Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#411

Post by amanaplanacanal » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

rock_hard wrote: post #358

timerol wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably due to the strong political and moral statement in the middle. "in Europe, the socialism makes people dead on the inside" definitely requires some justification. Without that digression it's a great comment about the potential upside that exists in America.

Thanks for the feedback...let me elaborate on that a bit more then: I was born and raised in Europe and lived there 30 years. What I will share here is from personal expierence and will be a generalization (because there is of course always exceptions). What I meant by dead inside is that people there don’t do anything with the safety and freedom socialism provides. They don’t spend more time with their kids or follo…

It sounds like you are assuming that your situation applies everywhere in Europe, which seems unlikely to me.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#412

Post by honkycat » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:43 PM UTC

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #237

normal_man wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually lower income people give more to charity than well-off people.

If you exclude Christian lower income people, that no longer holds true.

Your point? Why would you exclude them because they are Christian?

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#413

Post by amanaplanacanal » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

cableshaft wrote: post #391

malvosenior wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having grown up poor I'd say it's not that poor people are not as smart, it's that they are extremely anti-intellectual. I tried my hardest to get family/friends/community into computers (or really any intellectual pursuit). Resistance was extreme to say the least. Reading a book is looked down upon. Computers are for "nerds". I used too many "five dollar words"... If you want a real view of the situation you have to…

Intellectuals can be poor and/or make bad choices too. I know plenty of smart people who are struggling to make ends meet (me included, to a certain extent, and I make 2-3x more than a lot of these people). But you're right that there is a culture of anti-intellectualism amongst a certain segment of poor people.

But that means that most kids who grow up in that culture are going to absorb those same influences. It doesn't seem fair to then blame them for the society they came from.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#414

Post by droithomme » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

saiya-jin wrote: post #164

anoncoward111 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have made those strides in productivity and they all went to rent seeking and taxation/regulation of small businesses and personal conduct (see also $150 red light cameras and $350,000 school admin salaries)

$150 for going on red light I have no problem with, do it few times and have driver's license revoked temporarily (as in Switzerland, on top of massive fee). That's how innocent people are killed, be it pedestrians or other drivers, by arrogant/DUI folks. I understand that on empty roads at 3am in the middle of nowhere there are no consequences whatsoever, but generally that's a big infraction. Just watch few car cra…

You might be assuming the cameras work as they do in Switzerland.

In the US a common scenario is a private company installs the cameras for free and gets to collect most of the revenue. They adjust the yellow timing downward so that you don't have time to stop between the light turning yellow and it going to red. Then they send tickets in the mail to people who ran the light. Then if you do a study proving that they adjusted the timing downward to unsafe levels as a state sponsored scam, you get arrested and fined for "unlicensed practice of engineering".

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#415

Post by linkmotif » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

athenot wrote: post #385

linkmotif wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching is a straw man. Teachers get paid poorly because (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make, and (2) it’s a government-based monopoly that prioritizes “benefits” and graft (tenure, etc) over salary

> (1) Americans don’t actually care about education, as evidenced by the amount teachers make Americans care very much about education but the system we're in doesn't. Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power (or influence on purchase power). In a highly inequal society that means very fancy private schools, for those who can pay. And neglected public schools for the rest. The outlook of…

Kids have massive purchasing power, a fact which was discovered by marketers in the 50s and cultivated extensively since then. Marketers back to then discovered they could actually market directly to kids, which wasn’t a thing before and something people take for granted now. In American households kids drive massive percentages of household spending, not just indirectly but directly as well.

