As unions decline, inequality rises

https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-rises/

by vivekmgeorge • 4 years ago

327 445 4 years ago

What is the impact of inequality in a job seekers market? The perception I have is that employers are seeing difficulty in hiring. Would not inequality and diversity increase in such markets, as employers lower barriers and reduce leverage?

Zeyka8• 4 years ago

I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions, maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of them? It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how someone, say Jerry, 60 year old factory worker from idaho, can be against unions...

faitswulff2• 4 years ago

Ironically you’re being downvoted by the same folks who would benefit from unions. American Twitter employees, for instance, would have done a lot better with European labor protections. European Twitter employees probably have a sizable comeuppance on the horizon.

Zeyka8• 4 years ago

Exactly, and I'm not trying to devalue their beliefs, I'm just trying to understand how they can be against something that would benefit them.

formercoder• 4 years ago

I really don’t understand the push for white collar tech employees to be in unions. It’s my understanding that in most union jobs, compensation and benefits are strictly based on time in role, not performance. I try and excel in my role and others are less interested in doing so. I should be promoted faster and compensated higher.

throwaway67343• 4 years ago

But American tech companies would be even less likely to be created in the first place under European labor laws

logicalmonster2• 4 years ago

If the European standards are so good, where are all of the influential European tech companies?

To properly weigh all of the tradeoffs, you might consider asking if those Twitter jobs would even emerge in the European system and if there's a link between European labor standards and the lack of influential European tech companies. Europe is a large market that is filled with many capable and educated technology workers, yet almost always all of the tech companies we're ever talking about are American. Why is this?

missedthecue9• 4 years ago

Why are European wages so low? Why aren't their unions extracting more meaningful pay? Why do the non-unionized US workers make so much more money?

pxmpxm• 4 years ago

Ha, if anything Twitter's the paragon of a European tech company. Overstaffed, politicized and unable to make money, all while their top talent flees to competitors in sf bay area.

gchamonlive• 4 years ago

It's because you have the blessing and privilege of working two to three jobs in a capitalist society, a very small price to pay to access all capitalism has to offer: smartphones, TVs and cleaning machines that break in a month after warranty expires, cars, a healthcare system that will take your house and your dog as collateral...

Unions? you should be thankful!

JasonFruit3• 4 years ago

In my experience, what they oppose isn't unions as such, but compulsory union membership. They consider that a union should arise from the expression of worker needs, and a union that they are forced to join and that exists whether they want it or not might lack incentives to represent their needs instead of the needs of the union. It's kind of like the saying about organizations in general: eventually they come to serve the needs of the organization instead of the purpose for which they were originally created.

Zeyka8• 4 years ago

I think that's fair enough, but it's not like workers in the USA have a lot of protections or are getting fairly compensated for their work. So unions, whether compulsory or not, still benefit them in one way or another.

nverno2• 4 years ago

compulsory union membership

Yea, it can be frustrating be barred from jobs, like construction, being a non-member, or being forced to pay union dues to a union you feel is doing nothing for you.

Small, company-sized unions have always been a lot more appealing to me than the huge behemoths the US currently has.

kelseyfrog4• 4 years ago

That's been my experience as well. It's pure reactance psychology. From the first paragraph of the wiki page

Reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs when an individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's choice of response and/or range of alternatives.

When I think about the people who I know who are anti-union, they all have high reactance as a trait. If I were to try to change their mind, it would be to frame their non-union environment as more freedom-limiting than the unions alternative re: workplace democracy etc.

slater-• 4 years ago

as we say in america when someone is right about something, "i think you just hit the nail on the head."

thepasswordis4• 4 years ago

Because some people take pride in their work, and being essentially forced to do a bad job hurts them psychologically.

I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work. I take immense pride in that, and seeing the output in some sense is a big part of the payment.

Unions don’t allow for this attitude, at least none of the ones that I have ever interacted with. They’re not pro worker, they’re anti work. These people seem to believe that work is bad for workers.

So some people don’t like unions. I don’t like unions.

dr_dshiv• 4 years ago

Hypothesis #1: European unions aren't like American unions in this way: they are far less oppositional to the objectives of the companies.

Hypothesis #2: This is a result of European unions having an origin as trade guilds whereas American unions have an origin as political organizers.

softfalcon• 4 years ago

I find this is true for some unions but not all.

We have a union at my company and it’s for our creative writing and video production folks. We’re in the media space. These are some of the most effective and driven people I’ve met or had the privilege of working for.

People being lazy (or not) and wanting to do a good job (or not) is mutually exclusive of whether they are in a union (or not).

I do see why you would think this. Many media outlets and corporations spend lots of time making sure everyone thinks unions are just for lazy people. That’s not true, but after decades, many people think this now.

ljw10012• 4 years ago

I think your characterization of unions is a propaganda driven falsehood, and your argument ignores the fact that Most people see less and less of the fruits of their labor.

Devasta4• 4 years ago

I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work.

You might see the fruits of your hard work, but it's your boss who reaps them.

CPLX• 4 years ago

I want to get up early, set big goals, work hard on them, and then see the fruits of that hard work.

Perhaps you could serve as an example and role model that could inspire union members like Michael Jordan and Tom Brady to work harder.

nineplay• 4 years ago

I used to work with UAW in the 90s and it was excruciating. I'd be on the floor with one of our machines and I wasn't allowed to even take a panel off with a screwdriver. There was one guy whose job allowed him to unscrew the panel and he was somewhere else, or on a smoke break. I spent so much time sitting around twiddling my thumbs, waiting for this or that person. It was the opposite of having a productive day, I'd never want to work like that.

stri8ed2• 4 years ago

For the same reason that people oppose monopolies. Unions are effectively a monopoly on the labor market.

missedthecue9• 4 years ago

With specific exemption from federal anti trust legislation.

jasode2• 4 years ago

It's probably my European brain, but I cannot understand how someone [...] can be against unions...

America unions are structured differently from Europe and some can become as distrusted by the workers as the corporation.

Your viewpoint is common but it's based on the mental model of "Unions are good. Period end of story."

But for voters like your proverbial Jerry against unions, the mental model is more about tradeoffs like this, "the proposed union by these particular set of organizers has made some promises and wants to charge me $$$ per year to negotiate with the company. Things may turn out better -- or they may turn out worse (e.g. no job)."

As an example, the Amazon union vote in Alabama failed and many blamed Amazon propaganda. No doubt that Amazon crafted many negative messages about unions. But outsiders forget that many voters had older relatives from Alabama coal mines telling them that "the union just took our dues money and didn't do shit for us".

How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned union coal miners spreading negative information like that? These are the kinds of scenarios Europeans are unfamiliar with.

toomuchtodo• 4 years ago

How can pro-union advocates counter those disillusioned union coal miners spreading negative information like that?

Because coal mining is in no way the same as Amazon’s retail business? Now, I will say, some of these folks are beyond hope. In an energy transition documentary done by one of the HGTV property brothers, they interview a coal miner dying of black lung in Appalachia, and they believe that’s the job their kids and grandkids should do versus renewables or “new tech” even when considering there are other options available. [1] Belief systems are deeply ingrained and have defense mechanisms. Persuade the open minded whenever possible, of course, but ignore those who aren’t. The effort is better spent elsewhere. As Max Planck said, “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Same deal.

