10 ms·

The State of American Wages 2017

57 points by mcone 9y ago

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Looking at section two I'm struck by just how much better it is to be at the top, not only are you at the top but you're accelerating upward faster than everybody else too. This is as good a place as any, do you guys have any readings on 'winner take all'-ification and/or how to reverse it?
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  This seems to be the trend throughout history. At the beginning people get to the top through merit and then they start believing that everything that happens is because of their greatness and they think they deserve an ever growing share of the economy. We are observing the creation of a new kind of aristocracy. Usually this gets only reverted through a big upheaval like a war, revolution or another big event. Then the the cycle starts new with different players.
  - JBlue42 9y ago
    Yup. And we've seen the rumblings of this in the US in the past few years, on both sides. Too bad racism is our thing over 'class warfare'. Think that goes back to the everyone thinking their a temporarily inconvenienced millionaire thing.
- bfrog 9y ago
  It will fail when quality of life degrades quickly enough for the have nots (most of us). As in we can't afford a roof of the non-roach motel kind even with well above median wages (already true). Can't afford to get sick (been true). At what point do these sorts of situations go from "well, thats just the way things are now" to "burn this mother down" is playing the lotto, but I'd say the odds are moving towards "burn it down" on the daily.
  - logfromblammo 9y ago
    I don't know... the blatantly corrupt behavior of several of the world's most prominent government officials has got me sharpening my peasant's pitchfork, refueling my castle-burning torch, and thinking "soon". But they have these fancy stab-resistant vests and flame-retardant castle treatments now, so I'm not entirely sure if I can accomplish anything significant without a howling, bloodthirsty mob behind me. It wasn't the existence of ultra-rich jerks. At least Jobs and Bezos could bring product to market. Those guys, I didn't have to worry about when I'm not buying from them. It's when the wealthies get involved in government and start changing the rules for their own benefit that makes me want to start weaving some head-catcher baskets. I can stand just being relatively poor compared to some other person. I can't stand being oppressed and exploited, or having my personal agency removed, by people incapable of even feigning empathy. Their mistake was not in being rich, but in allowing themselves to believe that wealth correlates with superiority. Right now, I'd put it at around a 2% chance of contagious civil unrest per calendar year in the US, and rising. Few want to start anything, but many are willing to join in. A lot of people are drooling over the special counsel investigations, and hoping to check a few trends with the midterm elections. The majority still wants peaceful resolution for their political issues, but a lot of people have given up on that. If it ever does flip to "burn it all down", that will go a lot faster than most people can react to it.
    - tachyoff 9y ago
      > Few want to start anything, but many are willing to join in. And yet, nobody votes. Everyone is apparently so willing to participate in violent revolution (which typically ends badly, if you read history), but nobody wants to head over to a church or school on a Tuesday in August. Nobody wants to go to city council meetings. Nobody wants to run for one of the many uncontested local elections in their area. By the time you need your guns, you’ve already lost. It’s much easier, and much more likely, to change the system slowly and deliberately. That’s not to say you shouldn’t protest, or even strike, but there is so much unseized political power in America, and too much of it is simply because of apathy.
      - 9y ago
- simonbarker87 9y ago
  The rise of the Labour Party in the early 1900s era in the UK is a non violent example of this to some extent. It was helped by the 2 world wars so there was violence and upheaval but not directly to buck the system in the UK. Bolshevism happened at the same time is Russia but that was pretty violent.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Good question. I recommend the podcast Economic Update: https://player.fm/series/economic-update-with-richard-d-wolff https://player.fm/series/economic-update-with-richard-d-wolf... It’s also available on iTunes and all the podcast apps. For books, read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. It’s a short read, too! While there are many recent books of nuanced interested in what created these problems, books on how to fix them are fairly unnecessary. Just be open minded, honest and stop rewarding perspectives which by all accounts appear to have created the current problems.
  - aklemm 9y ago
    Do you have the right link there? There seems to be a defunct podcast at that link but an active one by Richard D. Wolff available by searching.
    - gt_ 9y ago
      It’s the same one as far as I can tell but I changed the link to player.fm which might be a bit more clear.
- tabeth 9y ago
  Revolution and violence tend to be the solution.
- r00fus 9y ago
  High progressive taxes at the top end with lots of loopholes for things society benefits from (which could be seen as a form of enforced noblesse oblige) You know, like what the US had in the 50s-70s. The kind that France and other european countries have had for a long time as well. Large corporate taxes are useful too - it forces companies to reinvest (as reinvested profits are not taxed).
  - refurb 9y ago
    If you look at the effective tax rate for the highest earns it's higher now than in the 50-70's. Sure the rates were higher, but the tax code closed a ton of "loopholes" since then.
    - r00fus 9y ago
      This is untrue. In the heyday it looks like the 1% were paying about 7-8% more in effective taxes than today. Take a look at this Slate article which includes data: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/08/07/the_history_of_tax_rates_for_the_rich.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/08/07/the_history_o... "So the real tax rates rich Americans paid in the 1950s may not have been so stratospherically high as some progressives assume. But they also may have helped create a more egalitarian society. That seems worth considering." Mainly by removing the massive incentive for increased wealth past a tax threshold. 1% households back then made much less than today.
