Yeah, I make the same adjusted for inflation that I did when I got my last/only promotion 10 years ago. I have grey hair, a disability, and a family that relies on the health insurance. Switching or being laid off is a risky proposition for me. It sounds like all your examples are young, childless people (who else could take a month off to go vacationing?). Life is much harder for some of us.
Yeah, the prospect of layoffs hits a little different when you're in your 50s. I have some non-techie friends in their 50s (sales, project management) who have been looking for a job for years. I've even heard third-hand about some good programmers in their 50s in LA in the same boat, although I don't know them personally.
The last time I was looking for a job at age 48, I interviewed at a bunch of startups and only got a second interview from one. It was clear that most of them were never going with someone my age unless I'd written a book or had patents or something (or was ex-FAANG), even if they didn't consciously realize that.
I reached a point--somewhat older than that--when I didn't have a real job any longer, but nobody seemed in a big hurry to get rid of me, and they were paying me pretty well. I made it through a small layoff though I wouldn't have minded the good severance. I might have hung around in different circumstances but figured I should optimize the payout up to a point and wasn't really interested in heading somewhere new.
Yep. The subliminal message I'm getting from my current managers is that I should just be a good little disabled person and work as a Walmart greeter. It's turning into harassment at this point. Just all sorts of BS. Like telling me they are doing so much for me, when my ADA accommodation is weekly 1-on-1s with the manager and my tech lead. Is that really a lot? There are people without disabilities getting weekly 1-on-1s with their managers. Maybe the weekly tech lead meeting is more than others get, but it doesn't seem that hard. I got told my productivity looked bad. I asked if he ran the numbers - he didn't. He didn't even look at my productivity before telling me it looked bad. I ran the numbers and I was in line with my peers. I would think that's the definition of bias... nobody gives a fuck. I didn't get my accommodation for 6 months last year and then they gave me a bad rating based on opinon and not metrics. They said me not getting the accommodations wasn't a factor in my performance (how?).
At my current job, in the manager training we were told "you should have weekly 1:1 with your direct reports" and i thought "who the fuck needs to be told that?". This is an illuminating comment, seems absurd to me
It's supposed to be bi-weekly here. But according to HR "that's not policy, just recommended". I had about 5-6 months were I only got 2 1-on-1s, and the feedback then was good. They completely dropped the ball and blamed it on the disabled guy.
Such a subliminal message might be "constructive dismissal" and against disability legislation. With a good lawyer you might get a decent result if they ever did fire you? On the plus side, the fact they haven't fired you means either (a) they do actually value you performance even if they're claiming otherwise (perhaps to avoid paying more) or (b) they'd quite like to fire you but fear being sued big time if they did, so holding back. Either way, it'd seem you've got some power over them if you play your cards right. So, maybe try not to stress? ;) Yeah OK that's easier said than done....
Off and on they've been threatening me with a PIP for the past year, but haven't actually triggered one. I did talk to a lawyer. They said there's not much I can do until they terminate me, or risk losing the job. They could help me respond to a PIP when they PIP me. But even if the company terminates me, the lawyer said they are inclined to negotiate higher severance than going to court because it's tricky to prove that any bias or singled out treatment was because of the disability and not something else. Although I do have notes of my manager saying requesting accommodations might have hurt me and that my department head is targeting me for some reason.
Ah well I wish you all the best with it. Sounds like a form of bullying to me :( Might not hurt to set your phone to record mode during some of those meetings. ;) I know what you're saying about making a legal case. Legal stuff is always a pain, not somewhere you wanna go if you can help it. Its bluffing right? They need to think you might consider sue-ing and could win, even if you know you wouldn't. Personally, if I was in your position, I'd be looking at what skills were in demand locally, and ruthlessly up-skilling in that stuff, during work time, ideally by working on stuff they need anyway. But, again, easier said than done...
> your recent years of peak lifetime earning potential overlapped with an industry massively overpaying its workforce
Only if the following conditions are true:
1. You spent your entire career in the US, ideally on the West Coast
2. You entered the industry early, ideally right after (or in!) university
3. You did not spend significant time in low-paying segments of the industry, such as in academia, hardware, games, idealistic open source, or the public sector
4. You did not need a significant career break, such as for major medical issues, being a SAHP, or caring for sick family members
Even if all of the above applied, certain wealth-destroying events such as an expensive illness, legal trouble, or bad divorce, might have made FIRE infeasible.
As I understand it, tech employees are typically paid a small fraction of the revenue that they bring into the company.
