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Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

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Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#141

Post by pabs3 »

roenxi wrote: post #98
kelseyfrog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing you can do is organize your workplace. Job hopping allows businesses to eat the market at the edges and eventually squeeze those demands out of the labor pool.

Inflation doesn't - fundamentally - change the power balance between employers and employees. Market forces will cause the situation to find a fair market price. If job hopping can't get you better wages, then you probably don't have enough market power to resist if an employer flat-out cuts your pay. Though to try and prevent misunderstandings - I do think inflation is bad for people who are paid wages. Market force…

Late last century inflation and then wages keeping up with that inflation enabled a generation of folks to pay off their first mortgages quite quickly.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#142

Post by kelseyfrog »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #136
whydid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I love to study history, you can almost predict the future by studying the past. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

I wonder how much time we have left for a real citizen revolution. Is is not difficult to imagine a near future with an automated and mechanized military and police with equipment that cannot go rogue. People in the US like to talk about guns as protections against state tyranny but not many have automated laser point defence for drone attacks.

A work stoppage is more realistic than direct combat. What are they going to do? Force us to work?

For example, with the way supply chains are right now, how much leverage do transportation/logistics workers have to force a change?

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#143

Post by vkou »

Supermancho wrote: post #41
baron816 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It never does. The first thing in the article is a graph where 7 our of the 11 years shown have positive real wage growth. If worker pay never kept up with inflation, the country would be among the world’s poorest.

How does that math work? > If worker pay never kept up with inflation, the country would be among the world’s poorest. That is flat wrong. Even if you were still making 23$ an hour as you did in the 70's: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/50-years-of-us-wages-... https://www.factcheck.org/2019/06/are-wages-rising-or-flat/ ...you'd still be among the top 20% of earners across the earth. Let's take another step do…

The guy panhandling two streets away from me is not far from 'the top 20% of earners across the Earth'.

I can't say his situation is entirely enviable, and I would not suggest using that statistic to tell him that he ought to be happy with his lot in life.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#144

Post by unionpivo »

holografix wrote: post #137
silisili wrote: post #58

As someone who does OK, but lives in reality (not the bay area), I feel a revolution coming. I hope it's not a violent one, but who knows at this point. Hopefully it's just a politician with big policy changes. People feel completely disenfranchised. You keep hanging housing over their head but just out of reach like some baby toy, then inflation spikes everything else. What's the point of working even? I don't know…

It already came and half went. It was represented by Donald Trump, the rise of the right in Europe and the alignment of Russia and China for short term push back on the west. DT would never have been elected if _any_ of the architects of the GFC had gone to jail. Imho that was Obama’s biggest mistake. Bailouts could be justifiable and understood by the population, no one going to jail was a betrayal. It caused a tipp…

nah this are just precursors of the real thing, whatever it will be.

People are sick of status quo. That's why more and more are willing to try anything that will shake things up.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#145

Post by onion2k »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #95
skywal_l wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when someone come to you asking for a raise, how often do you give it?

Their peers if they're nice enough will let everyone know "Don't ever show up with an offer or you'll be fired." So it happens rarely if at all.

I don't think accepting that someone is going to leave unless I match an offer is the same as me firing them.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#147

Post by ergocoder »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #20

We had an all-hands meeting recently where we got to submit anonymous questions. One of the questions was 'with inflation rising at 6%, will the company reconsider their 'standard' 2% raise?' The lady answering looks dead in the camera and goes 'Honestly? No' and goes on to talk about how we're reasonably competitive with the local market. Hey, credit where credit is due, at least she was a refreshingly straight shoo…

Google HR answered this question in a company-wide forum.

It is mostly the market (e.g. the other company pay high, so we do too). The living cost doesn't really matter.

I appreciate the honesty though.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#148

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

aeternum wrote: post #68
ars wrote: post #17

Is this inflation due to expansion of the money base? Or inflation due to rising costs? If the second one, there where is all that money going? Who is that "cost" that is benefiting?

Likely some of both. Many of the costs are going to the supply-chain bottlenecks, IE: meat packing plants, lumber mills, container ports, chip manufacturers. Demand is high and it's hard for new supply to be brought online so those in the right position benefit significantly. For example AMD and NVDA revenue up 50%+, income 100%+ Eventually these high margins will attract competitors and bring down the margins but it…

>For example AMD and NVDA revenue up 50%+, income 100%+ Eventually these high margins will attract competitors and bring down the margins

For those examples that is false hope. You can't just spring up a new competitor in the GPU filed out of thin air and expect it to work; Nvidia and AMD duopolies are so far ahead into the game experience wise that no startup could ever catch up no matter how much money you throw at it (even AMD is having a hard time keeping up with Nvidia and they've been at it for 30 years).

Not to mention the insane patent minefield that protects them from competition. Even Intel, a trilion dollar company with experience, patents and fabs can't catch up with the other two.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#149

Post by tapland »

Kiro wrote: post #129
kelseyfrog wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing you can do is organize your workplace. Job hopping allows businesses to eat the market at the edges and eventually squeeze those demands out of the labor pool.

Look at Sweden. The collectively bargained pay increase was below inflation in all sectors. You should unionize for many reasons but I wouldn't trust it as an efficient tool for pay negotiations.

I've never seen a pay increase above ~2% here in Sweden. Some union agreements allow larger (and lower) changes if the average increase is still the decided upon percentage.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#150

Post by bryanrasmussen »

onion2k wrote: post #67
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a raise the best thing you can do is find a new job. Note that this doesn't always even involve taking it. Go get a job offer that pays better and bring it to your boss. If they want to match it, great. If they don't, bye.

From the other side, whenever a member of my team has come to me asking to match an offer I've always refused and wished them well in their new role. If someone is unhappy enough to start job hunting rather than talking to me then it's a clear sign that they'll leave soon regardless of any pay rise. Psychologically, every pay increase makes someone happy for a short time, and then they get used to it and they start t…

>If someone is unhappy enough to start job hunting rather than talking to me then it's a clear sign that they'll leave soon regardless of any pay rise.

so you mean if a recruiter contacts your workers and says we can offer you X amount and they check it out they should have talked to you beforehand?

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