American life is improving for the lowest paid

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2019/05/18/american-life-is-improving-for-the-lowest-paid

by esilver • 7 years ago

101 127 7 years ago

ethbro• 7 years ago

Headline: "American life is improving for the lowest paid; Come back capitalism, all is forgiven"

Article: Low unemployment means anyone can find a job.

"By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%."

"Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars."

"Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent."

"Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds."

mistermann• 7 years ago

A good example of how the news is often both factual and "fake".

olivermarks• 7 years ago

I was just listening to one of the Economist podcasts with Cass Sunstein https://soundcloud.com/theeconomist/the-economist-asks-cass

The Economist is strictly broadcast, no feedback or comments allowed in any medium. The podcast interviewers introduce themselves but that's a rare exception, no article authors are attributed.

Their platform arguably promotes the Rothschild/Agnelli agenda and is useful to keep in touch with that viewpoint.

FabHK9• 7 years ago

Yeah, quite remarkable. Celebrating a 0.1% annual wage increase over the last 4 decades, one week (!) of paid vacation, and "help" with health insurance as progress. In 2019.

It reminds me of the Onion article rejoicing that "Chinese Employers To Grant 15-Minute Maternity Break".

https://www.theonion.com/chinese-employers-to-grant-15-minut...

"Of course, this measure wouldn't need to be taken at all if pregnant workers could schedule their due dates for the annual holiday of May 1," Huang added.

will42742• 7 years ago

When you consider that it's 0.9% in the past year, and 3.2% total in the 39 years prior to that, it seems more like something to celebrate.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm

0815test• 7 years ago

Low unemployment is a huge deal. We should keep in mind that the real wage of an unemployed worker is, well, zero. And a robust labor market means that employees are better positioned to move up the pay scale, to jobs with better productivity, wages and working conditions.

adamnemecek• 7 years ago

As always, it's probably improving in some ways, getting worse in others.

I didn't have access to the whole article but the first three paragraphs that I read didn't really inspire confidence.

Also the claim isn't that it's not getting better but that it's not getting better as fast as it is for the rest of the economy.

otaviokz• 7 years ago

"What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday"

I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year? Is there any other form of paid off time?

ragona• 7 years ago

Correct. US companies don’t have to give any paid time off. It’s as bad as it sounds.

umanwizard2• 7 years ago

Usually, low-skill hourly wage service jobs in the US have no paid leave, at all.

If you work N hours, you get paid for N hours.

That’s why getting one week of paid leave annually was described as rare.

Barrin92• 7 years ago

Jesus I didn't know that. I knew that the US had a debate about maternity leave, but I thought the US had paid annual leave. Here in Germany everyone gets 24 working days off, I don't think I'd survive a year without it.

aphextron• 7 years ago

I may be getting it wrong as I don't live in US, but does it mean he only gets one week of holidays per year?

Yes, and even that is a rarity for wage workers.

Is there any other form of paid off time?

Nope. Most hourly workers are lucky to get a few unpaid sick days. Have an accident, or get sick and need to spend a couple weeks in the hospital? Now you're unemployed and bankrupt.

themagician3• 7 years ago

This is both true and mind boggling to me.

I employ 5-10 unskilled people at any given time. Mostly for assembly and packing. They get two weeks PTO, and at least a week of paid vacation throughout the year when we close for holidays, mostly more.

At the end of the day the total annual cost to provide this is well worth the drama it keeps out of the workplace.

Sick days? Take as many as you need. I don’t want sick people at the office.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

I believe in theory they don't have to give any paid time off, no vacation, no sick days. I once was offered a job in NYC with 5 days vacation, increasing to 10 after a few years. I said "No, thank you". I can't even imagine how it is to work like that.

MisterBastahrd2• 7 years ago

I interviewed for a ton of positions recently because I was about to be laid off. I got to see the entire gamut of offers from "no PTO, no benefits, and a pittance" to "fully paid benefits, 18 days PTO, and top 10% salary for location".