[1] https://youtu.be/MgRa5spkfXw

zip1234• 4 years ago

There are also public sector unions which appear to only serve a special interest group at the expense of everyone else. Teacher unions are an example--they appear to protect bad teachers, stifle innovation, and it isn't even clear that they are great at getting pay for teachers.

Aunche6• 4 years ago

A lot of people have had bad experience with unions. Often times, it's only people with high seniority that see the most benefit from unions. This is why the railroad unions negotiated for more pay instead of paid sick days. Pension payouts are based on the average of the highest 60 paying months. Senior employees who are due to retire in a few years just need bear a few more tough years to enjoy their significantly fatter pensions.

danaris3• 4 years ago

Have they really? Personal bad experiences?

Or is this just the prevailing narrative that's been sold to us over the past 30-50 years, and there are too few actual unions and union jobs left to effectively counter it?

jccalhoun• 4 years ago

Because all they see is "that union is taking money out of my pay check!" and they don't see the positives.

And there actually are bad unions. I worked in a casino and out union was a non-striking union so even if the casino gave use some shitty contract we weren't able to strike. So what was the point?

Zeyka8• 4 years ago

Replace the word unions with cops (in the us) and then see if you come to the conclusion that there should be no cops because the system isn't working right now. The answer is most likely "No, of course not". So why do so many come to the conclusion that since unions aren't working well right now, you should just get rid of them altogether?

wallawe• 4 years ago

If this is your take, you're not being honest about the downsides of unions.

Here is a list of reasons for not wanting a union[1]:

- I want my underperforming colleagues to be fired quickly. It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort, and it leads to ineffective orgs.

- I don't want seniority or rank to be rewarded. It's unfair to young people (me) who are more competent and ambitious, and it leads to ineffective orgs.

- I want to negotiate individually because I believe I will make more money as an outperformer. I don't want a centralized handicapper to blunt my compensation.

- I don't like that unions are rent seeking in nature.

- I don't like that unions often are exploited by organized crime.

- I don't like that unions interfere in the broader political process and democracy via activism and political pressure (e.g look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be going to everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).

- I think people should be free to organize, but I don't like that the state grants special asymmetric powers to unions.

- I don't like especially public sector unions that I believe are doing significant damage to society broadly. For example police unions that shielded Chauvin after a large number of complaints.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28958674

ubercore3• 4 years ago

I think you have a very US-centric lens on unions. In the Nordic countries, for example, unions operate entirely differently. So you need to be clear where your points come from.

otikik2• 4 years ago

It's unfair and annoying that laggards are protected and free riding off their colleagues' (my) effort

With your unionized coworkers that might be a possibility. With the business owners that’s a certainty. Do you feel differently about these two groups of people?

ceres• 4 years ago

All great points. To add: As someone who's worked blue collar jobs, it is all too common for unions to protect assholes from getting fired. This leads to a hostile work environment created by the "high seniority" workers.

Something I don't like whenever these discussions come up is the condescending tone, from white collar workers. "Don't these poor people know what's good for them????"

Working class people are capable of thinking for themselves and it's not that uncommon for people to move from a union shop to a non-union shop due to the reasons outlined above.

joshlemer• 4 years ago

Thank you for articulating this so well!

winkeltripel• 4 years ago

I don't think you quite understand how the unions work.

-in most cases, the employer is able to fire with cause. The union keeps the employer from using layoffs as a weapon.

- pay scales reward loyalty and keeps the workplace stable.

- without the union, you have almost no bargaining power. The union usually gets a better rate for everyone than any one person could have negotiated. This is in fact the point of collective bargaining. Even the presence of a union job site can lift wages across industries. I see this in Oshawa, where the CAW jobs making car bits helps waitresses and sales associates draw higher wages.

-the employer is rent-seeking on their capital. The union balances this.

-unions are not criminal organizations. The teamsters have done some things in the past. If we didn't have so much union busting, there would be more unions competing for workplaces, and this would drive bad unions out of business.

-unions are political, and need legal protections for workers. Tesla will eventually have to deal with a union or treat their workers better than the UAW.

-I don't like that the state grants asymmetric privileges to the employer class, like never prosecuting white collar crimes, and not clawing back exec severances during bankruptcy, and giving them a lower tax rate than their employees.

-there are many things wrong with policing in the us, but all could be fixed with fedral legislation. The unions are aligned with their membership, and doing great work. The wider outcomes are horrible, but that's a good union doing good work.

underbrush3• 4 years ago

Take your reasons, which are really more opinions, and insert "free speech" instead of "unions" (after the appropriate changes) and you might understand why people would disagree.

onetimeusename• 4 years ago

The way that many union bosses have become part of the political class is something I rarely see discussed when talking about union benefits. The bosses seem to be well removed from the rank and file members and can have completely different goals and priorities. The definition of a union does not really seem like it should have anything to do with politics either. I am sure that people will defend union bosses by pointing out that union leadership jobs have a different nature than what the members do which may be so. But I would like to point out that it seems pretty rarely people talk about exploitation and corruption of and by union bosses themselves as if this can't possibly exist. I would argue there is potential for union leadership to be exploitative of union members and this is worth discussing.

tgv• 4 years ago

tldr: I think I can get more money, and screw the rest.

You’ve proven the point about inequality.

BHSPitMonkey3• 4 years ago

- (e.g look at the fact that the new EV subsidies will be going to everyone except Tesla, it's a perversion).

If you mean the federal tax credit, it was the OLD one that stopped going to Tesla (due to the per-model caps in place; caps that any competitor could also reach after enough sales, mind you). The new credit that was signed into law this year does not exclude Tesla (instead, it excludes cars manufactured overseas).

larksimian2• 4 years ago

Beautiful sentiments. Young programmers in the hottest job market in history don't need a union.

Fortunately for your ability to empathize with the plebeians in the regular world, Musk has shown that software companies are probably employing at least twice as many programmers as they need, so this job market should be turning south soon.

After ten-twenty years of being employed half the time and your salary going down with every new job I'm sure you'll be mentally broken down enough to empathize with the blue collar pro-union perspective.

JustSomeNobody• 4 years ago

I think it in part comes from being trained generation after generation that if I work harder than you, I deserve more than you. So if people want to make things more equal, I will have worked so hard for nothing and that makes me unhappy.

* Note: I used "I", but I don't personally feel this way. If I found out a fast food worker made more than me as an engineer, I wouldn't care. In some ways they work harder. Also, I don't think CEOs bring as much worth to a company as engineers do and they make way more, so...

lisper• 4 years ago

Two big factors:

1. American capitalists have waged a very effective propaganda campaign against unions and

2. American unions have had a history of corruption. (Or maybe I just think that because I've been taken in by the propaganda campaign.)

mistrial92• 4 years ago

as an American, my casual observation is that "real, political Leftists in Unions of America" were pushed out by any means (media,legal pressure,illegal intimidation and harassment), leaving the far-Right shady people to run them (literally Mafia in many locations, and with the Teamsters). This is a political trade-off paralleling other anti-Communist countries. USA Americans do not have a real impression of the horrific power struggles that can occur within a labor & tax system, and as these comments show, also do not have a real impression of a working, daily Union doing it's job without drama.

otikik2• 4 years ago

It has been demonized and propagandized against by people with the deepest pockets in the world, and it’s working in some cases.

Zeyka8• 4 years ago

A quick look at the comments on here answers that pretty well... It's quite sad that those that are against unions for various reasons are also against any changes to them. It just seems like bad faith.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions

It seems as though decades of corporate puppets have done a wonderful job of convincing the blue-collar worker that unions are corrupt and exist solely to milk worker's dues.

