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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

#231

Post by hakunin »

haleem123 wrote: post #224
hakunin wrote: post #216

I was always curious, why would anyone believe that hard work leads to economic gains in the first place? That's like saying "flapping your hands very fast leads to building a house". Nothing about working hard has anything to do with economic gains. This has always felt to me like magical thinking: if I check certain boxes, I'm automatically entitled to "hard work funds" allocated to me. Like anything in capitalist…

>> I was always curious, why would anyone believe that hard work leads to economic gains in the first place? Because I saw it work my my immigrant grandparents and parents. It doesnt work anymore

Funny you say that, I too am an immigrant to US. Your parents probably understood the above on an intuitive level. We immigrants think of it as "goes without saying" type thing.

> It doesnt work anymore

It never worked to just work hard. People in today's society want to part with more money than ever in all of history (to buy things and services), you just need to be a part of what they want to part with their money for.

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

#232

Post by jparishy »

haleem123 wrote: post #221
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…

>> 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. The richest people I know are trying to convince everyone 1. There is a "worker shortage" in an attempt to bring in immigrant workers whom they can boss around and keep on a leash 2. That "AI is taking jobs" so you cannot point the people who are really taking…

I agree, I think this is a longer way to say what I was feeling. It's a rigamarole by people with too much money. If they had less money, they wouldn't be able to do it. So at the end of the day the root cause to me is the inequality. it allows special treatment and the ability to manipulate our daily life (through social apps, news, etc) in a way that they are completely insulated from, feeling no pain whatsoever. Huge policy failure to let so few people have so much influence

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

#233

Post by jparishy »

amelius wrote: post #213
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…

> maybe divided by those who participate in the stock market and those who don't In many places there's a divide between home owners and people who rent.

I thought about that, but anecdotally i know many renters addicted to Robinhood. i think housing prices and therefore the cash necessary to get a loan have shifted this divide a bit

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

#234

Post by _DeadFred_ »

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…

Watching since the 1980s, the average tech startup in the bay area is just dragging rocks up a hill 18 hrs a day with the output thrown away in a couple of years when it doesn't pan out. Yet the people that do that there are HIGHLY compensated.

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

#237

Post by koakuma-chan »

WalterBright wrote: post #223
mathiaspoint wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right that it did used to work that way but now all the juniors are competing with people like me who have done all of that and also have five years of professional experience at large companies.

I don't know you, so I will speculate that something else is going on. There are a lot of ways to not get hired. For example, one guy I interviewed spent all his time asking about what benefits he was going to get. He had no interest whatsoever in what he'd be doing, and what the company was doing. No hire. Unfortunately, such is commonplace. This gives the savvy interviewee an advantage - approach the interview from…

Oh you're a recruiter? I am curious about something, I hope you can share what you think: is it a red flag when the candidate doesn't ask questions during interview? I often don't have questions because I have a good enough idea of the company and of what I will be doing already, so I don't ask that kind of questions, and I also don't ask about benefits because I don't really care. Is this seen as bad?

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

#238

Post by downrightmike »

nluken wrote: post #87
exabrial wrote: post #78

It used to be true, but now you are taxed out of success, and any other gains you save will simply evaporate with unchecked inflation and money printing by Congress. There needs to be a "Hard Stop" on inflation: The federal government's checks bounce if there is no money in the account. ... and somehow, there has been a successful miseducation campaign on the internet that "corporations raising prices causes inflatio…

> now you are taxed out of success Separate from your inflation argument, aren't income tax levels lower than they used to be, even during the Reagan administration?

Lower income taxes, yes, and near zero benefits for paying those taxes. Had they not lowered, things wouldn't be this bad.

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

#239

Post by haleem123 »

sfpotter wrote: post #36
tekla wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems normal. My friends and I did the exact same thing w. top grades and top schools 2 decades ago, turns out life is not a easy ride.

On the flip side, back in the 70's Boeing used to do things like hire up people with no immediate experience, teach them C for three months, and then hire them into roles as programmers. I'm not sure you can decide what's "normal" based on what was happening two decades ago. Two decades ago, we were smack between two big economic crashes. And all this depends so, so much on geographic locale.

>> 70's Boeing used to do things like hire up people with no immediate experience, teach them C for three months, and then hire them into roles as programmers

In the 70's we didnt have NAFTA, so you couldnt just send the jobs to Mexico

In the 70's we didnt have the H1B program, where you could have a permanent "shortage of workers" and re-direct jobs to immigrants

In the 70's we didnt have Zoom, so you couldnt just send the jobs offshore

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

#240

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

WalterBright wrote: post #95
koakuma-chan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

For those who have no experience, one can gain experience while in college: 1. contribute to a significant open source project 2. write some significant work of software 3. design and build your own computer 4. build a robot something 5. work as an intern in industry 6. do work as a research assistant When I was at Caltech, students did (entirely on their own): 1. built a gas powered helicopter from scratch 2. built…

I tend to agree with you more often than not but in this case, that's not very realistic. The caliber of students and the opportunities available at CalTech are head and shoulders above those at the average college with a CS program.
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