6 ms·

Maybe (and I mean this genuinely, I don't know for certain) "Who cares?" is a cause of wage stagnation.

saltwatercowboy 1y ago
UK real wages stagnated directly in line with the 2008 financial crisis [1]. Enough has been written about 'too big to fail' that I don't need to rehash it, but ascribing guilt to the workers of a chronically underpaid and historically innovative nation doesn't feel right. [1] Office of National Statistics via BBC: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/2560/cpsprodpb/13FD8/production/_129008818_optimised-wages-real-whole-econ-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/2560/cpsprodpb/13FD8/p...
- b112 1y ago
  Wage stagnation always happens at the start of any economic downturn. However, once over and the economy resumes, typically the stagnation ends, and wages jump. The massive, huge cynic in me says, people make less because all they do is stare at their phones. Yes, I know, I'm overstating things a bit. But the other day I noticed the approx 20 year old garbage collector, was staring at his phone the whole time. I am not joking. Truck pulls up, he glances at my garbage bin, back to phone as he snags it. While rolling it to the truck? Staring at phone. While pulling the lever to lift and dump it? Phone. While putting it back in my driveway? Phone. While hanging off the truck from one arm as it careens up to 100km/hr to the next rural property? Phone. He's literally not doing his job. He's supposed to be looking for things in the garbage (car batteries, or something else not for normal garbage) during the dump. My bin also fell into the ditch, because he didn't even look at where it was headed. (And I've had garbage collectors for my entire life, decades of them, and yes it's worse.) Another example? I had a fridge delivered. One guy was 40. The other 20. 40 year old talks to me, etc as the delivery proceeds. 20 year old? Staring at phone literally every second, monosyllabic answers. Had to be prompted by 40 year old a dozen times to do basic jobs. I'm not saying it's all phones. But I've heard the cries of horror from people who have been told "if your phone is in your hand at work, you're fired". I can just imagine, when one is literally that addicted to something, how normal "I don't like work" unpleasantness skyrockets to mega-proportions of inane misery, from the conjoined "ARG, WORK!" and "OMG my fix is missing!" I envision it as "OK, now I'm working this sucks" mixed with "plus I have shards of glass in my shoes" or some such.
  - greedo 1y ago
    If you look at the rate of wage growth compared to inflation, it's pretty clear that wages have stagnated for a long time, with periodic bumps. The goal of most businesses is growth and increased productivity. The easiest way to have higher productivity is to constrain wages.
    - b112 1y ago
      I will agree that in certain parts of the world, this is quite true. However it's not a universal. China has had immense wage growth, and the emergency of a "middle class" income bracket, where no such bracket existed before. Of course it's an economy still in the throws of massive transformation. Yet regardless, "staring at phone instead of doing job correctly" isn't going to reverse that trend. Or I guess it could for the few unaddicted.
      - pixl97 1y ago
        >However it's not a universal. China has had immense wage growth Yea, showing transforming economies to established economies isn't really a great comparison at all. You have two huge things happening at once. A massive transfer of wealth from those 'rich' economies building new factories to use the cheap labor. This drops wages in the rich economies by shipping the jobs out. In the meantime the people in the rich economies have to move to service style jobs away from manufacturing. In a few decades the same will happen with China as it converts to a service economy.
  - zippyman55 1y ago
    I visit my local hospital and am in the back getting tests, etc. and the number of employees on their personal phones bugs me. Supervisors could just request users to step out into the hall and check their phone. The amount of non work that occurs when people become glued to their phone is incredible.
