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The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

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Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#281

Post by greedo »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #215
bjourne wrote: post #104

"Yet, despite all the quitting and renegotiating, the real wage for the average American worker — meaning the true value of their paycheck after taking into account inflation — fell by 2.4% in 2021." All while the world's elites have doubled or tripled their fortunes. Great Robbery would be a more apt name than Great Resignation.

Come on. Most of the people in first world countries were forced to stay at home and depend on the services that these "elites" provided. How exactly is it unfair that they make more profit from wider reach? A large portion of Americans who received COVID cheques burned it on toys and leisure instead of saving and their money went upwards. How is that unfair?

Perhaps people have realized that the PPP program was basically a gift to business? And that the majority of the COVID checks were spent by consumers on normal expenses?

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#282

Post by Apocryphon »

J5892 wrote: post #275
Apocryphon wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This website is named Hacker News, yet there is an abundance of content that is neither for nor about hackers, nor news.

"Vaguely Tech-related Information for Programmers" wasn't a catchy enough name.

Turns out "Disgruntled Laborers Mad about Bad Bosses and Toxic Work Environments" is likewise too lengthy.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#283

Post by leadingthenet »

warent wrote: post #10
softwaredoug wrote: post #3

> spectacles like the immense popularity of the "Anti-Work" thread on Reddit — have gone as far as to suggest this record-breaking trend is a movement of young, able-bodied Americans rejecting work altogether. I don't think this is the point of "anti work". The point is (to me) that people should be treated equitably at work and that work shouldn't be the center of our lives

Yes. Admittedly on the one hand what I see a lot is people embracing victimhood, relieving themselves or responsibility and self empowerment. That's the only aspect of anti-work that I don't like. Otherwise I think their message is very fair and very clear: raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job.

> raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job.

...so continue working aka the exact opposite of what anti-work seems to imply. Gotcha.

Another term got co-opted for political purposes, wonderful. Nonsense that once again originates in the US, which will inevitably land on our shores in no time.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#284

Post by jjeaff »

slowhand09 wrote: post #230
bjourne wrote: post #104

"Yet, despite all the quitting and renegotiating, the real wage for the average American worker — meaning the true value of their paycheck after taking into account inflation — fell by 2.4% in 2021." All while the world's elites have doubled or tripled their fortunes. Great Robbery would be a more apt name than Great Resignation.

"All while the world's elites have doubled or tripled their fortunes. Great Robbery would be a more apt name than Great Resignation." I don't get it. Why does what they do have anything to do with what you or I do? Why does anyone begrudge someone else for being lucky, harder-working, in the right place at the right time, better looking, fitter, smarter, better at business, better at making connections, faster at lea…

>Was it at your expense?

Yes, I think the point of complaints of the richest becoming richer is that they are doing so on the backs of the poor. They are underpaying employees and otherwise taking advantage of the lower classes to extract efficiency from them. If at the end of the year, I'm poorer because wages didn't even keep pace with inflation but my employer is 2-3x richer, something is wrong.

In a healthy econonomy, the idea would be that the employer pays you for services rendered and we both come out ahead and with some sort of balance.

Which, in a truly competitive free market, that should be the case. Amazon shouldn't be able to pay peanuts and work employees like dogs (or drones). Because in a free market, a competitor would show up and pay more and treat employees with more respect. But the moat is too wide and deep for many of these companies.

Heck, even if someone did make a serious play for Amazon's online retail and fulfillment, they would simply use their AWS earnings or even borrowing power due to their market cap to fund their retail side and underprice you out of the market. (Something that they have done several times before).

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#285

Post by DSMan195276 »

hungryhobo wrote: post #254
scatters wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If inflation is 5% and you get a 5% raise, you're level in real terms, right? No, because that 5% is taxed at your higher tax rate, which is (usually) higher than your average tax rate. This is called bracket creep.

but you're still earning more than if you haven't gotten that 5% raise.

I think his point is that while a 5% raise and 5% inflation should be a wash, since you now pay slightly more taxes than before your pay after taxes is slightly less value than before.

It's still very misleading to say "wage gains aren't good" though - the problem is not that you got a 5% raise, it's that inflation is 5% so you need a slightly-higher-than-inflation raise to keep up. If you didn't get a 5% raise you'd just be even worse off.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#286

Post by MilnerRoute »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #174
bjourne wrote: post #104

"Yet, despite all the quitting and renegotiating, the real wage for the average American worker — meaning the true value of their paycheck after taking into account inflation — fell by 2.4% in 2021." All while the world's elites have doubled or tripled their fortunes. Great Robbery would be a more apt name than Great Resignation.