Outside of tech, employees are underpaid, and wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s. Profit growth has greatly exceeded wage growth since the early 2000s, with the exception of the 2008 recession.
The labour theory of value that you allude to here makes no sense. People are paid at the market price based on supply and demand, just like other goods and services.
Tech employees don't "bring in" the company's revenue. That makes the mistake of attributing the products and services of a business to its workers.
>wages haven't tracked productivity growth since the 1970s.
Propaganda. Productivity growth literally is just wage growth, by definition. It is impossible for them not to track each other.
>>Productivity growth is literally just wage growth, by definition.
No, it is the opposite, whether you are measuring Units Per Worker Hour or especially Units Per Worker Dollar.
You have a dozen $25/hr workers in a factory producing 50 widgets/hour, and you now introduce new tools, techniques, and/or materials and they now produce 80 widgets per hour, productivity per hour and per dollar has risen, but worker pay is exactly the same.
If you instead cut their pay to $22/hr their productivity in Units/WorkerHour is unchanged but productivity in Units/Labor$ has risen.
It is ONLY in the limited case where you are paying 100% by piecework that productivity tracks wages, e.g., if those workers are paid $6/Widget produced and they manage to make 50%more widgets/hr, then their pay rises with productivity. But that is uncommon and labor cost is rarely the only input.
>No, it is the opposite, whether you are measuring Units Per Worker Hour or especially Units Per Worker Dollar.
That is precisely how it is measured: by measuring wages.
>You have a dozen $25/hr workers in a factory producing 50 widgets/hour, and you now introduce new tools, techniques, and/or materials and they now produce 80 widgets per hour, productivity per hour and per dollar has risen, but worker pay is exactly the same.
As is unlikely to surprise you, productivity as a macroeconomic indicator is not measured by lookikg at factories and the tools and techniques they use.
96% of the gap can be explained by the fact that these figures compare productivity growth of the whole economy with wage growth of some workers (the lowest 80% of them - leaving out... the most productive workers), count the productivity growth of the self employed but not their wages, dont take into account overtime, bonuses, or health insurance benefits, and intentionally use different means of measuring inflation across the two figures in an attempt to inflate the numbers.
At the end of the day they track very closely because they are both measures of wages. Productivity is just net output by hour worked and wages is just net output by hour worked. If you use different methods for calculating each you can make either look higher but it is pure methodology.
>>That is precisely how it is measured: by measuring wages.
Again, NO.
Just go to the Bureau Of Labor Statistics and their description of how productivity is measured [0]:
>>"For a single business producing only one good, output would simply be the number of units of that good produced in each time period, such as a month or a year."
Notice not a single mention of wages
It then goes on describing how they measure aggregate output in sectors of the economy. Wages is only mentioned ONCE, for charities and government organizations (since their output is not sold).
>>Government services and the output of nonprofits are not sold in the marketplace, so these types of output can be difficult to measure. For example, what is the output of a charity? Often these outputs are measured by the wages and benefits - compensation - paid to workers producing these outputs.
and then they point out:
>>
Since productivity compares output to input, if the output is measured by the input, any time the input grows, the output grows by the same amount.
>>Measuring output by labor input is similar to including the same amount in the numerator as in the denominator of the labor productivity ratio.
>>This implies no productivity growth for that group of workers, dampening productivity change for the industry and sector. For this reason, BLS productivity measures exclude government, nonprofits, and private household production.
So the ONLY mention of wages is specifically EXCLUDED from measures of productivity.
Then the summary:
Output is measured primarily as an index of product revenues, adjusted for price changes. Adjustments are made to ensure that output that is sold to another business within the same measuring unit (industry or sector) is excluded to prevent counting it more than once.
Again, no mention of wages.
I have no idea where you get your misconceptions, but you really need to study some actual economics before posting pages of obviously wrong nonsense.
>Productivity growth literally is just wage growth, by definition. It is impossible for them not to track each other.
I don't understand what you mean by this. If i own a business, and employee productivity increases but i don't increase wages doesn't that disprove your statement?
The graph on this page disagrees, can you explain please? I haven't heard anyone say the two concepts are the same before.
As I have heard it "productivity" is roughly gdp/hour, which can be different from wages/hour (but you generally expect the two to be related / correlated).
> Tech employees don't "bring in" the company's revenue.
Sure they do. Every employee contributes to the revenue a company brings in. If they don't, then they should be fired.
> Productivity growth literally is just wage growth, by definition.
Completely false. You accuse a commenter in a sibling thread of not having a good grasp of economics, but that feels like the pot calling the kettle black, here.
