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Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

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Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#351

Post by dgb23 »

kccqzy wrote: post #159
zipiridu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch Ray Dalio's videos on the long term debt cycle and how the economy works in general. Another interesting topic is what is called the "fourth turning" which sort of says that major changes happen around once a human lifecycle. We are going to have some major economic changes in the next decade, but no one knows how that will look. I think it's 50/50 whether it's violent or not.

I read the fourth turning book. I couldn't finish it just because how tenuous the argument was. It was also debunked by experts. I find it absolutely not interesting at all.

What is far more interesting is people seeing through the bullshit. Large parts of our lives have been bureaucratized and oozes with an arrogant and paternalistic ideology that tells us how much we’re worth as if it was a law of nature.

Workers find solidarity, meaning and community among peers and realize that we have real power and can have a say in our lives.

I expect this to grow and I hope it creates a counterbalance to centralized power structures that are quite frankly often severely detached from reality.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#352

Post by monopoledance »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #332
dan-robertson wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most Americans are significantly worse off since the 1970s I think this is obviously false and hurts the credibility of the rest of this comment. There are many pitfalls with measuring long-term inflation. How much did an internet connection cost in the 1970s? What about a computer? What about a smartphone? These modern technologies make peoples lives much better and were somewhere between impossible and impossibly…

You can't eat a smartphone, you can't sleep in an internet connection, you can't do your nursing job through a computer. Formal education is more expensive. A balanced diet is harder to get, and more expensive. Housing is more expensive near your work. But gas as well if you live far from it. Today's people debt is higher, and you can't easily work one job, raise a family, and afford education plus buy a home. It was…

Let's not forget securities. Today most people live in some state of constant existential dread, because they know, if they somehow lose the flat, they can't afford a new contract; they can't plan long term, as their job isn't safe (although, that point is in interesting turmoil right now, /r/antiwork and all); they can't work towards a pension plan; ...

The promise of salvation past generations had with their working lifestyle doesn't hold truth anymore. I think that's why we see more "new religions" popping up right now, like conspiracy narratives, new nationalism, "white man identities" (the group without a distinct identity in the past; their self-efficacy experiences seem to be in decline, too), the MLM-fantasy of self-employment/all-in hacks/dire fight for "untapped markets" (podcasts, porn, stock market ...).

Late stage capitalism.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#353

Post by CraigJPerry »

sigmaprimus wrote: post #330
hvidgaard wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is new tech if you cannot afford to buy a house or a new'ish car for the minimum wage, even if you live frugal and save?

Many people have a misguided belief that home ownership was easy in the 70s, 80s or even the 90s. Yes the prices were lower and maybe the cost/average income ratio was lower but I can attest to the fact that it was no easy feat even back then. Plenty of people lost their homes, renters had far less rights and although when looking at things through averages seems to indicate a better off middle class, the wages of th…

>> maybe the cost/average income ratio was lower

There’s no maybe about it. In the 70s, average house sale price was 4x the average salary. Today it’s 8x.

How many lattes would you need to have skipped to have bought two homes at the time you bought your first? How many holidays would you have needed to skip to pay two mortgages while you were paying one?

That is the scenario - well except todays generation would only have one house at the end of the day, not two.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#354

Post by selfhifive »

nickpp wrote: post #289
hvidgaard wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is new tech if you cannot afford to buy a house or a new'ish car for the minimum wage, even if you live frugal and save?

For example, it lets you live in a less expensive city and work remotely wherever you want. Also it allows you to learn and raise your earning potential. Finally modern transportation options less expensive than cars like e-bikes and e-scooters allow you to commute easier.

Thus funneling more wealth to the already wealthy. That's the point. The average is okay but the distribution of wealth is messed up.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#355

Post by throaway46546 »

whydid wrote: post #70
silisili wrote: post #58

As someone who does OK, but lives in reality (not the bay area), I feel a revolution coming. I hope it's not a violent one, but who knows at this point. Hopefully it's just a politician with big policy changes. People feel completely disenfranchised. You keep hanging housing over their head but just out of reach like some baby toy, then inflation spikes everything else. What's the point of working even? I don't know…

This is why I love to study history, you can almost predict the future by studying the past. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution

Sometimes it doesn't end as well...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_R...

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#356

Post by chimprich »

Jenk wrote: post #314
pydry wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit happened because a third party tore chunks out of the voting base of one of those two horses.

