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>I think the HN crowd forgets that what really runs the world are min wage workers running around and doing real world things, not code monkeys and glorified ty

>I think the HN crowd forgets that what really runs the world are min wage workers running around and doing real world things, not code monkeys and glorified type writers filling excel sheets. This is not true at all. How many products do you use that come primarily from minimum wage workers? If a few people responsible for Google maps running stopped working the GDP loss would be much bigger than if magnitudes more minimum wage workers did the same.

diggan 3y ago
Forget "how many", without those people, you'd end up without food on your table. Then the rest of the products you use wouldn't matter.
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  Also not true, I know the big farms of my state and they don't depend on minimum wage workers and I live in a third world country. I doubt agricultural wages or truck drivers are minimum wage jobs where you live. Assuming US https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Farm_Labor/fl_allwg.php https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Farm_Labor/fl_allw...
  - lm28469 3y ago
    France is one of if not the biggest agriculture power in Europe, most farmers can't even generate a 35hr min wage equivalent while working 80+ hours a week. 20% of them live in poverty, half of them make less than 22k euros a year Truck drivers earn between min wage and 150% of min wage, while being on the road every day and not having a social life, they drive 8 hours per day and sleep in their fucking truck while some code monkey makes 300k+/year coding memeojis at apple. Guess which ones will be automated first by openai lmao
    - qvrjuec 3y ago
      >Truck drivers earn between min wage and 150% of min wage Where are you getting this information? It's absolutely wrong. Long haul truckers (the one's you're saying don't have social lives because they drive 8 hours per day) make $71,196 on average in the US[1]. [1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/LONG-HAUL-Truck-Driver-Salary#Yearly https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/LONG-HAUL-Truck-Driver...
      - allendoerfer 3y ago
        He is talking about France in the sentence before. There are barely any truckers in Germany with a German nationality. They are simply not competitive. Same goes for package delivery. Just imagine what would happen to a trucker's salary in the US if it were to create a unified market with Mexico and all of Central America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_Europe... It's not necessarily a bad thing. Economies of Eastern European countries have been growing after all and Western Europe does not have enough workers because of its demographics anyway. My take is, that everybody is winning, there is less poverty than before, but some sideffects look ugly for a while.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      >half of them make less than 22k euros a year I'd be extremely happy making this amount. Some people are just accustomed to easier lives. >while some code monkey makes 300k+/year coding memeojis at apple. Meme position for a privileged caste statistically irrespective of skill in an institution that can piss money on anything and still succeed.
  - diggan 3y ago
    Farm work, especially work that doesn't require specialization (planting, maintaining, harvesting), is pretty much minimum wage work where I live, in Spain. Minimum wage here is ~1300 EUR / month. But it also differs wildly by region here, as some regions are really poor while others rich (relatively). Besides the farm work, there is food processing workers (cutting, cleaning, basically assembly lines), packaging, workers at warehouses, people who work at the counters of the store, and all the support roles for those positions. If you go outside and eat, you have all the restaurant personnel to take into account as well. There is a lot of low skilled labor that goes into making what we eat today. I'm not sure how you could possibly claim that none of those people are on minimum wage.
    - hotdogscout 3y ago
      Not all of the work you cited is essential. Would society crumble without retail? Minimum wage in Spain is significantly more money than anything I've made in my life. It's a very comfortable position for the vast majority of the world. >There is a lot of low skilled labor that goes into making what we eat today. I'm not sure how you could possibly claim that none of those people are on minimum wage. People doing essential work that isn't trivially replaceable have the bargaining power to charge more than the minimum wage in a moderately free market of human work, usually they do.
      - squigz 3y ago
        > Not all of the work you cited is essential. Would society crumble without retail? Did I miss the part where the other comment mentioned retail, or where you respond to the half dozen other examples of essential work? > Minimum wage in Spain is significantly more money than anything I've made in my life. It's a very comfortable position for the vast majority of the world. Instead of moving the bar some more, could you just define what minimum wage would be an acceptable bar for you in this conversation?
        hotdogscout 3y ago
        Yes you missed retail, read it again. https://uk.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://uk.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries Do you really need me to Google every single essential position known before conceding that society is not maintained by minimum wage workers?
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Take a look at what happened to farm employment figures over the last 100 years. It was a good thing.
lm28469 3y ago
The people picking trash in my street stopped working for 2 days and it looks like I live in some third world country now, two fucking days and it looks like I live in the middle of an open air dump If trucks stopped deliveries every city would die in a week If construction workers stopped building / maintaining we'd be in deep shit in 6 months or less If the people in warehouses stopped working for a week the economy would tank like it rarely does Nurses, doctors, bus/tram/train drivers, police, firefighters, ambulances, janitors, trash pickers, plumbers, sewer workers, electricians, people taking care of water treatment plants, power plants, teachers, social workers, ... You could delete facebook, openai, instagram, twitter, netflix, tesla and 90% of startups from the face of the earth right now and I'd have the exact same life as yesterday. Remove any of the people I mentioned above and society would crumble in no time And none of these are even remotely close to being automated at all, nobody cares about most of these jobs. But hey, here is a dancing kangaroo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuivg5rz_aA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuivg5rz_aA
- hotdogscout 3y ago
  Are any of the positions you cited minimum wage workers where you live? Again, assuming US: https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-high-pay/ https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-... https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector... >You could delete facebook, openai, instagram, twitter, netflix, tesla and 90% of startups from the face of the earth right now and I'd have the exact same life as yesterday. Remove any of the people I mentioned above and society would crumble in no time Yes because you picked non-essential work. (?)
  - rvnx 3y ago
    Even further, maybe the world would actually be better without these companies. Now that there are great inventions like TikTok, teenagers are depressed as hell, and they don't go to meet each other to play soccer together, because the "social" networks are giving the illusion of having that connection.
  - lm28469 3y ago

diggan 3y ago

Forget "how many", without those people, you'd end up without food on your table. Then the rest of the products you use wouldn't matter.

