3 ms·

Consider: You are worth about $10mil, in terms of labor. If you work for 40yrs, from 20 to 60, then you are worth about $250k/yr. Conclusion: We are underpayin

Consider: You are worth about $10mil, in terms of labor. If you work for 40yrs, from 20 to 60, then you are worth about $250k/yr. Conclusion: We are underpaying nearly everybody in society.

whiddershins 6y ago
You don’t work all your waking hours, and if someone does, they usually make that much or more.
- lidHanteyk 6y ago
  You've been downvoted, but it's worth pointing out exactly why you're wrong: I am talking about salary, which means that folks are compensated not based on a number of hours spent working but on the overall impact that their work has on the organization. Also, I have been salaried several times in my life, and in each case, I was expected to do various things outside of a 9-5 "workday" sort of framework. Without being too self-oriented, I think that I earned the salary commanded. I've never been compensated even $200k/yr, and my highest is about $150k/yr. Even those of us that are well-paid and well-respected for our work are not paid enough to justify the time that we lose to work.
  - whiddershins 6y ago
    I truly am not understanding how anything you write makes me wrong. If we value a life at a certain amount, it seems we can value it out at per year, per hour. These are all just estimates. But if your life is worth x per year, and you x * z number of waking hours, and you trade some of those waking hours for cash ... Where am I wrong? Edit: I’m not even sure why we are pruning non working years from the calculation.
    - lidHanteyk 6y ago
      Aha! It's because we are talking about the value of a laborer, of a plebian, of an everyman. The value of the typical person, to some society, is the labor that they can provide to the society. Money is the only way that society can estimate the value of people. This might be a foreign way for you to look at people, but it's common in the Marxist worldviews. In other words, society doesn't care what you're doing when you aren't working, as long as you're leaving society alone. Thus society has no real reason to pay you just for existing. We might demand that our society put money in everybody's pocket, as a way of creating a capitalism which respects humanity, but it is not strictly necessary, because money is not strictly necessary for a society to exist.
      - whiddershins 6y ago
        Yeah you value some of your own time, and choose not to trade that to society but just use it for yourself. So the total value of your life, to you, should necessarily include all the money you can earn plus all the things you do that you value more than working. Etc. Edit: I’m not disputing that other systems, including non money based systems are possible, it just seems way outside of the scope of the original contention.
shoes_for_thee 6y ago
Seems like you're being intentionally reductive to get a rise out of people. But this argument has been had a million times in the form of -- - All corporate profit is theft! - Profit not theft because money is our primary means of compensating people for shouldering risk, etc etc etc. I would nonetheless appreciate a pay raise.
simonh 6y ago
The $10m is not calculated based on economic value. As explained in the article, it’s calculated based on extrapolating how much we will pay in order to avoid some small risk, then dividing that by the fractional risk. So if we will pay $1k to avoid a one in 10,000 risk of dying then a life is worth $10m. Economic value doesn’t come into it. If you’re interested US GDP is $22tn, with a work force of 164m people. That gives an economic product of about $134k per person per year on average. That includes unemployed people though, because it’s the labour force size not the number of people in employment.
- lidHanteyk 6y ago
  Labor's value does not come from its output; I am not talking about economic value. I am, rather, talking about opportunity cost; for what amount of money would I spend time, my only personal and non-renewable resource, on anything besides what I want to spend it on?

Consider: You are worth about $10mil, in terms of labor. If you work for 40yrs, from 20 to 60, then you are worth about $250k/yr. Conclusion: We are underpaying nearly everybody in society.

whiddershins 6y ago

You don’t work all your waking hours, and if someone does, they usually make that much or more.

lidHanteyk 6y ago
You've been downvoted, but it's worth pointing out exactly why you're wrong: I am talking about salary, which means that folks are compensated not based on a number of hours spent working but on the overall impact that their work has on the organization. Also, I have been salaried several times in my life, and in each case, I was expected to do various things outside of a 9-5 "workday" sort of framework. Without being too self-oriented, I think that I earned the salary commanded. I've never been compensated even $200k/yr, and my highest is about $150k/yr. Even those of us that are well-paid and well-respected for our work are not paid enough to justify the time that we lose to work.
- whiddershins 6y ago
  I truly am not understanding how anything you write makes me wrong. If we value a life at a certain amount, it seems we can value it out at per year, per hour. These are all just estimates. But if your life is worth x per year, and you x * z number of waking hours, and you trade some of those waking hours for cash ... Where am I wrong? Edit: I’m not even sure why we are pruning non working years from the calculation.
  - lidHanteyk 6y ago
    Aha! It's because we are talking about the value of a laborer, of a plebian, of an everyman. The value of the typical person, to some society, is the labor that they can provide to the society. Money is the only way that society can estimate the value of people. This might be a foreign way for you to look at people, but it's common in the Marxist worldviews. In other words, society doesn't care what you're doing when you aren't working, as long as you're leaving society alone. Thus society has no real reason to pay you just for existing. We might demand that our society put money in everybody's pocket, as a way of creating a capitalism which respects humanity, but it is not strictly necessary, because money is not strictly necessary for a society to exist.
    - whiddershins 6y ago
      Yeah you value some of your own time, and choose not to trade that to society but just use it for yourself. So the total value of your life, to you, should necessarily include all the money you can earn plus all the things you do that you value more than working. Etc. Edit: I’m not disputing that other systems, including non money based systems are possible, it just seems way outside of the scope of the original contention.

shoes_for_thee 6y ago

Seems like you're being intentionally reductive to get a rise out of people. But this argument has been had a million times in the form of -- - All corporate profit is theft! - Profit not theft because money is our primary means of compensating people for shouldering risk, etc etc etc. I would nonetheless appreciate a pay raise.

simonh 6y ago

The $10m is not calculated based on economic value. As explained in the article, it’s calculated based on extrapolating how much we will pay in order to avoid some small risk, then dividing that by the fractional risk. So if we will pay $1k to avoid a one in 10,000 risk of dying then a life is worth $10m. Economic value doesn’t come into it. If you’re interested US GDP is $22tn, with a work force of 164m people. That gives an economic product of about $134k per person per year on average. That includes unemployed people though, because it’s the labour force size not the number of people in employment.

lidHanteyk 6y ago
Labor's value does not come from its output; I am not talking about economic value. I am, rather, talking about opportunity cost; for what amount of money would I spend time, my only personal and non-renewable resource, on anything besides what I want to spend it on?