5 ms·

>I've heard arguments in the past of paying "acceptable" US wages to people in other countries would destabilize the other country more than it would help. Whi

>I've heard arguments in the past of paying "acceptable" US wages to people in other countries would destabilize the other country more than it would help. Which honestly is a bullshit argument. The only destabilizing thing here is it would make the person in the higher-paying profession more valuable to society and more able to make economic impact where it might not normally. In this case, a rising tide does lift all boats...because you're giving more economic purchasing power to more people. Will this kill some businesses or disrupt the status quo? Yeah. Will it help more people than it hurts? Maybe, probably, who knows? But I personally see no problem with paying people relative to their output, no matter where in the world they are. Having been to Kenya myself and worked with Kenyan developers for several years, most of whom were quite talented, I see absolutely no problem with paying them their value relative to the work being done. I have no problem with high skilled Kenyans making much more than the local average because they have a skill that is in demand all around the world. >the salary should be paying for the work being done and that's it 100% agree. If a business derives $X profit from a laborer and agrees to pay a given % of $X to the laborer as compensation, it should not matter if the laborer is in a high cost or low cost of living area - the business still makes the same amount in profit, and shouldn't get to say "hey yeah we made $10mm off your application, but we're going to only pay you 5% of our profits as compensation because you live in Bangladesh and the cost of living is lower, so be happy with what we're giving you" when if you did the exact same labor and lived in, say, LA or NYC, they'd give you 10%. Just bullshit IMO.

autodev1 4y ago
BS? Based on what experience of yours? I spoke with a US Civil Engineer who worked in Honduras in the 1980's, clearing paths in forests for electrical transmission lines. He initially paid workers significantly higher than local wages-- US-level wages. The result: --> He was threatened with harm by bosses of local companies. Why? He took all their workers. The local companies couldn't compete-- they lost all their labor to his company which paid relatively (relative to Honduras) exorbitant wages. His US company literally destabilized the local labor economy. So, I wouldn't be so quick to jump to "that is BS", as in my opinion it exemplifies naivete & ignorance.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  The civil engineer’s experience rings true from what I’ve seen, but there’s some exception for developers and people of other high skilled professions because they are few relative to the population…paying local developers the same as foreign won’t destabilize but it may for manual labor almost everyone can do.
  - hex4def6 4y ago
    Sure, but doesn't that mean their absence will have a disproportionate effect on the industries that rely on them? If you're a small 15-person dev company, and now there's a multinational company that's gobbling up developers at 4x the going rate, you're not going to be able to compete. This is one of those things in which it's better to sudden upsets (even if they're "positive"), might have negative consequences. If you're paying +25% over the going rate, you're going to attract a range of people. Someone that designs software for reactor controls might not care (or be compensated enough anyway). However, if you're offering 200% over, you're guaranteed to hoover up the top talent from strategic industries, and that might end up being a net negative in terms of the damage caused.
    - btilly 4y ago
      Your small local company does not own your workers. If the multinational values your workers more than you do, then it is good for everyone except you that they work for the multinational. But, conversely, the multinational values your workers because it knows how to use them for business opportunities elsewhere to make money. But you're in a position to find many of those same opportunities. Which now means that your local economy is not just getting the profit of having the workers do so well, but of the fact that you're keeping the profit margin that otherwise would have gone to the multi-national! Free trade on average makes everyone richer. (Observation originally due to Ricardo.) That means that it brings both opportunities and risks. And the opportunities usually exceed the risks.
- 6510 4y ago
  could create a single pool of workers on a fixed salary and rotate them. that is, if you are stubborn about paying more
notahacker 4y ago
> Having been to Kenya myself and worked with Kenyan developers for several years, most of whom were quite talented, I see absolutely no problem with paying them their value relative to the work being done. I have no problem with high skilled Kenyans making much more than the local average because they have a skill that is in demand all around the world. We're not talking about developers though, we're talking about people with good enough English and internet connection to be able to tag or flag strings of text and images. That's not highly skilled work even in a country where native English fluency and internet connections aren't as universal as the US. It's just that the cost of living differences mean that the "get paid just enough to make rent" money that unskilled labour is worth in the US is "more than the local doctors" money in Kenya.
- NickC25 4y ago
  >That's not highly skilled work even in a country where native English fluency and internet connections aren't as universal as the US Just as a point to that - English is one of 2 official languages in Kenya, and is the national language of business and education. Practically everyone speaks it well enough to get by.
aeternum 4y ago
It often requires extra overhead to work with someone in Bangladesh. Tax implications, legal complexities, potential communication & timezone challenges. Also companies often can't tell how much profit they will make and can almost never tell how much profit each employee is contributing towards. IP, machinery, business processes, brand value, all contribute to the company profits. Some companies with very significant profits can even exist with zero employees. This idea that a laborer deserves some percentage of business profits is just fundamentally flawed.
alpos 4y ago
> If a business derives $X profit from a laborer and agrees to pay a given % of $X to the laborer as compensation, it should not matter if the laborer is in a high cost or low cost of living area That would be true if that were deal the business had with their employees. However, you made up the percentage thing by observation and are working from the assumption that because you can represent a wage as a percentage of a profit margin, that means the business agreed to share a fixed percentage of profit with the employee. This is incorrect reasoning. Businesses generally don't contract with their employees to share a percentage of revenue or profits, with the narrow exception of commissions for people in sales. With regard to developers and almost all other employees, the contract both parties agreed to is almost always a trade of specific amounts of time for specific amounts of money and possibly some flexible additional benefits. And to the employee's benefit, the amount of pay does not flex based on whether the company is even producing a profit from the sale of the the products of their labor, only how many hours they put in. Caveat all manner of fuckery in labor relations, of course. Which is a giant caveat, I agree in advance. However the fundamental agreement is still time for money without the employee having to worry whether the products of their labor can be sold for more than their hourly wage, that's the business's problem to deal with. The employee expects their paycheck to show up on time all the time, or the deal is off. With that sort of agreement, it is absolutely expected and reasonable that the business keeps any profit from selling the product of the labor after the agreed upon fees for said labor have been paid. That was the deal. --- If you'd like a different deal for most people, as I would love to see more of in the world economic future, then most people need to change over from needing a job to needing some form of income to support their long term future growth as they live currently off of savings. Instead of expecting someone else to ensure there is a buffer of money to pay you so you can pay your expenses, you will have to keep that buffer yourself and be okay with the fact that sometimes you will get paid a lot and sometimes not so much, but you will then be getting that percentage of the profit you wanted and it will be totally reasonable to expect the same percentage regardless of what the cost of living is. You also won't have to worry about layoffs as much because the company's costs now also scale directly with it's profits, so there is no need to cut head count when things get really bad and the company's buffers run low. But again, that also means you will be responsible for keeping a big enough buffer yourself to deal with the fact that your income fluctuates with both short an long term market swings. Otherwise all you have done is trade the annoyance at seeing the company profit massively from your fix-time-cost labor for the annoyance of being broke even though you have a job whenever the market takes a shit. Most people still don't want to deal with that, even in super wealthy countries like the US. In fact most people in wealthy countries actually scale their own living expenses in step with any increases in their income such that they can be living paycheck-to-paycheck even at $200k+/yr. So the balance of things present day is that most people take full-time or even part-time contracts as employees and hope they don't get fired at the wrong time in life. This is possible to change though, for yourself and for others if you like. So if you think your current deal is bullshit, feel free to change the deal.
eddsh1994 4y ago
When Mansa Musa toured Africa he built new mosques and paid the local workers in gold. Sounds great - skilled labour should get paid well, and he was paying very well. He ended up destabilizing (some people go as far as saying "wrecking") the Egyptian economy for decades. Basically put 22 tonnes of gold into a gold-based economy and suddenly it was deemed less valuable.

