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> in this forum, where single young adults are commonly making 2-3x the median household income and yet are fond of complaining about disenfranchisement. No pr

> in this forum, where single young adults are commonly making 2-3x the median household income and yet are fond of complaining about disenfranchisement. No problems with offering your opinion. Everybody should be free to metaphorically weak noses. Here is my opinion. This is only a paradox if you think the median household income is a lot of money. It isn't. With respect to their power and positions, geeks in our society earn a lot less value than they generate, from scientists to programmers. The truth is that the USA and Europe contain corporate cartels which control programmer wages. We've already seen this at [Eric Smith]/Apple/Microsoft but it's even worse in Europe where the government endorses wage suppression for STEM employees as part of some insane plan they thought was a good idea at the time. That's why Britain and Germany have shit tech and science sectors in comparison to the States still, despite its factional political disputes threatening to drag it down, which still maintains a certain level of meritocracy. You'll be unlikely to hear much of this from the established media although the SV wage collusion did come out. A General Strike of computer programmers would cripple the world economy overnight. I'm an extremely capitalist person, not a communist, but this much is clear. The powers that be are painfully aware of the fact in inverse relation to most engineer's obliviousness to the fact. That they're pissed at that guy in the E-Embassy is not a coincidence because among many things, they're perturbed by his attempts to get a geek rebellion underway. So we get paid better than most, but nowhere close to a real market wage, which would be in the millions easily. Is there any rational reason other than a power play that makes a programmer earn a similar wage to the white collar professions? This is entirely arbitrary! If a dentist or lawyer could affect millions of teeth or cases at a moment's notice, you better believe they would be looking to be compensated for that reach.

mcguire 10y ago
"This is only a paradox if you think the median household income is a lot of money. It isn't." 50% of the households in the United States would think it is more than they are making. Any further conclusions are up to you.
- internaut 10y ago
  That way of looking at it doesn't really make sense. We know men make more money than women. The typical programmer is male. We know technical professions like engineering make more money than say, working in retail. Most workers are not engineers. Right there your benchmark is going to be at least twice median household income and we haven't even added the fact computing has been the most influential industry since the railroads and steamships got invented. So yes, I am quite confident 100k is not a high salary for the kind of work being done. It would be better to compare many programmers to venture capitalists or inventors than other traditional white collar professions. I repeat my point from the above post. It is all about the scaling factor. I expect a programmer's work to attract white collar wages without the Internet existing. But with it, that's a different story. The fact there's more programmers to compete with is meaningless in comparison to the ability to affect the majority of people on the planet.

mcguire 10y ago

"This is only a paradox if you think the median household income is a lot of money. It isn't." 50% of the households in the United States would think it is more than they are making. Any further conclusions are up to you.

internaut 10y ago
That way of looking at it doesn't really make sense. We know men make more money than women. The typical programmer is male. We know technical professions like engineering make more money than say, working in retail. Most workers are not engineers. Right there your benchmark is going to be at least twice median household income and we haven't even added the fact computing has been the most influential industry since the railroads and steamships got invented. So yes, I am quite confident 100k is not a high salary for the kind of work being done. It would be better to compare many programmers to venture capitalists or inventors than other traditional white collar professions. I repeat my point from the above post. It is all about the scaling factor. I expect a programmer's work to attract white collar wages without the Internet existing. But with it, that's a different story. The fact there's more programmers to compete with is meaningless in comparison to the ability to affect the majority of people on the planet.