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.
[dead]
Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
41–50 of 88 posts
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#42> 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…
>since you just wiped them out.
It's a start.
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#43Earlier 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…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Uni... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Uni... It's all in the top 10 or 20%.
The top 20% is household income over $109,000. That's not the ultra rich by any means.
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#44> 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.
So what? Those low skilled workers want your money just the same, why shouldn't we give it to them?
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#45I’m skeptical of the premise of this article, but I know that I saw an A&W advertising CAD $17/hr starting wage today. Not only is that above minimum wage but they are advertising it out front. Down the street is a factory asking for electricians at $40/hr. I hope that publishing wages/salaries becomes more normal. I think it’s an equalizer.
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#46The 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?
I think you're mistaken here, blue collar workers and white collar workers are in the same boat when it comes to the precarity of their means of providing for themselves and the relations they have with the entities that dole out those means.
Division is what I interpreted as what elicits disgust here, when workers of all stripes would be stronger if they instead were united.
The scraps that are thrown to blue and white collar workers alike pale in comparison to the wealth disparity of those who need to work as a whole versus who they must work for.
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#47There are so many ways in which this article really puts on display the purpose of the WSJ it’s hard to count. The most important ones are 1) labor organization (unions) are responsible for the meager gains. That’s it. If higher wage earners (like me!) actually engaged with society and organized their trade we’d get the same gains 2) inequality is not earnestly, meaningfully defined as the difference between compensa…
Labor unions also shut out marginal and marginalized workers from their own sectors, or even from the labor market as a whole. The labor income of an unemployed worker is zero.
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#48> 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.
That's not what the literature says about differences in income - there, skills are indeed very relevant (though of course sheer luck and superstar dynamics matter a lot at the very high end). Wealth is a whole other ballgame, it's a stock not a flow; it grows globally when asset values rise (as they clearly have in recent times, due to r < g); and at an individual and subcultural level when people refrain from drawi…
But why focus on income when the game is all about owning capital.
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I’d go further: the myth of “discussion” as some sort of tool to resolve these issues benefits them and them alone.
Carl Schmitt critiqued liberal democracy with this very same premise. The myth of the disinterested neutral "discussion" seeking consensus optimal solutions, (vs the reality of factional interest groups fighting for 0 sum spoils and power).
Re: Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
#50> In the decades before the pandemic, the wages of lower-paid, less skilled hourly employees steadily lost ground to those of skilled workers, college graduates, managers and professionals. In the two years since, those trends have sharply reversed. We don’t know if this narrowing in inequality will last. I'm certainly for economic justice. But how is comparing apples to canned tuna "inequality"? As another comment a…
> The delta between service worker and say tech is far less than the delta between that collective average and the top of the financial food chain.
True when we think purely in terms of wealth and income, but I'd say the reverse is true in terms of quality of life.
A SV tech worker earning six figures has food and housing security, likely has insurance and dental, has a 401k, is possibly building wealth with stock options, likely has a long term achievable plan to buy a home if they don't own one already, has an emergency fund. They can afford to live in a safe area and send their kids to a good school. That's a lot of vital needs satisfied, many (maybe even most) of which are not fulfilled for the average minimum wage service worker. A huge number of people are one missed wage payment away from poverty.
Sure, Elon Musk has a private jet and can fly anywhere he wants every day of the week. But his fundamental needs (physiological, safety, security) are basically met just as well as mine.
The concentration of wealth at the very top is deeply concerning and potentially destabilising. But I think it's worth remembering the differences between the secure end of the middle class and the bottom half society.