I don't understand it either.

mikem170• 4 years ago

I will never understand how some working class Americans can be against unions

I've wondered if this is because unions in the U.S. are considerably different than unions in other places?

This was an interesting article [0] I bumped into titled "Europe could have the secret to saving America’s unions".

It said that in the U.S. unionization happens at the enterprise level, leaving unionized companies at a disadvantage relative to their competitors, so individual companies are very much incentivized to fight against unionization. In other countries when a certain amount of workers call for unionization negotiations happen between the union and a federation representing all employers in the sector, and the entire sector unionizes at once, not individual companies.

The article also talked about employees receiving benefits from their unions in some (fewer) countries, like unemployment insurance, instead of from the government. This incentives workers to join the union and pay union dues, instead of forcing them to do so. The idea was thrown out there that things like health care and retirement plans could also be included with union dues for people in gig-work jobs that would otherwise not receive these benefits.

I'd add that the article didn't address a concern many in the U.S. have about unions protecting under-performing workers, to the detriment of others. I've heard that this is different in other countries, at least to a point, but the article did not get into this. Also in the U.S. there have been a lot of corrupt unions, and public employee unions that receive (expensive) preferential treatment by law, I don't know if these problems exist in other countries.

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/17/15290674/u...

Zeyka8• 4 years ago

Thanks for the interesting read, I think that US unions should definitely change, and this is still in line with my original comment, because of course you can dislike the way unions work right now, but still be pro-union in the long term.

Opposing unions is just going to lead to no changes on the union side and it's going to let the companies be as harsh on workers as they want, even on the "hard workers", because in the end, companies just care about the value that you are producing, not what you once produced. If you aren't valuable now, they'll just throw you out.

All the comments on here that say "well i don't want my lazy coworker to get paid more" highlight how well the "hustle"/"grind" and meritocracy propaganda worked on US workers. The other type of comments that talk about the bad side of unions just seem like bad faith arguments, It's just like the police violence in the US, there are a lot of bad actors and the system is ultimately flawed, but does that mean that there should be no police? No, of course not, so why is that in this context, they are actively against unions and against workers right? It quite literally makes no sense, but then again we're talking about the USA here so the notion of logic just goes out of the window.

2devnull• 4 years ago

You don’t know many working class Americans or you could ask them. I do and have and they report exploitation and misaligned incentives. Unions are like corporations, they can have poor leadership with goals that are incongruous with the goals of the members. Union dues can feel like you pay a lot of your hard earned cash to just have your money siphoned off to a politicians that literally hate you. But usually they have agreed that in general it’s good that unions exist. Better to have them around than to not have them, in the abstract.

defphysics• 4 years ago

see themselves as embarrassed millionaires

I see this "embarrassed millionaires" line a lot. It seems unbelievably cynical. Do you really think a meaningful fraction of workers are thinking "I'll oppose unions because even though I'm hurting workers, it'll be good for me when I'm rich"?

danaris3• 4 years ago

It's rarely a specific and conscious line of thought during the decision-making process. The more common case is making the working class feel like they're "just like" the wealthy—playing on the narrative that "anyone can get rich in America"—and then selling them on policies that actively work against their own interests, and for the interests of the wealthy. This step often looks like talking about things that would primarily affect the very wealthy as if they would hurt everyone. Things like "taxation is theft", "increasing taxes punishes success", "government small enough to drown in a bathtub", etc.

surement13• 4 years ago

maybe they just see themselves as embarrassed millionaires that would want to crush their workers to squeeze money out of them?

What a lazy take. Unions only protect their current members. It's common for companies to hire fewer people or hire more people at only part time schedules because full time employees are required to cost exaggeratedly more or are harder to fire due to union contracts. What organization represents the people who are unemployed or underemployed because of unions? These people are much worse off than if the unions didn't exist.

musictubes• 4 years ago

You say you will never understand why some American working class workers oppose unions. Well then I guess you will need be able to convince them otherwise. If your starting point is that the union experience is obviously a good one and you must be stupid to not see that, you have lost any chance of a serious conversation. People have reasons for feeling the way they do. Dismissing them as falling for propaganda is once again just calling them stupid.

I'm an American and I admit to having a very negative view of modern unions. When the word union comes up I immediately think of:

1) The Teamsters and their ties to organized crime 2) Police unions that shield officers from consequences 3) Teacher unions that prevent awful teachers from being fired 4) Ridiculous rules around duties on film/theater sets 5) The UAW is seen by many former workers as letting them down. Many other people feel the UAW bears some responsibilities for plant closures. 6) As supermarkets in my area started to unionize the service noticeably suffered. 7) Several friends were Verizon workers and felt that they were screwed by their union. 8) It is common for unions to fund candidates that many workers do not like.

If someone like myself has a negative view of unions it is up to people like yourself to change that perception if you want unions to gain traction in the US. Distrust of unions in the US are not always (usually?) driven by ignorance or propaganda. Unions themselves have done a very good job of alienating workers.

rejectfinite5• 4 years ago

Here is how Swedish unions work :)

Maybe urs are just shit :)

https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen

factfindingisfn• 4 years ago

Ha! This is a best loosely coupled. EPI discloses labor unions fund them. Labor Unions did nothing for families in the 60s,70s,80s, and 90s when all manufacturer jobs were driven out of the US due to bad labor negotiations. Joining a union is about as helpful for your job as joining a country club except you don’t get any real perks.

wpietri5• 4 years ago

Laying all of the US's industrial decline at the feet of unions is a bit much. I think a lot of the management-hostile, zero-sum thinking that drove bad union behavior was a clear response to previous management behavior filled with both exploitation that drove the rise of unions and hostility when they couldn't get away with as much.

An instructive example here is the story of the NUMMI plant in the 1980s, which clearly shows the awfulness of GM's internal culture, the cluelessness of management in the face of existential threat, and how much things can be different, even with the exact same union workers: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015

If we want unions that have a collaborative, win-win approach with management, I think we first need management that has that spirit toward the workers. But looking at how US companies are reacting to the recent uptick in unionization, I'm not very hopeful.

pmoriarty• 4 years ago

Many people don't want equality... especially those who see themselves as superior.

atsuzaki• 4 years ago

You can see it in the comments of this thread, even.

bombolo17• 4 years ago

Yep, like the people who say they are better than their coworkers and say unions would make them compensated less… USA propaganda succeeded… they don't even realise the enemy is their CEO.

missedthecue9• 4 years ago

I want society to get richer. I want poor people (in all nations including China, India, and Vietnam) to earn more money. This is not the same thing as wanting equality.

In that sense, no I do not support economic equality. Jeff Bezos owning 10% of Amazon worth $X billion does not effect my life in any way. If he owned 50% or 0.001%, instead my life would still be the same.

I'm not sure why I need to be upset about that.

eggsmediumrare• 4 years ago

The actual number is not upsetting, it's that 1) he achieved that number by exploiting workers (pee in a bottle, stay in the warehouse during a tornado, et cetera) and 2) not paying taxes.

kingboss2• 4 years ago

It does affect you though. Cause Bezos then lobbies that unions are evil and does everything under the sun to keep wages low. Including yours.

kaputmi• 4 years ago

I have mixed feelings about unions. On one hand – should workers be able to associate freely and bargain collectively against employers? Yes! But, should some groups of workers be able to impose on everyone that they must join their association in order to be a worker at X company, or an actor, or something? No, I don't see why.

dnissley• 4 years ago

Exactly! If conditions are so bad in a company that 99% of it's workers immediately sign on to a union then that means something very different than when you can only get 51% of workers to eventually sign on.