You don't "bring revenue in". You are paid for providing a service to your employer. Your employer brings revenue in by providing quite different goods and services to its customers.
By your logic, "cost centres" (like IT, HR, and office management) within a business are bad because they don't bring in any revenue. Except of course in reality they are the same: they provide a service to the business that the business makes use of in providing goods and services to its customers.
I am being pedantic but for good reason: there is no a priori reason why your pay should go up just because your employer has become more profitable, except that it is in the interests of employers to make use of resources efficiently. If they are profitable then hiring more people so they can make more money is good. But it isn't a matter of "deserving" to be paid more or something. Pay isn't based on what you deserve for many reasons, including that you can't attribute the business's profits to its workers and ignore, for example, the investment in capital resources (including IP) required to enable the workers to work effectively. Mainly though because of supply and demand.
If an improvement in productivity makes you more efficient then there should be higher demand for you and you should be paid more. And indeed that is exactly what happens: people in industries that have productivity improvements are paid more afterwards than before.
Minimum wage, fairly, should have been around $32 in 2019 or so. I haven't run numbers lately because it's depressing, but I bet it's worse now.
You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel.
I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years."
I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013.
Gasoline changes prices so much I can't really say, it's about twice as expensive for 87 here as 12 years ago, but 93 is 2.5+ times higher.
Food? Don't get me started.
I live in the rural south. I don't really care about price fixing in Los Angeles or silicon Valley.
There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly". What is the minimum amount you should be able to pay someone an hour? Surely it is the amount where if you didn't, someone else would pay them more.
There are many people who do jobs worth much less than $32/hour. That min wage would just make them illegal to employ.
>You can't go off mcdonalds sandwiches, and you can't use the economic indicators that ignore food and fuel.
You can't use economic indicators that track volatile commodities either. We use baskets of consumer goods and the inflation tracking is very accurate in short time frames but it becomes harder to compare the further out you get. A TV today is much better than a TV even 10 years ago but it is hardly even the same product as one from 1970.
>I've heard wild numbers from "the dollar is worth 50¢ compared to 20 years ago" to "the dollar has lost 98% of its value in the last N years."
What is wild about that? If you had 50c then and you had invested it in even relatively poorly performing investments it would be worth much more than $1 now.
>I'm not an economist, but I do know my electric bill has been thr exact same dollar amount for 12 years, and I've halved my usage twice in those years. That puts the dollar purchasing power for power at 25% of 2013.
That you are not an economist is obvious.
You are aware that dollars buy more things than energy from your energy provider according to your energy plan, yeah?
> There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly".
Sure there is. It's the amount you have to pay someone such that they can work a reasonable amount of hours (40/week), such that they can afford all of life's essentials while having a little extra to save for a rainy day, as well as have a little fun.
But certainly some people's poilitics ignore the human aspects of the world we live in, and think that the "free market" (something that doesn't actually exist) will sort it out.
What are life's essentials? Do you have the right to a car? To one bedroom per child or should they share? Do you have the right to central heating so you can wear a tshirt indoors or should you be expected to wear a jersey in winter?
The minimum wage doesn't make anyone be paid more. It only causes anyone paid less than it to instead be paid $0, and instead be paid an unemployment benefit. How is that reasonable?
A higher minimum wage puts upward pressure on wages at the lower end of the scale, which helps the working class so that they aren't working and on medicare, section 8, food stamps etc. - as many Wal-mart workers currently are. That saves us money in the long run.
When Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15/hour, everyone screamed it would lead to mass unemployment. That never happen. Suddenly the lower class had more money to spend, which boosted the economy as much or more than higher wages hurt bottom lines.
Higher minimum wage doesn't put upward pressure on other low wages, and even if it did, pushing up the wages of people making $30/hr by taking away jobs from people making $20/hr to put them on benefits earning $15/hr is obscene.
>which helps the working class so that they aren't working and on medicare, section 8, food stamps etc. - as many Wal-mart workers currently are. That saves us money in the long run.
A higher minimum wage leads to lower employment not higher employment.
>When Seattle raised the minimum wage to $15/hour, everyone screamed it would lead to mass unemployment. That never happen.
It has been shown many times that a higher minimum wage causes less employment. It is also obvious from first principles and basic logic. Price controls are a very bad idea, and wages are no exception.
> A livable wage in the geographic jurisdiction they are in.
This is called the Iron Law of Wages. As its name implies, it's neither prescriptive nor pleasant - but it is guaranteed to be liveable.
> Including stuff like transportation, healthcare, food, heat, housing, and insurance.
