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Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

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Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#161

Post by nostrebored »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #92
the_snooze wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any current students reading this, it's entirely doable to finish your program with real experience and connections under your belt. Not just with internships, but TA, research, and student org leadership experience absolutely count too. There are tons of overlooked low-stakes zero-experience opportunities available only to university students, and it's really useful to develop the habit of identifying and pursui…

Do not go to college if you have to spend any money on it. If you do that's everyone telling that you don't belong there and you'll have a hard life if you ignore them.

This is a take that maybe makes sense for wealthy children or the upper middle class?

I paid for school (admittedly not that much, I stayed in state and lived in relatively poor accommodations). I’m also the only one of my siblings to not be a felon or dead before 45. Life is often a game of deltas: given the same or similar starting conditions, where did you wind up?

If you keep making delta positive outcomes, eventually you’ll wind up somewhere interesting.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#162

Post by Workaccount2 »

komali2 wrote: post #70
mcntsh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> working hard at creating value does "Creating value" is such a subjective phrase. Societal value? Fiscal value? Someone who drives around your city for 12 hours, rescuing and resuscitating people in life-or-death situations probably provides more societal value than a software engineer who builds CRM features for large social companies but we all know which one gets paid more and who is considered "more successful.…

Yes, this is one of the inherent contradictions of capitalism: the definition of "value" is reversed so that the system rewards the least valuable actors (investment bankers, middlemen, rent-seekers) and punishes the most valuable actors (teachers, firefighters, plumbers, sewage treatment plant workers, garbage collectors). Those who like this system, is this inevitable? If not, how can it be reversed? Or is it someh…

The problem is that huge swaths of people can do those "most valuable" jobs, so they will chronically undercut each other to a stable salary point.

There is no conspiracy or scheme going on. Most people who set out to become a teacher or sewage plant worker are successful in doing so. Very few people who set out to be investment banker VP or real estate moguls succeed, but we hyper focus on those who do, ignoring (more likely unaware of) the graveyard of broke losers who didn't make it.

On the flip-side, if we had a way of finely grading, say, teachers, then the teachers in the top 1% percentile could likely demand extremely high paying salaries...because 99% of teachers would fail to make this grade.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#163

Post by analognoise »

As soon as we start prosecuting the rich for "social murder" and things like it, things will improve.

We just need to get over that hump. You pay yourself 300x what your average worker does? That's fine, but we can also try you for social murder. Like if you're a healthcare executive that denies coverage and increases costs without delivering care (serving as a worthless middleman who actually prevents care), you go to prison. That sort of thing.

We need to move in that direction, imo.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#164

Post by Buttons840 »

paulpauper wrote: post #97
jparishy wrote: post #66

Wealth inequality is high. High enough you can feel it like a vibe in the air. The richest people in the world are telling everyone to get onboard with technology that is determined to make a lot of those same people's jobs redundant. All with an explicit goal of increasing the price of stock most of those people do not own. IMO there's two economies, maybe divided by those who participate in the stock market and tho…

If you're smart or lucky enough to to land that 6-figure job, then times are pretty good. There are tons of stories on subreddits, e.g. r/FIRE, r/investing, r/fatfire, etc., of people with large nest eggs and home ownership at an early age. But those are outliers. There are many opportunities to get rich if you are lucky and or smart enough to land them, like in tech or finance. But this is not much consolation for t…

The following site breaks down the living wage required for families of various sizes, and the wage of various industries.

I compared the living wage for my own family size with the average wage per industry and realized there were only 3 industries I could earn a living wage in, management, computers, or legal. Fortunately I have experience in the computer industry (surprise HN).

Let me spell it out. The following industries provide a below living wage, on average, for a single parent with one child: business & financial operations, architecture & engineering, life, physical, & social science, community & social service, education, training, & library, arts, design, entertainment, sports, & media, healthcare practitioners & technical, healthcare support, protective service, food preparation & serving related, building & grounds cleaning & maintenance, personal care & service, sales & related, office & administrative support, farming, fishing, & forestry, construction & extraction, installation, maintenance, & repair, production, transportation & material moving.

https://livingwage.mit.edu/ example: https://livingwage.mit.edu/states/49

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#165

Post by vvpan »

WalterBright wrote: post #110
vvpan wrote: post #48

I have not read the whole of "Capital in 21st Century", just the opening chapter. But the picture the chapter painted was quiet grim - income inequality growing rapidly every year as "innovation" and jobs declined. In other words Piketty's numbers have shown that one cannot work their way to a comfortable living years ago and IMO this is at the heart of almost all political processes these days - inability to earn a…

> big government Is indeed an issue, as it corresponds with the malaise you describe. > wage stagnation is in part due to the government increasing the costs of hiring people. That indirectly results in correspondingly lower wages. The so-called "employers' contribution" is a misrepresentation.

