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America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD
- DarkNova6 3mo agoAs somebody living outside the US, I would find moving to the states highly undesirable even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens. To me, it would mean a significant reduction in quality of live and I am low-key scared of all the ingredients and additives in food that are pretty much banned everywhere else. Not to mention all risks regarding healthcare.
- lostlogin 3mo agoI’m not in the US, but laughed when I saw that my bike is ‘known to cause cancer or birth defects/reproductive harm.’ When everything is dangerous, nothing is dangerous.
- oblio 3mo agoAnd you know that it's not dangerous based on... Gut feeling? Have you read the health warning in detail and disagree from an informed point of view or are you just generally opposed to regulation? Even better, can you link the bike model and health warning and let others take a look at it for you? Or just your neighborhood chat bot :-)
- TomK32 3mo agoThe DOT has a list of interesting studies on the active transportation in the form of walking and cycling https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/active-transportation-and-health https://www.transportation.gov/mission/health/active-transpo... You can also search for studies that compare the societal cost/benefit of using a car vs a bicycle. The generally accepted conclusion is that cars have a cost while cycling has a benefit for society.
- oblio 3mo agoThat's not what I'm saying. Based on OPs phrasing, their specific bike was marked as a health hazard. Maybe their bike is painted with lead based paint. There could be a million reasons a specific model could be unhealthy.
- TomK32 3mo agoOh sorry, I missed that CA over-cautious warning label nonsense.
- oblio 3mo ago> Oh sorry, I missed that CA over-cautious warning label nonsense. See, that's the thing... what "over-cautious warning label nonsense"? What are they actually warning about? Which chemicals/products?
- lostlogin 3mo agoWho’d know. It gets slapped on all sorts of things and you can’t tell which matter.
- entrope 3mo agoI've read the list of materials that California knows cause cancer and birth defects. It lists things that people encounter every day. Alcoholic beverages, aloe leaf extract and aspirin are some of the most notable examples from the "A" section. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list
- vladvasiliu 3mo agoWell, here in France, pregnant women are also discouraged from drinking alcohol because of birth defects. I don't know about aloe extract, but pregnant women are also discouraged from taking aspirin. Here's a random online store selling it, with a big warning for "usage during pregnancy and breastfeeding" (French only): https://lasante.net/nos-medicaments/douleurs-et-fievres/aspirine/aspirine-du-rhone-500-mg.html https://lasante.net/nos-medicaments/douleurs-et-fievres/aspi...
- entrope 3mo agoYes, but California requires prominent signs for any business premise where these materials are found, and the incentives are to not provide any further detail about which substances are present. So a gas station will have a Prop 65 sign; is there a hazard beyond automobile exhaust? It's legally less risky for the business to not say. Similarly for a store that sells alcoholic beverages; should customers take protective measures besides not drinking alcohol? It's less risky for the business to not say. The signs are too common, and too vague, to satisfy the intent of the law.
- vladvasiliu 3mo agoOh, I thought those signs were on the products themselves. I was probably confused because of the "handlebars being a cancer risk" comment.
- oblio 3mo agoAsbestos, leaded gasoline, lead based paint, etc were things encountered everyday in the past. This is how science progresses and how our life expectancy and active life expectancy go up.
- Henchman21 3mo agoYou ignore gut feelings? Feelings from your second brain? That seems incredibly unwise. Sorry for the off topic comment.
- lostlogin 3mo agoI’m on a Cervélo Soloist. I’ve just looked more carefully - the warnings is on the S5 (under the frame set sale option, specifically naming lead), so I’m safe! https://www.cervelo.com/en-GB/bikes/s5 https://www.cervelo.com/en-GB/bikes/s5 So I’m in the clear. I’m pro good regulation. This warning is ridiculous and it’s plastered all over things in California such that it’s useless. Yes, there are toxic things on a bike. How many riders or their offspring were harmed as a result of them?
- oblio 3mo agoDoes the warning harm you? That's the ultimate benchmark of bad legislation? Annoying legislation is just... meh. Now, what would be ideal if they would actually list the harmful chemicals and where exactly they are used. There are certifications that require that kind of disclosure and for people that do care, they're gold.
