Demand for Taser is up? That's not good.
Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
371–380 of 541 posts
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes however the demographic diversity in the US makes it less likely for people to want to "spread it" around. If your entire country is the population of one large US metro and everyone is the same ethnicity and culture, there are fewer cognitive impediments to being empathetic at scale.
==everyone is the same ethnicity and culture== I think depends on how you define ethnicity and culture. Sweden foreign-born population - 17.0% [1] US foreign-born population - 13.7% [2] [1] https://nordic.businessinsider.com/swedens-foreign-born-popu... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-data/u-s-...
Using just the census designated measures would be a fine start.
Foreign born population wouldn't begin to address diversity in the US.
In Sweden it might be the case that foreign born population is the only source of ethnic diversity.
Whereas in the US, the people in northern Maine live in a completely different world than the people in Southern Florida.
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends what you mean by "enough money". If more than half of the population makes at least double what they need to keep themselves from starvation, then you could argue there is enough money. In short, your disagreement with the GP is probably due to a disagreement about the lifestyle that UBI is supposed to afford its recipients. Those in power might determine that the bare minimum UBI to avoid violent revolu…
Starvation is not a problem in the developed countries (and most of the developing world). Food is cheap. Housing, healthcare and education are the problems, but $5000 per year are not nearly enough for any of that.
It's absolutely enough for housing if you squeeze in.
Healthcare and education are problems, but I'm not sure they're enough to provoke a revolution when everyone is otherwise well-fed and sheltered from the elements.
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Western European countries hardly take immigrants. When you live in a homogenous, solely middle-class country like Sweden/Denmark/Norway, of course everything seems nice and comfortable. But America accepts some very poor immigrants and allows them to make money and be lifted up. Those are many of the people you saw on the bus.
This is wildly incorrect. Angela Merkel got in trouble precisely because she accepted so many Syrian refugees. Germany absorbed almost a million refugees in one year, which is an incredible number. On a per capital basis, that would be like the USA accepting 4 million refugees in one year, when in fact net immigration to the USA, of all forms, tends to run at about 10% to 15% of that level.
... yeah, I don't think those Syrian refugees are vacationing on the Rhine with OP. He doesn't see them on the bus because they can't even afford the bus he takes...
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#375I saw this when I arrived in America, and it's the reason I left. I take the bus and seeing literally every day that there were people with families who worried and laughed and were kind who spent 2 hours a day transporting themselves to service or manufacturing industry job when I sat in an air conditioned office making 3x their wages was making me feel terribly guilty. I eventually went back to a country with a soc…
Poor people could do well in America if they made economic decisions that led to them accumulating wealth.
This is the United States sentiment of "you should make your own way" when 99% of the time it's all luck.
It's luck based on what race you were born as, gender, social class, geography, family situation, and mental / physical health you end up with. If you're a middle-class white guy from the suburbs of a major metro your "social mobility" into a "tech job in SV" is a bit higher than most people.
Our egos like to think we're responsible for all of our success when most of the time it's luck.
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
The parent's point was we have made those strides in productivity, but the wages were denied us.
Measured in 1960 US$ the UK’s GDP per capita was 1181[1]. In 2016 US$ U.K. GDP per capita was 40,341[2]. Even if we assume the 2016 dollar is worth half as much as the 1960 one because of inflation the average U.K. resident is 15 times better off. If people wanted to live in 1960s houses with what people in the 1960s would have considered a lavish standard of living they could do it easily by working half the year, o…
run that through an inflation calculator and you'll be unpleasantly surprised.
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#377[deleted]
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trust me, I don't work 3x harder than most of the people I make 3x of. My wife is a teacher and I am in tech, I make 3x her salary. She works way more and spends more of both her physical and emotional labor on her job. I work hard and I do good work, but what she does is not even in the same stratosphere as what I do. I'm not innovating anything, I'm just writing decent code. She's finding new ways to help kids lear…
It's worth asking why your wife doesn't switch to your job, to make 3x the salary. Either a) she couldn't do it, in which case by extension it boils down to supply and demand, or b) she doesn't want to do it, because she gets a whole bunch of joy from the job which is invisibly priced into compensation (and which indirectly goes back to supply and demand.) I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.
> I don't see the discrepancy as any kind of market failure.
What his story underlines is that teaching young human beings about navigating life is rewarded 3x less than churing out code that fits some business objective.
The market doesn't care about people, it cares about profit. In that system, human life is only important to the degree that it helps market dynamics.
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in tech. My wife does not. We came to the EU and I noticed that I make a good deal less, but she makes more. Even more important, though, instead of me getting lots of vacation time and her getting almost nothing, we both get a month off a year, protected by law (no bullshit "unlimited vacation" policy can take it away). We can finally take proper holidays together. Life is better here.
To add alternate experience to the children of this post, I worked for a company w/ unlimited vacation, and while I took very little vacation, there was no pressure from outside to limit it. Other people tended to work less than I did and took vacation more or less in line with what they would have done elsewhere. I wouldn't take unlimited vacation as a sign of anything other than "we expect you to be reasonable and…
> I wouldn't take unlimited vacation as a sign of anything other than "we expect you to be reasonable and we don't want to micro-manage everything."
In truth, though, the sole reason companies use unlimited vacation policy is that, in the US at least, it means unused vacation time does not accrue as a liability on the balance sheet, and companies aren't required to pay out for it if you leave.
Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without incentives, there is no innovation. And if everyone is entitled to the same portion of the pie, what’s the incentive to work harder? Seeing your neighbor put in a third of the effort and produce the same economic result is demoralizing.
Trust me, I don't work 3x harder than most of the people I make 3x of. My wife is a teacher and I am in tech, I make 3x her salary. She works way more and spends more of both her physical and emotional labor on her job. I work hard and I do good work, but what she does is not even in the same stratosphere as what I do. I'm not innovating anything, I'm just writing decent code. She's finding new ways to help kids lear…
It's not about how hard you work. It's about how many people can do what you do.
Don't sell yourself short, in tech you have skills that only a small percentage of the population are capable of doing. We might all say "Programming is easy" or "I really only work half the day" but for many people Programming is seen as witchcraft, and for many what would take a skilled developer an hour would take a whole day (or worse, they might just do the task manually).
If your not satisfied with programming you can of course go into teaching, if that's what you think is truly fulfilling.