      - refurb 9y ago
        Don't forget the impact of the economy in general. The effective rate is dependent on income and during recessions the effective rate decreases as incomes decrease. This set of data shows the effective rate for the top 1% isn't that much lower than it was in the 1950's (baring the recession in 2008) and much higher than they were in the 1980's when Reagan gave his "tax cuts to the wealthy". https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170804133536/Average-Effective-Tax-Rate-on-the-Top-1-Percent-of-U.S.-Households.png https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170804133536/Average-Effec...
- fabianhjr 9y ago
  > This is as good a place as any, do you guys have any readings on 'winner take all'-ification and/or how to reverse it? Pop Culture Detective - Sociological Storytelling ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1-vPQKwXbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1-vPQKwXbY ) Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek ( http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509504862 http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509504862 )
- humanrebar 9y ago
  > ...do you guys have any readings on 'winner take all'-ification and/or how to reverse it? Reduce the complexity of society so a good baker can make a good living by starting a bakery. Business success these days seems to hinge much more on secret knowledge (taxes, real estate, employment law, patent process, certifications, etc.) than just great execution on a simple idea. Complexity is a subsidy to the well-connected and masters of the arcane at the expense of everyone else.
- refurb 9y ago
  One key think to remember is that the people at the top or bottom aren't necessarily the same people year over year. Not sure where to find the data, but I'd love to see the churn rate by different income quintiles.
  - fabianhjr 9y ago
    You can search for that data as social mobility.
  - amdavidson 9y ago
    The answer is not much churn[0], rich stay rich and poor stay poor. Though the situation is not much different than it was a generation prior[1]. 0: http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil... 1: https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-americ...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Tax capital and evaluate regulations in terms of who they benefit rather than whether they are "good for business".
bfrog 9y ago
Housing went up 6.8% since last january alone. I didn't see any news about wages matching so yeah, I think there's a hidden layer of inflation on certain goods/services (housing, healthcare) that just aren't being weighted heavy enough for.
- pessimizer 9y ago
  The good news is just that wages have reached 2007 levels for all deciles. When it comes to the rise in the average wage, the influence is concentrated in the top 10% of incomes. Black people are actually doing worse, finally reaching the wages they had in 2000, which wasn't a great year. This report definitely isn't a whitewash. It starts by making it clear that the wealthy are continuing to skim about 1/3 of middle class productivity gains (through housing, healthcare) as compared to the post-WWII period of the rise of America as a middle-class country that free-marketeers claim to want to go back to.
- CompelTechnic 9y ago
  Are there any good sources of information for a different aggregate inflation figure than CPI? I have read up on the CPI weightings before and I agree that they are inaccurate, but trying to find alternative weightings quickly leads into crank territory.
  - JamesBarney 9y ago
    The MIT billion prices project. They basically wrote a program to go out and index a bunch of prices on the internet and see how they change. The results are pretty similar to the CPI. Do you have any specific complaints against the CPI? It's actually a pretty well thought out measure.
    - wyldfire 9y ago
      If housing is excluded from CPI, why is it excluded? I'll agree that people make housing decisions infrequently, but it still seems like it should be reflected somehow with some weight into the index.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
I'd really love to see this broken down by location (more precisely than just state) and adjusted for CoL (e.g using the GS table). Knowing how supply/input of money has changed over the years is cool and all but you need to know demand/output to reason about the actual impact on quality of life.
humanrebar 9y ago
With a growing gig economy, are we seeing greater variance in wages? Are people getting consistent work or are some months or years better than others?
- bfrog 9y ago
  The "gig" economy as some people are calling it appear to be closer that of subsidized serfdom by the wealthy. What else do you call it when you pay people to feed you, shop for you, and drive you aruond?
  - EggsOnToast 9y ago
    I think that's just called the service industry. I realize the jobs you mentioned aren't glamorous lines of work to a lot of people but I think your attitude is unnecessarily degrading to the workers. There are plenty of servers, drivers, etc. that take a great deal of pride in their work even if it's just a stepping stone or secondary income source for them.
    - gt_ 9y ago
      Any evidence for this being “degrading”? Anecdotal evidence? It sounds farcicle, propagandistic, and at the very most an extreme rarity. Although sure, plenty of people in any line of work will take pride in what they do, you are shaming someone for showing consideration for the plight of workers well understood to be the front line victims of market precarity. Sounds like an ignorant stance without presenting some evidence. EDIT: HN would not let me reply to my replies so I clarified my question here.
      - refurb 9y ago
        Evidence service workers take pride in their work? You need a source for that?
      - malvosenior 9y ago
