Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 430 posts

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#391

Post by fastball »

maxxxxx wrote: post #367
fastball wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure?

You basically told the previous poster that he is an idiot. That's arrogance in my view especially since you are only stating things with nothing to back them up or any coherent thought besides that you are right and everyone else is stupid and not even worth discussing with.

The idea that two different things are in fact different does not require "back up". Wealth inequality and poverty are not interchangeable concepts, but wonderwonder was treating them like they were by appealing to everyone's innate sense that poverty is bad and then conflating that with wealth inequality.

This isn't up for debate. The two things are, by definition, not the same. You may think they are related, but that burden is wonderwonder's (and perhaps yours) to prove, not mine. Two separate concepts are not correlated, causal, or interchangeable until they have been shown to be. Not the other way 'round.

I don't think everyone else is stupid. But people that conflate those two things are either missing something or doing it deliberately (knowing full well they are wrong). Telling someone this is not arrogance, and my comment was perfectly coherent to a great many people if upvotes are any indication. If you want an example of incoherence, look no further than the comment which talked about "driving past food banks" as if that was some sort of "gotcha" about wealth inequality. I think it was lost on wonderwonder that food banks themselves are a great example of wealth not being a zero sum game.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#392

Post by firstplacelast »

kelnos wrote: post #329
Mikeb85 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re. failing restaurants, that's a result of bad business planning. If you can't find staff, pay more, pass those costs on to customers. If people can afford to live in high-rent areas, they can afford to pay more for food.

The reality doesn't agree with you. In SF, for example, fine dining is doing well, while the mid range is slowly failing and being replaced by fast casual, where they focus on fast turnover. The only way to pay the bills seems to be to either be super high end (fewer customers overall, but at a much higher service level and price point), or just above fast food, where you serve a reasonable-quality menu, but items th…

Isn't this literally indicative of the economy as a whole? The entire middle is being hollowed out. You've got to go high or go low, which is the same segregation we've seen in terms of wages.

Makes sense to me.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#393

Post by throwawaymsft »

Tade0 wrote: post #373
throwawaymsft wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.) I don't see how it's inherently wrong for a CEO to take 10% of revenue and employees split 10%. And why do companies have a fixed pile: shouldn't an effective CEO grow top-line revenue? What if employees are splitting twice the revenue compared to a year ago? (If the company isn't growing, replace the CEO for someone who earns their 10%.) Money-…

(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.) Stories of countless species hunted to extinction show that this is not what happens. Let's look at the physics(?) of the economy: where does wealth actually come from? It's either from transforming things into more useful things or increasing efficiency of processes. There are limits to both of those things. We live on a planet that's in a roug…

Is wealth truly proportional to matter? How many physical resources are used when making software, music, art, theater, writing? How much wealth did the internet create and how much matter did it use?

There may be a finite limit on potential wealth but it’s effectively limitless for human planning purposes.

(For the trees, we can certainly mismanage our resources; it doesn’t mean it’s a priori impossible to create a growing and sustainable form of wealth.)

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#394

Post by throwawaymsft »

orthecreedence wrote: post #347
throwawaymsft wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do I care if someone has 1000x the artistic talent I do? Is there a shared river of inspiration we're all drinking from? You seem to believe there's a fixed pile of money in the world that every human competes for (e.g., 16th century Mercantilism). Go into the woods and turn a tree into a chair. Where did that value come from? Will it run out?

> You seem to believe there's a fixed pile of money in the world ...there is. not in the sense of "money" but in the sense of "wealth" and ownership of private property. Wealth is not "created" it is diverted. If wealth grows in one place it's because it shrank in another. Unless you believe that growth and resources are infinite, like many capitalist economists.

When you invent the wheelbarrow, stack bricks into a house, plant a seed, where is wealth diverted from? Who is losing? What shrank?

Potential wealth is ‘finite’ because humans are finite but there’s no practical limit. (Just like there’s no practical limit to how much art can be made. If art isn’t being made it isn’t because there’s only so much creativity to go around.)

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#395

Post by throwawaymsft »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #232
wasdfff wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you can’t see how a CEO being compensated 1000x more than whoever cleans their office is a problem? Money flows like a river, and when every executive diverts egregious amounts of money that they’d never spend in their lifetime into their little pools, theres less money flowing downstream along the river. Do you really think that Bill Gates needed to become one of the richest men on earth to proselytize ms dos? Be…

Do I care if someone has 1000x the artistic talent I do? Is there a shared river of inspiration we're all drinking from? You seem to believe there's a fixed pile of money in the world that every human competes for (e.g., 16th century Mercantilism). Go into the woods and turn a tree into a chair. Where did that value come from? Will it run out?

Many people think the economy is a fixed pie. Do a quick google: inflation adjusted gdp per capita is increasing exponentially(!) over time as we find new ways to create wealth. If the pie were fixed our living standards should decrease over time as there’s more mouths to feed.

https://www.google.com/search?q=world+gdp+per+capita+over+ti...

