I do think it's harder now due to capitalism but there's still no excuse on not being able to succeed. The US perpetuates people remaining poor - Obamacare and other handouts basically make it pointless to work if you can only make 35-40k. All these free handouts creates lazy people - sometimes you need to throw people in the water and force them to sink or swim. The other day I drove by a guy holding a sign in the street asking for handouts - I'm over here hustling my ass off, sleepless nights, etc and I should be giving some loser standing in the street money? Does that make much sense to you? If you bring a horse to the water and he doesn't drink you blame the water? What it comes down to is working hard and achieving is tough - complaining online all day is easy. Not too shocking most people choose the latter.

dam son thats leggit

America is underpaying its workers. COVID-19 stimulus and COVID-19 unemployment proved that. If your workers stay home because they are better off getting unemployment then you, the job creator, deserve to get shafted!!!

"Force others to work for less so I can get my services cheap!"

If you want cheaper healthcare you need to:

1)Lower barrier of entry so there is competition
2)Lower regulatory requirements to provide services
3)Change the system so more people can become doctors or make it possible to perform basic healthcare procedures without full medical degree (you can train a competent nurse to perform basic check-ups in a few months for example)

The reason I can get a knee MRI for like 150$ (full payment, no insurance involved at all) in my country is not that it's magically cheaper to perform here it's because the regulations are such that it's easier to enter the market, buy MRI machines and start a business without worrying about all the regulatory burden/threat of lawsuits etc. etc.
Look at prices of MRI machines and calculate how much you need to charge per procedure to have great ROI. It's a small fraction of what you pay in US.

The way to make services cheaper is to allow competition and remove cartels controlling the industry. Throwing more money at it won't help. The existing players will just capture most of it.

That doesn't make much sense. So if I have zero skills and can only work at McDonalds that means I'm underpaid since unemployment is more money? No one is underpaid in America - there's unlimited opportunity but people are lazy and will whine about not making enough money but won't do anything about it. America is the land of being spoiled and lazy - rather then stop being a ***** and go make something of yourself, people take to the internet and cry about their lives. You have a losing mindset.

nope. and in fact the people actually doing the work should get paid more in a lot of those jobs. remove the insane profits that are funneled to the insurance companies and the for profit hospitals. if there is still a shortfall then pay then the workers can get payed with public money.

theres a reason why the USA pays far more than other countries and has far worse outcomes for health care.

None of these things would reduce the cost of healthcare in the United States because prices are not set by the market. They are determined in secret by a cabal of 31 doctors on a committee called the Relative Value Scale Update Committee, better known as the RUC. This is a private committee protected by rigorous non-disclosure agreements. They set the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule and the Current Procedural Terminology codes which insurance companies base their pricing on, as does the government for Medicare. There is no third-party, independent review of how prices are set, and as demonstrated by the 2012 dismissal of Center for Primary Care v. CMS and HMS, the RUC is immune to legal challenge.

There are other reasons for exhorbitant costs as well, such as the tax write-off hospitals receive for providing uncompensated care to uninsured/underinsured patients.

1) the poor are much richer than they were not all that long ago.

2) the 'poor' aren't the same exact group of people* every year/decade. Most people move through various income/wealth quintiles. I started in the bottom quintile [low income, lots of debt] and now I'm in the top quintile.

Can everyone do that? No. Do people fall out of the top quintile? All the time.

Can you get out of the bottom quintile? Absolutely.

The median # of workers in a bottom-quintile income household is Zero. I bet you can figure out a solution for moving up a quintile or two.


*Immigration, of all kinds, also distorts the stats across time. You can not make apples-to-apples comparisons across decades just looking at the raw stats.

the median number of workers in a bottom quintile income household is zero? are you trying to say that at least 1/5th of people aren't working?

that barely scratches the surface. there're an endless number of trade unions working in tandem with the minimum wage that inflate the salaries of all participants to a massive extent by excluding others' from the process. and what i find amazing is how the people who're critical of the min wage and unions are always the last ones to own up to the true scope of their impact. it's not just job losses.

