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By assuming away wage inflation, you’re really stacking the deck in favor of your argument. You are also treating “ability to save or pay off debt” as a generi
by sethg 16y ago
By assuming away wage inflation, you’re really stacking the deck in favor of your argument. You are also treating “ability to save or pay off debt” as a generic thing, rather than considering fixed-payment debts (e.g., fixed-rate mortgages), variable-rate debts (e.g., credit cards), fixed-rate investments (e.g. bonds), and stocks as separate things.
If, for example, I spend 30% of my income on a fixed-rate mortgage, and both wages and prices go up by 10% across the board, then I would end up spending only 27% of my inflated income on the mortgage, and the nominal value of my house would go up by 10%.
- dnautics 16y agoHaha. Well, during my six years as a graduate student, the CPI went up 8% per annum, and my salary went from 24k to 27k. Show me some data that there isn't a lag between wages and prices. As far as I know, typically the way that people get their wages to keep up with inflation is by shifting jobs horizontally or vertically. All evidence shows that that's not working so well. In the 50s a family could survive on one salary working a 40-50 hour work week. We're increasingly seeing families requiring two breadearners pulling 50-80 hour weeks. I think my argument is sound. All I'm saying is that the blanket statement that inflation is beneficial to poor people is flat out wrong. Consider also that poor people aren't getting fixed rate mortgages (more like variable rate ones - which are worse) and aren't investing in stocks or bonds which at least have a chance of beating inflation (if you play it right and get out before crashes). If you want to critique my argument, plug in real numbers and show me I'm wrong in our current situation. I believe that the numbers will hold up in my favor.
- kenjackson 16y agoDude, you were a GRAD STUDENT. The fact that your wages went up at all is a miracle. Everyone knows that grad students are basically free labor.
- dnautics 16y agoSo, you don't think capitalists (in the sense of business owners, industrialists; not the philosophical position) have the same attitude towards fungible, unskilled labor? At what point will internet startup VCs start to take that attitude towards commodity coders? Aren't we already seeing coding jobs escape to hyderabad?
- kenjackson 16y agoNo, grad students hold a special place in society. Your role is to work 18 hours per day, at what amounts to below minimum wage, while submitting your finest intellectual achievements to journals that no one will read, nor will compensate you for your publication. I read, in a reliable journal, that Kunta Kinte, was accepted at Harvard for a PhD program. He turned it down and was quoted as saying, "There's only so much you can ask a man to do for nothing in return."
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- dnautics 16y agoThat's entirely an artifact of the fact that there are more grad students than are {necessary/sustainable/(interesting problems)}. it certainly wasn't the case 50 years ago, or hell, even 30 years ago. The notion of a "postdoc" would have been rediculous during the graduate studentship of most of the luminaries of 20th century science, and is entirely an a result of inflated spending in the sciences and a funding structure that channels money to a small number people who can rack up (mostly by luck) impressive CVs. Did max planck do a postdoc? How about Crick? Watson? Curie?
- sethg 16y agoIf your employer considers you “fungible, unskilled labor”, then you have a lot more to worry about than inflation.
- dnautics 16y agoI find this to be an incredibly elitist statement.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]