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Nurses do actually end up spending more time with patients, it's just that they spend more time with rich patients. The actual, tangible form this is taking ri
by nostrademons 23d ago
Nurses do actually end up spending more time with patients, it's just that they spend more time with rich patients.
The actual, tangible form this is taking right now is concierge medicine, home health aids, private practice, etc. My wife's (very good) ob-gyn had enough of working in institutionalized medicine where she's paid about what a L4 FANG engineer makes and pretty much has to follow the script that the health-care system dictates, and quit. Now she does perimenopause consultations for FANG execs at $1200/hour.
My uphill neighbors are in their 90s. I think the wife was in VC or something back in the 70s and 80s. There's a steady stream of nurses and home health aids up to their property. Seems like they've got a full care team working out of their home.
Across industry and industry, we see the same pattern. The mass-market product gets cheaper and less labor intensive, at the expense of any human touch. Everybody displaced, if they're any good and wants to stay in the field, moves up-market to do custom professional services for rich people. They pay for it, because if you want people to do good work for you, you have to pay them more than they can get otherwise.
- bmitc 23d agoThis has a surprisingly easy solution: get rid of the rich. It's never, in the history of the world, been in anyone's favor, except the oligarchy, to privatize everything.
- fangspire 23d agoThe group that gets rid of the rich will become the new rich.
- dismalaf 23d agoMaking everyone poor never made the world better.
- kqr 23d agoAren't "not rich" and "poor" very different things?
- FrancisMoodie 23d agoFor rich people who want to uphold the status quo these two things are identical, sadly.
- nickpp 23d agoMost people's definition of rich is "one dollar more than I have". Just look at laptop class's hate on the 1 percenters - which actually includes them.
- dismalaf 22d agoBoth are relative terms so they can be the same or different depending on who defines them. Nearly everyone that works in the US is rich by worldwide standards, so it's not clear that a lack of billionaires for example would make things better. Sans Amazon, Apple or Google, would the US be better off? I'm not convinced.
- bmitc 22d agoGetting rid of the rich by taxing them and getting rid of legal and financial loopholes that allows them to operate outside of the system with absolutely no contributions back does not make everyone poor. In fact, it's the complete opposite. Reducing wealth inequality is not the same thing as making everyone poor. And you know that.
- dismalaf 22d agoLots of counterpoints. Peronist Argentina, France under Hollande, Canada from 2015-today, etc... I live in Canada. Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%. Keep in mind that LLMs were basically invented in Canada and we've captured next to none of the economic activity. Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy and Geoffrey Hinton are all Canadian citizens lol...
- bmitc 22d ago> Under the current government, business investment cratered, 40% of our 1% earners left and our GDP per capita relative to the US dropped by 40%. With the assumption that this is true (I have no idea either way), has it made people more poor or worse off?
- dismalaf 22d agohttps://www.statcan.gc.ca/hub-carrefour/quality-life-qualite-vie/prosperity-prosperite/household-income-revenu-menage-eng.htm https://www.statcan.gc.ca/hub-carrefour/quality-life-qualite... You tell me. Median household (+ individuals not in an economic family) income went up $5k from 2015-2024. Given what you've experienced inflation wise in that time period what do you think? US median household income went up $15k in that time period ($22k CAD), so >4x more.
- bloppe 23d agoHow about just abolish poverty, so everyone is rich
- throwawayqqq11 22d agoPotato, potato, wealth is relative.
- deleted 22d ago[deleted]
- goodpoint 22d agoIt happens in cycles throughout history: inequality increases until it reaches a breaking point.
- bmitc 22d agoThat is indeed the concern, to avoid that breaking point by preemptively taking care of business.
- thatguy0900 22d agoIt reaches a breaking point because ultimately, the rich are outgunned and outnumbered once the poor realize they have had enough. We are not too far off from a time with ai and robotics and automated factories that the rich are no longer outgunned or outnumbered by things capable of disobeying them.
- hakfoo 20d agoThis seems like a new spin on the "wealth fades after 3 generations" narrative. You built the killbots that prevent anyone from ever reallocating your wealth and holed up in your compound. But will your daughter and granddaughter be able to keep them operational and aligned to their interests?
- thatguy0900 16d agoI think if the elites cared about their daughter and granddaughter they would have acted to not destroy the world to begin with, frankly. And it's no reprieve for the common man that after the world is ruined the elite bunkers will be trash after 100 years