The thing that trips people up is that the word "liveable" is a synonym for "subsistence," not "fullfilling." A wage that's only liveable would feel quite exploitative to most people.
The intention of "minimum wage" in the US is not merely subsistence level. FDR said, "by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living." [0]
The "iron law of wages" is instead an economic principle that wages tend to trend downwards until people are paid the minimum possible for subsistence. It's not meant to be a goal.
There are ten million stated reasons for the minimum wage! Pretty much the only one that economists can agree on is that it's helpful to prevent abuses of monopsony power in small towns.
Regardless of what FDR said, a living wage is guaranteed because people will not accept anything lower.
The problem with a "decent" living is that reasonable people can disagree about what that looks like. Roommates? Children? An unemployed spouse? Vacations and retirement?
It's not the government's job to guarantee all of that stuff and I would rather we focus on stopping wage and tip theft and protecting the rights of workers (banning noncompetes, decoupling health insurance, etc.) instead of increasing the minimum wage towards some poorly-defined goal.
There's also the other side of the minimum wage debate, which is that most of the specific numbers people list as "liveable" do actually result in some folks losing their jobs and becoming unemployable. There was even a recent BERKELEY study that showed this!
>>There is no such thing as what minimum wage should be "fairly"
Nonsense.
There most definitely IS a definition of a fair minimum wage -- it is the definition used when it was originally introduced into law:
The wage necessary for a full-time (40hr/week) worker head-of-household to support a family of four above the poverty line -- spouse & kids in a house/apartment, food, medical, education, etc..
We have Walmart workers collecting $6 Billion in benefits per year to stay above the poverty line while the Waltons sit on a $250Billion fortune, it is clear we are subsidizing the rich by failing to set an above-poverty minimum wage.
>The wage necessary for a full-time (40hr/week) worker head-of-household to support a family of four above the poverty line -- spouse & kids in a house/apartment, food, medical, education, etc..
Food of what quality? That available in the 1930s?
Medical of what quality? 1930s medical care?
Education to primary level as most had in the 1930s or more than that?
You don't have a natural right to receive the fruits of the labour of others.
>We have Walmart workers collecting $6 Billion in benefits per year to stay above the poverty line while the Waltons sit on a $250Billion fortune, it is clear we are subsidizing the rich by failing to set an above-poverty minimum wage.
Then stop giving benefits to people that have jobs.
There are standards for virtually everything. Meet the current basic standards. For food, a basket of FDA/USDA-approved for distribution food to make a basic but nutritious diet for the family of 4. For housing, you could go with minimums for HUD housing. For education, through public high school. These are not hard to figure out (but may be a bit tedious). These are also minimums required to maintain a functional workforce in a modern society.
>>You don't have a natural right to receive the fruits of the labour of others.
>>Then stop giving benefits to people that have jobs.
Right. So what you want is a Dickensian crabs-in-a-bucket labor market where the wage level is set by the most desperate person, who will work for hours to get a crust of bread for his/her next meal. A market where employers can abuse workers at will because there really are 500 others outside the gate who will take his job if he isn't willing to take the beating?
We are no longer living in a frontier society where 97%+ of the workers are producing food.
That insanely over-simplistic model has been tried, and it is a resounding failure, both for every society, every country, and every individual living in it. Those societies inevitably collapse or grow out of it with minimum standards for everyone. And while it is obviously awful for the workers, it is no day at the beach for the oligarchs either, who must live in secured closed-off areas, always frightened of everyone in the public as well as their rivals in power. Unproductive misery for everyone is what you want?
So, NO, the solution is not to just make the people at the bottom more poor, more hungry, and more desperate.
The solution is to stop giving benefits by ensuring that their employer pays the workers sufficiently that they do NOT NEED benefits to survive.
If an employer cannot pay their workers a living wage they do NOT have a business model.
They have an exploitation model.
The exploitation model specifically violates your above principle saying that the employers have a natural right to the fruits of the workers' labor to whatever degree they can exploit the worker by their desperation.
You aren't saying the no one has a right to the fruits of anyone else's labor, you are only saying that no other worker has such a right, but the employers do.
You are saying that if someone has power or deception, whatever they can take is their right.
I say, NO, that is the most dishonorable and amoral of societies.
Despite agreeing with the rest, should the kid who graduated high school 2 months ago (1) earn as a grocery cashier to support a family of four, including medical and education, (2) should they not work / not be employable, or (3) is there room for a minimum lower than this definition?
