9 ms·

American workers are the wimpiest creatures on the planet. That's why they don't have unions, tolerate horrible bosses, and have few protections.

ars 3y ago
[flagged]
- mempko 3y ago
  Which SOME employees benefit from. The poverty rate is too high, too many people in jail for such a rich country. What's the point of being rich when only a tiny percentage of the people benefit?
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    Well, a lot of the people you're addressing here are the ones benefiting, so I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting.
    - OnlineGladiator 3y ago
      You can expect people to have empathy and be self-aware. It doesn't mean your expectations will be met, but it's a sad world we live in where you dismiss this as unrealistic.
    - ars 3y ago
      Everyone in the US is benefiting from this. People in the US are so comfortable they don't seem to have a clue what real hardship actually is.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Well, at the very least the ones who die from exposure in the winter because they don't have a place to live, the ones who die because they can't afford medical care, and so on have a clue what real hardship is.
        nsxwolf 3y ago
        "In the United States: 6,660 people died from hypothermia or exposure to cold from 2006 to 2010, an average of 1,320 deaths a year." [1] It isn't split up along poverty vs. accident lines, but this is not a major cause of death in the US. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf
        JohnFen 3y ago
        The deaths amongst the homeless are underrepresented in the statistics for obvious reasons. But ignoring that... > this is not a major cause of death in the US. Wait, so people dying due to poverty isn't something that deserves attention just because it isn't common enough?
        ars 3y ago
        This discussion is if the United States has an issue with poverty, and the answer is: no it does not. A tiny fraction of people dying from cold is not an indication that the US has a poverty issue. Sure help them, no one is disputing that, but that's also not what's being discussed here.
      - mempko 3y ago
        Yes, that's why the life expectancy of the US, the richest empire in history, is ranked 51 out of all countries, just below Cuba and above Albania.
  - MichaelDickens 3y ago
    The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income If we look at the income level of the poorest 10%, the United States ranks 16th—not as good, but still among the 10% best countries: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty https://ourworldindata.org/poverty (click on the Table tab)
    - lmm 3y ago
      > The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income Only because it's unique among developed countries in seeing healthcare costs as disposable income.
      - astrange 3y ago
        Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" and most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.
        lmm 3y ago
        > Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" You only have to look at the definition in their link to see that US healthcare costs don't get adjusted for. > most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway. Right, most people pay health insurance in a way that's indistinguishable from paying taxes in practice (although the US system also comes with significant out-of-pocket costs, so just including insurance costs wouldn't tell the full story). But that "disposable income" metric is defined in a way that considers US-style health insurance voluntary and therefore money spent on that is disposable income (even though it never actually hits someone's bank account in practice), whereas in a country with tax-funded healthcare or mandatory health insurance (unless it qualifies as "social insurance", but normally it doesn't) the costs of that aren't counted in that person's income.
      - NLPaep 3y ago
        No, it’s in spite of US spending more in taxes on healthcare than what some developed countries use to cover their entire population.
  - ars 3y ago