> Kids have no value in a market economy until they have purchase power

Market economies are based entirely on investment. Market economies value investment and therefore kids. If people aren’t investing in kids, it’s because of market economy? as a matter of fact Americans invest tons of money in early childhood education and their children at an early age. It’s an American obsession. The problem is that outcomes have little to do with dollars invested. American culture at this point has devolved into pseudo fascist corporation and leisure identity worship, so people don’t even know what education is. Being a “geek” in America now means you watch tv and play video games. Buying your kid a tablet and plopping then down with some STEM edutainment software isn’t education. It’s just unfortunate, miguided ignorance, and we get what we pay for.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#416

Post by supermw » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #351

supermw wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My choices were nothing special: Pay attention in school, do my homework, get good grades, pick a meaningful hobby, don't drink or do drugs, don't beat up other kids for fun, read books, work in a retail store, stay away from drama, get into a decent college and choose a good major, do internships, network, pick up recommendations, get interviews at tech companies, get tech job, start paying debts, save and invest mo…

> My choices were nothing special: Pay attention in school, do my homework, get good grades, pick a meaningful hobby, don't drink or do drugs, don't beat up other kids for fun, read books, work in a retail store, stay away from drama I concede that the rest of this list is choices you made, but I wonder how much of the part I quoted can be attributed to actual, conscious choice on your part. Me personally, I'm in tec…

A lot of those things are conscious choices... I suppose getting good grades is tough if you are not intelligent and were born with a bad brain, or paying attention might be tough if you had ADD.

Some of it may just be a result of having decent parents that instill good values in you, like warning you about hanging with the wrong crowds or teaching you right from wrong or showing you interesting stuff.

I guess if one is looking for an excuse for their shitty upbringing, your parents are the first place to start, not society. Maybe if someone is a shitty parent we should be more aggressive about taking their kids away, instead of letting them reach maturity in their sorry state where it becomes increasingly harder and more expensive to get them back on their feet. Maybe people shouldn't be entitled to raising their kids automatically if they can't demonstrate they'll be a good parent. It may be the only way to solve the problem of poor and underemployed people breeding out of control and creating more poor and underemployed.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#417

Post by rock_hard » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #411

rock_hard wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the feedback...let me elaborate on that a bit more then: I was born and raised in Europe and lived there 30 years. What I will share here is from personal expierence and will be a generalization (because there is of course always exceptions). What I meant by dead inside is that people there don’t do anything with the safety and freedom socialism provides. They don’t spend more time with their kids or follo…

It sounds like you are assuming that your situation applies everywhere in Europe, which seems unlikely to me.

Like I disclosed upfront: I am generalizing based on my personal expierence

Please share you personal story too though so we get a better picture

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#418

Post by moreira » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #393

mr_overalls wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> European countries finally start catching up to the US in the size of their immigrant population, No. Several European countries have had significant foreign-born populations for a long time. https://www.statista.com/statistics/549292/foreign-born-popu...

Those stats count an immigrant from any neighboring Western European country as foreign born. That makes them highly misleading compared to the US. In the US, a person from a different state does not count as an immigrant.

Of course not, but a state is not a country. Germany has 16 states, for example, and the statistics don't count people from different states as immigrants.

However, a person from a neighbouring country (e.g. Mexico) would count as an immigrant in the US.

Just because states are massive in the US doesn't make them equivalent to different countries in Europe, which all have their own language, ethnic background, and culture. A German person moving 350 miles to Italy (from Munich to Venice) is definitely an immigrant, with a completely different background, even though the distance itself isn't even enough to go between Austin and Houston in Texas.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#419

Post by Bakary » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

Society will just return to the age-old model of kings, clergy, and peasantry. Except this time it'll be the owners of capital and automation served by the highly educated. The rest will fight for the scraps as they have for thousands of years.

Re: Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Work Force in Two

#420

Post by ThirdFoundation » Tue, Feb 05, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #325

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #231

Earlier 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.

Per capita basis, I believe EU countries take on more immigrants than America

I'm having trouble finding a more recent source, but as of 2012 that wasn't close to true. It's actually a larger gap than I expected. I'm going to keep researching to see if I can find more recent numbers. Do you happen to have a more recent source?

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

__EU__

Total net migration: 2,324,066

Net migration per 1000 inhabitants: 4.60

__US__

Total net migration: 5,007,887

Net migration per 1000 inhabitants: 15.94