... and it's not only people who start at the min wage who're impacted by it. in law, for instance, yes there're a lot who start well above the min wage. but there're also a lot of lawyers who start articling at the min wage (and many more unable to find paid work in their field) who would be willing to undercut on price if given the option. the person starting at 80k is paid what he's paid because someone less qualified would demand 60k... because the next person would demand 40k etc. and when you set the bottom at 25k/y, though that may sound like a meager living, is in many cases far higher than a market wage. not because a lawyer would plan on making 25k/y indefinitely but because, depending on the complexity of the role, they could reasonably expect to be worth multiples of what they start at after having done it for several years. the end result is that people who "make the cut" enjoy a substantial wage inflation at the expense of the people who don't. it runs completely contrary to market principles and it's very impactful all the way to the top.

but in the cases where the entry points are meritocratic - sure, it's a bit distasteful in that people who'll end up in the upper income brackets are effectively getting welfare payments.

...but worse still is that any role that starts at the min wage (and particularly union jobs) end up being subject to nepotistic pressures because when you take away their ability to discriminate based on price (ie: peoples willingness to do it) incremental difference in competencies will often be outweighed by personal relationships. and there've been a variety of empirical studies on the impact of the min wage on nepotistic hiring practices and the obvious answer is obvious. even in some of the most shrewd companies this takes place and you'd either have to be horribly naive or mentally challenged to not see it happen time and time again. i don't know a single person without a graduate degree who got started on their path doing something that was open to merit based competition. sure, after 5 or 10 years of doing it, then they're actually making decent money, but it's all hinged on keeping out huge swaths of the population who would be willing to undercut them on price from the get go.

the lack of fairness in that sense is less that people at the bottom make too little as much as it is that people at the top are making far too much - sometimes multiples of what they'd be making in a truly free market economy.

Abba,
Over half of people aren't working. Over 36% of able bodied prime working age people aren't working. A lot of the wage stagnation has to do with terrible economic policy and over-regulation. For example, compare the participation rate trend under Obama (the worst president in history for the economy) to that under Trump (the best president in history for the economy, mostly thanks to extensive deregulation efforts):

Labor force participation rate:



The US economy was crushing it and actually accelerating upwards as Trump's policies were gathering momentum. Until corona hit.

wages have been stagnant verse inflation for decades despite GDP drastically increasing. people are working harder to earn the same or less while the rich and the corporate cartels bring in record profits. middle class is shrinking every year.

On the contrary, GDP has drastically slowed down, and poor people are richer than ever in terms of actual usable goods and their quality.

But if we assumed what you say is true, would you expect the above to happen in a purely economic-merit-based society, Victor?

GDP may have slowed down. but it is still growing. and in fact the richest have made billions during the Covid thing while the citizenry is hanging by a thread or completely destroyed.

poor people may be richer than ever in terms of technology, but its not close to what they deserve considering what they create and considering how much profit they create. nor is it close to what they deserve as human beings in terms of the resources available.

as for your question, I am not sure I understand it.

Wages will remain stagnant vs. inflation in almost every scenario.

At the end of the day there's a fixed pool of goods. If you double everyone's wages, everything will end up costing twice as much.

If you 10x everyone's salary, the price of goods will roughly 10x over time.

People working harder to earn the same or less??? What world do you live in? Do you think your standard of living is higher or lower than your grandparents? Do you have to work harder or less hard than they did?

Maybe you're an unusual case, but I think my life has been substantially easier than my grandpa's, and I have a higher standard of living than he did.

dam when you put it like that thats wild man we even have a higher standard of living than jessus

i don't really care to debate the point of which president has been more effective at x/y/z - the result is very similar regardless.

the point i'm making is that the incomes that we DO see are largely illusory. it gives a dishonest representation of what the opportunities actually are for people who aren't highly capable and highly credentialed. because most of the jobs that pay even as something seemingly meager as the min wage are not roles that people (even equivalent qualified people) have open access to. this is why some uber drivers are willing to do it for less than $5/h. many of them would be perfectly suited for the types of jobs that start at $10/h but will never be able to get them, and not because they aren't capable. these gig economy wages are a much more honest representation of what a true fair market wage would be for unskilled labor, and it's likely even lower than that since owning a car seals off a lot of the people who're most desperate for work.

i'm in favor of deregulating these things but the consequence is that you'll absolutely crush the salaries of people making 40-60k/y in the process, and chop down the upper incomes substantially. ironically the people least impacted by it would be the poorest.