Collective bargaining is a escape valve against shit employers for employees that don't have a lot of options. A standing union with mandated membership and support from laws and regulations very easily becomes something far more twisted.

throw0101c6• 4 years ago

But, should some groups of workers be able to impose on everyone that they must join their association in order to be a worker at X company, or an actor, or something? No, I don't see why.

We then get into:

In the social sciences, the free-rider problem is a type of market failure that occurs when those who benefit from resources, public goods (such as public roads or public library), or services of a communal nature do not pay for them[1] or under-pay. Free riders are a problem because while not paying for the good (either directly through fees or tolls or indirectly through taxes), they may continue to access or consume it. Thus, the good may be under-produced, overused or degraded.[2] Additionally, it has been shown that despite evidence that people tend to be cooperative by nature, the presence of free-riders cause this prosocial behaviour to deteriorate, perpetuating the free-rider problem.[3]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

danuker2• 4 years ago

A company should be able to set different salaries for unionized vs. non-unionized workers.

ljw10012• 4 years ago

Only management should be able to impose their will on employees and should be able to do so without competition. On the job, and during their “free-time”.

More seriously, imagine where not everyone is required to be in the union and think about how easy it then becomes for management to manipulate the environment to the detriment of union employees until the union is wiped out.

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 4 years ago

This analysis ignores the effects of WWII.

At the end of WWII, the USA was the only industrial economy in the world, not significantly damaged by the fighting.

If you see, the spike of worker union participation is right after the end of WWII.

Basically, for a couple of decades the USA had a monopoly on advanced manufacturing. Then as Europe and Japan caught up, there was more of a push towards efficiency as US companies faced more competition

rejectfinite5• 4 years ago

Sweeden too cope cope cope cope cope cope

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Economic_history_of_Sweden#Secon...

stri8ed2• 4 years ago

As does global warming, and pandemics. Why assume their is a causal relationship?

mannyv• 4 years ago

What does inequality mean in this context?

The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have/had lower levels of inequality than the west...by making everyone poor. That is the easy way to reduce inequality/

What the left fails to realize is that absolute inequality doesn't matter. The real questions is the vast majority feel better off? In China, hundreds of millions are wealthier than they were two generations ago. They have increased absolute inequaliry and increased equality at the same time.

In fact, inequality as a concept is a ridiculous measure. What does equality in that context even mean? That everyone should make the same amount, no matter the ability or position? 90% of humanity would vehemently disagree with that. In fact, people try to flee countries who implement that sort of resource allocation.

bombolo17• 4 years ago

So you are saying there is nothing wrong with a country where a few own everything and everyone else doesn't even have access to healthcare?

In fact, people try to flee countries who implement that sort of resource allocation.

Yes, rich people, lol. People who GET access to things like housing and healthcare remain.

kneebonian• 4 years ago

I feel like you are mischarecterizing OPs argument. His argument is that rather than focus on inequality we should focus on increasing everyone's standard of living overall.

throw0101c6• 4 years ago

What does inequality mean in this context?

Everything going to the top, and nothing going to those on the bottom.

The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have/had lower levels of inequality than the west...by making everyone poor.

Seems like your examples also have things going to the people at the top.

A comment from a few years ago that I saved:

If we suppose that the goal of society is to produce the greatest utility, and that the utility wealth provides an individual is sub-linear (i.e. twice as much money makes you less than twice as happy), then inequality is inefficient resource allocation.
However, we also suppose that some level of inequality can lead to greater productivity, and thus greater utility overall. The question is then what level produces the best outcome? […]

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14505342

gfdsgfsdgfdsg2• 4 years ago

Why aren't poor Americans immigrating elsewhere if they have "nothing"? The poor in other countries are risking their lives to come to America.

sopooneo2• 4 years ago

I think your point about "feel better off" is critical, but I wonder if that stems more from comparison across generations or across the current population.

Devasta4• 4 years ago

There are some things, like political campaigns, where absolute inequality does matter. One man one vote may be true in theory, but in practice Rupert Murdoch has fat more political sway than anyone on this thread precisely because of his wealth.

Closi2• 4 years ago

Is that a problem with income inequality, or a problem with political campaign financing rules/influence in a system which has wealthy people?

Personally I think lower inequality in our society would be a good thing - but also with political influence there are more direct faults/solutions.

next_xibalba2• 4 years ago

This is shocking news to me. How many extra votes does Rupert Murdoch get? What is the exchange rate from dollars to votes, precisely?

missedthecue9• 4 years ago

Rupert Murdoch has sway because he owns the most watched news network in America. He could give away all his money tomorrow and his sway would stay the same because he controls a major news network.

JumpinJack_Cash3• 4 years ago

> What the left fails to realize is that absolute inequality doesn't matter.

1) It's always paternalistic to try and explain to people how they should feel, especially when the social group in question is 55-60% of a country of 330M, it's not a matter of being right or wrong. It's a matter of Tilting at the windmills vs. not Tilting at the windmills.

2) It's impossible to solve inequality because every complex system is a Pareto system, however Pareto says nothing about the speed of the turnover of the top 20%.

indiogrindio2• 4 years ago

90% of humanity would vehemently disagree with that.
The USSR, North Korea, and Cuba all have/had lower levels of inequality than the west
In China, hundreds of millions are wealthier than they were two generations ago. They have increased absolute inequaliry and increased equality at the same time.

Sources? Do you have any data or metrics available for your claims (outside of Facebook memes)?

surement13• 4 years ago

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/size-poverty-gap-countrie...

dzink• 4 years ago

World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this. There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic. I’d argue the unions were a bi-product of a historically rare moment in time vs cause of equality. The market bust and global world war increased taxation, demand for workers, and value of each worker in the early 40s. Much more importantly, for a few decades after WWII all other global world powers were rebuilding after being leveled by the war. The US instead remained as the last productive developed nation standing for decades and enjoyed likely huge margins as a result of both lack of competition and demand for supplies by the rest of the developed world. Those margins and the unscathed living conditions, also turned the US into a magnet for technical and scientific talent from everywhere else.

The more competition recovered in Japan and elsewhere, the less bargaining power and surplus could be captured by Unions. The Union-driven higher costs of manufacturing also drove outsourcing, off-shoring, and did not lead to higher quality output, (if Unions were producing higher quality that would have kept Japanese-manufactured cars from dominating US car sales shortly after).

Even further, exorbitant labor costs make it worthwhile for manufacturers to do capital investments in automation, and we are seeing the output of that.

The rise in middle class should probably be attributed to investments - in equities, bonds, house purchases. Growing up in Eastern Europe, where only housing investment was an option, and unions were abundant, the middle class that sprouted came from those who invested in property and business. Labor union power and wealth was too politically and corruption influenced to be a sustainable source of growth for the country.

soco2• 4 years ago

Re. unions: especially in the Eastern Europe I don't think unions deserve to be called like that "unions". They were just facades for the "communist" political power to reach into every corner of worker's lives. Unions real meaning is negotiation power against the employers, and you must agree there was exactly zero of this in the EE. Might have been something before communism took over, but after WW2 there was no union left worth their name behind the iron curtain.

scarmig6• 4 years ago

after WW2 there was no union left worth their name behind the iron curtain.

