> Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping? Possibly, except t

> Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping? Possibly, except that there are a lot of pressures on people to move out of programming. Some examples: folks over 35 aren't welcome a lot of places; financial incentives often push programmers out of programming into e.g. project management. So you have a lot of people constantly leaving the field, somewhat by the design of the roles offered. Oh, and every programmer is reading HN trying to figure out how to start their own gig. Higher wages and other job fixes (e.g. security, status, professionalism) might bring a lot of these people back into the recruiting pool.