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American life is improving for the lowest paid

economist.com

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Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#121

Post by NeedMoreTea »

henrikschroder wrote: post #93
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A whole week off is seen as weird. Hang on. So even if you have paid leave, is a yearly week or two's holiday really not usual in the US? You know to go spend a week hiking or skiing in the Rockies, or fortnight camping, or whatever is your thing. Not being able to take a week or two straight to get away from civilisation would have me clawing the walls going stir crazy, and I'd probably find myself divorced. Quite…

If you only have two weeks total, getting two weeks straight is very hard, because you've probably had to use vacation days for other things, family obligations, christmas, etc, so you don't really have the time.

Fair point. I'm am so used to the statutory days paid provision as separate and extra from how many days holiday we get - Xmas, Boxing Day, Easter, August Bank Holiday etc.

So we always built around 9 day or 16 day breaks, and everyone else seems to. There's usually a few holiday days left over for the odd day off. Some places didn't even count the compassionate things or family emergencies towards holiday entitlement days. Heck, when I was contracting, we took a few - obviously unpaid - one month holidays!

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#122

Post by NeedMoreTea »

njepa wrote: post #97
dj_gitmo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually like some things about the Economist and I subscribed for years. I feel like people would be better informed about the world if they read it. That said, it's absolutely dripping with ideology and you need to know how to read it. It's a cheerleader for Capitalism, kinda like the Financial Times. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thi...

Unfortunately I think the Economist is one of those publications where it seems authoritative until they write about something you really know about and realize it is mostly just written in an assertive style.

There I disagree. When they write on things I know about - like science and tech - they do a far better job of being accurate than most others. They are one of a very few that I don't start by presuming they misunderstand the science, statistics or facts of the matter.

On conclusions, or political consequence, or what should be done there we can agree or disagree. On opinion we can disagree stridently - their stance is not of the right, or simple "capitalist cheerleading", nor of the left, so even there we can agree or disagree surprisingly sometimes.

I know their stance and view - they make it very plain, have run several features explaining it, and even discuss it on their About page. So even when we do disagree on conclusion I find it mostly a rational view from the other side of the fence.

Pick something like The Telegraph to get a "cheerleader for capitalism". It infects everything, even the footie, and damn the facts. If it's science or tech they're very unlikely to have understood. Thirty years ago they were more like the Economist - we may vehemently disagree on some points, agree on others, but their core facts and striving for accuracy were reasonable.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#123

Post by thelasthuman »

FabHK wrote: post #106
hollandheese wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a right-wing magazine (i.e. ardently pro-capitalist). Their endorsements support that idea. All of those candidates that they supported were also ardent supporters of capital.

If you want to call the candidates from the left party in the US right-wing, sure (when you look at it on a global scale, you might have a point there). But as I said, while The Economist supports free trade and free markets, they are not laissez-faire, but support sensible regulation, anti-trust, action on climate, etc. > "The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability." [1] > Is…

Considering the shift in the Overton window the last 50 years in the USA, radically center is right wing.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#124

Post by thelasthuman »

scarface74 wrote: post #108
bjourne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come so few Americans realize how insanely unfair that is? The USSR collapsed 30 years ago, so there is no Communism to scare people with anymore.

So how do you propose to make things more fair? Why do I have the feeling that knowing the population of HN, who are heavily employed in the tech industry, don’t consider themselves the privileged beneficiaries of capitalism?

The privileged beneficiaries of capitalism are the people that hire the population of HN to make them money.

As for how to make things more fair, a good start would be to allow bad actors (the well connected good ole boys) in the economy to die off instead of bailing them out. Perhaps a better use of that money would be to invest in community owned assets (like low income housing) and businesses (corporations structured similarly to Mondragon)?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#125

Post by scarface74 »

thelasthuman wrote: post #124
scarface74 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you propose to make things more fair? Why do I have the feeling that knowing the population of HN, who are heavily employed in the tech industry, don’t consider themselves the privileged beneficiaries of capitalism?

