7 ms·

I truly hope that at some point, the pain brought upon the American low wage labor market will re-ignite unions. If it doesn't we are heading to a dual class d

I truly hope that at some point, the pain brought upon the American low wage labor market will re-ignite unions. If it doesn't we are heading to a dual class dystopian future. The Reddit r/antiwork has been getting traction (even with the Fox News debacle) and I'm seeing more and more people talk about wage inequality amongst a lot more social classes than I have in the past decade. Fingers crossed history arcs towards economic equality.

creakingstairs 5y ago
Even with wage inequality fixed, we would still be heading to a dual class dystopian future. The rate of capital return is running off and even those with "good" income will struggle to keep up with people starting their life with family wealth. It's happening now. Specialists around me can't find an affordable house even with their relatively high salary unless their parents can help with their initial deposits for a mortgage and ,at least for my country, it's looking to get worse with no capital gains tax :^)
- greiskul 5y ago
  One thing that can hopefully change that, is the move to remote work where that is possible. It allows high income earners to move to lower cost of living areas (or never leave them to begin with), removing the power that landlords of existing high jobs areas have purely because of pre existing capital, and potentially help revitalize areas that were in downturns before. I know that the only reason I left my hometown is because of higher paying jobs in other cities/countries. If I could make what I make here, while living there, I would probably go back so I could be closer to my family, plus have my taxes help my hometown and country, instead of some other country.
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    I enjoy working remotely and I hope it lasts, but I have to admit a large part of me does worry that it makes my job easier to outsource. If some sort of controls aren't put on companies, I don't know how we can stop massive outsourcing of the white collar jobs, just like what occurred in the manufacturing sector - except with less infrastructure to move.
    - wizzwizz4 5y ago
      All jobs have creative and procedural elements. The procedural elements can be indefinitely outsourced, and eventually automated. The creative parts… well, they're hard to measure. Companies that outsource procedural elements of a job and discard creative elements will slowly fail, unless they have sufficiently-large monopolies that it barely matters what actually goes on inside the company.
    - thePostFuturist 5y ago
      There are language, timezone, and legal (contract and IP enforcement) barriers to completely outsource a core engineering team. Modules, such as QA, however, are up for grabs even today.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      I've spent the last 20 years working remotely, and 10 of them traveling/living in cities, towns and villages in South America, Europe and Asia. I've been happy to see talented locals get better jobs working internationally and boost their incomes. I've never once been concerned with being displaced by some tidal wave of offshore workers. Here's why: * You, as a native English speaker, familiar with American business culture and someone with years of experience in the field are always going to be paid an order of magnitude more than someone just learning the ropes. * You can, if you want, outsource your tasks to other people wherever you are. * You understand that this luck, this privilege, is not going to last forever, because ultimately these jobs will equalize out around the world. And it's right and fair that they should. So you take the advantage you have now and you parlay it into securing something for your future. The inequality between an American who can live like a king on $200k a year working remotely in a village in Brazil, and a local kid who's learning Javascript there and making $1k a month, is going to even itself out. And that's a good thing for efficiency, equality, and the global economy as a whole. All you have to do is be on the right side of it, ride the wave while it lasts, pass on some knowledge, and by the time they're fantastic at taking your job over you'll be 20 years ahead all over again. There's no reason to feel insecure or guilty about it. The global south is not behind America because America is trying to restrict education there. America does plenty of damage to its own educational system, but it needs skilled workers abroad. The global south is behind America because it hasn't fully shifted from economies of community to economies of scale. That's a multi-generational change. Not to be blunt, but it's plenty of time to become an owner rather than a worker.
  - creakingstairs 5y ago
    Yeah we’ve actually moved to a new country to experiment with the idea of remote working in lower COL area. But it sucks to think that we may not be able to live in the area we grew up in if we want to go back.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    > It allows high income earners to move to lower cost of living areas (or never leave them to begin with) But the algorithms are already compensating for that. Many companies are paying “location differential” salaries. It will probably result in a new form of outsourcing. The “good” news, however, is that it won’t last. Many formerly affordable areas are already seeing gentrification and median income jumps, as a result, so they are being flooded with yuppies, and driving out the lifelong residents. I’m watching that happen to Brooklyn, in New York. I know that it is almost catastrophic, in San Francisco. I’ve seen the “Google buses,” on 101. I’m hoping that unions make a comeback, but that’s a damoclean sword; as the American system is highly adversarial, and can be corrupted fairly easily. It’s also becoming almost impossible to get jobs, unless you jump through crazy hoops, and don’t get me started on the silly whiteboard tests. It’s resulting in things like “leetcode bootcamps,” and consultants, that will help you to “optimize” your CV for scanning algos. Background checks are almost certain to find something wrong; especially in this age of social media. I remember, a few years ago, when a teacher was fired, because she posted a Facebook picture of herself on vacation, with a drink in her hand[0], and there’s a prominent Canadian psychologist, permanently barred from the US, because he wrote an article, where he mentioned taking LSD, while in college, in the 1960s[1]. Also, politicians almost always have something in their past, that can be used in “oppo research.” [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354515/Teacher-sacked-posting-picture-holding-glass-wine-mug-beer-Facebook.