Solidarność.

goodpoint• 4 years ago

There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic

No, there isn't. The causation is self-evident, and also unsurprising since it's the whole point of unions.

MoreSEMI3• 4 years ago

I think stating that something is self-evident is not a helpful argument. First, it seemingly isn’t or else parent would not have posted as such. And secondly, something being self evident is only used when you want to describe an axiom because you cannot prove otherwise.

phil21• 4 years ago

It's completely "self-evident" to me that the US can never re-achieve post-WWII prosperity largely for the reasons OP stated.

It was a moment in history that will not repeated in any of our lifetimes. Anything else against this backdrop is basically a rounding error.

I was alive during the drawdown of US industrial capacity and my entire family was blue collar mostly union workers. In my teens and 20's I worked such jobs. This narrative still rings largely true to me. The amount of outright waste and fraud in these industries at the labor level was astronomical. We were begging to be outcompeted. Combined with managerial incompetence we were doomed.

Spooky233• 4 years ago

You really need to squint at the sun to conclude that.

As money interests have become more politically powerful, it’s harder and harder for employees to organize. You can get fired at Walmart if 4 people are caught talking to each other.

It’s easy to rag on unions, but usually that’s a surface complaint ignoring the factors causing it. Even globalization is an example. There’s nothing etched in stone that says we need to have child labor mining in Africa for rare earth minerals to make iPhones.

simplotek• 4 years ago

As money interests have become more politically powerful, it’s harder and harder for employees to organize. You can get fired at Walmart if 4 people are caught talking to each other.

Totally this.

We can't pretend that the likes of Amazon et al haven't been repeatedly caught being openly hostile and extremely agressive towards any semblance of a labour rights organization within their workforce, with union busting strategies being discussed, planned, and executed at the VP level. They went as far as executing smear campaigns in the media targeting labour representatives and activists.

No one can claim that unions are in decline due to some unavoidable law of nature when huge multinationals once led by the richest man in the world invest so much time and effort and money at the VP level to sabotage them.

Aunche6• 4 years ago

Even globalization is an example. There’s nothing etched in stone that says we need to have child labor mining in Africa for rare earth minerals to make iPhones.

This is a concern troll. If you really cared about child labor abroad, you would unequivocally support globalization as parents don't want their kids to be slaves and more jobs in these countries gives parents more options. Child labor and slavery is caused by a lack of oversight more than anything else, and unions in the US won't help that.

runarberg9• 4 years ago

There is also the fact that the so called “globalization” enabled the free flow of capital, but not the free flow of workers. Meaning it created geographically sanctioned low-labor zones for the capitalist class to exploit, while enforcing strict border controls such that international solidarity between workers of the world could never form.

This is an explicit policy choice by the ruling class, and has proven awfully convenient for the owning class.

berniedurfee11• 4 years ago

I think that’s always the key question. Why are most businesses so vehemently anti-union? Why does the power balance always need to be tipped heavily toward management over labor?

geysersam3• 4 years ago

This is bizarre.

Of course there is not one single factor determining the economic, technical and social development of countries over decades of time.

But the relationship between unions, the labor movement, and social democratic policies is obvious.

Those in turn have had a large impact on equality and standard of living.

The economy benefits from having a larger base of well off consumers, and a well educated, healthy, non-striking labor force. It's a self reinforcing positive spriral.

kingboss2• 4 years ago

So why are education levels going down? Why is health so expensive?

indiogrindio2• 4 years ago

There is a problem with correlation vs causation in the article’s logic.

No there isn't. You just didn't read any of the links in the article that it used for support, IE https://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-cha...

The Union-driven higher costs of manufacturing also drove outsourcing, off-shoring, and did not lead to higher quality output, (if Unions were producing higher quality that would have kept Japanese-manufactured cars from dominating US car sales shortly after).

You can't have it both ways in your argument. You set up an initial statement about high Union costs driving outsourcing, and then immediately drop that point as you pivoted to an argument about quality being the driver.

rubyn00bie• 4 years ago

World War II was a much bigger reason and a cause for this.

I'm going to stop you right there because that shows you're quite literally making this up based on feelings or beliefs. You're totally misrepresenting the history of labor unions. Labor unions were on the rise all throughout the 1800s and early 1900s.

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/the-history...

dehrmann3• 4 years ago

This backs up that labor unions grew a lot during the war and continued growing after the war.

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

ponow• 4 years ago

This argument needs to be made more. Thanks!

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

The rise in middle class ...

The "middle class" is a myth and is a propaganda tool for creating dissent. There are really only two classes:

1. Capital-owners. Think Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc; and

2. Workers. This is anyone who trades their labor for an income. This covers everyone from the janitor to LeBron James.

The idea of the "middle class" is to create a division between them and the "lower class". The "middle class" often look down on the "lower class" and lump those who might rely on welfare, etc. The "lower class" will be blamed for many of society's ills.

The truth is there is no division. What you think of as the "middle class" and "lower class" are exactly the same and have way more in common than to the Musks, Bezos's and Buffett's of the world.

Billionaires have class solidarity. The dire situation of stagnant real wages and skyrocketing cost of living is largely a result of workers not having class solidarity.

AnimalMuppet3• 4 years ago

I am a worker. I am also a capital owner, though on a small scale, from investing the surplus of my pay for my labor.

I am far from alone. And the existence of people like me kind of blows up your neat theory.

blululu• 4 years ago

Not trying to start a flame war, but the Japanese are an example of an economy where unions work really well. Their constitution and labor laws were largely written by New Deal Democrat inflected occupation forces who set up labor rights that Detroit fought against (somewhat successfully) for years. Some have even gone to suggest that the competitiveness of their auto industry stems from the fact that labor is effectively a fixed cost and a controlling stakeholder so the incentives to improveme process align nicely. This isn’t a pro/con union position it is more of a nuance that some unions are better than others and the historical/legal context for unions shapes that effecitvness. Unions can be a positive force but they can also be a negative force. A one sided account for them being good or bad is just too simplistic to be credible.

ClumsyPilot5• 4 years ago

The Union-driven higher costs of manufacturing also drove outsourcing

Gousing prices are the cause of higher cause of manufacturing. I am not sure how noone is talking that a worker in the west cannot compete eith a worker in a developing country when his rent is 10x higher. Then peolle have the guts to blame unions.

jostmey• 4 years ago

Politics aside, there might not be a causative link between unions and inequality—just a correlation. Supporting unions may or may not reduce inequality

thepasswordis4• 4 years ago

The exact attitude in this thread is why people don’t like unions.

It’s this smug idea that the workers are simply too stupid to understand that they should join the special club. Not that they don’t don’t like jt, or have made an informed decision about it, it’s because they are dumb and not capable of advocating for themselves.

I don’t want to be in your weird HOA club. Leave me alone and let me do my work and go get a job in HR so you can be a part of the PMC, which is obviously what you are after anyway.

leach• 4 years ago

It's quite annoying when people just assume that a union would be the best thing for you. They clearly have no idea and just read on the internet that a union would be good for workers so obviously they have to align with that view.

The last thing I want is for freeloaders to essentially never get fired and for some parasitic entity to collect dues for "bargaining" that usually isn't even worth it by the time they finish negotiations. Especially in todays climate.

Sure the threat of a union may mobilize a company to be more competitive and pay more, but the actual unions themselves just seem to never work out. Expecting an entity that doesn't do much to get you all these benefits is almost insane. When has any union actually got everything they promised? Never, at least not in America.

wendyshu• 4 years ago

"The Economic Policy Institute is a 501 non-profit American, left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C."