- lostlogin 3mo ago> Does the warning harm you? It’s a waste of time and money, so yes.
- pjc50 3mo ago"we know this is dangerous, but we're not going to do anything about it"
- cannonpr 3mo agoWell… your bike likely has several lubricants, and paints as well as coatings that especially in close contact with your skin… especially in the handle bars under friction indeed probably introduce chemicals that will increase some risks, versus never having done it. That is the horror of what we have done with modern material science… Would you prefer a label that gives you only risk increases above say 1% ? Alternatively you can just assume we have complicated the world so much with modern material tech that despite its benefits nearly everything you touch increases your cancer chances in America.
- stasomatic 3mo agoLook up California Proposition 65 warning labels [0]. Every parking structure or a building is dangerous to your health, enter at your own risk. It's very endearing. Our taxes at work. [0] https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov https://www.p65warnings.ca.gov
- fuckinpuppers 3mo agoYeah the USA has only given lip service for everything it claims to be. Especially in the last 18 months it’s been working overtime to make it even worse. All the US has done is allow for massive amounts of wealth hoarding and gaslighting of a significant portion of the population into voting and supporting things against their own beliefs or common sense. If you said “China allows red dye 12 in their food and it’s been proven to cause cancer” they’d freak out about it. But they don’t see any problem back home.
- isoprophlex 3mo agoNot to mention school shooting drills. Teaching kids how to behave when someone tries to shoot up your school, because it happens more than once a decade... And then not doing fuck all to fix the root cause, besides thoughts and prayers, because muh freedom. Incredible that this is the country that has been the dominant global exporter of technological innovation, pop culture and economic policy for so long.
- anonym29 3mo agoTraining kids how to respond to school shootings is like training kids how to respond to dual engine failures on an airplane. It happens, it's just statistically so unlikely to ever happen to your kid, that the drill essentially serves as ideological propaganda reinforcing fear of the idea of the threat far above and beyond the statistical risk actually posed by the threat itself. And as a reminder, Europe sees more people die to heat than America sees people die to guns. https://fortune.com/2026/06/26/heat-death-europe-ac-american-gun-violence-climate-change-hot-summer/ https://fortune.com/2026/06/26/heat-death-europe-ac-american... Maybe your guild should figure out how to beat the PvE server before lecturing the players on the PvP server on how ridiculous you think our freedom is. Major skill issue, noob.
- inigyou 3mo agoSchool shootings in America are not statistically unlikely, they are a regular occurrence.
- anonym29 3mo agoThe odds a child will be killed by an armed assailant at a school in the USA are about 1 in 5 million per year, and if you narrow down to mass shootings at schools, that drops to about 1 in 10 million. Between 2013 and 2022, a total of 77 students in grades K-12 have been killed in 11 school mass shootings, in a country with 50 million school children. A child in America is about 500-600x more likely to die in a car accident than a school shooting. A child in America is about 90-120x more likely to die from a pedestrian fatality than a school shooting. A child in America is 70-90x more likely to die from choking than a school shooting. A child in America is 50-60x more likely to die from drowning than a school shooting. A child in America is 40-55x more likely to die in a fire or from smoke than a school shooting. A child in America is 10-15x more likely to die in a bicycle accident not involving a motor vehicle than from a school shooting. Comparable risks to dying in a school shooting include a fatal sting from a bee or wasp, (about twice a likely), or dying from being struck by lightning (about half as likely). School shootings, while tragic, do not pose nearly as much of a statistical threat as you think they do, even if they still pose more than they ought to.
- philipallstar 3mo ago> even if it wasn't for the hostility towards non-US citizens. The US welcomes more people legally than any other country in the world[0], and half of its politicians think welcoming illegal immigrants is a good idea too. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/migration?tab=line&country=USA~DEU~FRA~GBR~TUR~IND~CAN~FIN~SWE~CHE~EGY~BRA~BEL~AUS~AUT~ALB~KOR~ZAF~TWN~THA~POL~PRT~ESP~ITA~ISR~JPN~CHN~COL~HRV&hideControls=false&Metric=International+immigrants&Period=Total+number&Sub-Metric=Total&Age=All+ages https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/migration?tab=line&coun...