        > Even anecdotal evidence? I take Uber a lot. I often ask the driver if they enjoy Ubering and I've yet to hear a negative response. In fact most love it. The main reason they site is being able to make their own hours and earn when they want. I don't think most drivers are even aware that there's a group of upper/middle class people who think they're suffering and being degraded.
arcanus 9y ago
Remarkable that $59 an hour puts one in top-5 percent of wages. That corresponds roughly to 120k a year, which is certainly accessible to many software folks.
- RubenSandwich 9y ago
  Not that remarkable. Software Engineers, like most people, like to think of themselves as Middle Class, but we are actually Upper Middle Class.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    ...or software engineers are still middle class and the bottom fell out of the middle class at some point. A lot of this depends on what "middle class" means. You'll have a really hard time buying a family home in SF or NYC on $120k a year.
    - refurb 9y ago
      Why would one assume that a middle class person should be able to afford a home in the two most expensive cities in the US? That's like saying "I earn $400k per year but I'm middle class because I can afford a home in Beverley Hills"
      - dv_dt 9y ago
        One would assume that to continue to exist, cities should pay a broad range of people in them enough to live in the city...
        refurb 9y ago
        True, but housing prices reflect actual prices paid, so there are obviously enough people in that city who can afford those prices.
        9y ago
malvosenior 9y ago
> a typical woman now paid 84 cents on the male dollar How can they claim this if they're not breaking out pay by job title? Comparing all women to all men then saying that women get paid 84 cents on the "male dollar" implies that women are paid less for doing the same job but that data is not included in the report. Edit: If you disagree with this please tell me what I'm missing. I'd really like to understand what this is saying.
- adventured 9y ago
  They're also intentionally ignoring the disparity in hours worked, which wipes out a large portion of the 0.26 they're quoting. If you actually equalized that pay figure without equalizing the hours worked, women will be earning quite a lot more than men per hour worked.
- bproven 9y ago
  I agree they need to break this down better before making that absolute claim...
SubiculumCode 9y ago
"In both comparison periods, both men and women at the 10th percentile saw greater wage growth in states with minimum wage changes versus those without." This is encouraging, but a more useful baseline might be to compare similar state economies that did and did NOT adopt minimum wage increases.
analyst74 9y ago
It's funny Asians are left out of the racial section. hello, we exist!
- EggsOnToast 9y ago
  I enjoyed my sociology classes when I had to take them but I still haven't been able to get over the premise that asians sort've get hand-waved out of a lot of statistics and it's okay because "they're a model minority in this country". I've got to assume that the theory which justifies it goes deeper than my intro level courses covered but it just seemed lazy and a bit racist when I learned it.
  - ancap 9y ago
    Unfortunately, this is because accounting for Asians contradicts the desired political narrative.
    - refurb 9y ago
      That's the real reason. "Minorities do worse because of racial discrimination" doesn't really fly when Asians do better than whites on numerous metrics.
      - vkou 9y ago
        Asians are a huge group of people. The academic and economic success of people from south-east Asia is vastly different from those that come from northern Asia.
        adventured 9y ago
        That's a poor excuse not to break out and list their extraordinary success. Asians lead in median personal income, median personal wealth, household income, household wealth, life expectancy, employment, lowest crime, education attainment, etc. Hispanics are a huge and diverse group of people too. Yet they almost universally get lumped in together.
ancap 9y ago
These "wage decoupling" studies generally make two methodological mistakes. 1) They do not include fringe benefits in their calculation of wages 2) They use one inflation measure to adjust for cost changes in productivity over time and a different inflation measure to adjust for cost changes in wages over time. Doing a quick search over their methodology [1], to their credit, I believe EPI avoids mistake #1, but it appears they make mistake #2. Studies which include the complete value of benefits in their calculation of wages and use the same method to deflate both wages and productivity show that there is no "wage decoupling" from productivity. [1] http://www.epi.org/data/methodology/ http://www.epi.org/data/methodology/
- refurb 9y ago
  You raise a good point. If you look at monetary and non-monetary compensation, wages have increased significantly. Of course, a lot of that has gone to health insurance which is not ideal.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  >Studies which include the complete value of benefits in their calculation of wages and use the same method to deflate both wages and productivity show that there is no "wage decoupling" from productivity. Do you have an example?
  - ancap 9y ago
    https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07/ES0707.pdf https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07... http://www.nber.org/papers/w13953.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w13953.pdf http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf The last one they muddy the waters quite a big where they talk about a "net decoupling" and "gross decoupling". The first they use the same deflator and the second they use a different deflator. Using different deflators for wages and productivity means you're comparing apples to oranges. Economists Donald Boudreaux and Liya Plagashvili discuss the topic in greater detail in this WSG op-ed https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-boudreaux-and-liya-palagashvili-the-myth-of-the-great-wages-decoupling-1394151793 https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-boudreaux-and-liya-palag...
mrfusion 9y ago
Speaking of inflation. Does anyone else get amazon inflation? Every time I go to reorder something the price has gone up by several dollars. (Almost without fail)