I can't imagine the difference in quality between the guys who are getting nothing and made to fend for themselves and the ones who are getting taken care of. I'm going to go out on a limb to say it might not necessarily be a giant difference depending on how well the developer in question Luckily for me, the job at the most financially rewarding location seemed just as interesting as the ones who appeared to be bootstrapping themselves.

luckydata• 7 years ago

I know it sounds crazy, it's because it is. Working in the US SUCKS for everyone.

umanwizard2• 7 years ago

That’s really not true. Plenty of people in the US do get paid time off. It’s just not required by law.

scarface749• 7 years ago

Not everyone. Most salaried jobs have at least two weeks paid vacation and 10 paid holidays. This is also true for decently paid full time hourly workers.

sosborn• 7 years ago

Working in the US SUCKS for everyone.

Simply not true. Every 12 months I get three weeks PTO and three weeks sick leave (which is also paid and not connected to my vacation time). PTO will soon jump to 4 weeks after another year of working at my job.

I know it isn't this good for everyone, but to say that working in the US sucks for everyone is a ridiculous statement.

seppin• 7 years ago

This article is about low skilled workers. I've worked the same job in the US and the EU, I earned MORE than double in the US. Also lower taxes.

And holiday you can negotiate up front to get as many as you would in Europe.

Avshalom2• 7 years ago

https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2017/ownership/private/...

As of March 2017 ~23% of private industry workers have no paid time off

rconti• 7 years ago

There are no requirements for vacation days. However, by using the term 'holiday' it may be mixing things up slightly. In the US, you may get a holiday off (eg, bank holiday such as Christmas or New Year's Day), in addition to "paid time off" or "vacation" days that you use at your discretion.

FabHK9• 7 years ago

I'd call that a "public holiday".

esotericn5• 7 years ago

I have never worked an hourly paid job in the UK that has paid holiday.

I'm not sure they exist, it's sort of what hourly pay is - you get it when you work and not when you don't.

Personally I'm not sure it's something that makes sense, it should just be factored in to the wage. Most hourly paid jobs I know of don't have regular hours, even - how much do you pay for a week's holiday when some weeks the employee works 8 hours and some 24 hours? An average? Of what, if they've only been there a few months, say?

Now, time off, e.g. whether someone practically actually can take time off during the year without being sacked, is a different matter entirely.

Historically (before my career as a software developer) whenever I've felt like I need a bit of time out I've either had to negotiate it or just leave. It's usually far easier to quit a job than to convince your manager to let you go away for a few weeks. Sometimes the bureaucracy doesn't even, well, understand it.

I am personally completely convinced that the only answer to these sorts of issues is just to pay people properly. If they choose to chuck the money away regardless, it's on them.

Building some savings early in my adult life and maintaining them has been the best thing I've ever done. It turns the matter of "does this job offer holiday" "can I get the weekend off" stuff into an academic concern because you are in control.

DanBC2• 7 years ago

Hang on - paid holiday is a legal requirement.

https://www.gov.uk/holiday-entitlement-rights

This applies to people on zero-hour contracts as well.

flattone• 7 years ago

"if they fail to save it's on them"

while this is mechanically true everywhere i look it isnt a comprehensive implementation of managing varieties of types of people toward the betterment of humanity

Someone1234• 7 years ago

I have never worked an hourly paid job in the UK that has paid holiday.

It has been a legal requirement since 1938, so hypothetical that is possible if you're in your mid 95 or older.

tzs2• 7 years ago

Personally I'm not sure it's something that makes sense, it should just be factored in to the wage. Most hourly paid jobs I know of don't have regular hours, even - how much do you pay for a week's holiday when some weeks the employee works 8 hours and some 24 hours? An average? Of what, if they've only been there a few months, say?

If you want full time hourly employees (40 hours per week) to earn two weeks of paid vacation per year, then you have hourly workers accrue vacation time at a rate of 1 hour vacation earned for every 25 hours on the clock.

This system handles people who hours worked varies from week to week, and it handles people who have not been there long enough to earn the full two weeks--ever 5 weeks they have accumulated a vacation day, so if they want to take a week off 6 months in, say, that works.

It also works for tracking vacation time for salaried employees. For salaried employees you just force the hours worked to 8 per day in the program that calculates vacation accrual, regardless of the actual hours worked (assuming that you even track actual hours worked for salaried employees).

boulos• 7 years ago

As mentioned downthread, this is the unfortunate combination of the British English term (“holiday”) which American English replaces with “vacation”.

There are a set of Federal Holidays, but the Fair Labor Standards Act does not require that all workers get them off nor that they are paid [1]. There are some holidays that are Federal Holidays but are generally not observed nationwide (e.g., Colombus Day), however, banks and financial institutions including the stock market may be closed for them.

