the premise that condiitions have improved, but not that it was consistent. It seems to me that it was anything but; more like extremely spiky. great depression, postwar economic miracle. Massive labor movements rose and fell, general strikes... Plus most countries have had several wars + revolutions in the last 200 years, including two world wars. Not all of those are to d…

Such a good comment, I would also add how much our perception of technology lifting conditions is conflated with the increased ability of governments to steer the economy to smooth things over.

All of those problems had nothing to do with technology and everything to do with economic mismanagement. And the commies were the worst at it. The US never had famines even at the worst of the great depression.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#73

Post by WalterBright »

dumberquestions wrote: post #62
SoftTalker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare the median house in 1950 with one today.

Have people's standards for what a house constitutes gone up, or are affordable options that people would be very willing to buy less available now?

Houses are much bigger today.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#74

Post by barrkel »

WalterBright wrote: post #70
cluckindan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything changed with floating currency. Inflation became a tool for centralization of ownership.

Inflation is caused by deficit spending. It is a tool for government to increase spending without raising taxes.

Inflation is an increase in the cost of living.

It can be caused by deficit spending. It can also be caused by supply shocks. For example, if you restrict building new housing, the price of housing will increase, both rents and house prices. If you tariff imports, a basket including those goods will rise in price to the degree those imports are not substituable. If you start a war in the Middle East, oil prices will rise, and increased energy costs can feed into lots of different things, raising prices.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#75

Post by mekael »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #48
maxbendick wrote: post #19

Marx actually has a bit about this: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm... The most interesting point here is relating machine speed to intensity. Plenty of tech folks are both working longer hours and overseeing more responsibilities thanks to AI. There are other factors at play though (interest rates and AI-addiction, for two).

[flagged]

There’s communism the theoretical idea and “communism” the application.

The twentieth century was neither, but just authoritarianism wearing a trench-coat.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#76

Post by nubg »

noosphr wrote: post #47
briga wrote: post #21

The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.

2026 - 200 = 1826 Yeah no. It's only since 1950 that conditions improved for everyone. Before then everything from sewage, to coal smoke, to chronically low wages made life worse for everyone involved. The most miserable people to live in history were the British working class in the mid/late 19th century.

> The most miserable people to live in history were the British working class in the mid/late 19th century.

I find this topic very interesting, do you have any reading you could recomment on this?

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#77

Post by gruez »

janalsncm wrote: post #49
gruez wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>to the point where raising a family on a single income is not a realistic goal for most people. Was this ever true? During the 1950s, (the perceived heyday of American middle class wealth) the female labor force participation rate was 35%[1], which was close half of the male labor force participation rate. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300002 [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300001

1) Based on your numbers, 65% of women were not working at that time. 2) That 35% number was likely even lower for married women. 3) Racism was still a systemic problem and was bad. Black men were excluded from the GI bill for example. 4) In spite of that, the median American household needed only 2x their salary to buy the median house. That number is 5x today, and after taxes the ratios are 2.2x then vs 6x today, w…

>4) In spite of that, the median American household needed only 2x their salary to buy the median house. That number is 5x today, and after taxes the ratios are 2.2x then vs 6x today, when two adults are often working rather than one.

Sources for these numbers? Also, housing is only a fraction of your costs.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#78

Post by WalterBright »

georgemcbay wrote: post #27
briga wrote: post #21

The central premise of this post is basically not true: working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years. The cases where it didn't were generally offset by the rest of society benefiting from increased automation and productivity. Where the current revolution will lead remains unclear, but if the past is any indication things will probably continue to improve for most people.

> working conditions and wages have pretty consistently improved over the past 200 years They've improved, but not consistently on human timescales. Being a worker in the pre-labor-movement industrial revolution was by all accounts horrendous. Things have, so far, trended better over time but they can be bad for whole generations and also past results do not guarantee future results. > The cases where it didn't were…

> Being a worker in the pre-labor-movement industrial revolution was by all accounts horrendous.

Average height and life expectancy improved steadily in the US throughout the 19th century.

The pre-Revolutionary Americans tended to live short and backbreaking lives.

Take a tour through Fort Williams. There is a collection of clothing from the Revolutionary War. The baby clothes look like doll clothes, and the adult clothes look like they were for boys. Then look at the clothing in the Gettysburg museums. The people were taller then, but still about the size of boys.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#79

Post by nubg »

rafaelRiv wrote: post #58
palmotea wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think we can sweep the worst parts of it under the rug because the bad impacts are only happening to "the poors". We can and we will. If you read HN for any period of time, you'll probably read at least 5 apologia for the harms caused by prior technological change for every one critique or expression of sympathy. After all, we're well-indoctrinated software engineers, and most of the rest are temporarily em…

> Not me! I'm 100x AI engineer who will certainly remain comfy an secure. LLMs are awesome! It's all those luddite doomer jerks who cling to their old ways of understanding how things work and manual coding that are going to be poor, and they deserve it. We will see in 5 years ! I think you highly overestimate llms

Funnily enough, the parent made the point that people probably overestimate their position in the future pecking order, and did so sarcastically, which you seemed to have completely missed (probably due to being ESL), something even a current LLM would easily "understand", thus proving his point.

Re: Most tech revolutions made work worse for employees

#80

Post by anonymars »

WalterBright wrote: post #69
regularization wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US Department of Labor measures wages, and adjusted for inflation the hourly wage is below what it was in 1973. It is even lower if you are only counting non-management roles then and now. Wages have not gotten better over the past half century they have gotten worse. Workers now work more hours pee year to try to catch up to what they made back then, so working conditions are worse now as well.

This corresponds with the increasing share of the economy consumed by the government. > the hourly wage This is a misleading statistic. The actual statistic is "total employee compensation", which includes the benefits packages, the (so-called) employer contribution to SS, 401k employer contributions, etc. The TEC is often worth up to 150% of the wages.

FRED shows Federal outlays as a percent of GDP broadly leveling off and declining. 2008 GFC and COVID being transient exceptions

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

Meanwhile here's employee compensation* over GDP (both seasonally adjusted)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XO2h

Any chance you can share the sources for your assertions?

* includes benefits as per https://www.bea.gov/resources/methodologies/nipa-handbook/pd...

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