    - b112 1y ago
      Legislation often lags immensely behind change. The worst of this has only being going on for a little over 10 years. Maybe 12, so 3x changes of elected legislators. Some of these issues are also safety issues. Being distracted is certainly obvious in a car, and massive fines and even criminal charges are now the result. But there are subtle things one must do in many jobs, just generically paying attention, which results in a save vs unsafe outcome. Boredom at work used to be filled with paying attention to ... work. The garbage truck example I mentioned? I can think of a dozen safety issues. Safety for the employee, safety for someone walking by. Any accident could result in criminal charges for negligence, surely, but workplace safety rules are an issue too. Soon, eventually, workplace safety rules will likely mandate "No phone at work, period"... at least for many professions. At least, that's how I see some of this resolving.
angry_moose 1y ago
It might be part of the feedback loop, but from my experience it always starts at the company level. I think I've been under a pay freeze for 4 of the last 6 years, and a capped 2% raise one of the others. No matter how much effort I put in, my wages would have stagnated.
- jmalicki 1y ago
  The effort you could put in would be to switch companies
  - foobarchu 1y ago
    Thats kind of part of the problem, though. Yes, switching jobs constantly is a solid path to higher wages in fields like tech (at least it was before this year, some of the most competent people I know are struggling to change jobs), but in my experience that act tends to reduce ones number of "give a damns".
actionfromafar 1y ago
On a meta level in elections, maybe.
piva00 1y ago
What would be the basis of that though? Just thinking about every point in my life where I ended up in "who cares?" was due to concerns outside of my control/power. When I feel I have some agency, power, and/or recognition it just naturally follows that I will care (in varying degree but I will care somehow); even if not for the larger organisation I will care about my immediate peers/team. If I'm not paid enough, or I don't have agency, or I don't feel heard and my point is proven later (multiple times), or a superior is an asshole, so on and so forth, I naturally end up in "who cares?" after some beating. Of course, it's all personal experience/anecdotal evidence, but in general I don't think most people just turned the "who cares?" mode on and wage stagnation followed, it seems to be much rather the opposite, you take away safety, money, agency, and any other aspect that might make a job more fulfilling and the only natural progression is people disengaging from the activity.
some_furry 1y ago
I think the arrow goes the other way.
- 0_____0 1y ago
  I was wondering if maybe this is the result of a tight labor market. A lot lf what I see kind of lines up with what happens if you have to make do with underskilled or otherwise sloppy staff. The throughline I think is that there's no consequence for being bad at one's job. Not to say I'm perfect - I am pretty sure I've been a mediocre employee before, but I've also never been sacked.
  - some_furry 1y ago
    I have a high work ethic but I mostly keep it to myself. That is: I don't hold strangers to my standards or expect them to feel the same way about their work that I do about mine. I've never been sacked for poor performance, but I have been included in mass layoffs and restructurings throughout my career, which always makes one wonder if they were secretly not meeting some metric.
tempodox 1y ago
You must have a very strange sense of humor.
bigtex88 1y ago
Absolutely not.
Spivak 1y ago
This is my read on the situation. I have been weirded out when I get "excellent" service at a restaurant. Like my friend, you literally aren't getting paid enough to give this much of a shit. You're doing me a favor by working this drive-thru job so I don't have to cook while I'm sick. The gratitude goes the other way.