Most workers get about 10 weekdays off per year from these federal holidays (Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, etc.) but at the low end (think fast food worker) that’s often not the case. Particularly part-time workers often get nothing. A comment downthread suggests that 23% of workers get no vacation time, but that might or might not also mean “and no Federal Holidays”.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/workhours/holidays

Avshalom2• 7 years ago

The bls page says 77% have 'paid holidays', 68% have 'paid sick days' and 76% have 'paid vacation'

chungleong2• 7 years ago

Paid leaves aren't mandated by law. The norm is two weeks for salaried workers. Most people don't used them up anyway. There's no tradition of everyone going on vacation in the same month in the US. That makes people feel somewhat guilty leaving their jobs behind. Even while on vacation many end up working.

Americans do switch jobs more frequently. People have more occasions to unwind between jobs (perhaps cashing out their unused leaves to pay for a big trip).

jeromegv• 7 years ago

While people might switch jobs more often, is that supported by data that they use this time to unwind? You end up without health insurance coverage during that gap so I can’t imagine tons of people going in that direction.

tzs2• 7 years ago

Another reason for not using them up is that one of the times of year that many people do often want to take time off during has a lot of paid holiday days already for many people, so you can get a large block of time off only using a few vacation days.

I'm speaking of Christmas/New Year, which many people like to take off to be with family.

At many places, Christmas and the day before are paid holidays, and at many places New Years and the day before are also paid holidays.

Suppose that in a given year you get a Tuesday and Wednesday off for the Christmas holidays and Tuesday and Wednesday off next week for New Years.

With one day of vacation (Monday), you turn the Christmas holiday into a block of 5 consecutive days off (2 weekend days, 1 vacation day, 2 holidays). Toss in 2 more vacation days (Thursday and Friday), and now for a cost of 3 vacation days you 9 consecutive days off.

Add another vacation day next Monday, and four a total cost of 4 vacation days you get 12 consecutive days off. 6 vacation days will get you 16 consecutive days off.

If you job is such that it naturally gets a lot less busy during the holidays, and it is possible to do it remotely, you might even convince your employer to work at home on some of those days, which will be such light work that it does not interfere with your vacation activities, but counts as a work day, not a vacation day.

I've usually been able to do that at least one day each week--check some logs, run some scripts that fix some database problems that some old crappy legacy code that no one ever gets the time to rewrite cause, spend 10 minutes or so figuring out to fix a couple things the scripts cannot, and then just check work email a few times during the day to look for anything else that comes up (which usually is nothing), and my employer will let me call that a work day...and so I can get those 16 consecutive days off with only 4 days vacation used.

Even if you are only earning two weeks (10 days) of vacation a year, if you take you vacations as above it is easy to end up accumulating them.

scarface749• 7 years ago

I only have a few anecdotal data points of what well paid hourly work is like in the US. But, most well paid hourly jobs with benefits etc. have some combination of:

Holidays: Federal holidays where people are off and they still get paid as if they were working.

Vacation: Time off work that is paid that is accrued during the time you are working. When you submit your time, you can use your vacation hours.

Sick: Days that you are suppose to either be unable to work or have a dependent (or spouse) that you need to take care of. Depending on the company, they can require doctor’s notes.

Many companies lump sick and vacation as “paid time off”.

Companies usually have paid bereavement leave.

I’ve worked as a contractor occasionally with none of these types of time off, but fortunately, I am in a position to adjust my rate accordingly.

Even when I was in college and working retail we had some type of minimum holiday pay.

ok_coo• 7 years ago

This typically means 5 paid days off per year. The rest is maybe paid holiday that other people get like Christmas. All other days taken off are unpaid and subject to approval. This was what I got at my first office job in the US.

moonlet• 7 years ago

Oftentimes the lowest paid workers end up working the days everyone else has off. Heaven forbid the Walmart or the Kohl’s be closed on any holiday but basically Christmas Day.

Izkata• 7 years ago

Everyone else is throwing out their experiences, so since none mentioned something like mine I may as well too:

Back in highschool, I worked hourly at a library for a year, and don't recall getting any paid vacation time. What I do remember is trading days with co-workers so I could get a full week off on occasion, or once just giving them my days so they got paid more that week with no pay loss another week.

rmason• 7 years ago

If you want to read the entire article:

https://outline.com/TegA4h

JumpCrisscross• 7 years ago

Why this over the Internet Archive [1]? Outline is a private site run by unknown people with unknown intentions. Its privacy policy [2] (a) names no actual person or responsible entity, (b) permits business transfers and (c) permits changes at Outline's sole discretion.

