3 ms·

Beware of a thing: location independent pay inside national borders is a good thing for Citizens and the nation in general, beyond borders is a good things ONLY

by kkfx 5y ago

Beware of a thing: location independent pay inside national borders is a good thing for Citizens and the nation in general, beyond borders is a good things ONLY for big corps and the most poor, so a bad thing for us westerns. Just imaging how can be the paycheck if the market is the entire world: seeing actual paychecks that means beside very little, very demanding in skills jobs where it's next to impossible find workers from some cheaper countries because due to their schools systems they can't form skilled enough people 98% of other remote works will clearly be interesting only for those from very poor countries were a very little salary is a high one in their own country. For big corps of course that's perfectly nice: a call center operator from Turkmenistan enough fluent in some westerns languages is equally good than a local one, his/shes cost of living makes a salary of 150 USA/EUR very interesting, connections are starting to be good enough not to have problems, so... Remember that actual neoliberal-driven IT is built around the concept of Ford's model stereotypical workers, so real quality does not count much in actual systems. I'm deeply in favor of WFH as much as possible, to do anything can be done remotely from remote because TLCs are there anyway and so that's can and should mean efficient and cheap (even if often due do bad IT choices is the contrary), but remember that we can't have equal cost of living anywhere: if we live at "polar" latitudes we need heating, a big expense, if we live at "tropical" latitudes we need cooling which can be a significant expensive (since it can be mitigated by p.v., just during the day), if we live in not-much-fertile or too dense area foods costs are higher, if we are far from industry goods costs more, but other things cost less etc. Even in an hypothetical "fair, ethical and just global world" we can't see equal costs everywhere, so we need different prices and different wages and different social systems. Ignoring this means push even more the inequality accelerators against workers interests.