If a high school graduate comes in and offers the same value as the other cashiers making the same amount of money, then, yes, they should get paid the same. If the other cashiers are more valuable, then they should be paid more.
this isn't really as difficult as everyone makes it. "Minimum wage is a company's way of telling you that if it was legal to pay you less, they would."
If a company can't afford to pay cashiers at different rates based on their tenure and skill, then i guess the company will have to deploy self-checkout, and some people don't like that, so they'll take their business elsewhere. If that means that all grocery stores go "self checkout" then i suppose farmer's markets will become a lot bigger.
This is all about grocery cashiers, please do not try to extrapolate my words to anything else, i am speaking to this very narrow thing.
Sure, we can approach from that angle, instead of the just-graduated-high-school angle.
I did not talk about paying cashiers at different rates. I addressed the single minimum rate from the earlier comment, where a household's single income can "support a family of four above the poverty line -- spouse & kids in a house/apartment, food, medical, education, etc [without relying on assistance programs]". According to the back of this envelope, that would be $70,000/yr = $33/hr. In some areas or with other decisions, maybe only $50,000/yr = $24/hr.
A grocery store would be rare indeed that could afford to pay their lowest-skilled, lowest-tenured cashier at $24/hr. Surely society can come up with a better answer than telling so many grocery stores that self-checkout is the only practical way to stay in business.
if you search HN for genewitch, you will find many times have said that exact dollar amount should be minimum wage, so this isn't a gotcha.
for years^, i've been saying this, since 2018 or 2019. $33 an hour. So if you re-read what i actually said, i explain that i don't really care if a supermarket can't afford to pay cashiers at a livable wage. they can suffer from lack of staff, or go full self checkout and robots, or go out of business. I don't care, like, at all. "But genewitch, what about the families of the shareholders and CEO and board?" uh huh, luckily they can go get a job and make a livable wage somewhere else.
^i've only been posting on HN since 2020, but my point stands
You having said so previously has no impact on this belief:
> A grocery store would be rare indeed that could afford to pay their lowest-skilled, lowest-tenured cashier at $24/hr. Surely society can come up with a better answer than telling so many grocery stores that self-checkout is the only practical way to stay in business.
I'll take you at your word that you don't care to come up with a better answer, and that means I'll gain nothing further from discussing this with you. I'll bow out. Take care!
I would say yes, it is reasonable to have an exception for lower wages for teenage part-time entry-level workers, and maybe some partially-disabled workers.
Of course there would need to be provisions that it not be abused and just used for all positions. E.g., it cannot be used for workers 21 years old or older, etc. And the rules against abuse need to be solid, as we can guarantee that whatever rules are made, employers will work hard to abuse and game the system to their advantage and at the employee's cost.
"Doctor, I need you to declare me disabled or else I'll lose my job when I turn 21. I need this job, and I don't know if I can find another one at the 21yo minimum wage."
I really want to like what you're saying, but I see too many problems. I don't have answers.
>>Of course there would need to be provisions that it not be abused ... And the rules against abuse need to be solid, ...
Exactly that sort of scenario is why I included those phrases.
ANY large system will have imperfections, inadvertent waste, and openings for abuse. Of course these should be minimized, but that shouldn't stop us from making a system. Better a few people benefit undeservedly than many who deserve and need the benefits go hungry.
The need for a system doesn't imply that your proposal is better than the status quo.
> Better a few people benefit undeservedly than many who deserve and need the benefits go hungry.
Agreed. Now consider that regulations exclude people, not include them, overall, by far. (I say this with a job that sees that daily, and where a frequent criticism is that implementing those regulations is government waste.)
What I'm taking away from this is, contrasting with an option I generally dislike, that option actually looks much better than I have previously thought, and it looks definitely better than raising the minimum wage. That is raising the corporate tax rate, which is at historic lows from what I understand, and increasing public benefits. You mentioned Walmart's profits being subsidized by benefit programs, but that valid and important complaint seems to be taken care of this way. This also starts to sound a lot like UBI, which I may have never really understood and have never supported. Maybe I should support it.
That could be a good solution to increase the corp tax rate and provide more benefits and more broadly. The problem is corporations, especially large corps, have historically bought favors from congress, with the result that the tax burden falls on the middle class.
UBI is an astoundingly good concept, especially when people get automated out of their jobs — tax every producing entity at a level required to distribute funds and services (e.g., healthcare) to everyone just above poverty level.