57 points by mcone 9y ago

Looking at section two I'm struck by just how much better it is to be at the top, not only are you at the top but you're accelerating upward faster than everybody else too. This is as good a place as any, do you guys have any readings on 'winner take all'-ification and/or how to reverse it?

maxxxxx 9y ago
This seems to be the trend throughout history. At the beginning people get to the top through merit and then they start believing that everything that happens is because of their greatness and they think they deserve an ever growing share of the economy. We are observing the creation of a new kind of aristocracy. Usually this gets only reverted through a big upheaval like a war, revolution or another big event. Then the the cycle starts new with different players.
- JBlue42 9y ago
  Yup. And we've seen the rumblings of this in the US in the past few years, on both sides. Too bad racism is our thing over 'class warfare'. Think that goes back to the everyone thinking their a temporarily inconvenienced millionaire thing.
bfrog 9y ago
It will fail when quality of life degrades quickly enough for the have nots (most of us). As in we can't afford a roof of the non-roach motel kind even with well above median wages (already true). Can't afford to get sick (been true). At what point do these sorts of situations go from "well, thats just the way things are now" to "burn this mother down" is playing the lotto, but I'd say the odds are moving towards "burn it down" on the daily.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  I don't know... the blatantly corrupt behavior of several of the world's most prominent government officials has got me sharpening my peasant's pitchfork, refueling my castle-burning torch, and thinking "soon". But they have these fancy stab-resistant vests and flame-retardant castle treatments now, so I'm not entirely sure if I can accomplish anything significant without a howling, bloodthirsty mob behind me. It wasn't the existence of ultra-rich jerks. At least Jobs and Bezos could bring product to market. Those guys, I didn't have to worry about when I'm not buying from them. It's when the wealthies get involved in government and start changing the rules for their own benefit that makes me want to start weaving some head-catcher baskets. I can stand just being relatively poor compared to some other person. I can't stand being oppressed and exploited, or having my personal agency removed, by people incapable of even feigning empathy. Their mistake was not in being rich, but in allowing themselves to believe that wealth correlates with superiority. Right now, I'd put it at around a 2% chance of contagious civil unrest per calendar year in the US, and rising. Few want to start anything, but many are willing to join in. A lot of people are drooling over the special counsel investigations, and hoping to check a few trends with the midterm elections. The majority still wants peaceful resolution for their political issues, but a lot of people have given up on that. If it ever does flip to "burn it all down", that will go a lot faster than most people can react to it.
  - tachyoff 9y ago
    > Few want to start anything, but many are willing to join in. And yet, nobody votes. Everyone is apparently so willing to participate in violent revolution (which typically ends badly, if you read history), but nobody wants to head over to a church or school on a Tuesday in August. Nobody wants to go to city council meetings. Nobody wants to run for one of the many uncontested local elections in their area. By the time you need your guns, you’ve already lost. It’s much easier, and much more likely, to change the system slowly and deliberately. That’s not to say you shouldn’t protest, or even strike, but there is so much unseized political power in America, and too much of it is simply because of apathy.
    - 9y ago
simonbarker87 9y ago
The rise of the Labour Party in the early 1900s era in the UK is a non violent example of this to some extent. It was helped by the 2 world wars so there was violence and upheaval but not directly to buck the system in the UK. Bolshevism happened at the same time is Russia but that was pretty violent.
gt_ 9y ago