kif 5y ago
Not sure if you're arguing for, or against same pay regardless of location... My opinion is that, if a company pays my US peers $200k, I expect to be paid the same. I can't force this opinion on others, but what I can do is refuse to work for companies that don't follow this rule.
- kkfx 5y ago
  The issue happen if someone who happen to live in expensive countries see offers with too low wages for living a good life there and can't really compete. Cost of living in Norway is far higher than in India, if we adjust payments to an average Indian's residents will be happy, but Norwegian will be on the road. Inside a country surely, especially in big countries, cost of living might vary as well, but in a far narrower manner. For instance Italy south is around 30% cheaper than north (by a very generous amount), while compared to vast part of India the difference is around 80%. Compensate 30% is hard, compensate 80% is next to impossible. Surely you can emigrate, but did you imaging the chaos we will see for such mass migrations also mixed by many others (climate, war, ... migrations) amid closing borders due to scarcity of resources, geopolitical tensions etc? The world change and there is nothing strange nor wrong in it, but the rate of change matter, a slow change can be faced slowly, a bit at a time, a sudden change is like hitting descending from a tall building with a rope or flying down without wings or parachutes... We arrive to the ground in both cases, but in very different conditions.
- oceanplexian 5y ago
  Location still matters, even for remote employees in the US. You can get on a flight to anywhere in the continental US in a few hours, usually much less (In my case I'm about 1.5 hours from SF). US citizens don't need to apply for a visa and can travel on a moment's notice to attend a meeting, or sync up with coworkers, or interview at a company. The other issue is regulatory. I'm sure companies would pay higher compensation overseas, if overseas governments were more business-friendly. If you think the pay isn't competitive in your country, petition your government to have lower taxes and less regulations for a business entity that wants to operate there. You might have to compromise and give up some of the benefits like free healthcare, that we have to pay enormous amounts of money for in the USA.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    It's not a matter of being free and able to travel, wages are a matter of supply and demand: too few workers? => skyrocketing wages. Too much workers? => very poor wages. Now look at population density of, let's say India. How many Indians have enough knowledge to apply for some positions respect of let's say the ratio of French? You easy see that potential number of workers climb exponentially, so wages go to the bottom. You might say "hey, but also the offer became far bigger", true, but now look at the entire world: in the west/JP/SK we have the highest wages and cost of living in the planet. We have had in the past a certain "mean culture" thanks to developed schools systems witch WAS around the highest of the planet, we have dominated tech sectors. In the past. Now mean culture is plummeted, thanks to those who have pushed the Ford model to the extreme because people without culture, especially without a generic culture, are easy to govern. Tech is still a bit higher than the rest of the world but not so much anymore and so on MEANWHILE cost of living do not lower and will not in a more globalized world. As a result pay-the-same means for some countries pay much, for some others pay too little. As a result we would see another mass disruption from a war between about-to-be-poorer vs about-to-be-less-poor that, summed to all other ongoing crisis will just push more people toward wars and extremism. As I said anything can and should change, but at a certain slow peace, to avoid too much collateral damages during the change. That's valid if you are thirsty almost dead of thirst and you drink too much once new water arrive to die of water indigestion and equally valid if you consuming too much water daily and suddenly stop: your kidneys will be the source of huge health problems. You might say "hey, but some will got rich quickly". Yes. Very few multi-national giants surely would be more rich in a quick time. Workers who get rich quickly from poverty in most of the cases will be equally or even more poor in a nick of a time because getting rich quickly means being unable to handle richness and so squander quickly as we regularly see with young generations too quickly substituting rich parents, that even if being born wealthy they have studied well and have had good examples and practice at home, in theory. Always consider a thing: from chaos there are very few who can really profit, like the same ration of lottery winners, from the "poor" classes, while the topmost rich being outside the chaos observing normally profit very well. See the French Revolution: the real winners were the bankers who have substituted an impoverished nobleness, not much differently than so many other revolutions. Simply because those who see the big picture being a bit outside and resourceful can maneuver, those in the fray can only elbow hoping to save their life in skin.
robertlagrant 5y ago
This is a fallacy in that the problem is also in-borders. The costs of living differences are vast inside a country, and so a company that has equal pay for different locations either massively overpays some people, ballooning its salary budget, or prices itself out of employees in high cost of living areas. Imagine the equivalent for house prices, saying that the same spec house should cost the same regardless of location, and you're not allowed to buy a house for more or less than the set price. If you think that's a good idea, fair enough (although I would completely disagree); otherwise I don't understand how you reconcile this difference.
- kkfx 5y ago
  True, but inside a country internal migrations and adjustments can happen under a common law, for instance in fiscal terms anything is the same. In law terms idem. With WFH surely we will see a shift and a shift that will hurt some, dense cities small apartments will loose values, as commercial for quick launches for office workers in the business/city center, properties in nice areas with good connections that so far are valued much less than central buildings in cities will see a rise etc BUT inside a country it's far more manageable than all around the world!
nathias 5y ago
As the 'most poor', I can tell you that wages and costs do not have a similar ratio across different countries. I think its fair I get paid the same for the same quality and quantity of work, and can't think of a reason why that would be ethically unsound. India has great developers and they are already hired everywhere in the world, do they really need to relocate for that?
- kkfx 5y ago
  Surely not, but those developers in their country how much spend for a good house, connection, health, food etc respect of let's say Norway? Remember that moneys are NOT a value themselves but a unit of measure we all agree/accept, to represent an underlying value for helping exchange, so the same 100 USD/EUR/* represent a much big sum in Indian rupees just because renewing the house, get some services etc costs much less there. It's not a matter of skills/time price. Let's say I want to renovate my house. Here (France) that might be for instance 50k EUR for a not-so-new house, how much can be an equivalent house renovation cost for an equivalent home in India? Is it fair for you getting the same amount of wage and with this very amount being able to buy much more or much less? Surely, costs differs, so in a country, like USA a newborn or a broken leg might be far more expensive than here, while a car might be far less expensive. That's part of the reason why I say ok for location-independent costs INSIDE nation borders, because a broken leg or a car cost almost the same in Alaska or in New Mexico, but not beyond national border because here a car is more expensive a broken leg in money cost normally nothing.
  - unmole 5y ago
    The single largest expense for most people is housing, the cost of which varies widely within a country. Add to that state and city specific taxes and you have even more variation in effective disposable income. The idea that pay should be the same within a country but not across countries seems like special pleading.
    - kkfx 5y ago
      Housing is an expensive, but not the only in the game: let's talk about pensions? Not only: what do you think States are for? They, formally, represent the interests of a cohort of people, in Democracies they formally represent the people at a whole. In a global work market how they can represent rights of their Citizens? Declaring war against some corporate-state? Witch law apply to a cross-border income? Which taxes? It's clear to anyone that the actual model of megacorps, private equity, zaibatsu, chaebol etc is to became Sovereign corporatocratic states that profit from a grey area between them and real States, but it's equally clear that have NOTHING to do with fairness or jobs. It's just a modern version of classic Indian's companies from UK, a group of criminals, drug smugglers, oppressors evolved to became banks (that's the REAL history of HSBC, for instance) profiting of some lie and peoples life. Location independent wages inside a country means help leveling the wages in the country, under a common law, fiscal system and not-that-different costs because yes houses have different prices, but connected enough for WFH ones do have not that much differences in developed countries. That means helping a transition from a urban-centric model to a distributed Riviera model. It's positive for employers and employees. Going beyond border is positive ONLY for biggest companies with their global footprint, big of IT thanks to their knowledge thanks to their mass surveillance capitalism AGAINST all others actors. If you are really convinced please try to prove the contrary. Try to see how a SBE can benefit from such market vs from the same inside country borders. For instance.
zerr 5y ago
It's not about Cost of Living but Quality of Life.
tailung 5y ago
I wonder what factors drive differing purchasing power parity in countries? Do you have any thoughts on that.

