> the video of Daggett threatening to “cripple” the entire economy, or the fact that Daggett is alleged to have connections to organized crime.
Half of our economy is built around making as many people replaceable as possible so that their wages can be driven into the ground. Pearl clutching about people resisting downward social mobility by any means necessary is cringe. This put me off to the rest of the article.
> Half of our economy is built around making as many people replaceable as possible so that their wages can be driven into the ground
Amusingly, this is both true and has the exact opposite effect of what you imply here.
The data does not show a downward spiral of individual wages and wealth, and in fact shows quite the opposite. And this is driven by real economic growth, which is driven by tech, which is frequently deployed in the hopes of automating away some work.
However, just from a first-principles point of view, more automation is better. We can't do things unintelligently just because that means more work. The goal is more wealth, not more work.
> The data does not show a downward spiral of individual wages and wealth
Not sure what data you are using. All data I have seen from the Federal Reserve and others show stagnant/negative wages accounting for inflation (since the 1970s). Not to mention the fact that key factors of social mobility like housing and education have outpaced wage growth drastically.
> However, just from a first-principles point of view, more automation is better.
I never said it wasn't. Automation is inevitable. However I am not going to complain about people smashing the machines meant to replace them. That is the only logical course of action for them, unless the government steps in with a free retraining program or someone else has unionized jobs lined up for them.
My point is that the author takes capital owners acting in their own naked self-interest for granted, and whines about workers/union leaders doing the same. Either be consistent or admit that you have disdain for the working class.
"However I am not going to complain about people smashing the machines meant to replace them."
Imagine coming home and finding your car wrecked and your home appliances such as washing machine, vacuum cleaner and microwave smashed into pieces.
What happened is that a guy who could have been your horse guy and a bunch of people who could have been your domestic help (a maid, a butler) in 1900 got angry at the machines which displaced them. Also, a now-unemployed phone exchange operator from the 1930s smashed your phone; why should you be able to connect a call to another city without going through her first?
After all, as a programmer, you are likely a solid middle class, and middle class homes once used to support numerous manual workers to clean, cook etc. for them. Thus, they acted as important job creators. By adopting machines, you destroyed their living and sent them on the dole. Unfortunately, they didn't have unions strong enough to nip microwaves and washing machines in the bud.
From the point of view of 2024, an absurd scenario, right? Because this development is over and we are used to its consequences. Employing people to cook and clean after you is even considered a bit gauche.
The most successful automation usually displaces workers all over the globe, not just in a few factories. Having a phone that connects you from Texas to New York without living people in the middle is a result of many people acting in "naked self-interest".
You offer a hypothetical that has no basis in reality. A better real-world example is people using their collective bargaining power, which slightly inconveniences me and other consumers. As it happens, this is a frequent occurence, and I am always ok with it. No need for hypotheticals.
I have some issues with CPI that are used in these charts. I don't mean to be like "argh this data disagrees with my worldview therefore it is bad!", but lots of people have made complaints about the CPI not showing the full picture.
I dislike how CPI handles housing costs:
"If a unit is owner-occupied, the BLS computes what it would cost to rent that home in the current housing market."
This does not take into account quality of housing or things like closing costs or insurance payments.
CPI also does not factor in things like pensions or benefits. So we are unable to see what proportion of people's money they are spending on things like their 401(k) which potentially would have been paid for by employers in the past.
Education cost calculations are also not ideal:
"Various types of student financial aid are also considered for eligible colleges. Loans or other types of deferred tuition are not eligible for pricing. Charges for room and board and textbooks are covered elsewhere in the CPI sample."
And lastly, healthcare costs appear to not take into account deductibles:
"The CE tracks consumer out-of-pocket spending on medical care, which is used to weight the medical care indexes. CE defines out-of-pocket medical spending as:
patient payments made directly to retail establishments for medical goods and services;
health insurance premiums paid for by the consumer, including Medicare Part B; and
health insurance premiums deducted from employee paychecks."