My understanding is that the bottom of the wage scale have seen the biggest gains, in real terms ( https://fortune.com/2021/12/10/inflation-wages-low-income-wo... ). Its the middle and upper middle class that are being made (a little) poorer by inflation. A fine trade-off imo. And given the asymmetry of the risks policy makers faced (great depression vs higher than average inflation), they wisely went with the risk o…

The other thing I never hear discussed is that this round of inflation isn't expected to be permanent, or even particularly long-lasting. So a wage increase in January which is (temporarily) eaten up by January's inflation means....an actual wage increase in May which then goes on for years and years.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#287

Post by loeg »

rootusrootus wrote: post #199
giantg2 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"meaning the true value of their paycheck after taking into account inflation — fell by 2.4% in 2021." This has been going on for like 30-40 years. It's sad, but nothing new. I got about a 4.5% value cut this year.

> I got about a 4.5% value cut this year. I have not done the math, but I would not be surprised to see this is true for me. Certainly feels like it. I do not hate my current job, and I loathe interviewing, but I feel like I will need to jump soon just so I can push the reset button and get my compensation to keep up with inflation lately.

giantg2 is relentlessly pessimistic and negative about their job and job prospects. They say much the same things in every thread about employment.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#288

Post by andrei_says_ »

Gareth321 wrote: post #155
hnaccount141 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both of these cases "we" is a group of thousands of people with varying opinions. There are absolutely plenty of people who very much believe in defunding the police and ending work. As both movements have grown more popular we've naturally seen more people who agree with the general spirit of the movement but hold more moderate views.

If someone doesn’t want to defund the police then I don’t see how they can “agree with the general spirit” unless they want to defund the police. It’s in the name. You can equivocate about anything else but not that. Same for anti-work. I suppose you identified the potential problem here: people inferring that “defund the police” doesn’t actually mean “defund the police” and ascribing softer, feel-good intentions whi…

I prefer “stop pouring insane amounts of money into police funding and tasking the police force with fixing issues completely unfixable by a police force and instead redirect some of the ridiculously inflated police funds to appropriate solutions.”

But it’s a bit long.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#289

Post by zanny »

warent wrote: post #10
softwaredoug wrote: post #3

> spectacles like the immense popularity of the "Anti-Work" thread on Reddit — have gone as far as to suggest this record-breaking trend is a movement of young, able-bodied Americans rejecting work altogether. I don't think this is the point of "anti work". The point is (to me) that people should be treated equitably at work and that work shouldn't be the center of our lives

Yes. Admittedly on the one hand what I see a lot is people embracing victimhood, relieving themselves or responsibility and self empowerment. That's the only aspect of anti-work that I don't like. Otherwise I think their message is very fair and very clear: raise wages to keep up with inflation, and treat workers humanely so people stop dropping dead of heart attacks on the job.

It feels like newfound indignity and the realization is that most of us are actually victims - capitalist exploitation of the working class is codified into the societies we live in, it just took people taking a break from the grind, a step back to see what they were subjected to, to realize what the exploitation is and what it feels like.

Its not popular on HN but most of the libertarian tenants that belay picking yourself up by your bootstraps are not applicable to a supermajority of labor. There is no change of attitude within the framing of the economic system as it exists that individual actors take on a collective scale to suddenly stop being exploited systemically.

Re: The Great Resignation? More Like the Great Renegotiation

#290

Post by fragmede »

scatters wrote: post #243
lotsofpulp wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the relevance of tax brackets? Earning more nominally while standard of living going down is the same as earning less in real terms. “Moving up” in a tax bracket never means earning less in nominal or in real terms. It just means you get less in your pocket of the extra you earned, not of the total you earned.

If inflation is 5% and you get a 5% raise, you're level in real terms, right? No, because that 5% is taxed at your higher tax rate, which is (usually) higher than your average tax rate. This is called bracket creep.

Only if 5% causes you to change tax brackets. 5% of $300k is a lot more than 5% of $100k or $50k/yr, but only if you were already at the very edge of a tax bracket will 5% cause you to change bracket. Eg the 22% bracket is from $40-$86k for single filers in 2021. Only if you were making $81k or more will 5% tip you over. For everyone else earning 40-81k, that 5% doesn't cause a bracket change.
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