I’m not saying local deviations don’t exist - I can lose my job - but globally wealth has been growing continuously and poverty is being eradicated. This is only possible with wealth creation. Look up Hans Rosling’s work.

https://goo.gl/images/QejAcY

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#396

Post by hoaw »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #320
hoaw wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is hard to make that into a constructive argument. Either you care and the 'allocation' is unfair. Or you don't care, which means that the market doesn't work since you caring is what is supposed to allocate resources fairly, and it is still unfair.

The word 'allocate' presupposes a fixed pie that we're expected to split in a zero-sum game. That works for redistributing the fraction of wealth captured in taxes. But the parent's argument is about the process of accumulating wealth itself being zero-sum somehow. Thinking "someone earned money which would have gone to me otherwise" is like thinking "someone got in shape and that physical fitness would have gone to…

I don't really matter if it is a growing pie or not, you are still getting a share. I am sure Uber creates a lot of new wealth, but the average driver most likely isn't seeing a lot of it.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#397

Post by intended »

intended wrote: post #235
moorhosj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

==I really enjoyed college, especially my liberal arts classes.== I think this highlights the true question. Do colleges exist to promote education and intellectual curiosity or to train workers? According to PEW, Americans believe colleges are for work training: "Americans are split on the main purpose of college, with 47% saying it is to teach work-related skills and 39% saying it is to help a student grow personal…

The American college question is always a jobs question dressed up. There’s no jobs for people. Therefore people try to get college degrees, even if they aren’t suited for it or going to be happy with it. This drives up the demand for college, and specifically for degrees that lead to jobs. This degrades the image and purpose of college (students aren’t here to expand their mind. They’re here so that recruiters won’t…

To be clearer, the issue is the hollowing out of the job ecosystem in America.

Economic value now comes from fewer roles, which require specific skill sets to perform.

With more lopsided reward structures (few people corner most of the gains), there is increasing pressure for people to move into the few places where rewards collect.

This ties into the issues like " History majors can't get a job that will help them hold down a house or family".

The societal cost of it is that society becomes a monoculture of a few degrees and sources of information.

The greater advantages of a modern first world society in terms of societal achievement, art, culture and so on weaken.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#398

Post by dan-robertson »

dragonwriter wrote: post #339
dan-robertson wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class? I don’t think the answer is by having equally large upper and working classes.

> I don’t think middle class refers to median income. At least it certainly didn’t used to. How else could a population have a small middle class? Well, it could if it meant “near median income” if few had near the median income. Median doesn't mean particularly common (or even the most common, which is the mode.)

The median is what you get if you sort all people by income and pick the middle person. If one forces the median to be in the middle class then this forces the upper class to be large when the middle is small: Example with a large middle class:

  |...|...........|...|
    ^       ^       ^
    |     median    |
  (working)      (upper)
Example with small middle class:

  |.......|...|.......|
    ^       ^       ^
    |     median    |
  (working)      (upper)
Real life example with small middle class:

  |.............|...|.|
  (working) ^     ^  ^
          median  | (upper)
                middle

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#399

Post by randomdata »

rtpg wrote: post #390
randomdata wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a modern definition, I like: Working class : One who makes money by collecting a wage. Upper class : One who makes money through investments or similar business dealings. Middle class : One who partially makes money by collecting a wage and partially through investing.

I don't believe that "makes money partially through investing" is true for a significant part of the population given that 60+% of Americans don't have $500 in savings. Though perhaps that is the point

The internet suggests that the median American household has closer to $5,000 in a savings account. Regardless, while you may see some paltry returns, savings is not really what I think most would consider any meaningful investment income. The primary purpose of a savings account is to keep a modest sum of liquid cash available for emergency purposes and not where one would want to keep most of their assets.

Wealth figures are more difficult to come by, but the internet suggests the median household has a net worth of around $200,000. However, I would venture to guess that a large portion of that is tied up in a primary household which does not normally generate any income. It is not clear how much a typical person does make in investment income.

If you are right that 60% of the population do not have investment income, that seems reasonable enough. I think it is fair to say that most people are working class. I am sure that we can agree that, under modern usage, the middle class is meant to represent something that is not easily attainable, but more attainable than upper class.

Re: Big Cities No Longer Deliver for Low-Skill Workers

#400

Post by Tade0 »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #393
Tade0 wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(As people use forests, others will notice and start making tree farms.) Stories of countless species hunted to extinction show that this is not what happens. Let's look at the physics(?) of the economy: where does wealth actually come from? It's either from transforming things into more useful things or increasing efficiency of processes. There are limits to both of those things. We live on a planet that's in a roug…

Is wealth truly proportional to matter? How many physical resources are used when making software, music, art, theater, writing? How much wealth did the internet create and how much matter did it use? There may be a finite limit on potential wealth but it’s effectively limitless for human planning purposes. (For the trees, we can certainly mismanage our resources; it doesn’t mean it’s a priori impossible to create a…

How many physical resources are used when making software, music, art, theater, writing?

Actually a pretty decent amount over the life cycle of a person. After all those things require a functioning civilisation that educates properly to begin with.

The internet is mostly a means of making communication more efficient - that was one stupidly inefficient process ripe for an upgrade.

So yeah, no additional wealth really - just much less losses.

Post reply on HN