Good question. I recommend the podcast Economic Update: https://player.fm/series/economic-update-with-richard-d-wolff https://player.fm/series/economic-update-with-richard-d-wolf... It’s also available on iTunes and all the podcast apps. For books, read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher. It’s a short read, too! While there are many recent books of nuanced interested in what created these problems, books on how to fix them are fairly unnecessary. Just be open minded, honest and stop rewarding perspectives which by all accounts appear to have created the current problems.
- aklemm 9y ago
  Do you have the right link there? There seems to be a defunct podcast at that link but an active one by Richard D. Wolff available by searching.
  - gt_ 9y ago
    It’s the same one as far as I can tell but I changed the link to player.fm which might be a bit more clear.
tabeth 9y ago
Revolution and violence tend to be the solution.
r00fus 9y ago
High progressive taxes at the top end with lots of loopholes for things society benefits from (which could be seen as a form of enforced noblesse oblige) You know, like what the US had in the 50s-70s. The kind that France and other european countries have had for a long time as well. Large corporate taxes are useful too - it forces companies to reinvest (as reinvested profits are not taxed).
- refurb 9y ago
  If you look at the effective tax rate for the highest earns it's higher now than in the 50-70's. Sure the rates were higher, but the tax code closed a ton of "loopholes" since then.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    This is untrue. In the heyday it looks like the 1% were paying about 7-8% more in effective taxes than today. Take a look at this Slate article which includes data: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/08/07/the_history_of_tax_rates_for_the_rich.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2017/08/07/the_history_o... "So the real tax rates rich Americans paid in the 1950s may not have been so stratospherically high as some progressives assume. But they also may have helped create a more egalitarian society. That seems worth considering." Mainly by removing the massive incentive for increased wealth past a tax threshold. 1% households back then made much less than today.
    - refurb 9y ago
      Don't forget the impact of the economy in general. The effective rate is dependent on income and during recessions the effective rate decreases as incomes decrease. This set of data shows the effective rate for the top 1% isn't that much lower than it was in the 1950's (baring the recession in 2008) and much higher than they were in the 1980's when Reagan gave his "tax cuts to the wealthy". https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170804133536/Average-Effective-Tax-Rate-on-the-Top-1-Percent-of-U.S.-Households.png https://files.taxfoundation.org/20170804133536/Average-Effec...
fabianhjr 9y ago
> This is as good a place as any, do you guys have any readings on 'winner take all'-ification and/or how to reverse it? Pop Culture Detective - Sociological Storytelling ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1-vPQKwXbY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1-vPQKwXbY ) Platform Capitalism by Nick Srnicek ( http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509504862 http://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509504862 )
humanrebar 9y ago
> ...do you guys have any readings on 'winner take all'-ification and/or how to reverse it? Reduce the complexity of society so a good baker can make a good living by starting a bakery. Business success these days seems to hinge much more on secret knowledge (taxes, real estate, employment law, patent process, certifications, etc.) than just great execution on a simple idea. Complexity is a subsidy to the well-connected and masters of the arcane at the expense of everyone else.
refurb 9y ago
One key think to remember is that the people at the top or bottom aren't necessarily the same people year over year. Not sure where to find the data, but I'd love to see the churn rate by different income quintiles.
- fabianhjr 9y ago
  You can search for that data as social mobility.
- amdavidson 9y ago
  The answer is not much churn[0], rich stay rich and poor stay poor. Though the situation is not much different than it was a generation prior[1]. 0: http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobility/ http://www.epi.org/publication/usa-lags-peer-countries-mobil... 1: https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-americ...
maxerickson 9y ago
Tax capital and evaluate regulations in terms of who they benefit rather than whether they are "good for business".

