7 ms·

Why is someone's age relevant? Whether you are 25 or 72, how much you earn is based on how much value you provide. A 72 year old has 47 more years of life to ha

Why is someone's age relevant? Whether you are 25 or 72, how much you earn is based on how much value you provide. A 72 year old has 47 more years of life to have potentially capitalized on.

throwaway2048 9y ago
>how much you earn is based on how much value you provide This is objectively false, and part of the myth of a meritocracy. You make what you can manage to manipulate the system into paying you, nothing more or less. That has precious little to do with value provided many times. It does a much better job at explaining how a CEO of a company going bankrupt can take home 7 or 8 digit bonuses, while a great teacher at a school might be struggling to make ends meet. Of course with your explanation we can sit secure in the knowledge that there is nothing wrong with how things work, and there is justice in it, people get what they deserve right?
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  This. The richest people made their money by letting their money do the work. How can a person compete with a dollar? The concept of increasing your wealth = delivering value died a long time ago. See also: HFT
- camus2 9y ago
  > This is objectively false, and part of the myth of a meritocracy. But that's not what meritocracy is about at first place.
nickthemagicman 9y ago
That's exactly the issue. These people have no value to provide modern society, because they're either not smart enough, or dont have the requisite quals to go into white collar work. Their 72 years of life experience were working hard in a plant and being loyal to a buiness, which then shutdown or outsourced their jobs Historically, there were places for these people. Manufacturing, truck driving, etc. White collar people are working on automating them out of existence.. So now they deserve to starve ? Because they're hard workers, honest, loyal, decent people, but just can't cut it in the modern professions that provide value? That's the Crux of it. That explains Trump to me
- cubano 9y ago
  > These people have no value to provide modern society, because they're either not smart enough, or dont have the requisite quals to go into white collar work. Or you have something on your SE history that makes you totally unsuitable for hire, according to the muckity-mucks in charge.
  - nickthemagicman 9y ago
    EXACTLY. Someone made a mistake at some point like we all do.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >Historically, there were places for these people. Manufacturing, etc. White collar people are working on automating them out of existence.. Trade agreements and austerity != robots
- WalterSear 9y ago
  They don't deserve to starve for their lack of skills. But it is very difficult to be sympathetic to the plight of the very people whose anti-intellectualism and moral ambiguity have caused so much damage to the country and the world.
  - FooHentai 9y ago
    You're lumping one group of people (people who's earing ability is diminishing over time) in with a different one (non-Clinton voters) and making the two a 1:1 correlation. That's incorrect. Also, flip it around and it works equally on the other side: 'it is very difficult to be sympathetic to the very people who's intellectualism and morality policing have caused so much damage to rural areas and the working classes'.
    - WalterSear 9y ago
      > You're lumping one group of people (people who's earing ability is diminishing over time) in with a different one (non-Clinton voters) and making the two a 1:1 correlation. That's incorrect. No, because the damage I'm referring to has been done over decades, due to support for the Republican policies, foreign and domestic, and at the state and federal level. >Also, flip it around and it works equally on the other side: 'it is very difficult to be sympathetic to the very people who's intellectualism and morality policing have caused so much damage to rural areas and the working classes'. Except that makes no sense at all - it's dissembly. Intellectualism has not hurt the rural demographic, while their refutation of it certainly has. And, it's laughable to suggest that they have been hurt by morality policing. Moreover, the bulk of the actual, legislated morality policing has come from the right, and is being driven by the hate and intolerance of, you guessed it, those same voters.
dvt 9y ago
> how much you earn is based on how much value you provide This is laughable, not to mention naive. The easiest counterexample being a bank robber. But even if we stay in the purview of the law, we have the crash of 2008, where bankers -- the very institutions that dropped the proverbial ball -- were bailed out. This reminds me of an episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Charlie tries to understand what Frank's company makes: C: What does Atwater make? F: Whaddya mean, like how much money does Atwater make? C: Uh, no, I mean, *what* do we make? F: I don't follow. We make money. C: No, I know we make money, I mean, what do we create? F: We create wealth. C: No, no, no, I mean, what do we build? What do we design? Because I have some ideas that could really help the company... F: Charlie, Charlie, we don't build anything. Leave that to the Chinks!
- snuxoll 9y ago
  This dialogue is awfully reminiscent of a certain talk about Oracle.
- skizm 9y ago