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354515/Teacher-sac... [1] https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/ https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      >But the algorithms are already compensating for that. Many companies are paying “location differential” salaries. It will probably result in a new form of outsourcing. so, combined services for remote workers - maintain fake address in high cost of living area, providing phone service with rerouting of calls to your real number, providing vpn service so you have an ip address from that high cost of living area.
charcircuit 5y ago
My skills can provide more value than others. It's natural that my pay is not equal to others.
- mellavora 5y ago
  some are more equal than others
- beckman466 5y ago
  only because you won the lottery of birth. your brain isn't somehow genetically better than others' brains. you had access to more bridges/ladders early in your development, that's it. most people cannot grow further instead of bridges/ladders they meet walls/moats.
  - mutatio 5y ago
    Isn't the logical conclusion of this that the Darwin's, Newton's and Einstein's of this world weren't genetically predisposed, merely consequences of fate? You don't believe success is a combination of nature and nurture?
  - krageon 5y ago
    > your brain isn't somehow genetically better than others' brains. You're going to have to elaborate on that, because AFAIK humanity has not solved intelligence to the point that we can say it is entirely nurture. That makes it reasonable to assume that it is part nature, which means that yes. It is genetically better than others' brains. And there's nothing wrong with that.
  - telxosser 5y ago
    - beckman466 5y ago
      please consider taking your own advice. with ladders/bridges and walls/moats i am talking about the existing material reality that has one class (the propertied class) creating unnecessary artificial scarcity (on non-scarce material, i.e. using the intellectual property system) which stops the organic spread of technology and knowledge overall, as it's following the profit motive of capitalism. this article is from a socialist magazine, so it's common to refer to systemic black boxing and alienating/obscuring technology as 'gatekeeping'/'rent-seeking' (creating walls with unaffordable gates (for 99.999% of us)).
closeparen 5y ago
As software engineers we are wage inequality. What steps have you taken to reduce your wages towards the median? Obviously you would not make the world an even more unequal place by accepting a raise, right? Just for some context, the median personal income is $36k, while the median software engineer makes $110k. There are about 1.8 million of us. So by each sending back (to our employers or the Treasury) $74k, we could reduce wage inequality by $133 billion. Not too shabby!
- mjcohen 5y ago
  Better to send it to low wage workers.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  The difference is that we don't own the means of production either. We're still workers.
  - vba616 5y ago
    Anyone who is a software engineer on HN surely is accumulating capital to retire some day and will likely succeed.
    - pjerem 5y ago
      > Anyone who is a software engineer on HN In the US.
      - vba616 5y ago
        I think there is such a thing as retirement outside the US. I thought that pensions are more common, as a matter of fact. You almost have to be a government employee to have a pension these days, in the US.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    But we do own the means of production. Unless you have no personal computer or think the Jira instance we all are forced to use is necessary for coding. =)
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> we are heading to a dual class dystopian future There is only one possible outcome where everybody wins and that is capitalism becomes so incredibly good at eliminating inefficiencies that all possible work is automated away, leading to the collapse of capitalism itself since it depends on continuous consumption which depends on disposable income which won't exist because there are no jobs. I'd really like to believe this is the point where the world evolves into post scarcity where there is no economy because there is enough for everybody and no need to economize anything. Realistically, the corporations will most likely literally invent new economies out of thin air based on nothing just like they did when they conjured up nonsense like copyright.
- creato 5y ago
  I don’t see how you can look at what happened in the last year and conclude we are anywhere near “post-scarcity”.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    The food an other resources exists in abundance and so do the means of production and distribution. All scarcity problems since 50 or even 100 years ago are artificial self inflicted constructs. We are post-scarcity the moment we simply decide to be. The reason we haven't and wont any time soon is property rights and everyone who has anything to lose in any redistribution or any change to future distribution.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    I didn't say we were nearing post scarcity. I said that's the only ideal outcome. We're closer to a cyberpunk dystopia where gigacorporations are more powerful than governments.
  - krageon 5y ago
    In what way are we not? The food was fine, the power stayed on and I had water. Sure, it's harder to buy computers but the lifecycle for them was too short anyway.

