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

Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

insidermag.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 715 posts

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#701

Post by dahart »

nec4b wrote: post #700
dahart wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do hundreds of millions of Americans, which is why the statistics are surprising. But having hope doesn’t make it happen. This is partly why it’s important to understand the reality of US social mobility. US immigrants are, statistically speaking, at an even worse disadvantage than the American born lower class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...

And yet they come and succeed. Their educated children move up to the middle class. The article you linked is an opinion piece of a single economist, who is critical of immigration. If human ability follows normal distribution, there is a hard physical limit of how many people can move up the ladder each year. It physically impossible for every one to be at the same highest level. The good news is all level are getti…

That’s what 20% social mobility means: that one in five actually move classes. The majority of immigrants do not change classes, just like the majority of Americans do not change classes. It’s still possible, it’s just not the average outcome.

> The article you linked in an opinion pieces of a single economist, who is critical of immigration.

What article? I linked to a section of Wikipedia, and that section alone has 9 different citations by as many authors.

> The good news is all level are getting higher year by year. The pie is growing for everybody.

Others in this thread have misunderstood my remarks as you have. The metric of moving from one class quintile to another during your lifetime is relative. It does not depend on standard of living at all. The pie can grow, and social mobility (as defined by changing class quintiles) can be stagnant, at the same time.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#702

Post by gruez »

faitswulff wrote: post #299
kh1 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked at graphics, but that's comparing minimum wage against various goods, isn't it? So it would be interesting to see the comparison between median wage and rent, etc. From the data, however, it looks like income inequality expanded quite a bit.

The second infographic compares rent.

But that's still comparing minimum wage rather than median wage, like the parent poster was talking about.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#703

Post by pugets »

CraneWorm wrote: post #143
esens wrote: post #37

Working hard but doing so for someone else can often not lead to significant gains. Many services like Uber or InstaCart or even McDonalds or Amazon Warehouse or Walmart or Retail Sales or call center, you can work hard but there is no where to progress to. Your rewards are capped. You need to find a way to work hard such that your rewards are not capped artificially. Startups were you get equity. Large companies whe…

Post-scarcity cannot come fast enough; the (external) need to work hard should just die in a fire.

Post-scarcity is a pipe dream. Even amoeba understand that life is a competition for resources. Stand still and you die.

Even if the whole world lived in a post-scarce global society, there would be wars fought over who controls the supply chains, who lives downtown and who lives uptown, who eats veal and who eats chicken, etc. And there would be entrepreneurial types who are willing to trade food for lumber, or land for sex.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#704

Post by tekknik »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #699
tekknik wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit higher than $18/mo, and your average american changes their phone every 2 years, and further phones are not $800 anymore. But let’s assume they are, over 2 years that’s $34/mo and let’s say 4 people in the plan. Over the same period you’ve doubled your phone bill. If $100/mo is expensive then so should the $134/mo or so to upgrade phones every 2 years.

The penniless American will keep their phone for longer than the average 2 years. You'd actually predict that the parents hand down the old phone to the child when they get a new one, and now we know why Apple recently extended the time they keep their phones in support.

> The penniless American will keep their phone for longer than the average 2 years.

Sure but they’re not the majority. This article from forbes (a bit old now) was enlightening. But note that those running their phones into the ground aren’t too far behind those upgrading as soon as they can.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/07/09/how-of...

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#705

Post by Zababa »

banannaise wrote: post #694
Zababa wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done both tech and minimum wage, the difference is that I can do the minimum wage job and they couldn't do mine. Minimum wage jobs often use humans as robots, and most humans can move around in relatively complex ways all days - that's what our brain evolved to do. I can do it, the minimum wage workers can do it. On the other hand most people can't write code. I'm not confident that most of the people that I w…

> the difference is that I can do the minimum wage job and they couldn't do mine [citation needed] A lot of low-wage work is skilled physical labor. I for one would need months to years of physical training before I would be strong enough to perform many of those jobs, and then it would take me months to years of practice before I could do them efficiently and effectively. If you were to give a day laborer the same a…

I was able to be productive in a day at McDonald's. At the joints factory, in an hour for my main task, and 5-10 minutes for the others. I think skilled physical labor (plumbing for example) is usually very well paid (I live in France so maybe that's the cause?). Do you have examples of skilled physical labor which is still minimum wage?