  I realize the guy is getting downvoted for being so callous, but I agree with the sentiment. You earn what people are willing to pay you, and generally people only pay for things if they get something in return. In theory the bank literally provided so much value to the country that when the citizens could not pay to keep the institution going the government stepped in and paid to keep them in business. Also I'd argue the original point was that "earn" means someone is willing paying you, meaning the bank robber example doesn't apply. /2cents
  - TimJYoung 9y ago
    You should really do some more reading on what exactly transpired leading up to, and during, the bank meltdowns in 2008-2009. The banks "provided value" like a person with a gun to your head is "providing life".
  - mturmon 9y ago
    "earn what people are willing to pay you, and generally people only pay for things if they get something in return" I'm sorry, no: this is taking some Econ 101 assumptions about supply and demand curves, and turning them around and claiming them as obvious empirical truths. In my experience, people are also willing to pay whatever other people are willing to pay for something. It's not always rational, and cartels and monopolies are major, perhaps dominant, parts of our economic system.
camus2 9y ago
> how much you earn is based on how much value you provide define value and define to whom.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Value? What someone is willing to pay. To whom? To whomever is willing to pay for it. That's the way value is decided in a free market economy.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    Nope. Value and cost can be completely different. The gap is often called "consumer surplus", though of course the consumer may be an employer. And since the labour market has more competition that almost any other, the gap can be quite wide.
    - aianus 9y ago
      The value provided is the ceiling on the cost (barring various inefficiencies like the principal-agent problem). They're not unrelated.
irrational 9y ago
"how much you earn is based on how much value you provide" I think a better way to put that is, how much you earn is based on how much it costs to replace you. It is very difficult to replace a doctor (you can't just grab any person off the street and put them into the surgery suite), but it is quite easy to replace a cashier or janitor. Likewise it is a lot easier to replace a developer than a CEO. How many people are qualified to step into a CEO role? There are a lot more people qualified to step into a developer role, so developers make less than CEOs.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  I think a better way to put this is the good old free market - there's a limited supply of CEOs countering a bigger demand while there's a much bigger supply of developers.
weeksie 9y ago
Unless you invented the Haber-Bosch process it's unlikely you've contributed anything appreciable. All of us are scions of thousands of years of human progress without which it wouldn't matter how smart or motivated you were because you'd just be a member of a small hunter gatherer band. Capitalism is great because it strokes our need to feel like we contribute but that's all. Humans don't like to be freeloaders or cheats and markets are a very good way to use that predilection, but it's important not to go cargo culting over the belief that individuals add any appreciable value to society.
1024core 9y ago
> how much you earn is based on how much value you provide. Sadly, 20+ years in the tech industry has cured me of this belief. I was at Yahoo at one time. There were quite a few "Friends of Jerry" floating around, making 6 figures, doing absolutely nothing (no offense to Jerry). Eventually they all drifted away, but not before they had accumulated a good amount of cash. I have an acquaintance who befriended a founder of a major company that went public, now valued into the 10s of Bs of dollars. For 5 years he worked there, from the beginning. No one knew what the hell he did there, but he was just floating around the CEO. He left the company recently, and bought a 5M+ pad in SF. Till today, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who can describe what he did there for 5 years. Look at many of the CEOs of companies. I could argue that for many of them, what value they provide to the company is negligible. The company runs mostly by itself, and they just hang around playing golf, collecting multi-million dollar paychecks. Terry Semel of Yahoo collected 100s of millions of dollars in stocks, but fumbled the Google deal, Facebook, etc. The man couldn't even use the Yahoo search engine properly!
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Of course that happens, but most of the time it doesnt, simply because its not sustainable. There is no difference for a CEO to be generous with stock to an employee than handing over the cash to his own son. A more valuable employee is going to tend to have better wages.
  - 1024core 9y ago
    > A more valuable employee is going to tend to have better wages. I disagree. Wages are a proxy for your value, but not a very accurate one. Among my circle of friends, I've seen 2 of them get significantly different offers for doing very similar jobs. One can negotiate very well; the other is a total nerd. Both are comparable in ability. The negotiator makes nearly 2x as much as the other guy. There is a lot more to compensation than just your "value to the company".
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      One expects that if this thread hangs around long enough, we'll eventually see claims that negotiating well against the firm is actually of some sort of value to the firm.