creakingstairs 5y ago

Even with wage inequality fixed, we would still be heading to a dual class dystopian future. The rate of capital return is running off and even those with "good" income will struggle to keep up with people starting their life with family wealth. It's happening now. Specialists around me can't find an affordable house even with their relatively high salary unless their parents can help with their initial deposits for a mortgage and ,at least for my country, it's looking to get worse with no capital gains tax :^)

greiskul 5y ago
One thing that can hopefully change that, is the move to remote work where that is possible. It allows high income earners to move to lower cost of living areas (or never leave them to begin with), removing the power that landlords of existing high jobs areas have purely because of pre existing capital, and potentially help revitalize areas that were in downturns before. I know that the only reason I left my hometown is because of higher paying jobs in other cities/countries. If I could make what I make here, while living there, I would probably go back so I could be closer to my family, plus have my taxes help my hometown and country, instead of some other country.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  I enjoy working remotely and I hope it lasts, but I have to admit a large part of me does worry that it makes my job easier to outsource. If some sort of controls aren't put on companies, I don't know how we can stop massive outsourcing of the white collar jobs, just like what occurred in the manufacturing sector - except with less infrastructure to move.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    All jobs have creative and procedural elements. The procedural elements can be indefinitely outsourced, and eventually automated. The creative parts… well, they're hard to measure. Companies that outsource procedural elements of a job and discard creative elements will slowly fail, unless they have sufficiently-large monopolies that it barely matters what actually goes on inside the company.
  - thePostFuturist 5y ago
    There are language, timezone, and legal (contract and IP enforcement) barriers to completely outsource a core engineering team. Modules, such as QA, however, are up for grabs even today.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I've spent the last 20 years working remotely, and 10 of them traveling/living in cities, towns and villages in South America, Europe and Asia. I've been happy to see talented locals get better jobs working internationally and boost their incomes. I've never once been concerned with being displaced by some tidal wave of offshore workers. Here's why: * You, as a native English speaker, familiar with American business culture and someone with years of experience in the field are always going to be paid an order of magnitude more than someone just learning the ropes. * You can, if you want, outsource your tasks to other people wherever you are. * You understand that this luck, this privilege, is not going to last forever, because ultimately these jobs will equalize out around the world. And it's right and fair that they should. So you take the advantage you have now and you parlay it into securing something for your future. The inequality between an American who can live like a king on $200k a year working remotely in a village in Brazil, and a local kid who's learning Javascript there and making $1k a month, is going to even itself out. And that's a good thing for efficiency, equality, and the global economy as a whole. All you have to do is be on the right side of it, ride the wave while it lasts, pass on some knowledge, and by the time they're fantastic at taking your job over you'll be 20 years ahead all over again. There's no reason to feel insecure or guilty about it. The global south is not behind America because America is trying to restrict education there. America does plenty of damage to its own educational system, but it needs skilled workers abroad. The global south is behind America because it hasn't fully shifted from economies of community to economies of scale. That's a multi-generational change. Not to be blunt, but it's plenty of time to become an owner rather than a worker.
- creakingstairs 5y ago
  Yeah we’ve actually moved to a new country to experiment with the idea of remote working in lower COL area. But it sucks to think that we may not be able to live in the area we grew up in if we want to go back.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  > It allows high income earners to move to lower cost of living areas (or never leave them to begin with) But the algorithms are already compensating for that. Many companies are paying “location differential” salaries. It will probably result in a new form of outsourcing. The “good” news, however, is that it won’t last. Many formerly affordable areas are already seeing gentrification and median income jumps, as a result, so they are being flooded with yuppies, and driving out the lifelong residents. I’m watching that happen to Brooklyn, in New York. I know that it is almost catastrophic, in San Francisco. I’ve seen the “Google buses,” on 101. I’m hoping that unions make a comeback, but that’s a damoclean sword; as the American system is highly adversarial, and can be corrupted fairly easily. It’s also becoming almost impossible to get jobs, unless you jump through crazy hoops, and don’t get me started on the silly whiteboard tests. It’s resulting in things like “leetcode bootcamps,” and consultants, that will help you to “optimize” your CV for scanning algos. Background checks are almost certain to find something wrong; especially in this age of social media. I remember, a few years ago, when a teacher was fired, because she posted a Facebook picture of herself on vacation, with a drink in her hand[0], and there’s a prominent Canadian psychologist, permanently barred from the US, because he wrote an article, where he mentioned taking LSD, while in college, in the 1960s[1]. Also, politicians almost always have something in their past, that can be used in “oppo research.” [0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354515/Teacher-sacked-posting-picture-holding-glass-wine-mug-beer-Facebook.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1354515/Teacher-sac... [1] https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/ https://www.wired.com/2007/04/canadian-psycho/
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    >But the algorithms are already compensating for that. Many companies are paying “location differential” salaries. It will probably result in a new form of outsourcing. so, combined services for remote workers - maintain fake address in high cost of living area, providing phone service with rerouting of calls to your real number, providing vpn service so you have an ip address from that high cost of living area.