Yes, as a result of what I said above. Farage and goons were unchecked. They rarely, if ever, had their bullshit fact checked by anyone that interviewed them. Dominic Cummings, an extreme libertarian[0], was in bed with various far-right (and also libertarian) people from the west, took office as the Special Advisor to the Prime Minister after riding the Brexit wave to success. A role that meant he had the power, wit…

I disagree with Cummings on a lot of issues (e.g. Brexit, the importance of international law, etc.), but I don't recognise that description of him. He's certainly not an extreme libertarian. By all accounts, during the pandemic response, he was very much in favour of government intervention. Johnson was far more laissez-faire, even to a ridiculous degree.

I actually think Cummings is an interesting guy and worth listening to, but I don't think he should be anywhere near the levers of power.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#357

Post by nickpp »

rocgf wrote: post #336
nickpp wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things with massive government involvement and heavily regulated like are incredibly more expensive: health care, housing and education. Meanwhile, things provided by the free market have become incredibly less expensive and more powerful: technology, communication, entertainment. Nothing to do with your rich vs poor class wars.

Gonna leave out housing and education, but for healthcare, you are painfully incorrect. European countries has vastly more regulated healthcare and yet pay about an order of magnitude less for it.

You have a good point, USA healthcare has the worst kind of regulation: it did lots of damage and helped very little.

But Western European countries (which you probably compare to) had an immense, unspoken advantage: an incredible supply of highly educated, unexpensive health care work force - the Eastern Europe.

If you want to truly compare the healthcare of USA with Europe's please include countries like Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Moldova and so on. Yes, it's cheap. But you truly get what you pay for.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#358

Post by Jenk »

toyg wrote: post #315
Jenk wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a country specific problem, not a Europe problem. I don't mean just Brexit for the UK, either. What does happen in Europe is far-right parties get a platform to speak on. The big continental countries have an election process that lets everyone be heard, and the far-right get heard plenty - allowing the electorate to smell their bullshit. In the UK we don't have such elections. We have a two horse race, and to…

You have equivalents of Farage in any EU country these days, believe me. And yes, they are often funded by comrade Vlad at the moment, but they started their rise well before he became a factor. > allowing the electorate to smell their bullshit. I wish I was as optimistic as you. In Italy and France, far-right views are now solidly held by roughly a third of the electorate, year-in year-out. Party names and figurehea…

> I wish I was as optimistic as you.

I think if everything is laid bare - facts are proven to be facts, and lies are exposed as lies - yet the electorate _still_ vote it in, then that's fair. I'll emigrate.

But the biggest con about Brexit (as a particular example) is that _everything_ from the Leave campaign was bullshit and not one claim, pledge, or promise from the Leave "side" was ever checked, questioned, or since held to account and, in my opinion, it is _that_ which stinks the worst.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#359

Post by atoav »

atoav wrote: post #196
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #20

We had an all-hands meeting recently where we got to submit anonymous questions. One of the questions was 'with inflation rising at 6%, will the company reconsider their 'standard' 2% raise?' The lady answering looks dead in the camera and goes 'Honestly? No' and goes on to talk about how we're reasonably competitive with the local market. Hey, credit where credit is due, at least she was a refreshingly straight shoo…

I think if you are taking a new job this should be one of your expectations as well: "Will the wage be coupled to inflation?"

And if they say "No" you can ask them if this means you will earn less in 5 years than you start with now, at which point they probably realize that this isn't an attractive offer and either change the conditions for you, or don't take you.

Re: Worker pay isn’t keeping up with inflation

#360

Post by sirspacey »

dan-robertson wrote: post #337
efaref wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet connections cost poor people nothing in 1970 because they weren't necessary and could happily live their lives without one. The real item we're looking at here is *communication*, which was cheap: the stamp you needed to send in the form for your taxes cost a few cents. You could get away with using payphones for the few phone calls you absolutely needed to make. In 2021, internet connections and cellphones…

An internet connected smartphone is not equivalent to the postal service (plus a pay phone or landline I guess). It may be that you use a computer or something else for the things that most people use smartphones for, wand so don’t realise how much they cover. You also didn’t mention having to go to the library (distance + fuel/car/travel costs + more time) for information, finding jobs from newspaper advertisements…

I’m curious - what personal experience with poverty in the USA do you have?

I’ve found that shapes people’s perspective on the topic significantly.

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