- rudolftheone 3mo agoNow look at the same metric per capita - USA immediately loses its 1st place.
- DarkNova6 3mo agoThis is irrelevant because of 2 factors: 1. Past policies don't dictate current policies. And current policies are wildly different from policies of 5 years ago, which are again different of policies of 20 years ago and even before that. 2. Amount of immigrants doesn't say anything about standard of living. And we all know immigration (and even illegal immigration) was promoted by all parties because this meant cheaper labor costs. And often also, exploitable labor. And finaly... it's not a surprised that the third largest country in the world, who was considered an immigrant nations for well over 2 centuries has the most immigrants?
- petcat 3mo agoIt very much depends on life situation. For instance, if you are less than 50 and on private health care through your employer than you're very likely going to have better healthcare access than anywhere in Europe and Canada. I am able to see my PCP and dentist within a week if I want. I read a statistic that in Europe and Canada you have to make those kinds of routine appointments months in advance. Also, my father-in-law went from consultation to a full knee replacement surgery within 3 weeks. Again, that kind of thing takes 8 months or a year minimum anywhere in Europe or Canada.
- gadders 3mo agoA lot of people in the UK (with professional jobs) top up their state health provision with private medical insurance provided by their employer. This isn't a bad mix.
- Arnt 3mo agoYou read that? I can get either in a day or two if I need it, they want much longer-term planning though. For a vaccination I'll call several weeks in advance. If I want an appointment before/after work I'll call well in advance, if I want something tomorrow they may say "11:30, take it out leave it", which isn't great for my work. Don't trust whoever wrote what you read there. FUD scaremongers.
- microtonal 3mo ago
- dzonga 3mo agoyeah the hostility started recently with trump and his ilk - fighting for nationalism of a bygone era. if you can afford it - the US has excellent healthcare, you can also get organic food and dare I say better housing, private infra. what the US could/should improve on is have public clinics ie for preventative and quick care. public hospitals in the long run have many problems. in the U.K for example - I used private healthcare, could've I have to the NHS - yeah but it means waiting times. the southern states in the US are also what bring the quality of life down.
- krapp 3mo ago>yeah the hostility started recently with trump and his ilk - fighting for nationalism of a bygone era. It definitely didn't start with Trump, it just became policy under him. Trump would never have had a chance if Americans didn't already blame immigrants for the effects of neoliberalism rather than the billionaires who put it into practice, and if the rural white populace weren't already afraid losing the cultural power of their demographic majority and identity. People forget how much of a joke candidate he was until racists took him seriously. >if you can afford it - the US has excellent healthcare If you can afford it, anywhere has excellent healthcare.
- vladvasiliu 3mo ago> If you can afford it, anywhere has excellent healthcare. I don't think so, judging by the many heads of state and other filthy rich people choosing to get healthcare in the West instead of their local countries.
- FeloniousHam 3mo ago[flagged]
- _DeadFred_ 3mo ago"estimates suggest that inability to afford costs of medical care contributes to at least 530,000 personal bankruptcy filings annually. Approximately two-thirds of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are associated with medical expenses or illness-related loss of work." https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2026/04/05/increasing-burdens-of-medical-debt-and-bankruptcy-are-uniquely-american/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2026/04/05/increasi...
- stasomatic 3mo agoI live in the US. I disagree about the hostility towards non-citizens. If you are talking about ICE, it's more about racism. They are not gunning down Brits, Germans or Australians. Agree about the rest. Can I come live in your country? :)
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- insane_dreamer 3mo ago[dead]
- DarkNova6 3mo agoNot from the population itself but the changes to policy and hostility at the border. This includes restricted access even to visas, but also handing over your unlocked phone if you are a foreign national. Nothing of that sort is done when you make a visit for China. In fact, I could go there for 2 weeks without the need for a visa. For over a year it has actually been the official recommendation to bring a burner phone to the US if you area a European citizen. To me personally, this feels like an invasion of privacy that makes me feel deeply resentful.