The Internet Archive, on the other hand, is a nonprofit run by known, reputable people.

(Setting aside the ethics of reading journalists' work without compensating them.)

[1] https://archive.org

[2] https://outline.com/privacy.html

willio58• 7 years ago

Outline has a better interface.

sergiomattei• 7 years ago

Outline looks like a completely different product - it allows annotating news articles in an uncluttered, from my initial impressions.

ttul• 7 years ago

How does Outline not get sued into the ground?

krustyburger• 7 years ago

Maybe all the staff at the various pay-walled outlets use it to avoid having to subscribe to competitors?

forgotmypw• 7 years ago

American life is improving for the lowest paid MAY 16, 2019

BRAD HOOPER quit his previous job at a grocery in Madison because his boss was “a little crazy”. The manager threatened to sack him and other cashiers for refusing orders to work longer than their agreed hours. Not long ago, Mr Hooper’s decision to walk out might have looked foolhardy. A long-haired navy veteran, he suffers from recurrent ill-health, including insomnia. He has no education beyond high school. Early this decade he was jobless for a year and recalls how back then, there were “a thousand people applying for every McDonald’s job”.

This time he struck lucky, finding much better work. Today he sells tobacco and cigarettes in a chain store for 32 hours a week. That leaves plenty of time for his passion, reading science fiction. And after years of low earnings he collects $13.90 an hour, almost double the state’s minimum rate and better than the grocer’s pay. His new employer has already bumped up his wages twice in 18 months. “It’s pretty good,” he says with a grin. What’s really rare, he adds, is his annual week of paid holiday. The firm also offers help with health insurance.

His improving fortunes reflect recent gains for many of America’s lowest-paid. Handwritten “help wanted” signs adorn windows of many cafés and shops in Madison. A few steps on from the cigarette shop is the city’s job centre, where a manager with little else to do points to a screen that tallies 98,678 unfilled vacancies across Wisconsin. In five years, he says, he has never seen such demand for labour. He says some employers now recruit from a vocational training centre for the disabled. Others tour prisons, signing up inmates to work immediately on their release.

Unemployment in Wisconsin is below 3%, which is a record. Across America it was last this low, at 3.6%, half a century ago. A tight labour market has been pushing up median pay for some time. Fewer unauthorised immigrants arriving in America may contribute to the squeeze, though this is disputed. Official figures show average hourly earnings rising by 3.2% on an annual basis. “Right now, part time, it seems like everyone is hiring. Every American who wants a job right now can get a job,” says another shop worker in Merrillville, in northern Indiana.

In any economic upturn the last group of workers to prosper are typically the poorest earners, such as low-skilled shopstaff, food preparers, care-givers and temps. Their pay was walloped in the Great Recession a decade ago, and the recovery since has been unusually slow. Pay has leapt recently—with the lowest-paid enjoying faster gains than the better-off.

The benefits are not equally spread. In Wisconsin, as in much of the country, more jobs are being created in urban areas and in services. Laura Dresser, a labour economist, points to a “very big racial inequality among workers”. Wages have been rising fastest for African-Americans, but poorer blacks, especially those with felony convictions, are also likelier to have fallen out of the formal labour market, so are not counted in unemployment figures.

The wage recovery is not only about markets. Policy matters too. Some states, typically Republican-run, have been reluctant to lift minimum wages above the federal level of $7.25 an hour. In Merrillville, a worker in a petshop carries a Husky puppy to be inspected by a group of teenage girls. Staff are paid “a dollar or two above the minimum wage”, says his manager. Despite his 13 years’ employment, and over 40 hours’ toil each week, his pay and benefits amount to little. He calls occasional bonuses a “carrot at the end of the road”.

He could munch on bigger carrots in other states. Lawmakers in some states are more willing to lift minimum wages. Where they do, the incomes of the lowest-paid rise particularly fast. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia raised the minimum wage last year. (Some cities, like Chicago and New York, occasionally raise it too). Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute told Congress in March that, in states which put up minimum wages at least once in the five years to 2018, incomes for the poorest rose by an average of 13%. In the remaining states, by contrast, the poorest got a rise of 8.6% over the same period.