by kkfx 5y ago

kif 5y ago

Not sure if you're arguing for, or against same pay regardless of location... My opinion is that, if a company pays my US peers $200k, I expect to be paid the same. I can't force this opinion on others, but what I can do is refuse to work for companies that don't follow this rule.

kkfx 5y ago
The issue happen if someone who happen to live in expensive countries see offers with too low wages for living a good life there and can't really compete. Cost of living in Norway is far higher than in India, if we adjust payments to an average Indian's residents will be happy, but Norwegian will be on the road. Inside a country surely, especially in big countries, cost of living might vary as well, but in a far narrower manner. For instance Italy south is around 30% cheaper than north (by a very generous amount), while compared to vast part of India the difference is around 80%. Compensate 30% is hard, compensate 80% is next to impossible. Surely you can emigrate, but did you imaging the chaos we will see for such mass migrations also mixed by many others (climate, war, ... migrations) amid closing borders due to scarcity of resources, geopolitical tensions etc? The world change and there is nothing strange nor wrong in it, but the rate of change matter, a slow change can be faced slowly, a bit at a time, a sudden change is like hitting descending from a tall building with a rope or flying down without wings or parachutes... We arrive to the ground in both cases, but in very different conditions.
oceanplexian 5y ago
Location still matters, even for remote employees in the US. You can get on a flight to anywhere in the continental US in a few hours, usually much less (In my case I'm about 1.5 hours from SF). US citizens don't need to apply for a visa and can travel on a moment's notice to attend a meeting, or sync up with coworkers, or interview at a company. The other issue is regulatory. I'm sure companies would pay higher compensation overseas, if overseas governments were more business-friendly. If you think the pay isn't competitive in your country, petition your government to have lower taxes and less regulations for a business entity that wants to operate there. You might have to compromise and give up some of the benefits like free healthcare, that we have to pay enormous amounts of money for in the USA.
- kkfx 5y ago
  It's not a matter of being free and able to travel, wages are a matter of supply and demand: too few workers? => skyrocketing wages. Too much workers? => very poor wages. Now look at population density of, let's say India. How many Indians have enough knowledge to apply for some positions respect of let's say the ratio of French? You easy see that potential number of workers climb exponentially, so wages go to the bottom. You might say "hey, but also the offer became far bigger", true, but now look at the entire world: in the west/JP/SK we have the highest wages and cost of living in the planet. We have had in the past a certain "mean culture" thanks to developed schools systems witch WAS around the highest of the planet, we have dominated tech sectors. In the past. Now mean culture is plummeted, thanks to those who have pushed the Ford model to the extreme because people without culture, especially without a generic culture, are easy to govern. Tech is still a bit higher than the rest of the world but not so much anymore and so on MEANWHILE cost of living do not lower and will not in a more globalized world. As a result pay-the-same means for some countries pay much, for some others pay too little. As a result we would see another mass disruption from a war between about-to-be-poorer vs about-to-be-less-poor that, summed to all other ongoing crisis will just push more people toward wars and extremism. As I said anything can and should change, but at a certain slow peace, to avoid too much collateral damages during the change. That's valid if you are thirsty almost dead of thirst and you drink too much once new water arrive to die of water indigestion and equally valid if you consuming too much water daily and suddenly stop: your kidneys will be the source of huge health problems. You might say "hey, but some will got rich quickly". Yes. Very few multi-national giants surely would be more rich in a quick time. Workers who get rich quickly from poverty in most of the cases will be equally or even more poor in a nick of a time because getting rich quickly means being unable to handle richness and so squander quickly as we regularly see with young generations too quickly substituting rich parents, that even if being born wealthy they have studied well and have had good examples and practice at home, in theory. Always consider a thing: from chaos there are very few who can really profit, like the same ration of lottery winners, from the "poor" classes, while the topmost rich being outside the chaos observing normally profit very well. See the French Revolution: the real winners were the bankers who have substituted an impoverished nobleness, not much differently than so many other revolutions. Simply because those who see the big picture being a bit outside and resourceful can maneuver, those in the fray can only elbow hoping to save their life in skin.

