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American life is improving for the lowest paid

economist.com

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Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#71

Post by NE2z2T9qi »

luckylion wrote: post #50
NE2z2T9qi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But in all seriousness, the richness that has been added to my life by walking around with a Library of Alexandria in my pocket is immeasurable. People may jokes about the value of having 24/7 access to cat videos or whatever, but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for.

> but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for Some people. Your average medieval serf didn't care for all that in his pocket: he couldn't read and he'd get the whip if he stood around doing nothing, so he would very much not have sold his soul for something that had no value for him. It's similar today. For you, it's a great a…

> Also, I have my doubts about the importance of carrying it around with you. It's the knowledge and the access that counts (if you're into knowledge), not the "and I can do it while standing outside anywhere in the city".

I would have to disagree strongly with that. There's a fundamental difference between the knowledge being extraordinarily democratized vs. available only through gatekeepers. Imagine having to go to a library to get directions for a short daytrip or book an Uber a day in advance. The frustration that would cause and time it would waste is enormous.

And importantly, you can't separate the "productive" and "non productive" aspects. The fact that you can FaceTime your friends or waste time on the devices is what makes them universally available. How many people in a poor neighborhood would shell out for a knowledge-only device or spend hours after a hard day shlepping down to a library? The fact that you can do fun stuff and mindless stuff with a phone is why the phone is in your pocket when you suddenly want to learn to do something difficult or find out the solution to an obscure problem.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#72

Post by henrikschroder »

Barrin92 wrote: post #38
School-Cotton wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually, low-skill hourly wage service jobs in the US have no paid leave, at all. If you work N hours, you get paid for N hours. That’s why getting one week of paid leave annually was described as rare.

Jesus I didn't know that. I knew that the US had a debate about maternity leave, but I thought the US had paid annual leave. Here in Germany everyone gets 24 working days off, I don't think I'd survive a year without it.

Even for high-paid white-collar jobs, you normally don't get a lot of paid time off in the US. Two weeks, typically. Three weeks is seen as generous. These days off are then typically used piecemeal, a day here, a long weekend there, some days around christmas, a family trip here. A whole week off is seen as weird.

I worked at a company where that was the standard, but every five years (!) you could apply for a whole month (!!) of unpaid (!!!) time off. I witnessed discussions on the employee blabbing mailing list where people who had worked there for five years or ten were talking about what they would do, and how a whole month of not working would affect them and some were not sure if they could stay away that long...

Meanwhile, in Sweden, I had six weeks of paid time off every year, and everyone has a legal right to four consecutive weeks in the summer, so most people take a month off every year. Not every five years. Everyone.

The cultural difference is absolutely crazy.

A second-order effect of this is that if people are gone a lot every year, it forces companies to have better redundancies, it forces companies to spread knowledge around, it forces them to make sure that everyone's job can be covered by someone else. This lessens the impact of someone quitting, because there should be people around who can at least somewhat do that person's job, so you are less likely to end up in a situation where someone quitting is a disaster for the company, because that person had made themselves essential as a crazy sort of job security.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#73

Post by tzs »

chungleong wrote: post #27
otaviokz wrote: post #4

"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday" I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?

Paid leaves aren't mandated by law. The norm is two weeks for salaried workers. Most people don't used them up anyway. There's no tradition of everyone going on vacation in the same month in the US. That makes people feel somewhat guilty leaving their jobs behind. Even while on vacation many end up working. Americans do switch jobs more frequently. People have more occasions to unwind between jobs (perhaps cashing ou…

Another reason for not using them up is that one of the times of year that many people do often want to take time off during has a lot of paid holiday days already for many people, so you can get a large block of time off only using a few vacation days.

I'm speaking of Christmas/New Year, which many people like to take off to be with family.

At many places, Christmas and the day before are paid holidays, and at many places New Years and the day before are also paid holidays.

Suppose that in a given year you get a Tuesday and Wednesday off for the Christmas holidays and Tuesday and Wednesday off next week for New Years.

With one day of vacation (Monday), you turn the Christmas holiday into a block of 5 consecutive days off (2 weekend days, 1 vacation day, 2 holidays). Toss in 2 more vacation days (Thursday and Friday), and now for a cost of 3 vacation days you 9 consecutive days off.

Add another vacation day next Monday, and four a total cost of 4 vacation days you get 12 consecutive days off. 6 vacation days will get you 16 consecutive days off.

If you job is such that it naturally gets a lot less busy during the holidays, and it is possible to do it remotely, you might even convince your employer to work at home on some of those days, which will be such light work that it does not interfere with your vacation activities, but counts as a work day, not a vacation day.

I've usually been able to do that at least one day each week--check some logs, run some scripts that fix some database problems that some old crappy legacy code that no one ever gets the time to rewrite cause, spend 10 minutes or so figuring out to fix a couple things the scripts cannot, and then just check work email a few times during the day to look for anything else that comes up (which usually is nothing), and my employer will let me call that a work day...and so I can get those 16 consecutive days off with only 4 days vacation used.

Even if you are only earning two weeks (10 days) of vacation a year, if you take you vacations as above it is easy to end up accumulating them.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#74

Post by chungleong »

ghaff wrote: post #39
jeromegv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While people might switch jobs more often, is that supported by data that they use this time to unwind? You end up without health insurance coverage during that gap so I can’t imagine tons of people going in that direction.