- stasomatic 3mo agoI replied to the parent post about hostility towards non-citizens. I am not sure if they meant from the administration or general population. There is zero to none from the latter. Sure, there are going to be some hicks in the boonies in their camo who will say inappropriate things about folks south of the border, etc. I am sure that happens in the most tolerant European countries as well. That said - I moved to the States in the late '80 as a teen (NYC/Brooklyn/NJ) from Ukraine. I lived all over the country since, except for PNW and the Midwest. The US was different then. Perhaps my glasses were rosier then. Perhaps it's because the net was in its nascent phase. By a strange twist of fate, I ended up working for a Ukrainian company until recently. When my ex-colleagues asked me "should I move", I told them no, stay in Europe. Culture, infrastructure, medicine, work-to-live. It takes me 9 hours to fly to Barcelona from Miami + customs, as opposed to a 2 hour train from Paris to London without any TSA shenanigans. I'd move to Europe in a sec, but it's too late, too many roots. One thing I'll add, as banal as it is, one can become an American, but one would probably never become French or German or Polish.
- AmVess 3mo agoIt really is astounding how bad national brands are. Everything loaded with sugar and salt. Lowest quality ingredients in everything, and I do mean everything. I bought a package of national brand slice turkey. Threw it right away. It was dripping in chlorine. Things like national or regional brand ground beef is vile, and nothing can be done to it to make it edible. I bought a package years ago, grilled up burgers. I had to throw every single one of them away because they STANK. Our bread is a joke. Bakeries no longer smell like bakeries because they aren't making bread, but a bread substitute. Chemical leaveners, trash flour, loaded with sugar and salt. Extra absurdity? Some brands dye the crusts brown because the leaveners they use doesn't brown in the oven. Candy is also a joke. Fake chocolate, tiny portions and very chemically tasting. Expensive, too. 75 cents for a bar the size of my ring finger. Extra insults? Everything is shrinkflated. Less product for higher prices. https://www.reddit.com/r/shrinkflation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/shrinkflation/ $22 for a package of toilet paper that has 1/3 less paper than before. Prices are out of sight. 3 years ago, 1lb of real deli roast beef was $7. Now $20. Costs almost $30 to make a pot of stew. Used to cost $10. I could write for hours on this subject. The garbage produced is that prolific.
- eudamoniac 3mo agoIt is not that astounding that the cheapest possible product legally available is not good quality. You are free to pay what UK pays for meat (a lot) and get great product. I'm not sure what bakeries you're visiting but that's not my experience; there's nothing cheaper than flour and yeast and baking soda. If the bakery bakes things in store, rather than getting shipped in, it's pretty likely to be made with those. Of course if you want to buy the sandwich bread that lasts 4 weeks on the shelf then it's not going to be 2 ingredients. The rest is just global inflation. EU doesn't have cheaper cocoa or wood pulp imports. Every problem begins with inflation. COVID QE fucked it all up.
- AmVess 3mo ago[flagged]
- DarkNova6 3mo agoI have no idea why you are getting downvoted. I don't know the specifics, but just comparing the ingredients of foods between the US and the EU really speaks for itself. Just compare something seemingly innocuous like Ketchup ffs.
- sershe 3mo agoIf you look at the immigration numbers across the board, apparently most people disagree :) just purely by numbers other than vibes or rare scary scenarios, the living standards in the US make most other OECD countries look poor. Not even speaking of the fact that immigrants can always go back so it's even better for them. I hiked with a guy who lived between US and Canada because he liked US better but needed expensive surgeries (that were also optional, kinda) so he did the minimum in Canada to qualify. Or worked with a European who outright said after making money it would be a good idea for him to go back and (ab)use the welfare state. Americans can't do that!
- DarkNova6 3mo agoLooking at the state of infrastructure, public transportation or the quality of food doesn't exactly make a compelling case for the US. Public schooling isn't something that wants me want to move either. I really enjoy walkable cities and I am absolutely not a car person. Sure, none of these are a problem if you earn a shitton of money... but where doesn't this apply? Look, I'm not saying the US is necessarily a bad place to live in but I really enjoy live in a high wellfare societies and will happily trade away a good chunk of my salary for higher quality of living.