autodev1 4y ago

BS? Based on what experience of yours? I spoke with a US Civil Engineer who worked in Honduras in the 1980's, clearing paths in forests for electrical transmission lines. He initially paid workers significantly higher than local wages-- US-level wages. The result: --> He was threatened with harm by bosses of local companies. Why? He took all their workers. The local companies couldn't compete-- they lost all their labor to his company which paid relatively (relative to Honduras) exorbitant wages. His US company literally destabilized the local labor economy. So, I wouldn't be so quick to jump to "that is BS", as in my opinion it exemplifies naivete & ignorance.

boeingUH60 4y ago
The civil engineer’s experience rings true from what I’ve seen, but there’s some exception for developers and people of other high skilled professions because they are few relative to the population…paying local developers the same as foreign won’t destabilize but it may for manual labor almost everyone can do.
- hex4def6 4y ago
  Sure, but doesn't that mean their absence will have a disproportionate effect on the industries that rely on them? If you're a small 15-person dev company, and now there's a multinational company that's gobbling up developers at 4x the going rate, you're not going to be able to compete. This is one of those things in which it's better to sudden upsets (even if they're "positive"), might have negative consequences. If you're paying +25% over the going rate, you're going to attract a range of people. Someone that designs software for reactor controls might not care (or be compensated enough anyway). However, if you're offering 200% over, you're guaranteed to hoover up the top talent from strategic industries, and that might end up being a net negative in terms of the damage caused.
  - btilly 4y ago
    Your small local company does not own your workers. If the multinational values your workers more than you do, then it is good for everyone except you that they work for the multinational. But, conversely, the multinational values your workers because it knows how to use them for business opportunities elsewhere to make money. But you're in a position to find many of those same opportunities. Which now means that your local economy is not just getting the profit of having the workers do so well, but of the fact that you're keeping the profit margin that otherwise would have gone to the multi-national! Free trade on average makes everyone richer. (Observation originally due to Ricardo.) That means that it brings both opportunities and risks. And the opportunities usually exceed the risks.
6510 4y ago
could create a single pool of workers on a fixed salary and rotate them. that is, if you are stubborn about paying more