I am not going to say that I have the data but from what I remember that was not identified as one of the causative concerns in the book.

Subjectively I doubt that that is a systematic driver of income inequality. For example in 60s the taxes in the higher margins were extremely high (80% I think?) and worker bargaining power was strong. Yet it was a period of unprecedented growth and innovation, one where ideas of invisible hand and tide that lifts all boats were forged but in reality it was not a laissez-fair period at all.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#166

Post by linguae »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #13

Hard work never lead to economic gains, working hard at creating value does, and that is still true today. If the adage was true, dragging rocks up a hill 18 hrs a day would make you billionaire. The knife in the side of the economy is housing costs. If that were to drop by 50% tomorrow, you would find that suddenly tons of people are happy with the pay the receive for the value they create. People forget (or are sim…

Yes, it's today's housing costs, combined with inflation, that are highly demoralizing.

Here's a personal anecdote: my grandfather was born in Arkansas in the Jim Crow era. He never went to school, and in fact was illiterate throughout his life. He moved to the Central Valley of California in the 1950s as part of the Second Great Migration of African Americans, where millions left the South to destinations either in the North or west to California. He worked on the same farm for 30 years before he retired on Social Security. He worked very hard; he regularly woke up around 3:30am and left his home before sunrise.

Despite being illiterate, having a low income working on a farm, and facing discrimination, he was able to provide for his wife and four children, and he was able to purchase a house in Bakersfield that he was able to pass on to one of his sons.

I had other family members who moved from Texas to California in the 1950s and were able to purchase homes in places like Oakland and even farmland in San Luis Obispo County.

Today a farm worker in the Central Valley would have a much harder time being able to afford a home.

I work as a CS professor in Silicon Valley making six figures, and all I can afford to purchase is a one-bedroom condo unless I wanted to live in a high-crime neighborhood of the type that I grew up in or unless I wanted a soul-crushing commute from the Central Valley. Yes, I know I signed up for that reality when I took my role.

But forget about me and consider the big picture: high housing costs are brutal for young people who weren't around to purchase when prices were more affordable.

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#167

Post by nonethewiser »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #131

Hard work has never led to success under capitalism. Having capital leads to success. And pure luck.

If success were ONLY about having capital then what would that imply? The super rich people of today would come from the super rich people of their parent's generation. This model is actually incredibly bad at predicting the richest people in the US today. Gates, Musk, Buffet, Bezos, Zuckerberg, etc. Many may have come from well off families but none of them were anything close to among the richest of their generation. Looking from the other end, you'd expect the Ford Family, Getty, Hunt, Howard Hughes, etc. to have spawned the richest people of today. They havent.

But we dont have to resort to this sort of logic. We already have data showing 70% of wealthy families lost their wealth by the 2nd generations and 90% lose it by the third. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/generational-wealth%3A-why-d...

But to be clear, you didn't say it was ONLY capital. It sounds like you're putting that as a primary thing. But you also mentioned luck.

Can you elaborate on the luck part? Wouldnt that imply that people acting randomly have a similar chance of succeeding? If not, then there must be something MORE than luck involved right? I think everyone would agree luck is involved, but disagree on the extent. Is (bad) luck the reason why the Ford family didnt produce the richest people of today? Is an insane amount of (good) luck the reason why Zuckerberg has billions?

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#168

Post by franktankbank »

komali2 wrote: post #41
franktankbank wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't need to worry about chasing raises if inflation didn't exist.

But the value of your labor would increase as your expertise did, surely?

What does this have to do with my comment of inflation? You are actively working to undermine my labor and cast me aside via your company anyway. Very cool!

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#169

Post by Deuter8 »

MangoToupe wrote: post #143
mathiaspoint wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> If the foreigners were positively contributing to the economy their economic output would create jobs as well. They do—actually, by a massive margin compared to citizens born here—we just don't have the legal immigration framework set up to support this. EDIT: I was unaware a "debate" was even happening, I was just clarifying that immigrants start businesses at a massively higher rate than birthright citizens do.

[flagged]

Re: Americans Lose Faith That Hard Work Leads to Economic Gains, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds

#170

Post by mathiaspoint »

nonethewiser wrote: post #19

The poll is more interesting than the article: https://prod-i.a.dj.com/public/resources/documents/WSJNORCJu... 37% of people in the survey are unemployed. That is very high. Not at all representative of the general population (4 to 5%). 69% live in a home they or someone in their household owns. That sounds a lot like young adults yet to get off their feet. More interesting things: - opinion on economy and own financ…

No that's close to the compliment of the male labor participation rate. 4-5% is only the people who have lost their jobs in the past six months and are actively looking for another one.
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