- sokoloff 3mo ago> We measure resources by using per capita gross domestic product – the amount of money in a country evenly divided among its entire population. GDP is not "the amount of money in a country". GDP is the monetary value of goods and services produced within a country during a given period (a flow, measured in dollars-per-year). The amount of money in a country is a measure at a point in a time (a stock, measured in dollars). I realize Fortune magazine isn't The Economist, but I'd still expect PhDs in political science opining on economic topics to at least understand the difference between stocks and flows.
- pydry 3mo agoit's not that either. it's the total value of all transactions. if you paint a masterpiece worth millions and keep it in your closet it has negligible impact on GDP. only once it is sold does it have an effect.
- stefanfisk 3mo agoAnd on the contrary, there’s this method of increasing GDP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37395566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37395566
- PaulKeeble 3mo agoAnd if its sold 5 times in the year its 5x the GDP. Of course the value of the painting hasn't changed and their remains only 1.
- sokoloff 3mo agoResales of previously sold (used) goods are not included in GDP. Services to facilitate selling [auction fees, commissions, shipping, etc.] are new services and so get counted, but the underlying asset's resale is not.
- stasomatic 3mo agoCan you explain more? Isn't it just money changing hands? The millions sat in the buyer's safe, now it's in the artist's safe. Same total, no? Or is it doubled? The artist has millions, and the buyer has millions worth of art. I am dense, if you can't tell.
- Havoc 3mo agoI do wonder how real the base number - the GDP - is. The wealthy have been accumulating wealth rapidly but it’s all on paper and the entire thing is underpinned by assumptions of USD reserve currency status.
- MrBuddyCasino 3mo agoAs if workers got paid by "what $wealth allows". As if there was a "right to dignified work" (what is "dignified"?). As if there was a "right to fair income" (whats "fair"?). This is, in the immortal words of Norm McDonald, some "commie gobbledygook". I don't think there is any "newspaper", as in traditional print publication, left worth reading.
- officialchicken 3mo agoAfter all of that, you still seem to be familiar with the concept of "fairness". And yet you feel you shouldn't try anything because you don't have the perfect universal answer... are you sure you're posting on the correct forum?
- charcircuit 3mo ago>If the U.S. changed some policies – such as increasing the federal minimum wage – 46 million people could earn enough to rise above that fair pay line. You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage and then those newly unemployed people will depress wages for other jobs since there is more labor on the supply side.
- frotaur 3mo agoCheck out https://arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-wage-natural-experiment https://arindube.substack.com/p/a-minimum-wage-natural-exper..., very good post comparing states with minimum wage and without, that seem to go against this often repeated argument.
- logicchains 3mo agoThen why not raise minimum wage to $100? Obviously there's a limit.
- inigyou 3mo ago"we should make murder illegal" "then why not make sleeping illegal? obviously there's a limit"
- charcircuit 3mo agoThere is bias in which states increased minimum wage or not. It's like attributing the massive tech salaries in Silicon Valley vs Maine because minimum wage exists.
- thatwasunusual 3mo ago> You can't just raise minimum wage and expect people to make more money since businesses need to fire everyone who aren't worth the new minimum wage [...] This way of thinking is what's wrong with USA (among many other things). You don't (or at least shouldn't) hire lots of people because it's cheap.
- nbardy 3mo agoThis is a weird number. And reeks of the same sort of reallocation fallacy that makes people think the rich making too much makes them poor. If we really just say 4xd everyone’s salary in America. Prices are gonna rapidly rise in everything. Things don’t get materially better unless we build the material things we need. We need to come up with a way to build more houses. Lower the cost of healthcare. Not just increase everyone’s money supply.
- roenxi 3mo ago> America pays workers just 27% of what its wealth allows – the worst in the OECD The US consistently scores among the best countries in the world for paying people [0]. Is there some way I can lodge an application to be exploited in a similar manner, without having to move there? Being wealthy and having to live among really wealthy people sounds better than being poor and living among equals. They're inventing a metric there that just doesn't matter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income
- krige 3mo agoThese charts are seriously out of date though. Five years in the current economic climate? Might as well be ancient history.
- AnimalMuppet 3mo agoPerhaps so. In what direction do you expect "the current economic climate" to be moving the charts?