notahacker 4y ago

> Having been to Kenya myself and worked with Kenyan developers for several years, most of whom were quite talented, I see absolutely no problem with paying them their value relative to the work being done. I have no problem with high skilled Kenyans making much more than the local average because they have a skill that is in demand all around the world. We're not talking about developers though, we're talking about people with good enough English and internet connection to be able to tag or flag strings of text and images. That's not highly skilled work even in a country where native English fluency and internet connections aren't as universal as the US. It's just that the cost of living differences mean that the "get paid just enough to make rent" money that unskilled labour is worth in the US is "more than the local doctors" money in Kenya.

NickC25 4y ago
>That's not highly skilled work even in a country where native English fluency and internet connections aren't as universal as the US Just as a point to that - English is one of 2 official languages in Kenya, and is the national language of business and education. Practically everyone speaks it well enough to get by.

aeternum 4y ago

It often requires extra overhead to work with someone in Bangladesh. Tax implications, legal complexities, potential communication & timezone challenges. Also companies often can't tell how much profit they will make and can almost never tell how much profit each employee is contributing towards. IP, machinery, business processes, brand value, all contribute to the company profits. Some companies with very significant profits can even exist with zero employees. This idea that a laborer deserves some percentage of business profits is just fundamentally flawed.

alpos 4y ago

> If a business derives $X profit from a laborer and agrees to pay a given % of $X to the laborer as compensation, it should not matter if the laborer is in a high cost or low cost of living area That would be true if that were deal the business had with their employees. However, you made up the percentage thing by observation and are working from the assumption that because you can represent a wage as a percentage of a profit margin, that means the business agreed to share a fixed percentage of profit with the employee. This is incorrect reasoning. Businesses generally don't contract with their employees to share a percentage of revenue or profits, with the narrow exception of commissions for people in sales. With regard to developers and almost all other employees, the contract both parties agreed to is almost always a trade of specific amounts of time for specific amounts of money and possibly some flexible additional benefits. And to the employee's benefit, the amount of pay does not flex based on whether the company is even producing a profit from the sale of the the products of their labor, only how many hours they put in. Caveat all manner of fuckery in labor relations, of course. Which is a giant caveat, I agree in advance. However the fundamental agreement is still time for money without the employee having to worry whether the products of their labor can be sold for more than their hourly wage, that's the business's problem to deal with. The employee expects their paycheck to show up on time all the time, or the deal is off. With that sort of agreement, it is absolutely expected and reasonable that the business keeps any profit from selling the product of the labor after the agreed upon fees for said labor have been paid. That was the deal. --- If you'd like a different deal for most people, as I would love to see more of in the world economic future, then most people need to change over from needing a job to needing some form of income to support their long term future growth as they live currently off of savings. Instead of expecting someone else to ensure there is a buffer of money to pay you so you can pay your expenses, you will have to keep that buffer yourself and be okay with the fact that sometimes you will get paid a lot and sometimes not so much, but you will then be getting that percentage of the profit you wanted and it will be totally reasonable to expect the same percentage regardless of what the cost of living is. You also won't have to worry about layoffs as much because the company's costs now also scale directly with it's profits, so there is no need to cut head count when things get really bad and the company's buffers run low. But again, that also means you will be responsible for keeping a big enough buffer yourself to deal with the fact that your income fluctuates with both short an long term market swings. Otherwise all you have done is trade the annoyance at seeing the company profit massively from your fix-time-cost labor for the annoyance of being broke even though you have a job whenever the market takes a shit. Most people still don't want to deal with that, even in super wealthy countries like the US. In fact most people in wealthy countries actually scale their own living expenses in step with any increases in their income such that they can be living paycheck-to-paycheck even at $200k+/yr. So the balance of things present day is that most people take full-time or even part-time contracts as employees and hope they don't get fired at the wrong time in life. This is possible to change though, for yourself and for others if you like. So if you think your current deal is bullshit, feel free to change the deal.

eddsh1994 4y ago

When Mansa Musa toured Africa he built new mosques and paid the local workers in gold. Sounds great - skilled labour should get paid well, and he was paying very well. He ended up destabilizing (some people go as far as saying "wrecking") the Egyptian economy for decades. Basically put 22 tonnes of gold into a gold-based economy and suddenly it was deemed less valuable.