The cool thing is that with UBI, there is basically no need for a minimum wage. First, potential workers are already being supported above poverty, and second, corporations will need to offer a wage and working conditions that together are worth it for workers to bother getting up and going to work. UBI would essentially give everybody "F.U. money", i.e., the option to get up and walk out anytime without endangering their family's ability to live. Studies testing UBI also repeatedly show people consistently spend the money well and do not squander it. The principle once advocated by some conservatives that the people themselves know best how to spend their money is really true (not absolutely, but at a very high level).
When I get to 50, I will still need some sort of job. Maybe I can get a lower paying or low stress job. That's me being in the industry for my entire career, good credentials, etc. I will have been making somewhat less than the national developer median (about $130k is median). I live in a moderately high cost area. Even the people that live in high cost areas making 2x my salary have significant tax and real estate burdens. Not everyone can FIRE, especially if you're below the median.
Having FIRE doesn't mean you're ready to retire and build ships in a bottle or whatever. I like programming, it puts me in flow state and keeps my brain young. I want to go out on my own terms. Also good luck with FIRE if you're putting kids through college. And thirdly, for those of us at normal companies the pay has been nice, but not FAANG mid-six-figures nice.
You don't have to "put kids through college". If you're in the US, they can borrow to go somewhere decent and affordable. Harvard has never been for you, it has always been for the children of very rich New Englanders.
Not passing any judgements on any life choices here, but occasional months off sounds like a good thing. I would not necessarily need to go anywhere to enjoy (make use of) the time. The notion of getting a month off with pay sounds good.
That sounds good, so long as there is similar employment at the end of it. As a sabbatical it sounds great. As a layoff, the uncertainty sounds crushing. It could take months to find a new position, especially with the disadvantages I have, I would likely need to start looking immediately and wouldn't be able to enjoy it.
Yeah, it's the same problem I have when the 20 somethings use the term "funemployment".
If you're single and have no responsibilities, sure. The second you have a mortgage, medical conditions that need health insurance, or need money because you had a family emergency and had to dip into savings, it's not "funemployment" at all.
There was a period in tech when a lot of people had a certain sentiment that they could drop a few emails and have a well-paying job the next week. That's never been the norm for professional work.
During dot-bomb I was relatively lucky if not necessarily super-well compensated but I knew a lot of people who basically dropped out of the professional labor market.
Just to be clear, I mean time off and returning to the same job. Shouldn't we be aiming for a future where we do not have to work like dogs to earn enough to struggle at home?
How do you do this? Taxes? Increase worker salaries? Government funded health care?
Access to cheap labor is what really drives economies. Market forces are what drive labor salaries. More people cheaper labor.
It used to be in the 60s, 70s, and to some extent the 80's a single wage earner was enough in a family. By the end of the 80's it became clear that 2 wage earners was how people got ahead in life.
I'm not sure how we do this, but our current economic system is garbage. As the saying goes, the other systems we've tried may have been worse, but that doesn't make this system good.
A significant portion of the world population works themselves to the bone while barely scraping by. This is not the mark of a successful civilization. It's gross.
Maybe as a start, we put limits on the ratio of executive compensation to the lowest paid jobs in a company. And require that a significant percentage of profits be distributed to employees rather than shareholders.
Yes, that will slow economic growth. But even as someone reasonably well off, who depends on investments for his future, that seems much more fair than what we're doing now.
I don't know and it is a good question. Maybe we need three or four wage earners per household. Maybe 60-70 hour work weeks. I would like to hear some ideas that does not include more grinding down workers for GDP. Maybe another measure for a health society. Growth certainly help lots of people but when an economy is mature maybe more is not necessarily better, at least for the average worker.
The main thing is that the share of GDP per worker has gone down, meaning the distribution is skewed. But I agree that there isn't a good option that I've heard to change this without other negative side effects.
We don't let the billionaires suck of 90% of the revenue, that's how. Them making 10% of their current salaries stock would still have them well well into retirement.
Oh, and not doing 2 trillion in tax cuts for the rich would help.
If you are unable to obtain a satisfactory replacement position after that time, it might be very desirable to have the option to get your old job back.
Some businesses are seasonal, so it might make sense there as well.
"Originally, layoff referred exclusively to a temporary interruption in work, or employment"
No sympathy from me either; instead, he gets appreciation. Thank you, OP, for bringing more life into the world. It's hard and (obviously) frequently thankless.
Thanks, but I'm not sure this deserves appreciation either. We already have plenty of life in this world. Perhaps so much so that the human life is negatively impacting other life, including other humans. I'd be much more appreciative of people making life better than making more of it.
That's a pretty weird and heartless thing to say. Having children is not a vice that deserves to be judged anymore than not having kids is. I could enumerate why fewer kids is bad for our collective future as a whole, but I won't, because the decision to have kids is a personal choice.
