5 ms·

In my native Belgium, indexation is set in law. Price levels up by 6%? Wages up by 6%. There has been tiny bits of nibbling at the edges, but the principle stan

In my native Belgium, indexation is set in law. Price levels up by 6%? Wages up by 6%. There has been tiny bits of nibbling at the edges, but the principle stands and is not up for discussion.

NicoJuicy 5y ago
I don't think we are alone though. Where I work, they pick the highest inflation ( Canadian company). So we get the highest inflation from Canada or Belgium.
sneak 5y ago
It seems a bit silly to do it this way and not authoritatively denominate the salary in a unit of account that isn't subject to such annual volatility in value. Otherwise you're still losing out, due to the fact that for ~11 months of the year your salary is not correctly inflation-adjusted. I look forward to the technology behind payment systems getting to the point where "streaming" payments are a thing, paid every minute or hour or whatever over months or years. Your salary could be denominated in big macs or grams of gold or shares of BRK.A or whatever, and the streaming process that sends your payments in EUR or USD or whatever simply calculates the current conversion (which would approximate continuous adjustment for inflation). It's such simple math and APIs. I wish payments (salary especially) weren't so tradition-based.
- BoiledCabbage 5y ago
  > I look forward to the technology behind payment systems getting to the point where "streaming" payments are a thing, paid every minute or hour or whatever over months or years. Why? > It's such simple math and APIs. I wish payments (salary especially) weren't so tradition-based. Yes, it's conceptually easy math (ignoring all the infrastructure needing to be updated to support this), but I'm not seeing the huge benefit here. If people are having trouble making ends meet, do more to improve the balance of labor in society rather than just let people get access to their middle of the month check a few days sooner. That's a bandaid on a larger problem.
  - sneak 5y ago
    The concept of "continuous work" or employment is really that of an ongoing payment structure. The concept of weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly settlement is an artifact of the time when payments weren't automatic. Send an invoice, wait for post, open envelope, send a check, wait for post, open envelope, send to bank, wait for post, open envelope, send to other bank, wait for post, open envelope, is why we have such concepts as Net 30 terms. Ongoing business relationships where you are paid flat x per y unit of time (monthly service charges, salaries, etc) can be easily modernized to minimize the amount and the duration of being out of settlement sync. It's not a matter of getting your paycheck a few days sooner, it's that for the vast majority of the time you are working, your employer has some amount of money that belongs to you, simply because settlement was a manual, human process until recently. We can settle every minute now because we have machines. This is sort of like saying that APIs are not useful because you can just wait to the end of the week to get your email in a big batch. Your personal income or your business revenue is much more important than email. Across the entire economy this is a massive amount of interest that goes to employers instead of employees, customers instead of vendors. It's not really theirs. Additionally, interval-based settlement doesn't fix the other bug in the system I mentioned: annual manual algorithm-based adjustment. Any time you have a human manually calculating an algorithm every x months, it seems to me it would benefit everyone in society to have machines do that every x milliseconds instead.
    - seanp2k2 5y ago
      ACH transfers are still slow, somehow. Modernize American banking first. Good luck.
- dpark 5y ago
  > Your salary could be denominated in big macs or grams of gold or shares of BRK.A or whatever So you would like your salary denominated in things that are more volatile than currency. That is an interesting choice. I’m sure you would enjoy that when, e.g., gold drops and you can’t afford rent for the month because your salary dropped to match.

In my native Belgium, indexation is set in law. Price levels up by 6%? Wages up by 6%. There has been tiny bits of nibbling at the edges, but the principle stands and is not up for discussion.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

I don't think we are alone though. Where I work, they pick the highest inflation ( Canadian company). So we get the highest inflation from Canada or Belgium.

sneak 5y ago

It seems a bit silly to do it this way and not authoritatively denominate the salary in a unit of account that isn't subject to such annual volatility in value. Otherwise you're still losing out, due to the fact that for ~11 months of the year your salary is not correctly inflation-adjusted. I look forward to the technology behind payment systems getting to the point where "streaming" payments are a thing, paid every minute or hour or whatever over months or years. Your salary could be denominated in big macs or grams of gold or shares of BRK.A or whatever, and the streaming process that sends your payments in EUR or USD or whatever simply calculates the current conversion (which would approximate continuous adjustment for inflation). It's such simple math and APIs. I wish payments (salary especially) weren't so tradition-based.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago
> I look forward to the technology behind payment systems getting to the point where "streaming" payments are a thing, paid every minute or hour or whatever over months or years. Why? > It's such simple math and APIs. I wish payments (salary especially) weren't so tradition-based. Yes, it's conceptually easy math (ignoring all the infrastructure needing to be updated to support this), but I'm not seeing the huge benefit here. If people are having trouble making ends meet, do more to improve the balance of labor in society rather than just let people get access to their middle of the month check a few days sooner. That's a bandaid on a larger problem.
- sneak 5y ago
  The concept of "continuous work" or employment is really that of an ongoing payment structure. The concept of weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly settlement is an artifact of the time when payments weren't automatic. Send an invoice, wait for post, open envelope, send a check, wait for post, open envelope, send to bank, wait for post, open envelope, send to other bank, wait for post, open envelope, is why we have such concepts as Net 30 terms. Ongoing business relationships where you are paid flat x per y unit of time (monthly service charges, salaries, etc) can be easily modernized to minimize the amount and the duration of being out of settlement sync. It's not a matter of getting your paycheck a few days sooner, it's that for the vast majority of the time you are working, your employer has some amount of money that belongs to you, simply because settlement was a manual, human process until recently. We can settle every minute now because we have machines. This is sort of like saying that APIs are not useful because you can just wait to the end of the week to get your email in a big batch. Your personal income or your business revenue is much more important than email. Across the entire economy this is a massive amount of interest that goes to employers instead of employees, customers instead of vendors. It's not really theirs. Additionally, interval-based settlement doesn't fix the other bug in the system I mentioned: annual manual algorithm-based adjustment. Any time you have a human manually calculating an algorithm every x months, it seems to me it would benefit everyone in society to have machines do that every x milliseconds instead.
  - seanp2k2 5y ago
    ACH transfers are still slow, somehow. Modernize American banking first. Good luck.
dpark 5y ago
> Your salary could be denominated in big macs or grams of gold or shares of BRK.A or whatever So you would like your salary denominated in things that are more volatile than currency. That is an interesting choice. I’m sure you would enjoy that when, e.g., gold drops and you can’t afford rent for the month because your salary dropped to match.