4 ms·

More importantly for a business, you can get a lot more bang for your buck. High School grads have much lower pay expectations.

scott_karana 11y ago
Ouch. So much for a tech meritocracy, right?
avz 11y ago
It's easy to be cynical (apologies if I'm misreading intentions here) about reduced paychecks. There is one complexity here that generally doesn't get mentioned. There are two mechanisms by which we get richer. One is by increasing our income. The other is by reducing the prices of the things we buy with it. The former is how we increase our wealth relative to other members of society. The latter is how the society increases its overall standard of wealth. On one hand each of us wants to get paid well. On the other, the more we get paid the higher the costs of the business we're in and the less of its fruits the society gets to enjoy overall. This dilemma is particularly acute if you're lucky to be in a business you genuinely care about (a huge and rare privilege). For example, if you work in space industry, your salary and benefits contribute directly to the costs of space exploration. This means that ultimately the more you earn the less space exploration we can do per buck. Generally, people's pay is a balancing act that should involve both fairness and efficiency.
- doki_pen 11y ago
  You're argument assumes that all cost is labor which is obviously not true. The higher a percentage of cost that is labor, the better of most people are, since they work. To put it simply, if everyone in the service sector made double, prices wouldn't double. The only people who would suffer are people who make most of their money through capital gains. Even many of them would benefit to have a healthier economy, margins can be replaced by volume. You would also see a spike in prices for limited resources that many can't afford, but innovation usually solves that problem. If you want a good empirical data on this, see the institution of minimum wage. Contrary to the naysayers predictions, there was little inflation and overall, a better economy.
  - avz 11y ago
    The argument doesn't really make assumptions about how you contribute to a business. Investors fighting for higher capital gains also drive up the costs for the business they fund. Higher ROI is how an investor increases her wealth relative to other members of society. Lower capital gains make the society richer overall. If you invest your savings in a space business and genuinely care about it, then the return you demand becomes the cost of space exploration. Identical dilemma to that of the worker. The class warfare between owners of capital and workers is essentially the same mechanics but taken between two specially chosen groups. In general, each individual and each group seeks to increase their share relative to others (whether you call it income or capital gains). Costs going down is how we all get richer as a society (the costs including both paychecks and capital gains).
    - doki_pen 11y ago
      I don't think workers, in the united States at least, are fighting for their share. Marketing efforts by the capital side have rendered the working side a helpless lamb ready for the slaughter. But if a symbiotic relationship becomes parasitic, sometimes the host is destroyed, taking the parasite with it.
    - doki_pen 11y ago
      The capital class is a much much smaller class. In any valid form of democracy, they should never win the way they are winning now.
- scott_karana 11y ago
  > For example, if you work in space industry, your salary and benefits contribute directly to the costs of space exploration. This means that ultimately the more you earn the less space exploration we can do per buck. Doesn't this assume that you the value you create for the company is less than or equal to your salary? Seems like the opposite of reality. In for-profit businesses, workers should always be a net gain. Your space exploration analogy would fall apart if you worked for SpaceX, for example. Paying engineers dearly doesn't mean the company makes less money: it means it can get even more lucrative contracts. So yes, in budget-constrained non-growth organizations like NASA, you might be a net-loss, but that's a pretty special case.
Eridrus 11y ago
So here's the question: If they're getting paid less than someone with a degree (and initial salary when entering the labor market has a very significant effect on how much someone earns over their lifetime since most pay bumps are incremental), will they be better off in the long run getting the degree? There's a lot of hate on degrees at HN, but I felt like I got a lot out of mine, even if I was bored in of all the intro classes; sure it's not something I couldn't learn by myself, but being employed full time tends to not give you a lot of time to just learn things that aren't necessary to do the job right in front of you.

scott_karana 11y ago

Ouch. So much for a tech meritocracy, right?

avz 11y ago

It's easy to be cynical (apologies if I'm misreading intentions here) about reduced paychecks. There is one complexity here that generally doesn't get mentioned. There are two mechanisms by which we get richer. One is by increasing our income. The other is by reducing the prices of the things we buy with it. The former is how we increase our wealth relative to other members of society. The latter is how the society increases its overall standard of wealth. On one hand each of us wants to get paid well. On the other, the more we get paid the higher the costs of the business we're in and the less of its fruits the society gets to enjoy overall. This dilemma is particularly acute if you're lucky to be in a business you genuinely care about (a huge and rare privilege). For example, if you work in space industry, your salary and benefits contribute directly to the costs of space exploration. This means that ultimately the more you earn the less space exploration we can do per buck. Generally, people's pay is a balancing act that should involve both fairness and efficiency.

doki_pen 11y ago
You're argument assumes that all cost is labor which is obviously not true. The higher a percentage of cost that is labor, the better of most people are, since they work. To put it simply, if everyone in the service sector made double, prices wouldn't double. The only people who would suffer are people who make most of their money through capital gains. Even many of them would benefit to have a healthier economy, margins can be replaced by volume. You would also see a spike in prices for limited resources that many can't afford, but innovation usually solves that problem. If you want a good empirical data on this, see the institution of minimum wage. Contrary to the naysayers predictions, there was little inflation and overall, a better economy.
- avz 11y ago
  The argument doesn't really make assumptions about how you contribute to a business. Investors fighting for higher capital gains also drive up the costs for the business they fund. Higher ROI is how an investor increases her wealth relative to other members of society. Lower capital gains make the society richer overall. If you invest your savings in a space business and genuinely care about it, then the return you demand becomes the cost of space exploration. Identical dilemma to that of the worker. The class warfare between owners of capital and workers is essentially the same mechanics but taken between two specially chosen groups. In general, each individual and each group seeks to increase their share relative to others (whether you call it income or capital gains). Costs going down is how we all get richer as a society (the costs including both paychecks and capital gains).
  - doki_pen 11y ago
    I don't think workers, in the united States at least, are fighting for their share. Marketing efforts by the capital side have rendered the working side a helpless lamb ready for the slaughter. But if a symbiotic relationship becomes parasitic, sometimes the host is destroyed, taking the parasite with it.
  - doki_pen 11y ago
    The capital class is a much much smaller class. In any valid form of democracy, they should never win the way they are winning now.
scott_karana 11y ago
> For example, if you work in space industry, your salary and benefits contribute directly to the costs of space exploration. This means that ultimately the more you earn the less space exploration we can do per buck. Doesn't this assume that you the value you create for the company is less than or equal to your salary? Seems like the opposite of reality. In for-profit businesses, workers should always be a net gain. Your space exploration analogy would fall apart if you worked for SpaceX, for example. Paying engineers dearly doesn't mean the company makes less money: it means it can get even more lucrative contracts. So yes, in budget-constrained non-growth organizations like NASA, you might be a net-loss, but that's a pretty special case.

Eridrus 11y ago

So here's the question: If they're getting paid less than someone with a degree (and initial salary when entering the labor market has a very significant effect on how much someone earns over their lifetime since most pay bumps are incremental), will they be better off in the long run getting the degree? There's a lot of hate on degrees at HN, but I felt like I got a lot out of mine, even if I was bored in of all the intro classes; sure it's not something I couldn't learn by myself, but being employed full time tends to not give you a lot of time to just learn things that aren't necessary to do the job right in front of you.