charcircuit 5y ago

My skills can provide more value than others. It's natural that my pay is not equal to others.

mellavora 5y ago
some are more equal than others
beckman466 5y ago
only because you won the lottery of birth. your brain isn't somehow genetically better than others' brains. you had access to more bridges/ladders early in your development, that's it. most people cannot grow further instead of bridges/ladders they meet walls/moats.
- mutatio 5y ago
  Isn't the logical conclusion of this that the Darwin's, Newton's and Einstein's of this world weren't genetically predisposed, merely consequences of fate? You don't believe success is a combination of nature and nurture?
- krageon 5y ago
  > your brain isn't somehow genetically better than others' brains. You're going to have to elaborate on that, because AFAIK humanity has not solved intelligence to the point that we can say it is entirely nurture. That makes it reasonable to assume that it is part nature, which means that yes. It is genetically better than others' brains. And there's nothing wrong with that.
- telxosser 5y ago
  - beckman466 5y ago
    please consider taking your own advice. with ladders/bridges and walls/moats i am talking about the existing material reality that has one class (the propertied class) creating unnecessary artificial scarcity (on non-scarce material, i.e. using the intellectual property system) which stops the organic spread of technology and knowledge overall, as it's following the profit motive of capitalism. this article is from a socialist magazine, so it's common to refer to systemic black boxing and alienating/obscuring technology as 'gatekeeping'/'rent-seeking' (creating walls with unaffordable gates (for 99.999% of us)).

closeparen 5y ago

As software engineers we are wage inequality. What steps have you taken to reduce your wages towards the median? Obviously you would not make the world an even more unequal place by accepting a raise, right? Just for some context, the median personal income is $36k, while the median software engineer makes $110k. There are about 1.8 million of us. So by each sending back (to our employers or the Treasury) $74k, we could reduce wage inequality by $133 billion. Not too shabby!

mjcohen 5y ago
Better to send it to low wage workers.
aaomidi 5y ago
The difference is that we don't own the means of production either. We're still workers.
- vba616 5y ago
  Anyone who is a software engineer on HN surely is accumulating capital to retire some day and will likely succeed.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    > Anyone who is a software engineer on HN In the US.
    - vba616 5y ago
      I think there is such a thing as retirement outside the US. I thought that pensions are more common, as a matter of fact. You almost have to be a government employee to have a pension these days, in the US.
- rightbyte 5y ago
  But we do own the means of production. Unless you have no personal computer or think the Jira instance we all are forced to use is necessary for coding. =)

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> we are heading to a dual class dystopian future There is only one possible outcome where everybody wins and that is capitalism becomes so incredibly good at eliminating inefficiencies that all possible work is automated away, leading to the collapse of capitalism itself since it depends on continuous consumption which depends on disposable income which won't exist because there are no jobs. I'd really like to believe this is the point where the world evolves into post scarcity where there is no economy because there is enough for everybody and no need to economize anything. Realistically, the corporations will most likely literally invent new economies out of thin air based on nothing just like they did when they conjured up nonsense like copyright.

creato 5y ago
I don’t see how you can look at what happened in the last year and conclude we are anywhere near “post-scarcity”.
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  The food an other resources exists in abundance and so do the means of production and distribution. All scarcity problems since 50 or even 100 years ago are artificial self inflicted constructs. We are post-scarcity the moment we simply decide to be. The reason we haven't and wont any time soon is property rights and everyone who has anything to lose in any redistribution or any change to future distribution.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  I didn't say we were nearing post scarcity. I said that's the only ideal outcome. We're closer to a cyberpunk dystopia where gigacorporations are more powerful than governments.
- krageon 5y ago
  In what way are we not? The food was fine, the power stayed on and I had water. Sure, it's harder to buy computers but the lifecycle for them was too short anyway.