Also, having kids is generally not the difference between having to work or not—most people have to work for a living regardless of family status. It's just that the stakes are higher when you have dependents.
You can view what I wrote whatever way you want, but I stand by it and don't think it was heartless at all. I think not having children is actually more heartful and caring than having children.
Look, out of all the people who come into this world, how many people can we say were a net positive for this planet? I see that you are currently at Airbnb. Great. You are lining your pockets, but I'm not sure what the net benefit to this planet is. If I have children, the chances are great that they were just resource consumers and waste producers. There are too many people on this planet, and chances are my having kids will make this problem worse. Of course, on a local scale, your children will add love to your life, you will help them out financially, they will live at home with their parents as adults, etc. This is not being selfless. You are helping your progeny which is, ultimately, selfish. What is truly selfless is to meaningfully help someone who has no connection to you. Fight for the poor, support countries that are being terrorized by aggressor countries, adopt a shelter animal, etc. That is truly selfless. Having kids--selfish. Look at Elon Musk and his 10+ kids.
> the decision to have kids is a personal choice.
And I choose not to burden the world with my own children. I've had numerous exchange students, adopted shelter animals, and I'm volunteering at a local shelter. I'm not under any illusion that my life here is going to be a net positive for the planet, but I am trying really hard. Having children, with the traditional notions about it that you regurgitated, is a vice when you consider that we are reaching our planet's capacity for supporting all of us. Ruining other planets such as Mars, I don't feel is a morally acceptable choice.
So you don't think people should have kids, that's a fair viewpoint, I don't begrudge you that.
But you responded to a thread where someone was expressing the considerations they have about why being laid off is personally scary to them. Using that to grind your axe about whichever of their life choices you find morally dubious is the heartless part.
It's not really surprising though since your first reaction to my comment was to look at my profile and cherry-pick something to condemn me with.
I didn't ask for your sympathy. I'm merely responding to someone who doesn't understand that others have factors that affect how hard it is to change jobs.
On a side note, I'm getting whiplash by how fast we go from
It's your fault for having children [overpop, resource exhaustion]
to
It's your fault for not having children [low-birthrates]
back to
It's your fault for having children [whatever this is]
I think a lot of the "low-birthrate" fearmongering is just a way to distract people.
Overpopulation was projected to be an issue, but we actually addressed it pretty well over the last 50-75 years and global average birth rates are in a pretty good place now.
I understand the trade offs you mention. I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” You have chosen a different payoff - your family, certainty of health insurance, etc. You get the benefits that children bring and the joy of being a parent. The “young, childless people” have made a different choice - more freedom in employment decisions but no joy from children. Everyone has their own cost/benefit analyses on these issues. That is life.
Haha you must be young. It's entirely possible young people will make the same choices and face the same realities I currently do. They just havent gotten to that stage yet. Even comparing my life now to my life 10 years ago would show the younger me had an easier life. However, having a disability is not a choice, and in general makes life harder than those without a disability. Don't get me wrong - I believe life is hard for almost everyone at at least one point or another in unique ways and to varying degrees.
Actually, I am not young. I just retired and have been thinking about my life, career, etc. I do not have a disability (my wife may disagree) and I agree it makes life more challenging (wouldn’t be called a disability otherwise). I also agree with you that life can be hard, children are born with health challenges, children make poor decisions with terrible consequences, spouse dies, you get cancer, etc. We all need to get through these. That does not change the fact that we all have decisions to make everyday about our careers, our families, our health, our financial situation, and so on. When we look at those who made different decisions, it does not necessarily mean they made better or worse decisions, just different decisions.
I have been thinking about this a lot recently. A former boss and good friend who is incredibly smart and effective in the work place asked why the two of us had never gone the PE route and been more successful. While he is very successful by most standards, he sees people flying private jets all the time who do not appear more skillful, yet have been more successful. As I think on this, I feel I simply was never willing to go all in on the risk required to achieve that level of financial success. I tried co-founding a company once when I was 28 while engaged and importantly, before children. I felt I could take the risk and if I failed, could bounce back. I did fail - company did ok but my I ended up disliking working with my senior partner - and I did bounce back, ending up at GE.
After that, I did not feel comfortable taking that level of risk until my children were off to college and no longer dependent on me an I had enough money saved that my wife and I would be ok for a long time. The people I know who have been jet-money financially successful took huge risks. They were all in on their venture(s). Frequently this cost them their marriage and/or relationships with the children. This was their choice. Their cost/benefit analysis to optimize their success criteria. Some regret the decisions - they underestimated the effort and impact on those they cared about. However, most have not. They are happy with how things have turned out.