bfrog 9y ago

Housing went up 6.8% since last january alone. I didn't see any news about wages matching so yeah, I think there's a hidden layer of inflation on certain goods/services (housing, healthcare) that just aren't being weighted heavy enough for.

pessimizer 9y ago
The good news is just that wages have reached 2007 levels for all deciles. When it comes to the rise in the average wage, the influence is concentrated in the top 10% of incomes. Black people are actually doing worse, finally reaching the wages they had in 2000, which wasn't a great year. This report definitely isn't a whitewash. It starts by making it clear that the wealthy are continuing to skim about 1/3 of middle class productivity gains (through housing, healthcare) as compared to the post-WWII period of the rise of America as a middle-class country that free-marketeers claim to want to go back to.
CompelTechnic 9y ago
Are there any good sources of information for a different aggregate inflation figure than CPI? I have read up on the CPI weightings before and I agree that they are inaccurate, but trying to find alternative weightings quickly leads into crank territory.
- JamesBarney 9y ago
  The MIT billion prices project. They basically wrote a program to go out and index a bunch of prices on the internet and see how they change. The results are pretty similar to the CPI. Do you have any specific complaints against the CPI? It's actually a pretty well thought out measure.
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    If housing is excluded from CPI, why is it excluded? I'll agree that people make housing decisions infrequently, but it still seems like it should be reflected somehow with some weight into the index.

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

I'd really love to see this broken down by location (more precisely than just state) and adjusted for CoL (e.g using the GS table). Knowing how supply/input of money has changed over the years is cool and all but you need to know demand/output to reason about the actual impact on quality of life.

humanrebar 9y ago

With a growing gig economy, are we seeing greater variance in wages? Are people getting consistent work or are some months or years better than others?

bfrog 9y ago
The "gig" economy as some people are calling it appear to be closer that of subsidized serfdom by the wealthy. What else do you call it when you pay people to feed you, shop for you, and drive you aruond?
- EggsOnToast 9y ago
  I think that's just called the service industry. I realize the jobs you mentioned aren't glamorous lines of work to a lot of people but I think your attitude is unnecessarily degrading to the workers. There are plenty of servers, drivers, etc. that take a great deal of pride in their work even if it's just a stepping stone or secondary income source for them.
  - gt_ 9y ago
    Any evidence for this being “degrading”? Anecdotal evidence? It sounds farcicle, propagandistic, and at the very most an extreme rarity. Although sure, plenty of people in any line of work will take pride in what they do, you are shaming someone for showing consideration for the plight of workers well understood to be the front line victims of market precarity. Sounds like an ignorant stance without presenting some evidence. EDIT: HN would not let me reply to my replies so I clarified my question here.
    - refurb 9y ago
      Evidence service workers take pride in their work? You need a source for that?
    - malvosenior 9y ago
      > Even anecdotal evidence? I take Uber a lot. I often ask the driver if they enjoy Ubering and I've yet to hear a negative response. In fact most love it. The main reason they site is being able to make their own hours and earn when they want. I don't think most drivers are even aware that there's a group of upper/middle class people who think they're suffering and being degraded.

arcanus 9y ago

Remarkable that $59 an hour puts one in top-5 percent of wages. That corresponds roughly to 120k a year, which is certainly accessible to many software folks.