VeninVidiaVicii• 4 years ago

I think that’s the point. Workers want to be paid more if they feel like they are more deserving.

avereveard2• 4 years ago

This article puts together two graphs and absolutely give no backing as to which one is the causation of the other beyond "see?" or if there's any backing model for their correlation than one could go and test.

This is sensationalistic propaganda, not research.

ed25519FUUU2• 4 years ago

You would honestly think that in 2022 someone would critically ask the author if they’re falling into a “correlation implies causation” fallacy.

avereveard2• 4 years ago

Considering I'm being downvoted on top of that, I might have overvalued this community as well.

ed25519FUUU2• 4 years ago

Of course, correlation does not equal causation!

But in some cities, the govt is required to do work only with labor unions. In that case, joining a union might help, because the government has taking away your competition!

js82• 4 years ago

To everybody who thinks this is just correlation and not causation - read the post properly. They mention:

"Labor unions both sustained prosperity, and ensured that it was shared; union bargaining power has been shown to moderate the compensation of executives at unionized firms."

And give a link to a study. This result has been seen across countries, and is the CAUSAL link you're looking for.

Gimpei• 4 years ago

I don’t have any real opinion about the direction of causality. If anything the idea of unions contributing to more wage equality makes sense to me. But, linking to a single study as “proof” of anything is a big no no. It is very easy to cherry pick studies so that you get the “true” outcome. The only way to make a halfway convincing argument is to look at every piece of evidence on the question and aggregate them. This is why we believe global warming is man made and severe despite a few studies that suggest otherwise. One other caveat I would add is that if you read the linked study, they’re only reporting correlations. There doesn’t appear to be a causal identification strategy there. Which isn’t to say it isn’t interesting and worthwhile. Only that one should take the results with an appropriate level of caution.

next_xibalba2• 4 years ago

Let's just read the title: "As unions decline, inequality rises"

That is very much a statement about correlation. Otherwise it would say, "Unions' Decline CAUSED Inequality". But, to anyone with a passing knowledge of statistics, that is clearly an impossible claim to make. This is one time series realization for one country.

Let's go further. Is there any mention of causality in the article. And I do mean quantified causality. The answer is "no". Is there even any mention of correlation? Again, the answer is "no".

Let's keep going. Let's evaluate the aims and intent of the article. Let's start with EPI, the publisher of this article. The Chair of EPI is "Elizabeth H. Shuler ... president of the AFL-CIO, a federation of 58 unions and 12.5 million working people". Other board members include current and former union leadership from the United Steelworkers, the UAW, the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, Service Employees International Union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Communication Workers of America, and the American Federation of Teachers. All huge unions.

In other words, this publication is not a work of science. It is not a credible academic publication. It is the motivated, self interested rhetoric of union leadership.

dash22• 4 years ago

Mr Always-grumbles-about-correlation-studies reporting in here. Maybe it's a nice causal study, but the jump from "moderates compensation of top executives" to "reduces equality across the whole income spectrum" is a big stretch.

Update: also, I went and scanned the linked article (because I'm that type). They're credible authors, but they themselves explicitly say: "In reporting correlations between unionization and managerial pay, we are not necessarily able to establish whether unions cause differences.... We try a variety of strategies to understand these issues, however each is imperfect."

js82• 4 years ago

"In reporting correlations between unionization and managerial pay, we are not necessarily able to establish whether unions cause differences"

Yes, but that's a different correlation vs causation issue. The point is, the phenomenon of unions equalizing pay, on the company (micro) level (which has been reproduced in other countries and time periods), can be considered to be a causal explanation for the phenomenon of rising inequality when unions decline, in the society at large.

dehrmann3• 4 years ago

My theory is unions thrive when there's a labor shortage, so workers will get paid more just because there's a labor shortage, decreasing inequality. If there's a labor glut, the union model falls over because it can't maintain its monopoly, and executives pat themselves on the back for lowering production costs, even though it was mostly driven by the macro environment.

dstauffer11• 4 years ago

Oh wow, they have a study! Definitely definitive then, case closed.

More seriously, my wife and I got into an argument about the effects of unions once and this was the best summary I could find: https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/what-unions-d...

(yes it is by the Heritage foundation so their top-line summary probably has some ideological bias but the list of study summaries at the bottom is great) Generally, studies found that unions benefitted the unionized workers at the expense of the most and least skilled workers. And was slightly bad for company investment/earnings long term. But by far my favorite result (and the best study design from the list, imo) was a regression-discontinuity analysis that found no effect of unionization whatsoever:

"Compares companies whose workers voted narrowly for a union with companies whose workers voted narrowly against a union. Since the difference between winning and losing is close to random, this provides an estimate of the causal effect of randomly organizing a given company. Finds that workers who vote to join a union do win certification but that unions have essentially no effect on the firm or the workers. Wages do not rise, and employment and productivity do not fall. Unionized companies are no more likely to go out of business than are non-union firms."

DiNardo, John, and David S. Lee, "Economic Impacts of New Unionization on Private Sector Employers: 1984-2001," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 119, No. 4 (November 2004), pp. 1383-1441.

UncleEntity2• 4 years ago

To everybody who thinks this is just correlation and not causation - read the post properly.

A quick glance at the chart and one could also show a link between federal income tax rates and executive compensation.

If you are taxed 73% you simply don’t have any incentive to “increase inequality” — you pay someone to show your income as a lot less than it really is. The real irony is the Reagan tax cuts resulted in more revenue because it just wasn’t worth the trouble to dodge paying taxes anymore.

Correlation, causation, lies, statistics, who knows?

TexanFeller• 4 years ago

Do China and similar powers have pervasive unions? If the rest of the wold doesn't, unionizing in the US may be a very temporary victory as union demands encourage even more offshoring and automation. We compete globally now. Globalization may be the bigger source of inequality in the first place.

danuker2• 4 years ago

Globalization moves money to people most in need of it (i.e. developing countries with cheap labor/resources).

k__• 4 years ago

In Germany at least, I have the feeling the Unions don't do much.

I know a bunch of nurses, and they still are paid badly.

rejectfinite5• 4 years ago

Are you German?

What if without unions, it would be worse?

susanasj2• 4 years ago

I think this is a good article for tech workers to read to provide perspective on our place in the tech economy (particularly Americans): https://organizing.work/2020/12/there-is-something-missing-f...

particularly this part: > Early on in my own career in the industry, I felt guilty about making a “good” salary. Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse? Of course, I don’t — they deserve a lot more too. But if I was making less it would go straight into the pockets of investors, not other workers. Tech workers’ labor has made six of the world’s ten richest people, and today computing and the internet are an integral part of every industry. Although some workers are highly paid, the differential between investor profits and employee salary is as stark as in any other industry, because workers are not organized.

it's true that tech workers frequently make good money and we should be grateful for that, but when our industry is producing oligarchs like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, it means that they are profiting from the things that tech workers produce. It's how inequality is increased. It's no coincidence that the rise of the tech economy has coincided with American inequality rising sharply.

8f2ab37a-ed6c4• 4 years ago

One of the memes that you frequently see in the upper middle class left-leaning tech worker circles is that anything less than a worker co-op is ultimately an organizational structure that is inequitable and exploitative to its labor force, leading to negative externalities for society at large.

I'm 100% ignorant of the history of labor and of all philosophical dialectic around it, but I would love to form an opinion on this. Would someone mind steel manning both sides of that argument?