    The poverty rate is not high. Actual hunger in the US is so low that they had to pick a new metric "food insecurity" to work on. Maybe travel a bit and see what actual poverty is.
    - uoaei 3y ago
      Sure, when your options are "eat Jack in the Box's 99¢ two tacos deal or starve" you will eat the tacos. Can't wait until you people are justifying soylent green in a couple decades.
  - GoldenMonkey 3y ago
    How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine. Even our poor people have cars. We all benefit and even our pets have a higher quality of life than most people in the third world.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine. > Even our poor people have cars. The luckier ones, sure, but there are plenty of people in the US that have none of that.
- shaky-carrousel 3y ago
  It's not that hard having a productive economy when most of your workforce is mainly composed of essentially indenture servants.
  - ars 3y ago
    The only way you could say such a thing would be if you were profoundly ignorant on what indentured servitude actually is. Maybe look it up.
    - wyclif 3y ago
      Indeed. The idea that software engineers could be in the top 85th percentile of American income and be identified as "indentured servants" is an absurd notion.
      - shaky-carrousel 3y ago
        The idea that software engineers account for most of the American workforce (which is what I said) is so egocentric that I hope you just misread.
        belmont_sup 3y ago
        Seriously. Anyone only has to look for a second and see how many Americans are struggling day to day, paycheck by paycheck. Quick search says up to 78% of Americans do. That’s “essentially indentured servitude”.
        nsxwolf 3y ago
        They aren't indentured to another person, they're indentured to the laws of nature - needing to eat, find shelter, etc. When in human history has this not been the case?
        uoaei 3y ago
_8j50 3y ago
It's not wimpiness, it's an essential acceptance of cruelty that is accepted as a neccessary part of the american psyche where not just individuals but businesses have that freedom. "If I was the company owner or the boss, I might do that to in order to protect my money"
- Clent 3y ago
  You're describing a mental illness and yet I still agree with you.
OJFord 3y ago
They don't? All the tech companies I hear about having unions are American. (They are also big I suppose, but when I worked at Arm in the UK there were frequently outsiders sort of 'protesting' for employees to join. I was never aware of anyone caring who worked there.) It seems weird to me to have professional unions, doctors are an outlier there, where it's common, and (partly I suppose because) there isn't a professional institution (which overlap slightly) - it's split between unions and the GMC (licencing body, and as a doctor you'd whistle-blow to them for example). I'd like to see more software engineers be professionally registered, and it be more worthwhile to. (Yes, quite chicken-and-egg I'm sure.) I'm a member of the IET, but to be honest their light on software-relevance. The chartership requirements for example seemed like they would require quite a bit of bullshitting (not lying exactly, just sort of business-speak style forcing something to fit the very specific irrelevant questions) to satisfy; I abandoned it, so far at least.
kashunstva 3y ago
> American workers are the wimpiest creatures on the planet American workers do put up with a lot. But the cruelty of having one’s health care access perfectly intertwined with employment probably explains much of their reluctance to engage in the sort of individual and collective action needed to address malignant employer behaviour.
- nsxwolf 3y ago
  This is starting to collapse with the shift towards high deductible plans and HSA accounts. Increasingly, employers are just providing a subsidy for something that partially covers you when you get cancer. You'll pay for everything else yourself.
moneywoes 3y ago
Seems easy to say when you have healthcare coverage
dang 3y ago
Could you please stop posting flamewar comments, including nationalistic flamewar comments, to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