>You end up without health insurance coverage There's COBRA although, of course, you don't have the employer portion paid for any longer. I'm a bit skeptical that the typical person takes a lot of time off between jobs. If you've already got a position lined up, your new employer probably wants you to start as soon as possible. You can probably negotiate 2 or 3 weeks but, in most cases, I expect a real sabbatical wou…

There certainly are a lot of Americans who mismanage their finances. Standard advice is to have at least six months of saving at your disposal. If you can't take a afford a break at a time of your own choosing then how are you going to cope when you get laid off during a recession?

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#75

Post by esotericn »

Someone1234 wrote: post #33
esotericn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never worked an hourly paid job in the UK that has paid holiday. I'm not sure they exist, it's sort of what hourly pay is - you get it when you work and not when you don't. Personally I'm not sure it's something that makes sense, it should just be factored in to the wage. Most hourly paid jobs I know of don't have regular hours, even - how much do you pay for a week's holiday when some weeks the employee works…

> I have never worked an hourly paid job in the UK that has paid holiday. It has been a legal requirement since 1938, so hypothetical that is possible if you're in your mid 95 or older.

Turns out you're right. I can't edit the post as the time has passed.

I've actually just never taken holiday from an hourly job, since it wouldn't have made sense at the time (if I were aware I would have probably tried to fill the time with more work.. )

I assume then that I should have been paid in my final pay. Ten years back now, I've been contracting or salaried since.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#76

Post by moonlet »

otaviokz wrote: post #4

"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday" I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?

Oftentimes the lowest paid workers end up working the days everyone else has off. Heaven forbid the Walmart or the Kohl’s be closed on any holiday but basically Christmas Day.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#77

Post by peisistratos »

adventured wrote: post #69
peisistratos wrote: post #65

The article text does not really support the headline > By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%. With exactly 40 years ago being in the midst of a wage downturn. Go back a little more and real hourly wages have fallen for both groups, despite GDP etc. booming for…

The real median household income is up over 43% since 1990. It's up 62% for the bottom 20%.[1] It's popular to claim that wages have gone nowhere for ~40 years, it's never supported by the actual data. The premise requires that one ignores the cost of health coverage in the US that is commonly paid for or heavily subsidized by an employer (the employee would have to pay far higher taxes for that otherwise, given the…

> actual data

The data is available from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics https://www.bls.gov . The Economist's gloomy figures were right, but are gloomier if pushed back a few years as 1979 was a nadir any how.

> health

The US is off the charts in terms of health costs compared to other industrialized countries, and big business has arranged it so it is the only industrialized country with people not under health coverage.

> 401k

US Workers used to have guaranteed pensions, the 401k was a backward step, not some new benefit

Plus the fact that Google workers have all these things, and some other workers may have some if these things doesn't modify that wages have fallen.

The US has skyrocketing health care compared to everyone else, with some unconvered unlike every other industrialized countries, and guaranteed pensions no longer exist - not great arguments for an improvement.

People are not stupid, they know things are not better, despite think tank commissars trying to present ways that they are.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#78

Post by bjourne »

peisistratos wrote: post #65

The article text does not really support the headline > By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%. With exactly 40 years ago being in the midst of a wage downturn. Go back a little more and real hourly wages have fallen for both groups, despite GDP etc. booming for…

How come so few Americans realize how insanely unfair that is? The USSR collapsed 30 years ago, so there is no Communism to scare people with anymore.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#79

Post by thatfrenchguy »

themagician wrote: post #34
aphextron wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Yes, and even that is a rarity for wage workers. >Is there any other form of paid off time? Nope. Most hourly workers are lucky to get a few unpaid sick days. Have an accident, or get sick and need to spend a couple weeks in the hospital? Now you're unemployed and bankrupt.

This is both true and mind boggling to me. I employ 5-10 unskilled people at any given time. Mostly for assembly and packing. They get two weeks PTO, and at least a week of paid vacation throughout the year when we close for holidays, mostly more. At the end of the day the total annual cost to provide this is well worth the drama it keeps out of the workplace. Sick days? Take as many as you need. I don’t want sick pe…

“Two weeks PTO”, like it’s a godsend, when the EU basic law, not known for being worker-friendly, guarantees everyone in the EU at least four weeks.

Re: American life is improving for the lowest paid

#80

Post by toastbox2 »

peisistratos wrote: post #77
adventured wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real median household income is up over 43% since 1990. It's up 62% for the bottom 20%.[1] It's popular to claim that wages have gone nowhere for ~40 years, it's never supported by the actual data. The premise requires that one ignores the cost of health coverage in the US that is commonly paid for or heavily subsidized by an employer (the employee would have to pay far higher taxes for that otherwise, given the…

> actual data The data is available from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics https://www.bls.gov . The Economist's gloomy figures were right, but are gloomier if pushed back a few years as 1979 was a nadir any how. > health The US is off the charts in terms of health costs compared to other industrialized countries, and big business has arranged it so it is the only industrialized country with people…

Your English grammar is pretty bad - you are obviously not from US. Please don't speak as if you are an American. You create opinions without any facts to back them up.
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