Your argument about physical fitness and "mental" fitness makes sense though, that's something I didn't consider. Thanks for the insight.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#706

Post by merpnderp »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #533
merpnderp wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ecologies don't tend to work the way human societies do" maybe you need to get your money back also. Either you don't understand the word tautology, or you don't believe an elephant seal taking breeding and hunting rights from smaller seals is something stronger taking from something weaker. Nature is completely filled with hierarchies, where those that are stronger and more fit take resources from those are who are…

You have no definition of "strong" here other than "one who takes from others, and no definition of "weak" as "one who is taken from". That's a tautology. > Nature is completely filled with hierarchies, where those that are stronger and more fit take resources from those are who are weaker and less fit. The sort of understanding of "evolution" and "fitness" might do well in the circles you move in. It doesn't have mu…

"Co-evolution, overlapping resource extraction, and of course the tension between the health of a group and the health of the individuals within it are just three basic ways that complicate your strong-takes/weak-taken description."

Why would that possibly complicate anything? You think a cheetah making the gazelle faster over time is some sort of gotcha that changes the fact that cheetahs eat gazelles?

I can throw out some terms and claim they'll contradict you too. Dominance hierarchy, infanticide, territoriality, and reproductive fitness are just 4 basic ways that uncomplicate my strong-takes/weak-taken description.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#707

Post by traveler01 »

nicbou wrote: post #592
traveler01 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Portuguese. It's an European country but sometimes doesn't look like it. We get fed the notion that if we work hard, study, pay our taxes in time and etc we will be good in life. Absolute lies, a big percentage of poor people in Portugal actually have jobs and these jobs are stable... We also have licensed workers receiving minimum wage (640€)...

How is that? Isn't the minimum vacation time in the EU around 20 days?

Yes but since portuguese economy is pure garbage companies tend to use some european programs for hire, which means professional internships, which is basically working, like doing real work for 9 months for a company without almost any right, just your "wage". So it means, no right for vacations or even to any other subsidie thats common.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#708

Post by traveler01 »

imtringued wrote: post #648
traveler01 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Portuguese. It's an European country but sometimes doesn't look like it. We get fed the notion that if we work hard, study, pay our taxes in time and etc we will be good in life. Absolute lies, a big percentage of poor people in Portugal actually have jobs and these jobs are stable... We also have licensed workers receiving minimum wage (640€)...

Isn't portugal's economy growing? It's just a matter of time.

No, this economy is pretty much sinking. It was never growing, basically the pandemic threw us to levels worse than 2009. And people fear if isn't for the european money we will go bankrupt, like worse than Greece.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#709

Post by apercu »

ceilingcorner wrote: post #578
apercu wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are struggling financially who cares if you are paying an extra $10 a month to rent-to-own an $800 phone? That sort of shit is just more judgemental dog whistling.

Everything that you don’t agree with isn’t “judgmental dog whistling.”

I have been watching the laziest members of society sit at the top and complain about the hardest working people with the shittiest jobs for 40 years.

Re: Survey shows people no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life

#710

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

merpnderp wrote: post #706
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no definition of "strong" here other than "one who takes from others, and no definition of "weak" as "one who is taken from". That's a tautology. > Nature is completely filled with hierarchies, where those that are stronger and more fit take resources from those are who are weaker and less fit. The sort of understanding of "evolution" and "fitness" might do well in the circles you move in. It doesn't have mu…

"Co-evolution, overlapping resource extraction, and of course the tension between the health of a group and the health of the individuals within it are just three basic ways that complicate your strong-takes/weak-taken description." Why would that possibly complicate anything? You think a cheetah making the gazelle faster over time is some sort of gotcha that changes the fact that cheetahs eat gazelles? I can throw o…

I wasn't making a broad claim about the natural world, you were. To contradict your broad claim, I merely pointed out a couple of counter-examples that suggest something other than the heirarchy-based view you described.

If you want to contradict me, given that I'm acknowledging the presence of strong-takes-weak, but noting that it's not the whole picture, you'd need to show that actually, it is the whole picture.

You can't do that (because it's not true).

Post reply on HN