ars 3y ago

[flagged]

mempko 3y ago
Which SOME employees benefit from. The poverty rate is too high, too many people in jail for such a rich country. What's the point of being rich when only a tiny percentage of the people benefit?
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  Well, a lot of the people you're addressing here are the ones benefiting, so I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting.
  - OnlineGladiator 3y ago
    You can expect people to have empathy and be self-aware. It doesn't mean your expectations will be met, but it's a sad world we live in where you dismiss this as unrealistic.
  - ars 3y ago
    Everyone in the US is benefiting from this. People in the US are so comfortable they don't seem to have a clue what real hardship actually is.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Well, at the very least the ones who die from exposure in the winter because they don't have a place to live, the ones who die because they can't afford medical care, and so on have a clue what real hardship is.
      - nsxwolf 3y ago
        "In the United States: 6,660 people died from hypothermia or exposure to cold from 2006 to 2010, an average of 1,320 deaths a year." [1] It isn't split up along poverty vs. accident lines, but this is not a major cause of death in the US. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf
        JohnFen 3y ago
        The deaths amongst the homeless are underrepresented in the statistics for obvious reasons. But ignoring that... > this is not a major cause of death in the US. Wait, so people dying due to poverty isn't something that deserves attention just because it isn't common enough?
        ars 3y ago
        This discussion is if the United States has an issue with poverty, and the answer is: no it does not. A tiny fraction of people dying from cold is not an indication that the US has a poverty issue. Sure help them, no one is disputing that, but that's also not what's being discussed here.
    - mempko 3y ago
      Yes, that's why the life expectancy of the US, the richest empire in history, is ranked 51 out of all countries, just below Cuba and above Albania.
- MichaelDickens 3y ago
  The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income If we look at the income level of the poorest 10%, the United States ranks 16th—not as good, but still among the 10% best countries: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty https://ourworldindata.org/poverty (click on the Table tab)
  - lmm 3y ago
    > The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income Only because it's unique among developed countries in seeing healthcare costs as disposable income.
    - astrange 3y ago
      Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" and most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.
      - lmm 3y ago
        > Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" You only have to look at the definition in their link to see that US healthcare costs don't get adjusted for. > most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway. Right, most people pay health insurance in a way that's indistinguishable from paying taxes in practice (although the US system also comes with significant out-of-pocket costs, so just including insurance costs wouldn't tell the full story). But that "disposable income" metric is defined in a way that considers US-style health insurance voluntary and therefore money spent on that is disposable income (even though it never actually hits someone's bank account in practice), whereas in a country with tax-funded healthcare or mandatory health insurance (unless it qualifies as "social insurance", but normally it doesn't) the costs of that aren't counted in that person's income.
    - NLPaep 3y ago
      No, it’s in spite of US spending more in taxes on healthcare than what some developed countries use to cover their entire population.
- ars 3y ago
  The poverty rate is not high. Actual hunger in the US is so low that they had to pick a new metric "food insecurity" to work on. Maybe travel a bit and see what actual poverty is.
  - uoaei 3y ago
    Sure, when your options are "eat Jack in the Box's 99¢ two tacos deal or starve" you will eat the tacos. Can't wait until you people are justifying soylent green in a couple decades.
- GoldenMonkey 3y ago
  How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine. Even our poor people have cars. We all benefit and even our pets have a higher quality of life than most people in the third world.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine. > Even our poor people have cars. The luckier ones, sure, but there are plenty of people in the US that have none of that.
shaky-carrousel 3y ago
It's not that hard having a productive economy when most of your workforce is mainly composed of essentially indenture servants.
- ars 3y ago
  The only way you could say such a thing would be if you were profoundly ignorant on what indentured servitude actually is. Maybe look it up.
  - wyclif 3y ago
    Indeed. The idea that software engineers could be in the top 85th percentile of American income and be identified as "indentured servants" is an absurd notion.
    - shaky-carrousel 3y ago
      The idea that software engineers account for most of the American workforce (which is what I said) is so egocentric that I hope you just misread.
      - belmont_sup 3y ago
        Seriously. Anyone only has to look for a second and see how many Americans are struggling day to day, paycheck by paycheck. Quick search says up to 78% of Americans do. That’s “essentially indentured servitude”.
        nsxwolf 3y ago
        They aren't indentured to another person, they're indentured to the laws of nature - needing to eat, find shelter, etc. When in human history has this not been the case?
        uoaei 3y ago

_8j50 3y ago

It's not wimpiness, it's an essential acceptance of cruelty that is accepted as a neccessary part of the american psyche where not just individuals but businesses have that freedom. "If I was the company owner or the boss, I might do that to in order to protect my money"

Clent 3y ago
You're describing a mental illness and yet I still agree with you.

OJFord 3y ago

They don't? All the tech companies I hear about having unions are American. (They are also big I suppose, but when I worked at Arm in the UK there were frequently outsiders sort of 'protesting' for employees to join. I was never aware of anyone caring who worked there.) It seems weird to me to have professional unions, doctors are an outlier there, where it's common, and (partly I suppose because) there isn't a professional institution (which overlap slightly) - it's split between unions and the GMC (licencing body, and as a doctor you'd whistle-blow to them for example). I'd like to see more software engineers be professionally registered, and it be more worthwhile to. (Yes, quite chicken-and-egg I'm sure.) I'm a member of the IET, but to be honest their light on software-relevance. The chartership requirements for example seemed like they would require quite a bit of bullshitting (not lying exactly, just sort of business-speak style forcing something to fit the very specific irrelevant questions) to satisfy; I abandoned it, so far at least.

kashunstva 3y ago

> American workers are the wimpiest creatures on the planet American workers do put up with a lot. But the cruelty of having one’s health care access perfectly intertwined with employment probably explains much of their reluctance to engage in the sort of individual and collective action needed to address malignant employer behaviour.

nsxwolf 3y ago
This is starting to collapse with the shift towards high deductible plans and HSA accounts. Increasingly, employers are just providing a subsidy for something that partially covers you when you get cancer. You'll pay for everything else yourself.

moneywoes 3y ago

Seems easy to say when you have healthcare coverage

dang 3y ago

Could you please stop posting flamewar comments, including nationalistic flamewar comments, to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.