RubenSandwich 9y ago
Not that remarkable. Software Engineers, like most people, like to think of themselves as Middle Class, but we are actually Upper Middle Class.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  ...or software engineers are still middle class and the bottom fell out of the middle class at some point. A lot of this depends on what "middle class" means. You'll have a really hard time buying a family home in SF or NYC on $120k a year.
  - refurb 9y ago
    Why would one assume that a middle class person should be able to afford a home in the two most expensive cities in the US? That's like saying "I earn $400k per year but I'm middle class because I can afford a home in Beverley Hills"
    - dv_dt 9y ago
      One would assume that to continue to exist, cities should pay a broad range of people in them enough to live in the city...
      - refurb 9y ago
        True, but housing prices reflect actual prices paid, so there are obviously enough people in that city who can afford those prices.
        9y ago

malvosenior 9y ago

> a typical woman now paid 84 cents on the male dollar How can they claim this if they're not breaking out pay by job title? Comparing all women to all men then saying that women get paid 84 cents on the "male dollar" implies that women are paid less for doing the same job but that data is not included in the report. Edit: If you disagree with this please tell me what I'm missing. I'd really like to understand what this is saying.

adventured 9y ago
They're also intentionally ignoring the disparity in hours worked, which wipes out a large portion of the 0.26 they're quoting. If you actually equalized that pay figure without equalizing the hours worked, women will be earning quite a lot more than men per hour worked.
bproven 9y ago
I agree they need to break this down better before making that absolute claim...

SubiculumCode 9y ago

"In both comparison periods, both men and women at the 10th percentile saw greater wage growth in states with minimum wage changes versus those without." This is encouraging, but a more useful baseline might be to compare similar state economies that did and did NOT adopt minimum wage increases.

analyst74 9y ago

It's funny Asians are left out of the racial section. hello, we exist!

EggsOnToast 9y ago
I enjoyed my sociology classes when I had to take them but I still haven't been able to get over the premise that asians sort've get hand-waved out of a lot of statistics and it's okay because "they're a model minority in this country". I've got to assume that the theory which justifies it goes deeper than my intro level courses covered but it just seemed lazy and a bit racist when I learned it.
- ancap 9y ago
  Unfortunately, this is because accounting for Asians contradicts the desired political narrative.
  - refurb 9y ago
    That's the real reason. "Minorities do worse because of racial discrimination" doesn't really fly when Asians do better than whites on numerous metrics.
    - vkou 9y ago
      Asians are a huge group of people. The academic and economic success of people from south-east Asia is vastly different from those that come from northern Asia.
      - adventured 9y ago
        That's a poor excuse not to break out and list their extraordinary success. Asians lead in median personal income, median personal wealth, household income, household wealth, life expectancy, employment, lowest crime, education attainment, etc. Hispanics are a huge and diverse group of people too. Yet they almost universally get lumped in together.

ancap 9y ago

These "wage decoupling" studies generally make two methodological mistakes. 1) They do not include fringe benefits in their calculation of wages 2) They use one inflation measure to adjust for cost changes in productivity over time and a different inflation measure to adjust for cost changes in wages over time. Doing a quick search over their methodology [1], to their credit, I believe EPI avoids mistake #1, but it appears they make mistake #2. Studies which include the complete value of benefits in their calculation of wages and use the same method to deflate both wages and productivity show that there is no "wage decoupling" from productivity. [1] http://www.epi.org/data/methodology/ http://www.epi.org/data/methodology/

refurb 9y ago
You raise a good point. If you look at monetary and non-monetary compensation, wages have increased significantly. Of course, a lot of that has gone to health insurance which is not ideal.
frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
>Studies which include the complete value of benefits in their calculation of wages and use the same method to deflate both wages and productivity show that there is no "wage decoupling" from productivity. Do you have an example?
- ancap 9y ago
  https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07/ES0707.pdf https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/es/07... http://www.nber.org/papers/w13953.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w13953.pdf http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1246.pdf The last one they muddy the waters quite a big where they talk about a "net decoupling" and "gross decoupling". The first they use the same deflator and the second they use a different deflator. Using different deflators for wages and productivity means you're comparing apples to oranges. Economists Donald Boudreaux and Liya Plagashvili discuss the topic in greater detail in this WSG op-ed https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-boudreaux-and-liya-palagashvili-the-myth-of-the-great-wages-decoupling-1394151793 https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-boudreaux-and-liya-palag...

mrfusion 9y ago

Speaking of inflation. Does anyone else get amazon inflation? Every time I go to reorder something the price has gone up by several dollars. (Almost without fail)