31–40 of 88 posts
I’m incredibly happy to see wages at the bottom rising, but I think there’s a serious lack of discussion around obscenely high executive pay.
Discussion can be had all year long, but the executive caste will maintain it. There's no law or peaceful incentive to change the tendency. It's important to them that the plutonomy be maintained and extended.
> Remote work, deglobalization, stalled technology have started eroding some advantages of higher-skilled workers Their premise is broken. The largest inequality is not between highly skilled workers and everyone else. It is between the wealthy (top 0.1% or 0.01%) and the rest.
Not a broken premise at all. The focus on the ultra rich is mostly just a political ploy since it's easy to villainize extravagant wealth. But the vast majority of income (I'm including capital gains in this) is made by the middle class and wage-earning upper class, not by the ultra rich. If you take all the wealth of the ultra rich and distribute it evenly, every person would get a one-time, nice, but not life-chang…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a fan of communism, but that ideology produced two of the major world powers. Entire generations of illiterate peasants were educated, entire economies were completely reconstructed in a way that is pretty much unprecedented. There was immense repression, the human cost of Stalinism for example is uncountable. But capitalism has caused immense suffering as well. It's better to simply speak plainly of the effe…
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And as far as death tolls, they're completely indefensible, that's why I am not a proponent of communism or other anti-democratic ideologies. But it is curious that the death tolls from fascism never get added to the death toll of capitalism. Each ideological wing generates human suffering at the far end of anti-democracy, which is what we need to avoid, whether it comes disguised as facism or communism, or whatever else.
> Remote work, deglobalization, stalled technology have started eroding some advantages of higher-skilled workers Their premise is broken. The largest inequality is not between highly skilled workers and everyone else. It is between the wealthy (top 0.1% or 0.01%) and the rest.
Not a broken premise at all. The focus on the ultra rich is mostly just a political ploy since it's easy to villainize extravagant wealth. But the vast majority of income (I'm including capital gains in this) is made by the middle class and wage-earning upper class, not by the ultra rich. If you take all the wealth of the ultra rich and distribute it evenly, every person would get a one-time, nice, but not life-chang…
No, it's about the power asymmetry that breaks the promises of democracy that comes with it.
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I'm not a fan of communism, but that ideology produced two of the major world powers. Entire generations of illiterate peasants were educated, entire economies were completely reconstructed in a way that is pretty much unprecedented. There was immense repression, the human cost of Stalinism for example is uncountable. But capitalism has caused immense suffering as well. It's better to simply speak plainly of the effe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it a result of perverse incentive? I think it would help to better understand why executive pay is so high in the first place.
Because it can be. The boards that set it are made up of executives, and it's good for all that the bar for average pay gets ratcheted up. While a good CEO may be worth a multiple of any line worker, the notion that a CEO will leave for some other pursuit only holds water if the other pursuits hold higher multiples and are readily attained. They would all work for one-quarter the comp if that is all they were offered…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a broken premise at all. The focus on the ultra rich is mostly just a political ploy since it's easy to villainize extravagant wealth. But the vast majority of income (I'm including capital gains in this) is made by the middle class and wage-earning upper class, not by the ultra rich. If you take all the wealth of the ultra rich and distribute it evenly, every person would get a one-time, nice, but not life-chang…
Nonsense, you're doubling down on the false premise. The problem with the ultra rich isn't solved by a one time tax on their accumulated wealth, its solved by ongoing redistribution of the profits from industry into workers pockets. A classic case that was borne out this year is the dichotomy between Warren Buffet and the average railway worker. Railways took in massive profits over the pandemic, and precision schedu…
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I'm not a fan of communism, but that ideology produced two of the major world powers. Entire generations of illiterate peasants were educated, entire economies were completely reconstructed in a way that is pretty much unprecedented. There was immense repression, the human cost of Stalinism for example is uncountable. But capitalism has caused immense suffering as well. It's better to simply speak plainly of the effe…
The Soviet Union felt because the people, from a few of the previous agricultural powerhouses of Europe and western Asia were starving. If that's what reconstructing an economy looks like, I'd rather we don't.
Yes, the communist countries had some good results on education. I'm not sure any of them is worth copying, but they are worth looking it. One would expect a completely different ideology to get some things better, and some worse; it's incredible how few things they managed to do better.
The premise of this article is absolutely disgusting. The inequality that matters isn't the difference between blue collar workers and college grads with marketing and tech jobs. This is just propaganda to destroy the middle class.
Matters to you because you wouldn't be harmed by it? All egalitarian, equality doctrines will end up here, why wouldn't they? What is the limiting principle? This is why they should be rejected. Pretty funny to see the outrage when the equalizing starts moving down the spectrum. Why shouldn't that blue collar worker want you to be equalized to him, why should he care about your disgust?
But in reality, that's not how this works. Each company is distinct and has its own funding models. And the vast majority of money taken out of all workers paychecks regardless of industry isn't extracted by other workers in unrelated industries, it's removed by the employers to line their own pockets.