For example, how do you calculate the CPI on computers? They’re a million times better now, but are also cheaper. My Macbook is not the same product as my 486 from decades ago.
This affects everything. Take medical care as you said. The outcomes there are much better than before, so how do we calculate inflation on medical expenses?
If you provide a 10% better product/service for a 10% higher price, is that inflation? What if all of society gets richer and insists on the second, better version of your service as a minimum?
If houses get bigger and nicer and our standards for “a house” go up over time, and houses also get more expensive, then what is the inflation on housing?
I think they’re genuinely doing their best with the CPI calcs, even though it’s not possible to get a true number.
Long story short though, life has gotten dramatically better in material terms, for everyone, especially the poor.
Ah yes, the poor, benefiting from the new corporate 'zero hour jobs' meaning you can't count on having hours next week or what your schedule will be other than that hours will be kept at less than full time to make sure you don't accidentally qualify for benefits.
For 'the poor' tt was hard enough to juggle multiple 'part time' jobs that companies created to avoid full time benefits, but now multiple part time 'zero hour' jobs is ridiculous (especially when both expect you to work around/prioritize their non-consistent schedule you get last minute).
I too hated my last minute scheduling when I was working retail while in college, but it's also equally ridiculous that benefits like health insurance are tied to an employer in the first place.
Your average dockworker is infinitely more valuable than trust fund nepo babies that sit on their ass all day playing with investor money opening up yet another useless AI startup that's going to crash within a year.
Port workers are physical laborers and therefore in our popular culture are perceived as stupid. Humans of lesser value.
This inherent bias exists in all of us, whether we admit it or not. That's why we view knowledge workers getting paid more than they deserve in a MUCH different light than physical laborers getting paid more than they deserve.
Sad but true. Definitely a lot of elitism here as well as anti-union.
I'd happily remain on my butt at a computer even if the trades started making double my salary. They are sacrificing their bodies for this theoretical higher wage. They deserve it in my eyes.
But of course, that's not how a lot of "smart people" think. "I can life boxes, why are they paid more"? Big difference between lifting a box, and lifting boxes for 20,000+hours for a part of a career. Life is short as is, I will try to make the best of it.
I'm speaking to cultural biases in the west, I'm not speaking from a personal perspective. Physical laborers are percieved as humans of lesser value, and that's why the bar or standard for what is mistreatment of them is much higher. We do the same with, for example, prisoners. They are humans of lesser value, so the standard for mistreatment is really high. We can force them to work, physically hurt them, starve them a bit, and the average person doesn't care. We have to do something really bad for people to start caring.
That's why your office worker can take a 15-minute walk and nobody bats an eye. But the grocery store cashier wants to sit down, and millions of people lose their mind.
I don't think you understand what culture means. When I'm saying it's the culture of the west to put down physical laborers, that doesn't mean I think YOU PERSONALLY do that. I really didn't think this is the type of thing that needed to be explained on hackernews of all places, but here we are. Try to keep up.
What do you mean? Of course they will be taxing future transactions. Thats how we get congress with no empathy for people without a small loan of a million dollars.
Alternatively they nepo-inhereit a company and they fight for lower taxes that they should pay. So they indirectly tax the middle/lower class more becsuse they basically take money from the government.
> What do you mean? Of course they will be taxing future transactions. Thats how we get congress with no empathy for people without a small loan of a million dollars.
A trust fund is FUNDED. They are spending money that someone else made for them.
High port costs, on the other hand, are paid for by consumers.
There are not that many trust fund kids and I don't care if they blow their family fortune on something stupid. It's their money, it's not like spending it makes ME worse off.
But high shipping costs? That causes INFLATION. It's a cost they ask all of us to pay, unnecessarily, since they have blocked automation.
Half of our economy is built around making as many people replaceable as possible so that their wages can be driven into the ground. Pearl clutching about people resisting downward social mobility by any means necessary is cringe. This put me off to the rest of the article.