- jltsiren 3mo agoInternational comparisons are tricky, and you should always check the data definitions carefully. The first metric on that page is household income divided by the square root of household size. That has some unreasonable consequences. For example, if housing is unaffordable, children live longer with their parents, and measured income is higher. The second metric measures either net income or consumption, depending on the country and the year. It takes taxes, benefits, and purchasing power into account but fails to consider savings and subsidized services.
- DarkNova6 3mo agoSalary alone is meaningless if you don't factor in purchase-power-parity and other quality of living aspects. E.g. a lot of people are happy to move to Denmark, and accept a paycut because they are leading with their social facilities and family support. Salary alone will not conjure good infrastructure
- philipallstar 3mo agoThis is yet another article that doesn't understand what wealth is. There is almost no point talking about these numbers, because they mislead more than they inform.
- cyberjerkXX 3mo agoAgreed - it also doesn't understand rights. A right to someone's labor is slavery. It's great to have robust social programs. However, they aren't a right - they are benefits. Changing the definition of rights is a trick to idea smuggle politics.
- feverzsj 3mo agoThat's why they let in massive number of immigrants from poor countries.
- throwaway27448 3mo agoWe should really be letting in an order of magnitude more if we don't want our economy to drive off a cliff
- logicchains 3mo ago[flagged]
- throwaway27448 3mo ago[flagged]
- logicchains 3mo agoIt sounds like you're statistically illiterate. Indian and Pakistani immigrants to the US overwhelmingly vote for the same socialist, anti-business practices that have kept their countries poor. And in business Indians engage in the same kind of anti-meritocratic caste-based discrimination.
- cyberjerkXX 3mo agoChart go up
- cyberjerkXX 3mo agoIf you're a politician you can tax $500 from one productive member of society and redistribute $100 to four unproductive and lazy members. You get four votes instead of one. It's called job security.
- dauertewigkeit 3mo agoI know what they want to say, but I think their argument is quite weak, because essentially you have US industries that aren't tech. American workers still get higher salaries than elsewhere in the OECD and growth in such industries isn't out competing those same industries in other OECD countries. In fact many industries are lagging behind. So actually US workers are being paid more not less than elsewhere. Then you have tech. In tech, US workers are again paid more than in other OECD countries. But growth in tech is just insane and it makes a huge percentage of the GDP growth. And there aren't a whole lot of tech workers as a percentage of the total workforce. So although tech workers are paid a whole lot more than in other OECD countries, they aren't capturing as much of the growth of the tech industry. So really this is an argument that tech workers in the US should be paid even more, and I don't think that sells so well as the populist argument that the authors intended to make. And to me saying, that an autoworker that works for Ford, is not capturing the GDP growth that is generated by Google, is nonsensical.
- rbehrends 3mo ago> American workers still get higher salaries than elsewhere in the OECD and growth in such industries isn't out competing those same industries in other OECD countries. I used to think that also, probably because FAANG salaries had skewed my perception, but after looking at the data, this does not seem to be actually true, at least not in general. For example, Germany has a somewhat higher annual median gross salary for full-time employees than the US (PPP-adjusted, BLS/DESTATIS salary data, OECD PPP values). Of course, this is the median salary. America absolutely offers higher salaries at the top end (and I mean much higher, often by a factor of 2-3 for highly qualified professionals, such as software engineers and doctors). But that also means correspondingly lower salaries at the low end. And of course, labor is taxed heavily in Germany, so discretionary/disposable income may look different in the end on a case-by-case basis.
- AnimalMuppet 3mo agoMy expectation is that Germany has higher taxes than the US. What happens if you look at median net salary rather than gross?
- gadders 3mo ago"We set the bar at half of what a typical American household earns. " Yeah, relative income isn't really a good measure. You want to raise the floor for people, not (necessarily) narrow the gap between rich and poor.
- throwaway27448 3mo agoWealth inequality itself causes a great number of ills in this country. We should absolutely aim to lower this gap as a goal in itself.
- logicchains 3mo agoWealth inequality doesn't cause ills, envy does. Envy should be regarded as a character defect, a sin, not something to be elevated to policy. You're not poorer because someone's richer than you, and indeed policies aimed to reduce wealth inequality will actually make you poorer, that's why average European salaries are much lower than US ones.