The other factor you are missing in your analysis of PE route is the number of musical chairs are limited. There can only be 1 taylor swift not millions. So the choice is not for everyone. Even if everyone made that choice, a million taylor swifts will not happen. Surviorship bias is real.
It sounds like, by and large, you've had a pretty good life. But please understand that, while you've made good decisions and have taken advantage of the opportunities in front of you, a large chunk of your success comes down to random chance.
Many people do not fall on the good side of that random chance.
Dealing with poverty in my youth, homeless at 16, no parents to help me, debilitating ADHD, tourettic OCD, bipolar type II, CPTSD from 10 years of intense childhood physical/emotional abuse, my full-ride college scholarships illegally stolen from me by a high school who knew I was homeless and had no recourse and allowed a teacher to illegally modify my grades out of pure spite, malnourished, intense, crippling sciatica, fused lumbar discs, possible fibromyalgia, and then developing excruciating daily pains and physical disability which greatly impacted my life and sometimes made me suicidal, which turned out to be an autoimmune disorder that took 10 years for doctors to figure out... an extremely intense case of gout developing since my teens...
I just keep pushing on but every day I see people who take so much for granted, and who are so ready to pass judgement without appreciating the basic privilege of good health.
I've had to deal with so much struggle that the average person wouldn't even want to take the time to hear all of it much less believe it, once someone momentarily realizes that they'd have it comparatively easy compared to others, they often get defensive as they begin to realize that their life doesn't have nearly as many barriers as they've convinced themselves, and they have to come to terms with not applying themselves harder. It's easier for them to be dismissive and tell me, "all your problems would go away if you worked out more" or tell me to get on a keto diet, or whatever have you, as if I haven't tried every single thing I can think of.
And the insane thing is I am still quite privileged compared to some people in war-torn countries, even if they are able to move around without swallowing a truckload of ibuprofen. Reminding myself of that is a source of strength and determination to keep moving forward.
Well, the person you originally replied to mentioned having a disability, and your response was "yeah but you have kids so really you chose this and also I disagree that life is harder for some people."
The generous interpretation would be that you have sufficiently good health that you do not have to structure your life around it, and therefore lack understanding of the challenges faced by those who do.
The alternate interpretation, that you do understand and choose to ignore and dismiss, would be rather less generous to you.
I actually agreed with them that a disability makes life harder. I then pointed out other things that an individual did not choose can make life harder as well.
As for bringing up children, I did make the leap that that is generally a big difference between younger employees and older employees.
Hmm.. I think we are talking past each other. In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.
In my follow up comment I attempted to clarify my comment in response to giantg2's reply. "I do not have a disability (my wife may disagree) and I agree it makes life more challenging (wouldn’t be called a disability otherwise)." I completely agree a disability makes life more difficult. I simply added that it is not the only thing that makes life more difficult. All of these things need to be considered when making career/job decisions.
Let me take a step back here. You're contradicting yourself.
> In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.
> I completely agree a disability makes life more difficult.
Do you not see how it's hard to square the first statement, with the second? You do not agree that life is much harder for some people, but you do agree that a disability makes life more difficult?
> I think we are talking past each other. In my initial comment I said "I do disagree with your assertion that “Life is much harder for some of us.” I still maintain that comment.
It sounds like you have very little experience with people outside your socioeconomic class. (Or you do have that experience, but have drawn the wrong conclusions from it.) It is an obvious, proven fact that life is much harder for some people than for others.
I didn't publicly shame anyone. I pointed out their clear position of privilege to help them learn to apply empathy.
I think helping one another to build empathy is a good thing, and even if the person I replied to is unable to do so, it's possible that observing them tell a disabled person that they don't think their life is any harder will help other third parties such as yourself build that empathy.
I did not flag their original comment, but it's not for no reason it was flagged to death.
Text is a fairly imprecise form of communication. It's pretty common for multiple people to get triggered by misreading a post the same way if such a misread is possible.
In other cases downvoted posts are often the most interesting precisely because they trigger people with points they don't want to consider. I certainly wouldn't cite it as proof of any position.
I never said people choose disabilities. I tried to point out there are other life changing issues that can affect a person that they also did not choose.
As for starting a family, I agree not all can. My mistake was jumping from their assertion that I must be young to mean I did not have the responsibilities of an older worker such as taking care of a family. The less generous interpretation of that accusation is what? I am stupid? Ignorant of life? Not suffering from the impact of issues that I did not choose?