Why is someone's age relevant? Whether you are 25 or 72, how much you earn is based on how much value you provide. A 72 year old has 47 more years of life to have potentially capitalized on.

throwaway2048 9y ago

>how much you earn is based on how much value you provide This is objectively false, and part of the myth of a meritocracy. You make what you can manage to manipulate the system into paying you, nothing more or less. That has precious little to do with value provided many times. It does a much better job at explaining how a CEO of a company going bankrupt can take home 7 or 8 digit bonuses, while a great teacher at a school might be struggling to make ends meet. Of course with your explanation we can sit secure in the knowledge that there is nothing wrong with how things work, and there is justice in it, people get what they deserve right?

seanp2k2 9y ago
This. The richest people made their money by letting their money do the work. How can a person compete with a dollar? The concept of increasing your wealth = delivering value died a long time ago. See also: HFT
camus2 9y ago
> This is objectively false, and part of the myth of a meritocracy. But that's not what meritocracy is about at first place.

nickthemagicman 9y ago

That's exactly the issue. These people have no value to provide modern society, because they're either not smart enough, or dont have the requisite quals to go into white collar work. Their 72 years of life experience were working hard in a plant and being loyal to a buiness, which then shutdown or outsourced their jobs Historically, there were places for these people. Manufacturing, truck driving, etc. White collar people are working on automating them out of existence.. So now they deserve to starve ? Because they're hard workers, honest, loyal, decent people, but just can't cut it in the modern professions that provide value? That's the Crux of it. That explains Trump to me

cubano 9y ago
> These people have no value to provide modern society, because they're either not smart enough, or dont have the requisite quals to go into white collar work. Or you have something on your SE history that makes you totally unsuitable for hire, according to the muckity-mucks in charge.
- nickthemagicman 9y ago
  EXACTLY. Someone made a mistake at some point like we all do.
crdoconnor 9y ago
>Historically, there were places for these people. Manufacturing, etc. White collar people are working on automating them out of existence.. Trade agreements and austerity != robots
WalterSear 9y ago
They don't deserve to starve for their lack of skills. But it is very difficult to be sympathetic to the plight of the very people whose anti-intellectualism and moral ambiguity have caused so much damage to the country and the world.
- FooHentai 9y ago
  You're lumping one group of people (people who's earing ability is diminishing over time) in with a different one (non-Clinton voters) and making the two a 1:1 correlation. That's incorrect. Also, flip it around and it works equally on the other side: 'it is very difficult to be sympathetic to the very people who's intellectualism and morality policing have caused so much damage to rural areas and the working classes'.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    > You're lumping one group of people (people who's earing ability is diminishing over time) in with a different one (non-Clinton voters) and making the two a 1:1 correlation. That's incorrect. No, because the damage I'm referring to has been done over decades, due to support for the Republican policies, foreign and domestic, and at the state and federal level. >Also, flip it around and it works equally on the other side: 'it is very difficult to be sympathetic to the very people who's intellectualism and morality policing have caused so much damage to rural areas and the working classes'. Except that makes no sense at all - it's dissembly. Intellectualism has not hurt the rural demographic, while their refutation of it certainly has. And, it's laughable to suggest that they have been hurt by morality policing. Moreover, the bulk of the actual, legislated morality policing has come from the right, and is being driven by the hate and intolerance of, you guessed it, those same voters.

dvt 9y ago

> how much you earn is based on how much value you provide This is laughable, not to mention naive. The easiest counterexample being a bank robber. But even if we stay in the purview of the law, we have the crash of 2008, where bankers -- the very institutions that dropped the proverbial ball -- were bailed out. This reminds me of an episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia where Charlie tries to understand what Frank's company makes: C: What does Atwater make? F: Whaddya mean, like how much money does Atwater make? C: Uh, no, I mean, *what* do we make? F: I don't follow. We make money. C: No, I know we make money, I mean, what do we create? F: We create wealth. C: No, no, no, I mean, what do we build? What do we design? Because I have some ideas that could really help the company... F: Charlie, Charlie, we don't build anything. Leave that to the Chinks!