E.g. I have questions like, if I'm the founder of a company and I sell it 10 years later and make most of the upside, did I exploit my employees because they didn't make as much as I did in the end?

scarmig6• 4 years ago

Argument for the meme:

Labor unions don't challenge the core structure of capitalism; even when they're working, they mostly serve to give a slightly bigger piece of the pie to workers. And in practice, they are hijacked by a certain bureaucratic caste that mostly optimizes for stability and self perpetuation. They become integrated with state sponsorship, which will never allow for substantive change. For instance, in the USA the general strike was a powerful tool in the arsenal of workers' power and drove substantial wage gains, but disrupted capital too much and as such is banned by the NLRB. Since unions' scope is limited to accounting, law, and mediation, they become mostly administrative organizations staffed increasingly by members of the professional services class. These people can never provide leadership that primarily serves the working class, as their economic interests diverge and they can't do anything that would threaten their social good standing.

Argument against:

An economy dominated by worker co-ops is just wishful thinking. We have no idea how to get from point A to B, and no idea if it would even work. The limited evidence we have for that kind of economic structure comes from post WW2 Yugoslavia and suggests it wouldn't ("they just didn't do it right!" invites the question of how we do do it right). Conventional unions do shift some of the capital pie to workers, and we shouldn't let a very hypothetical best be the enemy of the concrete good. And even if worker co-ops are the ideal, any path that gets us there requires more worker power, so stronger unions would be a good first step to getting us to that point.

runarberg9• 4 years ago

This is a really good question, and there isn’t a clear answer. I’m only answering this from the left point of view though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Traditional labor theory can make arguments for both, if you put in most of the work, then you deserve most of the benefits. However the case for equal pay is also solid, especially if the fruits of labor are abundant. How much does 5 million give you that 1 million doesn’t, and why shouldn’t you settle for 1 million if it means everyone would get more?

But from a leftist perspective there is a fault in the question (but it is still a good question). Namely that you sell the business. In an ideal left world, you wouldn’t do that. The business belongs to the workers. If the workers can all form a consensus that it is time to leave the business and sell it to another set of workers—those that leave will be bought out basically—then this is a valid scenario. However if under a new leadership, some workers are receiving more benefits then others, then that is exploitation. I would say actually that the new leadership is exploiting their previous workforce by spending the money the workers created by buying a new business without their consent.

So in short, you as the founder of the business that was bought, are enabling exploitation by selling it to a larger organization (unless you sell it to a worker owned and operated business).

edent3• 4 years ago

The traditional view is that "The workers control the means of production".

Suppose you built a successful small company but, suddenly, every employee quit at once. Could your business carry on the next day? Could it survive until you hired and trained replacements?

If the answer is "no" then you have made the case that employees both deserve to share in the business's success and will probably be incentivised by co-owning the company.

Does the janitor deserve as much of the profits as the CTO? Well, what premium do you put on your other employees not getting sick, or injuring themselves?

(Wasn't there a case where a Google chef made a fortune from stocks? Much to the chagrin of some?)

The opposite argument is that those who risk capital are the only ones who deserve the reward. Without investment, a company can't launch or grow. Workers are an operational cost - they are paid for labour and no more deserving of reward than the electricity company. Both provide a service but neither takes a risk.

berniedurfee11• 4 years ago

Yes

susanasj2• 4 years ago

I forgot I posted this comment so just seeing this but as an upper middle class lefty tech worker I'll offer an answer.

I think your question is a bit too focused on the individual and not the system. I think it's actually difficult for founders to share the upside "equitably", whatever that means. Like, are there any examples of it actually happening? I suspect that the acquiring company frequently dictates terms that won't allow you to make every employee a millionaire because then what incentive do they have to work anymore. I think once you get to the multi billion dollar level of wealth it's difficult to get objective advice - many of the people surrounding you are just trying to please you to continue getting their slice of the vast wealth that you control. So just as a human it's hard to navigate that I think (this is me being sympathetic to billionaires, which I'm generally not).

The much easier answer to me is just much higher taxes on wealth. Capitalism is not a system built to share resources equitably, but inequality can be tamed through taxes. If you as a founder see most of the upside, fine, but a lot of it will get redistributed to society through taxes, and theoretically your workers benefit from that. It also means it's not up to the whims of the individual people or companies involved in something like an acquisition to try to make it equitable.

(another way inequality in capitalism can be tamed is through unions, but I don't know if there are any examples of unions being involved in something like an acquisition or IPO in tech)

michaelchisari• 4 years ago

| Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse?

My tech salary, adjusted for inflation, is almost exactly what my RN mother was making when she was my age.

Maybe our salaries aren't that extraordinary, they're just the only ones that have kept up with inflation.

Don't feel guilty about a tech salary, feel angry others been left behind.

bobthepanda5• 4 years ago

Not only inflation but with debt.

You can do extremely well with just a Bachelor’s in CS. Professions like nursing, medicine, law, even business have had their earning potential sapped by larger and larger costs of education. And degrees past Bachelor’s are less well supported by financial aid schemes.

subpixel• 4 years ago

Only a hundred years ago, a bunch of immigrants from places like Germany or Spain or Italy could arrive in New England (including New York City), perform manual labor, provide for their families on one income, and pool their additional money to _build whole buildings_ as social or fraternal clubs.

That really puts things into perspective for me.

black_13• 4 years ago

My salary now adjusted for inflation is exactly where i was in 1999. Having more money in the hands of those not in the 1% would make a better country. The 1% and above engage in deeply risky behavior.

mkmk3• 4 years ago

Why is sibling black_'s comment dead when they just provided an anecdote backing the parent comment? Or is the 1% talk controversial here?

surement13• 4 years ago

Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse?

prices are largely based on supply and demand, not some vague notion of "deserve"

jessehattabaugh• 4 years ago

prices are largely based on supply and demand

Then we'd better unionize before AI starts doing all the easy stuff

cycomanic• 4 years ago

If they would be based on supply and demand shouldn't nurses salaries gone through the roof recently? In every country I read the news shortage of nurses (and teachers to a lesser degree) is a huge topic and many places are badly understaffed. So why did their salaries not increase dramtically?

berniedurfee11• 4 years ago

Would the world be a better place if supply and demand weren’t the only factors in the compensation equation?

themitigating2• 4 years ago

As opposed to John Deere or Exxon?

tbrownaw2• 4 years ago

"deserve" doesn't exist. What does exist is "what price makes the market clear".

Assigned moral worth or whatever "deserve" is trying to get at has nothing to do with economics.

7sidedmarble2• 4 years ago

Why shouldn't we have ethical opinions about the economy?

TaylorAlexander3• 4 years ago

I phrase things like this: the lack of real labor power through unions or ideally worker cooperatives leads to bad deals for workers. It would be in the interest of workers to build collective power and demand better compensation or start their own cooperatives to guarantee higher pay and benefits.

This has to be said because collective action necessarily requires convincing a lot of people to do it. But either way this language avoids the claim of right and wrong and simply focuses on the fact that workers today get a bad deal due to poor bargaining power.