In neither case, however, do the increases amount to much better long-term prospects for the worst-off. By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%.

One study in Wisconsin suggests that caretakers, for example, took home over $12 an hour by last year, so were only just getting back to their (real) average earnings achieved in 2010. Expansion at the bottom of the labour market “is finally pulling some wages up. But it’s certainly been much slower in this boom than any other,” argues Tim Smeeding, a poverty expert at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. He describes “capital winning over labour” for several decades, and expects the trend to continue, given weak unions, more automation and other trends.

The poorest get some hard-to-measure benefits in addition to higher hourly pay. Mr Hooper is not alone in daring to walk away from an exploitative boss. More of the low-paid get a bit more say on how and when they toil. Many crave a reduction in the income volatility that afflicts them, since sudden swings in earnings are associated with poor mental health, high stress and worry over losing access to financial assistance or food stamps.

One study of 7,000 households, by Pew, found in 2015 that 92% of them would opt for lower average incomes, if earnings were predictable. Follow-up research late last year suggested the same trends are still present. Low- and middle-income households remain anxious about volatile earnings. Most have almost no savings. Many would struggle with a financial shock of just a few hundred dollars.

Lots of jobs that are being created are in or near flourishing cities like Madison, where low-paid workers are squeezed by high housing costs. Pew has estimated that 38% of all tenant households spend at least 30% of their income on rent. Living in more affordable places, such as Janesville, an hour south of Madison, may be an option for the lower-paid. But that means commuting to the city, or taking local jobs with less pay and fewer benefits. Few workers earning less than $12 an hour get health insurance from their employer, whereas most do so above that threshold.

Katherine Cramer, who studies the long-standing causes of simmering anger among poorer, rural Americans, says “resentment is worse than before”, despite the recent better wages. Rural folk complain that “it’s been like this for decades”, she says. A year or two catching up has not yet been enough to change their minds.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Better at the bottom"

Cannibusted• 7 years ago

The Android and iPhone made a few lives happier.

Back in my day, not everyone had a powerful pocket computer that could do Facetime!

NE2z2T9qi2• 7 years ago

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But in all seriousness, the richness that has been added to my life by walking around with a Library of Alexandria in my pocket is immeasurable. People may jokes about the value of having 24/7 access to cat videos or whatever, but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for.

luckylion2• 7 years ago

but the reality is that over 3/4 of Americans have access to knowledge that people in any other century would have sold their souls for

Some people. Your average medieval serf didn't care for all that in his pocket: he couldn't read and he'd get the whip if he stood around doing nothing, so he would very much not have sold his soul for something that had no value for him.

It's similar today. For you, it's a great asset, but most (and, I assume, everybody some of the time) don't use it that way. For most people, it is indeed 24/7 cat videos. Also, I have my doubts about the importance of carrying it around with you. It's the knowledge and the access that counts (if you're into knowledge), not the "and I can do it while standing outside anywhere in the city". The access would be virtually the same if you had to go to a public library instead of getting your phone out of your pocket.

stoppergoo• 7 years ago

Just think about how much effort and money it took in the past to acquire knowledge and even compute time. Microsoft word ? You can get that similar functionality for free now, as well as spreadsheets, encylopedias, etc.

Let alone cameras, videos. Cheap storage.

FabHK9• 7 years ago

FWIW, economists try to capture that with quality adjustments or hedonic indices.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_index

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_regression

craftinator• 7 years ago

Must say that I disagree with this article. I've been low income for years, and have had hundreds of low income coworkers, and I've seen rent, gas, food all become more expensive while their pay remains constant, or is cut. Most have at least 2 jobs, and any kind of expensive life event ($1000 or more) will put them out on the streets. Things weren't this bad for us 15 years ago...

peisistratos2• 7 years ago

The article text does not really support the headline

By last year, the poorest 10% were still earning only a miserly 4.1% more per hour than they did (in real wages) 40 years ago. Median hourly pay for America’s workers was up a little more, by 14%.

With exactly 40 years ago being in the midst of a wage downturn. Go back a little more and real hourly wages have fallen for both groups, despite GDP etc. booming for decades in relation (and out of relation as well) to population growth.