snuxoll 9y ago
This dialogue is awfully reminiscent of a certain talk about Oracle.
skizm 9y ago
I realize the guy is getting downvoted for being so callous, but I agree with the sentiment. You earn what people are willing to pay you, and generally people only pay for things if they get something in return. In theory the bank literally provided so much value to the country that when the citizens could not pay to keep the institution going the government stepped in and paid to keep them in business. Also I'd argue the original point was that "earn" means someone is willing paying you, meaning the bank robber example doesn't apply. /2cents
- TimJYoung 9y ago
  You should really do some more reading on what exactly transpired leading up to, and during, the bank meltdowns in 2008-2009. The banks "provided value" like a person with a gun to your head is "providing life".
- mturmon 9y ago
  "earn what people are willing to pay you, and generally people only pay for things if they get something in return" I'm sorry, no: this is taking some Econ 101 assumptions about supply and demand curves, and turning them around and claiming them as obvious empirical truths. In my experience, people are also willing to pay whatever other people are willing to pay for something. It's not always rational, and cartels and monopolies are major, perhaps dominant, parts of our economic system.

camus2 9y ago

> how much you earn is based on how much value you provide define value and define to whom.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Value? What someone is willing to pay. To whom? To whomever is willing to pay for it. That's the way value is decided in a free market economy.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Nope. Value and cost can be completely different. The gap is often called "consumer surplus", though of course the consumer may be an employer. And since the labour market has more competition that almost any other, the gap can be quite wide.
  - aianus 9y ago
    The value provided is the ceiling on the cost (barring various inefficiencies like the principal-agent problem). They're not unrelated.

irrational 9y ago

"how much you earn is based on how much value you provide" I think a better way to put that is, how much you earn is based on how much it costs to replace you. It is very difficult to replace a doctor (you can't just grab any person off the street and put them into the surgery suite), but it is quite easy to replace a cashier or janitor. Likewise it is a lot easier to replace a developer than a CEO. How many people are qualified to step into a CEO role? There are a lot more people qualified to step into a developer role, so developers make less than CEOs.

TomMarius 9y ago
I think a better way to put this is the good old free market - there's a limited supply of CEOs countering a bigger demand while there's a much bigger supply of developers.

weeksie 9y ago

Unless you invented the Haber-Bosch process it's unlikely you've contributed anything appreciable. All of us are scions of thousands of years of human progress without which it wouldn't matter how smart or motivated you were because you'd just be a member of a small hunter gatherer band. Capitalism is great because it strokes our need to feel like we contribute but that's all. Humans don't like to be freeloaders or cheats and markets are a very good way to use that predilection, but it's important not to go cargo culting over the belief that individuals add any appreciable value to society.

1024core 9y ago

> how much you earn is based on how much value you provide. Sadly, 20+ years in the tech industry has cured me of this belief. I was at Yahoo at one time. There were quite a few "Friends of Jerry" floating around, making 6 figures, doing absolutely nothing (no offense to Jerry). Eventually they all drifted away, but not before they had accumulated a good amount of cash. I have an acquaintance who befriended a founder of a major company that went public, now valued into the 10s of Bs of dollars. For 5 years he worked there, from the beginning. No one knew what the hell he did there, but he was just floating around the CEO. He left the company recently, and bought a 5M+ pad in SF. Till today, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who can describe what he did there for 5 years. Look at many of the CEOs of companies. I could argue that for many of them, what value they provide to the company is negligible. The company runs mostly by itself, and they just hang around playing golf, collecting multi-million dollar paychecks. Terry Semel of Yahoo collected 100s of millions of dollars in stocks, but fumbled the Google deal, Facebook, etc. The man couldn't even use the Yahoo search engine properly!

conanbatt 9y ago
Of course that happens, but most of the time it doesnt, simply because its not sustainable. There is no difference for a CEO to be generous with stock to an employee than handing over the cash to his own son. A more valuable employee is going to tend to have better wages.
- 1024core 9y ago
  > A more valuable employee is going to tend to have better wages. I disagree. Wages are a proxy for your value, but not a very accurate one. Among my circle of friends, I've seen 2 of them get significantly different offers for doing very similar jobs. One can negotiate very well; the other is a total nerd. Both are comparable in ability. The negotiator makes nearly 2x as much as the other guy. There is a lot more to compensation than just your "value to the company".
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    One expects that if this thread hangs around long enough, we'll eventually see claims that negotiating well against the firm is actually of some sort of value to the firm.