robertlagrant 5y ago

This is a fallacy in that the problem is also in-borders. The costs of living differences are vast inside a country, and so a company that has equal pay for different locations either massively overpays some people, ballooning its salary budget, or prices itself out of employees in high cost of living areas. Imagine the equivalent for house prices, saying that the same spec house should cost the same regardless of location, and you're not allowed to buy a house for more or less than the set price. If you think that's a good idea, fair enough (although I would completely disagree); otherwise I don't understand how you reconcile this difference.

kkfx 5y ago
True, but inside a country internal migrations and adjustments can happen under a common law, for instance in fiscal terms anything is the same. In law terms idem. With WFH surely we will see a shift and a shift that will hurt some, dense cities small apartments will loose values, as commercial for quick launches for office workers in the business/city center, properties in nice areas with good connections that so far are valued much less than central buildings in cities will see a rise etc BUT inside a country it's far more manageable than all around the world!

nathias 5y ago

As the 'most poor', I can tell you that wages and costs do not have a similar ratio across different countries. I think its fair I get paid the same for the same quality and quantity of work, and can't think of a reason why that would be ethically unsound. India has great developers and they are already hired everywhere in the world, do they really need to relocate for that?

kkfx 5y ago
Surely not, but those developers in their country how much spend for a good house, connection, health, food etc respect of let's say Norway? Remember that moneys are NOT a value themselves but a unit of measure we all agree/accept, to represent an underlying value for helping exchange, so the same 100 USD/EUR/* represent a much big sum in Indian rupees just because renewing the house, get some services etc costs much less there. It's not a matter of skills/time price. Let's say I want to renovate my house. Here (France) that might be for instance 50k EUR for a not-so-new house, how much can be an equivalent house renovation cost for an equivalent home in India? Is it fair for you getting the same amount of wage and with this very amount being able to buy much more or much less? Surely, costs differs, so in a country, like USA a newborn or a broken leg might be far more expensive than here, while a car might be far less expensive. That's part of the reason why I say ok for location-independent costs INSIDE nation borders, because a broken leg or a car cost almost the same in Alaska or in New Mexico, but not beyond national border because here a car is more expensive a broken leg in money cost normally nothing.
- unmole 5y ago
  The single largest expense for most people is housing, the cost of which varies widely within a country. Add to that state and city specific taxes and you have even more variation in effective disposable income. The idea that pay should be the same within a country but not across countries seems like special pleading.
  - kkfx 5y ago
    Housing is an expensive, but not the only in the game: let's talk about pensions? Not only: what do you think States are for? They, formally, represent the interests of a cohort of people, in Democracies they formally represent the people at a whole. In a global work market how they can represent rights of their Citizens? Declaring war against some corporate-state? Witch law apply to a cross-border income? Which taxes? It's clear to anyone that the actual model of megacorps, private equity, zaibatsu, chaebol etc is to became Sovereign corporatocratic states that profit from a grey area between them and real States, but it's equally clear that have NOTHING to do with fairness or jobs. It's just a modern version of classic Indian's companies from UK, a group of criminals, drug smugglers, oppressors evolved to became banks (that's the REAL history of HSBC, for instance) profiting of some lie and peoples life. Location independent wages inside a country means help leveling the wages in the country, under a common law, fiscal system and not-that-different costs because yes houses have different prices, but connected enough for WFH ones do have not that much differences in developed countries. That means helping a transition from a urban-centric model to a distributed Riviera model. It's positive for employers and employees. Going beyond border is positive ONLY for biggest companies with their global footprint, big of IT thanks to their knowledge thanks to their mass surveillance capitalism AGAINST all others actors. If you are really convinced please try to prove the contrary. Try to see how a SBE can benefit from such market vs from the same inside country borders. For instance.

zerr 5y ago

It's not about Cost of Living but Quality of Life.

tailung 5y ago

I wonder what factors drive differing purchasing power parity in countries? Do you have any thoughts on that.