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Living on $100k a Year

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Re: Living on $100k a Year

#181

Post by Consultant32452 »

scarface74 wrote: post #167
Consultant32452 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If welfare and food stamps are better than performing farm labor then farm wages and working conditions clearly haven't improved enough yet. I accept your data/claims at face value, that illegal immigration and temporary worker visas have suppressed wages of the poor in some sectors so much that even increasing the wage 5x is insufficient to attract native laborers. What we disagree on is whether or not that wage sup…

If welfare and food stamps are better than performing farm labor then farm wages and working conditions clearly haven't improved enough yet. It's farm labor - how much can working conditions improve while you are actually doing your job? If I had a choice between making minimum wage and getting government assistance and doing back breaking labor at $20 an hour, I'm not sure that I wouldn't take the minimum wage job a…

I can't speak to farming, but I know the going day labor rate, usually construction, for random (illegal) immigrants you can pick up at Home Depot is $20/hr minimum around here. So you'll certainly have to do better than that to get natives. Again, if $20/hr isn't enough, the market will adjust until it is enough.

Who cares whether unemployed people are capable of hard physical labor? Plenty of people in the country are capable, so farm wages will just have to compete against other sectors. And when it does, it will raise the wages of EVERYONE in those other sectors because people will leave for the higher wage farm work. This is the mechanism I keep bringing you back to about how it helps all the poor, not just the ones who take the farm labor jobs.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#182

Post by Consultant32452 »

notyourday wrote: post #172
Consultant32452 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the person you asked, but I'll give it a shot. In the short term I think I would be much better off. I don't believe enough people who can compete with me economically would be all that interested in coming here, and/or them coming here doesn't improve their ability to compete with me. However, I'd be able to hire poor people for slave-like wages to perform all sorts of odd jobs for me around the house. I'd h…

> In the short term I think I would be much better off. I don't believe enough people who can compete with me economically would be all that interested in coming here, and/or them coming here doesn't improve their ability to compete with me. This is where I fundamentally disagree - every single developer in the US making US salaries will lose to eastern european/Indian/Chinese developer moving to the US because they…

I'm already the lead for an off-shore team. There's nothing special about me being in the US, I'm not local to anyone I work with. If they could find an offshore resource to replace me at a 20-30% cost savings they would do it in a heartbeat.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#183

Post by scarface74 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #181
scarface74 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If welfare and food stamps are better than performing farm labor then farm wages and working conditions clearly haven't improved enough yet. It's farm labor - how much can working conditions improve while you are actually doing your job? If I had a choice between making minimum wage and getting government assistance and doing back breaking labor at $20 an hour, I'm not sure that I wouldn't take the minimum wage job a…

I can't speak to farming, but I know the going day labor rate, usually construction, for random (illegal) immigrants you can pick up at Home Depot is $20/hr minimum around here. So you'll certainly have to do better than that to get natives. Again, if $20/hr isn't enough, the market will adjust until it is enough. Who cares whether unemployed people are capable of hard physical labor? Plenty of people in the country…

If everything costs more - especially a necessity like food, how does that not cause inflation and lead everyone Back to the same place? The whole food chain operates on thin margins so they can't eat the cost and reduce their profits.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#184

Post by purplezooey »

Y7ZCQtNo39 wrote: post #30

I'm one of those coastal elites. Early career, so ballpark around this salary. I have some student loan debt, but my portion of the rent is only $1,000 a month plus utilities (I split a place). I spend about $2,500 a month. And I sock away the rest (about $60k annually) into investments. $100k still goes far in a high cost of living, coastal area. However, I drive a used car. I'm a renter, and probably will be for aw…

Fuck, I'm 40, did I plateau already?

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#185

Post by Consultant32452 »

scarface74 wrote: post #183
Consultant32452 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to farming, but I know the going day labor rate, usually construction, for random (illegal) immigrants you can pick up at Home Depot is $20/hr minimum around here. So you'll certainly have to do better than that to get natives. Again, if $20/hr isn't enough, the market will adjust until it is enough. Who cares whether unemployed people are capable of hard physical labor? Plenty of people in the country…

If everything costs more - especially a necessity like food, how does that not cause inflation and lead everyone Back to the same place? The whole food chain operates on thin margins so they can't eat the cost and reduce their profits.

If labor makes up 50% of the cost of a product, doubling the labor cost doubles the money the worker gets but only increases retail prices by 50%. This is still a great deal for the worker.

Why do you feel it's okay to bring in desperately poor brown people to do work that you claim Americans won't do at even 5x the rate we pay the desperately poor people? Why shouldn't back-breaking work bring in a wage that is competitive with the broader market? Why is it okay to flood the market with an over-supply of desperately poor people? Do you think it would have any impact on your income if we brought in 10s of millions of workers to compete against you in whatever you do for a living?

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#186

Post by scarface74 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #185
scarface74 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everything costs more - especially a necessity like food, how does that not cause inflation and lead everyone Back to the same place? The whole food chain operates on thin margins so they can't eat the cost and reduce their profits.

If labor makes up 50% of the cost of a product, doubling the labor cost doubles the money the worker gets but only increases retail prices by 50%. This is still a great deal for the worker. Why do you feel it's okay to bring in desperately poor brown people to do work that you claim Americans won't do at even 5x the rate we pay the desperately poor people? Why shouldn't back-breaking work bring in a wage that is comp…

Because the alternative for the "desperate poor people" to getting poor wages is not getting any wages? Do you think they would be better off not getting anything?

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#187

Post by Consultant32452 »

scarface74 wrote: post #186
Consultant32452 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If labor makes up 50% of the cost of a product, doubling the labor cost doubles the money the worker gets but only increases retail prices by 50%. This is still a great deal for the worker. Why do you feel it's okay to bring in desperately poor brown people to do work that you claim Americans won't do at even 5x the rate we pay the desperately poor people? Why shouldn't back-breaking work bring in a wage that is comp…

Because the alternative for the "desperate poor people" to getting poor wages is not getting any wages? Do you think they would be better off not getting anything?

So you want to help the poor from other countries at the expense of poor from your own country, which coincidentally benefits you in the form of cheaper produce. That's awfully generous of you.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#188

Post by [deleted] »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #187
scarface74 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the alternative for the "desperate poor people" to getting poor wages is not getting any wages? Do you think they would be better off not getting anything?

So you want to help the poor from other countries at the expense of poor from your own country, which coincidentally benefits you in the form of cheaper produce. That's awfully generous of you.

[deleted]

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#189

Post by scarface74 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #187
scarface74 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the alternative for the "desperate poor people" to getting poor wages is not getting any wages? Do you think they would be better off not getting anything?

So you want to help the poor from other countries at the expense of poor from your own country, which coincidentally benefits you in the form of cheaper produce. That's awfully generous of you.

How many of the native poor are competing for jobs in the fields? If food prices for me go up by 50% I might grumble, suck it up and pay for it. The poor aren't going to have any choice but to eat cheaper less healthy food.

And if food is more expensive to produce in the US because of labor costs, why would it be any different from anything else - the big companies will either start selling cheaper (less healthy) substitutes, or import it from places with cheaper labor.

Re: Living on $100k a Year

#190

Post by bfuller »

scarface74 wrote: post #118
killercup wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's something I always forget about when talking to people from the US: I don't have any student loans. A semester at a university in Germany costs around 250€ (plus housing and food), so it's hard to get to a point where you need 10 years to pack back loans. I had a part time job all through university and even saved up a reasonable amount of money.

There is really no reason for an American to have a unaffordable student loan. They could easily go to a state school instead of a private college and save thousands.

State schools are still ridiculously expensive
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