The wealth created by those who work and create wealth goes to the heirs and rentiers in America. The "job creators" who do not work and who parasitically expropriate surplus labor time and the fruits of that time from those if us who do work.

will42742• 7 years ago

The article text does not really support the headline

While that's true, it' mostly because its a bad article rather than the headline being wrong. Of that 4.1% gain over 40 years, 0.9% were in the the past year. America is seeing an economic boom go on longer than expected and low unemployment is allowing people who left the labor market to re-enter and _slowly_ pushing wages up.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/realer.nr0.htm

FabHK9• 7 years ago

You're comparing apples (average) and oranges (10th percentile) here.

adventured• 7 years ago

The real median household income is up over 43% since 1990. It's up 62% for the bottom 20%.[1]

It's popular to claim that wages have gone nowhere for ~40 years, it's never supported by the actual data. The premise requires that one ignores the cost of health coverage in the US that is commonly paid for or heavily subsidized by an employer (the employee would have to pay far higher taxes for that otherwise, given the per capita healthcare cost in the US is now ~$11,000 -- $33,000 for a family of three). It ignores pretty much every benefit that employees receive today, that did not exist in the early 1970s, including 401k matching.

If companies weren't paying for healthcare benefits, the employees would see their taxes skyrocket. That's a dramatic, obvious, direct wage benefit. In socialized systems such as are common in Europe, the companies do not pay nearly so much for healthcare coverage, instead individuals pay far higher personal taxes, while the average corporate income tax rate is low.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-15/wage-s...

peisistratos2• 7 years ago

actual data

The data is available from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics https://www.bls.gov . The Economist's gloomy figures were right, but are gloomier if pushed back a few years as 1979 was a nadir any how.

health

The US is off the charts in terms of health costs compared to other industrialized countries, and big business has arranged it so it is the only industrialized country with people not under health coverage.

401k

US Workers used to have guaranteed pensions, the 401k was a backward step, not some new benefit

Plus the fact that Google workers have all these things, and some other workers may have some if these things doesn't modify that wages have fallen.

The US has skyrocketing health care compared to everyone else, with some unconvered unlike every other industrialized countries, and guaranteed pensions no longer exist - not great arguments for an improvement.

People are not stupid, they know things are not better, despite think tank commissars trying to present ways that they are.

bjourne2• 7 years ago

How come so few Americans realize how insanely unfair that is? The USSR collapsed 30 years ago, so there is no Communism to scare people with anymore.

scarface749• 7 years ago

So how do you propose to make things more fair? Why do I have the feeling that knowing the population of HN, who are heavily employed in the tech industry, don’t consider themselves the privileged beneficiaries of capitalism?

0x262d2• 7 years ago

well Trump was elected president in 2016 and there might be a socialist elected president in 2020. so people realize.

dj_gitmo• 7 years ago

I actually like some things about the Economist and I subscribed for years. I feel like people would be better informed about the world if they read it. That said, it's absolutely dripping with ideology and you need to know how to read it. It's a cheerleader for Capitalism, kinda like the Financial Times. https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thi...

FabHK9• 7 years ago

It's not an uncritical cheerleader, though. They do support free trade and globalisation, yes, but also drug legalisation, gun control, carbon taxes, gay marriage, etc.

For US presidential elections, they endorsed Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

njepa2• 7 years ago

Unfortunately I think the Economist is one of those publications where it seems authoritative until they write about something you really know about and realize it is mostly just written in an assertive style.

0x262d2• 7 years ago

yes, it’s an absurdly out of touch pro-capitalist propagandistic article.

what really puts the cherry on top is that a market crash is expected soon, with much less ability to cushion it than last time. guess what market crashes due to median wages? very bad things! and the people who own lots of capital will see their fortunes recover soon enough as everyone else is cleaned out. so things look very tentatively positive now and will be very bleak in a couple years.

RickJWagner• 7 years ago

According to Forbes, Vox, The Heritage Foundation, etc.(in other words, people all across the liberal<->conservative spectrum) American poor are vastly better off than the rest of the world, and American poor are moving forward.

The poor in America often have climate controlled environments, cell phones, access to employment opportunities, access to charitable organizations and more. With rising wages, their fortunes are increasing.

It's not easy or desirable to be poor. But if you have to be poor, being American in 2019 is a pretty good spot.

CryptoPunk• 7 years ago

The gig economy is probably helping, by multiplying the sources of demand for low-skilled labor.

American life is improving for the lowest paid

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