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No it doesn't. It works better for 1% of the population. Everyone else is a health crisis away from bankruptcy. Literally. That's all it takes in the US for ev

No it doesn't. It works better for 1% of the population. Everyone else is a health crisis away from bankruptcy. Literally. That's all it takes in the US for everyone who doesn't have an eight-figure-or-more net worth to be staring ruin in the face. Your comment is exactly the mythology that perpetuates the problem. Exploitation is sold as participation. "Well we're paid fairly well so I guess we must be privileged and upper class." If you can't stop working tomorrow without ever having to worry about money again - including health crises - you are not privileged or upper class. Please stop telling yourself you are.

albntomat0 4y ago
I feel it’s important to properly look at the context of the layoffs. The original article leads with mentioning the recent layoffs at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. These are people who were making great money, and now have those companies on their resumes. I know they’re currently going through a rough situation, which should not be minimized. It’s hard to take your argument seriously though, as there’s so much space between FAANG execs with 8 figure savings, FAANG workers making 200k+, and poverty. Being realistic about this helps your argument that those companies could have done better, not the exaggeration.
roenxi 4y ago
Everyone is one health crisis away from death, no matter how much wealth they have. Whatever your complaints here are, start with having people working at a job where there is literally no-one willing to stand up and pay them their salary. That isn't going to be a society that can comfortably sustain people being unable to work. To have the level of surplus where a healthcare crisis is easily dismissed requires extreme economic efficiency. If you want someone to be unable to work and just sitting around dealing with a personal crisis, then we really need the people around them to be working on things that get a "wow, yeah, that is important!" type reaction.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > Everyone is one health crisis away from death, no matter how much wealth they have. Weirdly though, the number of health crisis that will lead to death are fewer the more wealth you have.
refurb 4y ago
Just like if you ask an alcoholic what is too many drinks they’ll say “one more than I drink”, it’s hilarious reading comments from tech people who are arguably some of the highest paid people in the US say “the upper class are people who make more than I do”. It’s incredibly tone deaf.
- acdha 4y ago
  It’s more nuanced than that: 1. Someone making $200k is definitely doing well compared to almost anyone in the US (94th percentile, 98th at $300k) but those salaries are heavily clustered in very expensive areas where that might not even be the top 10%. Someone making that much working at Apple or Google is living in a normal house - a nice one, sure, but not a mansion - and still feeling things like childcare costs. 2. That tech worker has to go to work every day. If they get sick, their income will end just like someone making coffee or pulling packages in a warehouse - to be clear, not as quickly and there are more conditions they can keep working with, but their income is derived by selling their time. Contrast that with the truly rich, who have passive income and enough assets that things rearrange around their needs. Someone with $10M in the bank isn’t homeless if they get a chronic illness, and if they own the company (or are related to the owner) they get as much time off as they need to deal with it. Nobody should feel sorry for tech workers but it’s important to look at how people’s lives differ, especially in the United States where things like healthcare and retirement are linked to their ability to work.
  - refurb 4y ago
    Im not not sure what point #1 means. They own a house in a HCOL area - the very definition of being upper class and privileged! A billionaire might “feel” the cost of his private jet fleet but that doesn’t mean he’s not rich.
    - acdha 4y ago
      It means that their income is linked to unavoidably higher burn rate, making it seem like their life is more elite than it actually is. For example, how nice is a $1M house in Silicon Valley compared to a $1M house in Podunk? The latter is a rich person’s lifestyle choice, the former is wanting to have room for kids and less than an hour commute. Unlike that hypothetical private jet, these are not optional expenses if the job doesn’t allow 100% remote – you need somewhere to live, if you aren’t wealthy but still want kids you need childcare until they go to school, etc. And, again, I’m not saying that this is a pity-worthy situation – only that it’s a lot closer to the average worker than the average rich person in terms of having to go to work every day, think about finances, etc.
makomk 4y ago
If anything it's the other way around - the 1% are going to be OK pretty much no matter what, it's everyone else that this matters for. Right now the US and most of the developed world does not have workers to spare for weird and potentially pointless speculative work of questionable value to society as a whole - they're struggling to find the workforce needed to supply the things ordinary people need and want, including stuff like healthcare. Just pointing at "supply and demand" and calling for pay rises, as I've seen so many do, does not solve this issue unless it causes a shift in workers from doing useless work to more useful work.
- malfist 4y ago
  Because people are good judges of what is and isn't useful work? Just like it's useless work to build a search engine when directories work well enough? Or useless to build an email service when ISPs already offered them?
WeylandYutani 4y ago
The American people have repeatedly voted against universal healthcare. Since the 1950s actually. Microsoft shouldn't be in the business of providing dental care for it's employees. Blaming corporations for the dismal state of the healthcare system is unfair.
commandlinefan 4y ago
> Everyone else is a health crisis away from bankruptcy But that's exactly why we have bankruptcy. You know the word doesn't mean "losing everything you have", it means "discharging debts you're never going to be able to pay", right? You can do it once, and it ruins your credit for a long time (7 years IIRC), but it saves you from dying of starvation trying to pay off debts you don't have money to pay.
- mrsuprawsm 4y ago
  might be a better idea to have a system where you don't need to go into debt to stay alive

