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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

#171

Post by orochimaaru »

fragmede wrote: post #146
orochimaaru wrote: post #51

Isn’t this a bit obvious? I mean I’ve known this since I started working in 1997. The first job you have generally shatters this illusion that job security and economic gains are tied to “hard work”. In the sense hard work is needed but only if you see if adding to what you consider a quality of life (which could be economic gain, generational wealth, bragging rights to a promotion, etc.). Each person has their crite…

Where in corporate America have you worked? At my previous place, there was a well defined career ladder, and what work was necessary to climb it as an individual contributor (vs a manager). Putting in more work meant climbing that ladder, which lead to pay increases and bonuses, and there was a formula somewhere on Confluence as to how those were calculated.

Where in corporate America are you working where "hard work" and not "sucking up" is translating to climbing said ladder?

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

#172

Post by Buttons840 »

jparishy wrote: post #147
Buttons840 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes are higher than capital gains taxes. This isn't based on economic theory or anything, it's just a political choice we have made as a country. We've chosen to reward those who move money around and trade capital more than we reward those who labor. And this at a time when, supposedly, the country is trying to increase its ability to build things. I thought this specific fact worth mentioning.

We're on the same wavelength. To me, I find it hard not to think about our explosive growth as a country happening at the same time we refuse to expand representation of the public. These charts are very frustrating to me: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IN11547 The people in power do not want to lose control, but clearly have no idea how to manage the scale of what has been built. There's an American leadership…

We should go back to having the house filled with 1 representative per 10,000 people. Also, we should do something new and have all the representatives in the house be chosen by lottery.

Normal people are not represented in congress, because politicians are not normal people, but if we chose people by lottery we would have a branch of congress filled with normal people. They would have time enough to study the issues. Some of them would be stupid, but this is no worse than the current crop of politicians.

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

#173

Post by coliveira »

nonethewiser wrote: post #90
LikeBeans wrote: post #15

I think the problem is the loss of the middle class. The ones on top getting a lot of the resources while the rest have to fight for whatever is left. It doesn't matter how hard or how smart you work.

I think you sum up the type of despair people feel pretty well. It's really more helpful to look at "middle class or better." Because yes, the middle class has shrunk. But more of that share went to the UPPER income tiers. The middle class went from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2023. But the lower income brackets saw a +3% change while upper saw +8%. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/economy/the-incredible... >The ones…

> There simply is not a static pool of resources.

Economists and rich people indeed think in terms of scarce resources. Any economics book will tell you that it is about managing scarce resources. Rich people will never allow for example the government to give increasingly more money and resources to lower income people, because they fear there's note enough for them. They don't believe in abundance for everyone.

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

#174

Post by t-3 »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #27
abirch wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frequently people want experience. The new grads are facing a bleak reality with AI and offshoring.

Correct if I'm wrong, but from what I observe, lots of job postings have "new grads ok"

Those postings get flooded with applicants, many of them not new grads. New grads are competing with experienced people just to get a foot in the door. Both of those groups have to compete with an AI-generated flood of grifters and scammers and a AI-driven resume filter judging them on whether they match the AI-generated criteria for getting the AI-generated posting which was created because some middle manager wanted to get his nephew a job.

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

paulpauper wrote: post #112
TuringNYC wrote: post #7

I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.

But they still will be faring better than others though. I am sure STEM grads are doing better than law school grads or humanities grads. But graduating in STEM in 2009-2010 would have been awesome. right at the takeoff of a decade-long economic expansion and tech boom. It was much easier to be hired

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by coliveira »

atbpaca wrote: post #100

Thinking out loud, CEOs have one mission, one objective: increase the ROI of shareholders through stock prices and dividends. I don't know if that is a legal obligation. But I wonder if CEOs were mandated/incentivized to also take into account social and environmental progress, maybe inequality would start to dwindle. Am I dreaming?

In China they do this by having people from the government in the board of big corporations. So they have to take into consideration social and countrywide economic goals, instead of pure profit.

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

#177

Post by dfxm12 »

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…

It is important to note that retired people are not employed. 31% of respondents were 60+ years old. Some chunk of the 18-29 year olds were likely full time students. There are also other people who can't or don't need to work.

4-5% unemployment rate captures something different from "do you have a job right now, yes/no?". There are also different "unemployment rates" that mean different things.

FWIW, adults might live in homes owned by their spouse or child. It doesn't necessarily point to children living their parent's home.

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

#178

Post by mcntsh »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #162
komali2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (mo…

This argument really breaks down when you consider that it requires a lot more training to become a teacher than an investment banker, and there is a massive shortage of teachers, and none of these factors makes teaching a lucrative career.

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

#179

Post by MangoToupe »

mathiaspoint wrote: post #156
MangoToupe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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]

That's certainly a... very specific perspective, can you share where you're coming from?

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

#180

Post by jandrewrogers »

Buttons840 wrote: post #115
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…

Income taxes are higher than capital gains taxes. This isn't based on economic theory or anything, it's just a political choice we have made as a country. We've chosen to reward those who move money around and trade capital more than we reward those who labor. And this at a time when, supposedly, the country is trying to increase its ability to build things. I thought this specific fact worth mentioning.

This is simply incorrect.

To make the tax incidence on wages and capital gains equivalent, you must first deduct losses due to inflation and risk. For wages, inflation and risk round to zero. For long-term capital gains inflation and risk are large and often the majority of the "gain". Short-term capital gains are already taxed like wages.

In the US, unlike some other developed countries, there is a very limited ability to deduct losses due to inflation and risk from long-term capital gains. Consequently, if they made the tax rate the same as wages then the tax incidence on capital gains would be much higher than wages.

As a policy matter in the US, they fix this large difference in tax incidence by reducing the tax rate instead of adjusting the cost basis for inflation and allowing full deductibility of losses.

If you pencil out the implications of these two policies, I suspect you'd find that you like the way the US does it better. Making risk and inflation deductible to equalize tax incidence enables a lot of financial structuring.

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