It’s also not just about markets. The federal government places severe restrictions on what organized labor can do to advocate for itself: Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 Aka “Taft-Hartley Act” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft–Hartley_Act

slg• 4 years ago

This is only true if you think "economics" and "capitalism" are the same thing.

quags• 4 years ago

For your three examples getting early into theses stocks, say stock compensation, or employee stock purchases would have produced outsized returns up until a few months ago. Much of the wealth is not from salary and simply stock compensation. Musk/bezos/zuck became billionaires on stock price alone. Early employees at these companies became millionaires many times over. But this is backwards looking and a survivor ship bias - for every one of these companies there companies who didn’t make it big , or value went to zero.

moneywoes• 4 years ago

My worry is bringing unions in the US tech industry will just accelerate off shoring especially with super fast growing companies like Deel

What are your thoughts?

devmor• 4 years ago

With the price of tech labor in places like Pakistan and India on the rise, that won't be sustainable for long.

scruple3• 4 years ago

Outsourcing technical work comes in waves. I've seen it up-close-and-personal 3 times. It's worked once and the magic that went into making it work (one of the founders moved back to his home country and started a consultancy that was contracted by the original business) in that specific instance isn't something that is easily replicated.

azemetre3• 4 years ago

Well if there was an actual union in place there would be general strikes. A company that lost all IT/SWE staff for the period of the strike may be more open to negotiations.

whiddershins• 4 years ago

This is an intrinsically Marxist framing.

Even if inequality is rising, so is wealth overall. That’s what Marx misestimated, although it wasn’t his most grievous error.

Poor people in the United States are far richer than rich people of 150 years ago.

I am personally willing to accept the he existence of some billionaires if that’s the price we pay for all this wonderful ness.

scarmig6• 4 years ago

Marx didn't predict that capitalism wouldn't generate wealth. On the contrary, he believed it was the most economically revolutionary structure the world had yet devised and would create untold wealth. That's entirely consistent with the world we see.

To be very specific, where he fell short was predicting a secular decline in the rate of profit. This wasn't a crazy error--most early economists also believed it--but it was very wrong, and his analysis of the failure of capitalism rests on that false premise.

ResearchCode2• 4 years ago

Compare to 30 years ago instead. Wealth in terms of being able to buy property is decreasing in many countries, which can be more significant than any increased ability to buy consumer gadgets (that will spy on you). And the countries with less wealth inequality don't in principle have less wealthy common people.

ClumsyPilot5• 4 years ago

Poor people in the United States are far richer than rich people of 150 years ago.

There is no material improvement in wealth over the past 20 years, but inequality has grown.

Wealth is produced by innovation, and greater concentratuon of wealth will lead to less innovation.

mcguire3• 4 years ago

On one hand, as long as your political opinions align with those of the ultra-wealthy then the inequality shouldn't bother you.

On the other, high inequality is socially unstable because that is not generally the case.

Aunche6• 4 years ago

when our industry is producing oligarchs like Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, it means that they are profiting from the things that tech workers produce

The workers that built the foundations of these companies received stock options or RSUs over a decade ago and reached FATFIRE territory as well. Had they unionized, the companies they worked for wouldn't be able to reinvest as much money into growth, which would be compounded by a lack of external investors. In that case, they would lose to an unionized competitor.

ncr100• 4 years ago

+1 Worker-Unions-conversation-point for using "oligarch" in a comment. /jk

The comment about "used to feel bad about making a lot of money" hits home for me, when I compare my wages to other family members who're struggling. Thanks for the perspective, it helps open me up a bit more about this.

Great information in the link, too - helps to consider whether and how a Union might be attractive, under various workplace circumstances.

nec4b13• 4 years ago

> Why did I deserve to make more money than a teacher or a nurse?

You should ask your clients or employers.

RickJWagner• 4 years ago

Why pick on those 'oligarchs'?

How about the Media moguls? A pretty good argument can be made that media oligarchs produce less value, but they dominate financial and political circles.

WalterBright• 4 years ago

As the government share of gdp rises, so does inequality. Increasing tax rates, and increasingly progressive tax rates, provide an increasing barrier to moving up.

renewiltord• 4 years ago

Every time I read something on HN about immigrants I know what a tech union would look like. Like the AFL CIO of old, it will be anti-immigrant. That specifically does not work for me.

Confoederationes commercii delendae sunt

option• 4 years ago

we should stop worrying about inequality and instead fixate on these two metrics: (1) how well off are the poorest and those unable to work and (2) how well off is the middle class

hintymad• 4 years ago

I think unions in private companies have value. The unions at least know they can’t demand too much or their companies will be out of business. On the other hand, I don’t get unions in public institutions: the government is unlikely to go out of business, so what is possibly the check and balance of the unions?

jmyeet2• 4 years ago

This is spot on. The evisceration of unions is the legacy of the Reagan/Thatcher years (ie the 1980s). Real wages have been stagnant for 40+ years [1]. Much of modern American culture can be summed up with this quote [2]:

“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

The Cold War and the hugely successful propaganda against communism spilled over to utterly decimate the labor movement in the US. You will however immediately lose most Americans as soon as you use the word "socialism". Let me summarize the usual rebuttals:

1. Socialism isn't communisum. The first is more about equality of opportunity. The second is more equality of outcome;

2. Socialism is not a poverty cult. Society is insanely wealthy. It's simply about sharing the wealth such that like 8 people don't own 50% of the economy;

3. Debt is built into your existence. Student debt, medical debt, housing debt, etc. This is by design to rob you of autonomy and keep you as compliant workers. Often this is referred to as "neofeudalism" or "neoserfdom".

5. There is no value without labor;

6. "The workers owning the means of production" simply means labor sharing in the value they create. And no, an Amazon warehouse worker getting paid minimum hour and being penalized for taking bathroom breaks is not "sharing";

7. Too many people have unrealistic views about their ability to negotiate and their overall ability, which is why you'll see so many comments like "I don't want to be kept down by low performers".

8. The financialization of housing turns people into NIMBYs who want to see their home values go up even though cost of housing is the leading factor in homelessness and has historically been used as a tool for segregation after explicit segregation was outlawed;

9. Creating monopolies such that companies can charge $1000/month and otherwise bankrupt you for needing lifesaving healthcare is state violence;

10. The police as an institution that exists today is a tool for protecting capital and those who own it; and

11. You are not Elon Musk. You will never be Elon Musk. Elon Musk doesn't know who you are. Elon Musk would melt you down for rocket fuel if it increased profits.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/328134-john-steinbeck-once-...

amelius• 4 years ago

Can we start a union for developers that sell in the App Store?

jelliclesfarm• 4 years ago

Inequality rises due to overpopulation. It’s a numbers game.

Buttons840• 4 years ago

As unions grow they begin to resemble that which they were meant to counter-balance. I've wondered, if a subgroup of union members are unhappy, can they organize? Can they form a union within the union?

For example, if my workplace has an exclusive contract with one union, and me and my coworkers (who are all union members) don't believe the union is representing us, can we organize to take collective action against both the union and our actual employer?

I known little about unions, so feel free to explain the basics if you need.

candyman• 4 years ago

Seems like less regulation and less government leads to greater efficiency. The rich get richer often because of government loopholes. Carried interest is a simple one but in the 77,000+ pages of the tax code the rich have the resources to use lawyers and accountants to avoid paying taxes. Anyone getting a W2 has very limited wiggle room on avoiding the tax bite.

rejectfinite5• 4 years ago

Lots of American cope in this thread.

Read this. This is a Swedish general office worker union. Yes even IT

https://www.unionen.se/in-english/this-is-unionen

navane• 4 years ago

Not saying unions don't equalize, but 1940-1945 had something else going on besides being peak union.

timka• 4 years ago

Fair means inequal.

As unions decline, inequality rises

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