albntomat0 4y ago

I feel it’s important to properly look at the context of the layoffs. The original article leads with mentioning the recent layoffs at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. These are people who were making great money, and now have those companies on their resumes. I know they’re currently going through a rough situation, which should not be minimized. It’s hard to take your argument seriously though, as there’s so much space between FAANG execs with 8 figure savings, FAANG workers making 200k+, and poverty. Being realistic about this helps your argument that those companies could have done better, not the exaggeration.

roenxi 4y ago

Everyone is one health crisis away from death, no matter how much wealth they have. Whatever your complaints here are, start with having people working at a job where there is literally no-one willing to stand up and pay them their salary. That isn't going to be a society that can comfortably sustain people being unable to work. To have the level of surplus where a healthcare crisis is easily dismissed requires extreme economic efficiency. If you want someone to be unable to work and just sitting around dealing with a personal crisis, then we really need the people around them to be working on things that get a "wow, yeah, that is important!" type reaction.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> Everyone is one health crisis away from death, no matter how much wealth they have. Weirdly though, the number of health crisis that will lead to death are fewer the more wealth you have.

refurb 4y ago

Just like if you ask an alcoholic what is too many drinks they’ll say “one more than I drink”, it’s hilarious reading comments from tech people who are arguably some of the highest paid people in the US say “the upper class are people who make more than I do”. It’s incredibly tone deaf.

acdha 4y ago
It’s more nuanced than that: 1. Someone making $200k is definitely doing well compared to almost anyone in the US (94th percentile, 98th at $300k) but those salaries are heavily clustered in very expensive areas where that might not even be the top 10%. Someone making that much working at Apple or Google is living in a normal house - a nice one, sure, but not a mansion - and still feeling things like childcare costs. 2. That tech worker has to go to work every day. If they get sick, their income will end just like someone making coffee or pulling packages in a warehouse - to be clear, not as quickly and there are more conditions they can keep working with, but their income is derived by selling their time. Contrast that with the truly rich, who have passive income and enough assets that things rearrange around their needs. Someone with $10M in the bank isn’t homeless if they get a chronic illness, and if they own the company (or are related to the owner) they get as much time off as they need to deal with it. Nobody should feel sorry for tech workers but it’s important to look at how people’s lives differ, especially in the United States where things like healthcare and retirement are linked to their ability to work.
- refurb 4y ago
  Im not not sure what point #1 means. They own a house in a HCOL area - the very definition of being upper class and privileged! A billionaire might “feel” the cost of his private jet fleet but that doesn’t mean he’s not rich.
  - acdha 4y ago
    It means that their income is linked to unavoidably higher burn rate, making it seem like their life is more elite than it actually is. For example, how nice is a $1M house in Silicon Valley compared to a $1M house in Podunk? The latter is a rich person’s lifestyle choice, the former is wanting to have room for kids and less than an hour commute. Unlike that hypothetical private jet, these are not optional expenses if the job doesn’t allow 100% remote – you need somewhere to live, if you aren’t wealthy but still want kids you need childcare until they go to school, etc. And, again, I’m not saying that this is a pity-worthy situation – only that it’s a lot closer to the average worker than the average rich person in terms of having to go to work every day, think about finances, etc.

makomk 4y ago

If anything it's the other way around - the 1% are going to be OK pretty much no matter what, it's everyone else that this matters for. Right now the US and most of the developed world does not have workers to spare for weird and potentially pointless speculative work of questionable value to society as a whole - they're struggling to find the workforce needed to supply the things ordinary people need and want, including stuff like healthcare. Just pointing at "supply and demand" and calling for pay rises, as I've seen so many do, does not solve this issue unless it causes a shift in workers from doing useless work to more useful work.

malfist 4y ago
Because people are good judges of what is and isn't useful work? Just like it's useless work to build a search engine when directories work well enough? Or useless to build an email service when ISPs already offered them?

WeylandYutani 4y ago

The American people have repeatedly voted against universal healthcare. Since the 1950s actually. Microsoft shouldn't be in the business of providing dental care for it's employees. Blaming corporations for the dismal state of the healthcare system is unfair.

commandlinefan 4y ago

> Everyone else is a health crisis away from bankruptcy But that's exactly why we have bankruptcy. You know the word doesn't mean "losing everything you have", it means "discharging debts you're never going to be able to pay", right? You can do it once, and it ruins your credit for a long time (7 years IIRC), but it saves you from dying of starvation trying to pay off debts you don't have money to pay.

mrsuprawsm 4y ago
might be a better idea to have a system where you don't need to go into debt to stay alive