hotdogscout 3y ago
Also not true, I know the big farms of my state and they don't depend on minimum wage workers and I live in a third world country. I doubt agricultural wages or truck drivers are minimum wage jobs where you live. Assuming US https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Farm_Labor/fl_allwg.php https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Farm_Labor/fl_allw...
- lm28469 3y ago
  France is one of if not the biggest agriculture power in Europe, most farmers can't even generate a 35hr min wage equivalent while working 80+ hours a week. 20% of them live in poverty, half of them make less than 22k euros a year Truck drivers earn between min wage and 150% of min wage, while being on the road every day and not having a social life, they drive 8 hours per day and sleep in their fucking truck while some code monkey makes 300k+/year coding memeojis at apple. Guess which ones will be automated first by openai lmao
  - qvrjuec 3y ago
    >Truck drivers earn between min wage and 150% of min wage Where are you getting this information? It's absolutely wrong. Long haul truckers (the one's you're saying don't have social lives because they drive 8 hours per day) make $71,196 on average in the US[1]. [1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/LONG-HAUL-Truck-Driver-Salary#Yearly https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/LONG-HAUL-Truck-Driver...
    - allendoerfer 3y ago
      He is talking about France in the sentence before. There are barely any truckers in Germany with a German nationality. They are simply not competitive. Same goes for package delivery. Just imagine what would happen to a trucker's salary in the US if it were to create a unified market with Mexico and all of Central America. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_enlargement_of_the_Europe... It's not necessarily a bad thing. Economies of Eastern European countries have been growing after all and Western Europe does not have enough workers because of its demographics anyway. My take is, that everybody is winning, there is less poverty than before, but some sideffects look ugly for a while.
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    >half of them make less than 22k euros a year I'd be extremely happy making this amount. Some people are just accustomed to easier lives. >while some code monkey makes 300k+/year coding memeojis at apple. Meme position for a privileged caste statistically irrespective of skill in an institution that can piss money on anything and still succeed.
- diggan 3y ago
  Farm work, especially work that doesn't require specialization (planting, maintaining, harvesting), is pretty much minimum wage work where I live, in Spain. Minimum wage here is ~1300 EUR / month. But it also differs wildly by region here, as some regions are really poor while others rich (relatively). Besides the farm work, there is food processing workers (cutting, cleaning, basically assembly lines), packaging, workers at warehouses, people who work at the counters of the store, and all the support roles for those positions. If you go outside and eat, you have all the restaurant personnel to take into account as well. There is a lot of low skilled labor that goes into making what we eat today. I'm not sure how you could possibly claim that none of those people are on minimum wage.
  - hotdogscout 3y ago
    Not all of the work you cited is essential. Would society crumble without retail? Minimum wage in Spain is significantly more money than anything I've made in my life. It's a very comfortable position for the vast majority of the world. >There is a lot of low skilled labor that goes into making what we eat today. I'm not sure how you could possibly claim that none of those people are on minimum wage. People doing essential work that isn't trivially replaceable have the bargaining power to charge more than the minimum wage in a moderately free market of human work, usually they do.
    - squigz 3y ago
      > Not all of the work you cited is essential. Would society crumble without retail? Did I miss the part where the other comment mentioned retail, or where you respond to the half dozen other examples of essential work? > Minimum wage in Spain is significantly more money than anything I've made in my life. It's a very comfortable position for the vast majority of the world. Instead of moving the bar some more, could you just define what minimum wage would be an acceptable bar for you in this conversation?
      - hotdogscout 3y ago
        Yes you missed retail, read it again. https://uk.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://uk.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries Do you really need me to Google every single essential position known before conceding that society is not maintained by minimum wage workers?
CamperBob2 3y ago
Take a look at what happened to farm employment figures over the last 100 years. It was a good thing.

lm28469 3y ago

The people picking trash in my street stopped working for 2 days and it looks like I live in some third world country now, two fucking days and it looks like I live in the middle of an open air dump If trucks stopped deliveries every city would die in a week If construction workers stopped building / maintaining we'd be in deep shit in 6 months or less If the people in warehouses stopped working for a week the economy would tank like it rarely does Nurses, doctors, bus/tram/train drivers, police, firefighters, ambulances, janitors, trash pickers, plumbers, sewer workers, electricians, people taking care of water treatment plants, power plants, teachers, social workers, ... You could delete facebook, openai, instagram, twitter, netflix, tesla and 90% of startups from the face of the earth right now and I'd have the exact same life as yesterday. Remove any of the people I mentioned above and society would crumble in no time And none of these are even remotely close to being automated at all, nobody cares about most of these jobs. But hey, here is a dancing kangaroo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuivg5rz_aA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuivg5rz_aA

hotdogscout 3y ago
Are any of the positions you cited minimum wage workers where you live? Again, assuming US: https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-high-pay/ https://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-... https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector/salary https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/garbage-collector... >You could delete facebook, openai, instagram, twitter, netflix, tesla and 90% of startups from the face of the earth right now and I'd have the exact same life as yesterday. Remove any of the people I mentioned above and society would crumble in no time Yes because you picked non-essential work. (?)
- rvnx 3y ago
  Even further, maybe the world would actually be better without these companies. Now that there are great inventions like TikTok, teenagers are depressed as hell, and they don't go to meet each other to play soccer together, because the "social" networks are giving the illusion of having that connection.
- lm28469 3y ago