The privileged beneficiaries of capitalism are the people that hire the population of HN to make them money. As for how to make things more fair, a good start would be to allow bad actors (the well connected good ole boys) in the economy to die off instead of bailing them out. Perhaps a better use of that money would be to invest in community owned assets (like low income housing) and businesses (corporations structu…

How many people on HN are volunteering to pay more in taxes and give up their income that is probably more than twice the median amount in the US?

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#126

Post by bjourne »

scarface74 wrote: post #108
bjourne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come so few Americans realize how insanely unfair that is? The USSR collapsed 30 years ago, so there is no Communism to scare people with anymore.

So how do you propose to make things more fair? Why do I have the feeling that knowing the population of HN, who are heavily employed in the tech industry, don’t consider themselves the privileged beneficiaries of capitalism?

It's up to the Americans. If they are fine with the way things are I'm not going to try to convince them.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#127

Post by njepa »

FabHK wrote: post #103
njepa wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I think the Economist is one of those publications where it seems authoritative until they write about something you really know about and realize it is mostly just written in an assertive style.

Granted. Yet, I think about it this way: They're smart kids that have studied their PPE in Oxford and can write well, but know nothing about issue XYZ, say whether to use tabs or spaces. But now, the issue comes up, and then they send someone out to visit a conference and speak to people and ask around who the experts in the field are, and (because they're The Economist) get an interview with, dunno, Guido van Rossum…

It isn't so much that they get details wrong. As you say they are smart. It is that they won't present the full picture. Sometimes they even do that, but come up with conclusions that aren't supported.

If they for example supported tabs they would end up writing a story how you could attribute the success of Python and Microsoft to tab usage. The quotes and the numbers would be correct and they would make a compelling case, but in the real world the difference would be marginal at best.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#128

Post by MisterBastahrd »

maxxxxx wrote: post #9
otaviokz wrote: post #4

"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday" I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?

I believe in theory they don't have to give any paid time off, no vacation, no sick days. I once was offered a job in NYC with 5 days vacation, increasing to 10 after a few years. I said "No, thank you". I can't even imagine how it is to work like that.

I interviewed for a ton of positions recently because I was about to be laid off. I got to see the entire gamut of offers from "no PTO, no benefits, and a pittance" to "fully paid benefits, 18 days PTO, and top 10% salary for location".

I can't imagine the difference in quality between the guys who are getting nothing and made to fend for themselves and the ones who are getting taken care of. I'm going to go out on a limb to say it might not necessarily be a giant difference depending on how well the developer in question Luckily for me, the job at the most financially rewarding location seemed just as interesting as the ones who appeared to be bootstrapping themselves.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#129

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Barrin92 wrote: post #38
School-Cotton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually, low-skill hourly wage service jobs in the US have no paid leave, at all. If you work N hours, you get paid for N hours. That’s why getting one week of paid leave annually was described as rare.

Jesus I didn't know that. I knew that the US had a debate about maternity leave, but I thought the US had paid annual leave. Here in Germany everyone gets 24 working days off, I don't think I'd survive a year without it.

Even for a lot of white collar jobs, you will get 8 days total paid time off the first year, usually either pro-rated or earned on a percentage basis as you work. Large companies of European origin with a unionized staff tend to be vastly more generous with retirement.

My new employer offers 3 weeks of vacation plus 3 days of PTO. That's it. Everyone at the senior level and above gets that. If I had worked for my dad's employer with a similar amount of seniority, I'd be looking at 4-5 bankable weeks of vacation each year.

His employer routinely offered negotiated severance for people with X years of employment. He took one of their packages. They paid him 2 years salary complete with healthcare coverage and 401k for those years, and then he was able to use his accumulated vacation. He went into the office twice in 4 months and then cleared out his desk before retiring to a nice pension.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#130

Post by Izkata »

otaviokz wrote: post #4

"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday" I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?

Everyone else is throwing out their experiences, so since none mentioned something like mine I may as well too:

Back in highschool, I worked hourly at a library for a year, and don't recall getting any paid vacation time. What I do remember is trading days with co-workers so I could get a full week off on occasion, or once just giving them my days so they got paid more that week with no pay loss another week.

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