- simianwords 3mo agoThe classic reply to this is that inequality reduces the agency of people to make decisions in the society - IOW it causes _power_ inequality. But the reply to that is that it is orthogonal to the discussion. Power should be distributed in a way that increases efficiency and not just for the virtue of doing so.
- cyberjerkXX 3mo agoAll human relationships have inequalities. Attempting to use the government to destroy hierarchies is utopian bullshit. It always leads to worse outcomes than intendent because humans are imperfect. Intentions should never be the measure of success, only outcomes.
- watwut 3mo ago
- dist-epoch 3mo agoAs an (in)famous philosopher said recently, if you workers are not bone-skinny it means you are doing Capitalism wrong and are paying them too much.
- Integrape 3mo agoMaybe pay them with GLP-1 drugs if that's your goal.
- refurb 3mo agoHmmm, this index scores US at 80% and Mexico at 86%. To say the results are suspect is understating things.
- arthurofbabylon 3mo agoI believe Americans are naive to the bad deal they're currently sitting with. It is the most materially wealthy place on earth, yet with terrible distribution – this is not a technical problem, it is a cultural problem. My favorite example is to describe a suburb. A lot of people in the world do not know how dystopian an American suburb is: many residents do not know their neighbors, acquiring food requires driving a car or paying someone else to drive, there exists a strict separation from nature/outdoors, depression and other preventable illness rates are high, life expectancy in some regions is declining, there is no plaza/piazza/"downtown." And yet, there are all of these buildings with concrete and glass (and vinyl siding) and more, with plumbing and electricity and often natural gas. The suburb despite its immense resources is simply not subject to a design process and not well-implemented. This is the deal that Americans unwittingly signed up for. It is not a very good deal, and if we were willing to more intelligently engage our political processes we could — as the article suggests — have a much more favorable arrangement. However, if Americans writ large remain ignorant to how good it could be, the healthy political engagement will not materialize. So here is a contrasting perspective, shared in hopes of spurring some healthy negotiation from my fellow Americans -> Imagine walkable residential neighborhoods with cafes/restaurants/shops where neighbors interact and by interacting reduce premature mortality, education is not just free but comes with a humble stipend, more than half the population commutes via passive transit, retail businesses are allowed to operate at almost any size, there is a guaranteed basic income for anyone disabled or simply unlucky, neighbors share resources like food and tools, police are trained and police officer candidates are screened to prevent those with exceptionally low IQ's from entering the field, administrators go to prison for violating laws, traffic systems are routinely redesigned and upgraded for safety and efficiency... And if any of this sounds like a pipe dream then I urge the skeptics to travel – every example above has been successfully implemented somewhere, in Thailand or Switzerland or Japan etc. Naivety is the common trait that currently holds America back from what it really quite easily could accomplish.
- glimshe 3mo agoI love suburbia. I grew up in "walkable residential neighborhoods with cafes/restaurants/shops where neighbors interact" outside the US. Thank you, but no thank you. Crowded, nosy judgemental people, noisy and small properties with constant fights with neighbors. You're projecting you personal tastes onto others and thinking everybody else is getting a bad deal.
- snapplebobapple 3mo agoI would expect fortune to be able to understand basic economics, but I guess not. I can't verify because it is a paywalled article, but if this article isn't about oligopolies abusing labor market power, then it is intensely wrong headed. Paying workers less is a good thing to a point, it means less dead weight loss to the economy from labor abusing market power (which is basically the worst thing you can do in economics). If it's about abuse of monopsony power in the labour market by oligopolies then I apologize, that's the one case where paying people less is bad, but it's also kind of rare these days.
- josefritzishere 3mo agoWe are in the bad place.
- lossolo 3mo agoUS ownership in capital markets by wealth level: Wealthiest 1% of earners - 50.1% Top 90-99% of earners - 37.3% Top 50-89% of earners - 11.7% Bottom 50% of earners - 1.1% Source: Federal Reserve/Reuters
- louraider 3mo agoIt's hard to understand that more and more countries are becoming better than the USA. You can live in a "developing" country and feel safer and better.