> They can be enjoyed/exploited (early retirment, savvy caching of excess income, etc) by workers but they don't win anybody progress and aren't a thing to celebrate.
Huh, if I get paid lots as a worker, I don't care whether the company goes belly up later. Why should I? (I include equity in the total pay package under judgement here, and by 'lots' I mean that the sum of equity and cash is big. If the cash portion is large enough, I don't care if the stock goes to zero. In any case, I sell any company stock as soon as I can, and invest the money in diversified index funds.)
> Workers (and society) have not won progress when only a handful of companies have books that can actually support their inflated pay, and the remainder are ultimately funded by investors hoping to see those same companies slurp them up before the bubble bursts.
I'm more than ok with willing investors (potentially) losing capital they put at risk. Just don't put some captive public retirement fund or task payer money into this. Those investors are grown up and rich, they don't need us to know better what is good for them.
> Workers don't win progress when they're lured into then converting that income into impractical home loans that bind the workers with golden handcuffs and darkly shadow their future when the bubble bursts.
This says more about carefully managing the maximum amount of leverage you want to take on in your life. It's hardy an argument that would convince me that lower pay is better for me.
People freak out when thinking about putting leverage in their stock portfolio, but they take on a mortgage on a house without thinking twice. Even though getting out of a well diversified stock portfolio and remove all the leverage takes less than half an hour these days (thanks to online brokers), but selling your single concentrated illiquid house can take months and multiple percentage points of transaction costs (agents, taxes, etc).
Just don't buy a house, or at least buy within your means. And make sure you are thinking ahead of time how to get out of that investment, in case things turn sour.
> Workers win progress when they can practice their trade with respect and freedom and can and secure a stable, secure future for themselves and their families.
Guess who's in a good negotiation position to demand respect and freedom and stability from their (prospective) employer? Someone who has other lucrative offers. Money is one part of compensation, freedom and respect (and even fun!) are others.
Your alternative offers don't all have to offer these parts of the package in the same proportions. You can use a rich offer with lots of money from place A, to try and get more freedom (at a lower pay) from place B.
Though I find that in practice that the places that are valuing me enough to pay me a lot, also tend to value me enough to give me more respect and freedom. (It's far from a perfect correlation, of course.)
> Software engineers didn't need these bubble-inflated salaries to acheive that.
Yes, have lived on a pittance before, and survived. I don't strictly 'need' the money. But I still firmly believe that all else being equal that 'more money = more better'.
> What fight we do still need to make is on securing non-monetary worker's rights and professional deference, [...].
I'd rather take the money, thank you.
If you want to fight, please go ahead, but don't speak for me.
And the whole thing smells a lot like you'd (probably?) want to introduce some kind of mandatory licensing and certificates, like they have in other engineering disciplines. No thank you. Programming is one of the few well paid white collar jobs left where you don't need a degree to enter. Let's keep it that way.