UK real wages stagnated directly in line with the 2008 financial crisis [1]. Enough has been written about 'too big to fail' that I don't need to rehash it, but ascribing guilt to the workers of a chronically underpaid and historically innovative nation doesn't feel right. [1] Office of National Statistics via BBC: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/2560/cpsprodpb/13FD8/production/_129008818_optimised-wages-real-whole-econ-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/ace/standard/2560/cpsprodpb/13FD8/p...

b112 1y ago
Wage stagnation always happens at the start of any economic downturn. However, once over and the economy resumes, typically the stagnation ends, and wages jump. The massive, huge cynic in me says, people make less because all they do is stare at their phones. Yes, I know, I'm overstating things a bit. But the other day I noticed the approx 20 year old garbage collector, was staring at his phone the whole time. I am not joking. Truck pulls up, he glances at my garbage bin, back to phone as he snags it. While rolling it to the truck? Staring at phone. While pulling the lever to lift and dump it? Phone. While putting it back in my driveway? Phone. While hanging off the truck from one arm as it careens up to 100km/hr to the next rural property? Phone. He's literally not doing his job. He's supposed to be looking for things in the garbage (car batteries, or something else not for normal garbage) during the dump. My bin also fell into the ditch, because he didn't even look at where it was headed. (And I've had garbage collectors for my entire life, decades of them, and yes it's worse.) Another example? I had a fridge delivered. One guy was 40. The other 20. 40 year old talks to me, etc as the delivery proceeds. 20 year old? Staring at phone literally every second, monosyllabic answers. Had to be prompted by 40 year old a dozen times to do basic jobs. I'm not saying it's all phones. But I've heard the cries of horror from people who have been told "if your phone is in your hand at work, you're fired". I can just imagine, when one is literally that addicted to something, how normal "I don't like work" unpleasantness skyrockets to mega-proportions of inane misery, from the conjoined "ARG, WORK!" and "OMG my fix is missing!" I envision it as "OK, now I'm working this sucks" mixed with "plus I have shards of glass in my shoes" or some such.
- greedo 1y ago
  If you look at the rate of wage growth compared to inflation, it's pretty clear that wages have stagnated for a long time, with periodic bumps. The goal of most businesses is growth and increased productivity. The easiest way to have higher productivity is to constrain wages.
  - b112 1y ago
    I will agree that in certain parts of the world, this is quite true. However it's not a universal. China has had immense wage growth, and the emergency of a "middle class" income bracket, where no such bracket existed before. Of course it's an economy still in the throws of massive transformation. Yet regardless, "staring at phone instead of doing job correctly" isn't going to reverse that trend. Or I guess it could for the few unaddicted.
    - pixl97 1y ago
      >However it's not a universal. China has had immense wage growth Yea, showing transforming economies to established economies isn't really a great comparison at all. You have two huge things happening at once. A massive transfer of wealth from those 'rich' economies building new factories to use the cheap labor. This drops wages in the rich economies by shipping the jobs out. In the meantime the people in the rich economies have to move to service style jobs away from manufacturing. In a few decades the same will happen with China as it converts to a service economy.
- zippyman55 1y ago
  I visit my local hospital and am in the back getting tests, etc. and the number of employees on their personal phones bugs me. Supervisors could just request users to step out into the hall and check their phone. The amount of non work that occurs when people become glued to their phone is incredible.
  - b112 1y ago
    Legislation often lags immensely behind change. The worst of this has only being going on for a little over 10 years. Maybe 12, so 3x changes of elected legislators. Some of these issues are also safety issues. Being distracted is certainly obvious in a car, and massive fines and even criminal charges are now the result. But there are subtle things one must do in many jobs, just generically paying attention, which results in a save vs unsafe outcome. Boredom at work used to be filled with paying attention to ... work. The garbage truck example I mentioned? I can think of a dozen safety issues. Safety for the employee, safety for someone walking by. Any accident could result in criminal charges for negligence, surely, but workplace safety rules are an issue too. Soon, eventually, workplace safety rules will likely mandate "No phone at work, period"... at least for many professions. At least, that's how I see some of this resolving.

angry_moose 1y ago

It might be part of the feedback loop, but from my experience it always starts at the company level. I think I've been under a pay freeze for 4 of the last 6 years, and a capped 2% raise one of the others. No matter how much effort I put in, my wages would have stagnated.

jmalicki 1y ago
The effort you could put in would be to switch companies
- foobarchu 1y ago
  Thats kind of part of the problem, though. Yes, switching jobs constantly is a solid path to higher wages in fields like tech (at least it was before this year, some of the most competent people I know are struggling to change jobs), but in my experience that act tends to reduce ones number of "give a damns".

actionfromafar 1y ago

On a meta level in elections, maybe.

piva00 1y ago

What would be the basis of that though? Just thinking about every point in my life where I ended up in "who cares?" was due to concerns outside of my control/power. When I feel I have some agency, power, and/or recognition it just naturally follows that I will care (in varying degree but I will care somehow); even if not for the larger organisation I will care about my immediate peers/team. If I'm not paid enough, or I don't have agency, or I don't feel heard and my point is proven later (multiple times), or a superior is an asshole, so on and so forth, I naturally end up in "who cares?" after some beating. Of course, it's all personal experience/anecdotal evidence, but in general I don't think most people just turned the "who cares?" mode on and wage stagnation followed, it seems to be much rather the opposite, you take away safety, money, agency, and any other aspect that might make a job more fulfilling and the only natural progression is people disengaging from the activity.

some_furry 1y ago

I think the arrow goes the other way.

0_____0 1y ago
I was wondering if maybe this is the result of a tight labor market. A lot lf what I see kind of lines up with what happens if you have to make do with underskilled or otherwise sloppy staff. The throughline I think is that there's no consequence for being bad at one's job. Not to say I'm perfect - I am pretty sure I've been a mediocre employee before, but I've also never been sacked.
- some_furry 1y ago
  I have a high work ethic but I mostly keep it to myself. That is: I don't hold strangers to my standards or expect them to feel the same way about their work that I do about mine. I've never been sacked for poor performance, but I have been included in mass layoffs and restructurings throughout my career, which always makes one wonder if they were secretly not meeting some metric.

tempodox 1y ago

You must have a very strange sense of humor.

bigtex88 1y ago

Absolutely not.

Spivak 1y ago

This is my read on the situation. I have been weirded out when I get "excellent" service at a restaurant. Like my friend, you literally aren't getting paid enough to give this much of a shit. You're doing me a favor by working this drive-thru job so I don't have to cook while I'm sick. The gratitude goes the other way.