Imagine thinking uber drivers make 5 bucks an hour

i didn't say uber drivers broadly make 5/h i said there are some who do. and there definitely are, though obviously not in major metropolitan cities.

https://www.ridester.com/how-much-do...rivers-make/#2

it depends on the state obviously but at least as importantly it depends on how you account for expenses and travel time to get to the jobs. looking at the raw numbers is obviously completely ******ed. a lot of what you see published is produced by people in the industry who're trying to make things look rosier than it is because they want to avoid heat from regulators. there's a lot that's been published as to an actual realistic projection of their hourly earnings

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/b...ers-wages.html

I haven't read those links yet but any analysis I have seen done of the 'true pay for Uber drivers' for some reason excludes the 'vehicle depreciation' costs of being mile'd out.

What Uber basically does in many instances is unlock the back end equity of your vehicle and use that money to pay to you weekly.

Meaning if you would be able to sell your used car in 3 years for $30k normally, instead you drive uber and mile your car out and get between $5-$10k for the same car. That $20-25K difference you would have banked later if you did not drive Uber is instead paid to you weekly.

Right, it isn't a small detail.

and i think uber pay is probably the best litmus test as to the health and vibrancy of the economy as you can find. because the courts ruled them as independent contractors it's one of the few unskilled jobs where we actually get a market driven answer to what people are willing to work for. and it's not just unskilled people who're doing it - a lot of people who do it are people who've been sealed out of the bubbles created by regulation.

https://www.epi.org/publication/uber...e-gig-economy/

this breaks down different studies with two of the more definitive estimates coming from MIT and Zoepf which peg the median hourly earnings (after all costs) to be ranging from 3.50 to 10. And that's the median for all cities - in some cities the median is far lower, where half of all uberites in each cities are making less than that mark. There're tons of accounts of people who're on the fringe of not even profitable after properly accounting for depreciation on their vehicle. having looked at both those articles i think the MIT one (which pegs the median between 3.5 and 5) to be more realistic but i guess it's debatable. regardless of what the median is, my point was that SOME are making less than 5 which is unquestionably true.


so just imagine if all those entry level admin or corporate jobs were able to allow people to undercut on price where wages actually reflected peoples' willingness to do it. there isn't an industry that wouldn't be bigly impacted.

it's even more ridiculous than it sounds because a) working as an uber or lyft driver is one of the shittest possible realities and most would in all likelihood be willing to work in an office for less than what they make driving and b) a big part of the appeal of these corporate jobs is that you can get a lot better at what you're doing with years of experience unlike driving which has a very shallow learning curve. the steeper the learning curve the more you can increase your wage relative to the starting point.

it's not a small issue. it's the entire economy. no, it's not an impediment to someone getting a masters degree and specialized certs from getting an entry level position because they're clearly worth considerably more than someone with no expertise. but it does inflate their wages indirectly by raising the cost of people who're less qualified. ie: a book keeper isn't a perfect substitute for an accountant but they can serve many of the same functions, and dropping the entry level wage for book keepers from $10 to $5 definitely has an impact on accountants salaries.

and again, what's worse is that when the min wage is higher than the market wage, nepotism becomes a major part of the equation, which means the people realizing the benefits of the min wage are disproportionately the ones who need it the least.

Simply false when including benefits, stock/options and bonuses. You cannot solely look at hourly wage data.

Secondly, hourly wage data is capped at $100/hr when lots of Americans earn more than that. The feds purposely bias the number downwards for some strange reason.

The middle class has shrunk because people making over $100k a year has vastly, vastly increased. Look at the data.

'According to the most recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2018, over 30 percent of U.S. households earned over $100,000 (i.e., the upper class). Fewer than 30 percent of households earned between $50,000 and $100,000 (i.e., the middle class). The share of U.S. households making at least $100,000 has more than tripled since 1967, when just 9 percent of all U.S. households earned that much (all figures are adjusted for inflation).

In 2018, the share of households earning less than $50,000 (i.e., the lower class) dropped below 40 percent for the first time since the U.S. Census data on this metric started to be collected in 1967. Back then, 54 percent of households earned less than $50,000.'

These are all well-known facts that economists have mentioned at length, you should try to educate yourself instead of being an example of Dunning-Kruger, like 99% of this forum.

This is simply idiotic, and not at all supported by the evidence.


Good to know that over 30% of the population making over $100k is largely 'illusory,' lmao.

Dunning kruger

If learning to use tools and fire is man's 1st great stepping stone, man's use of capitalism is the next most important stone man walks on.

We'd literally be still in the medieval times without capitalism.

Its actually immoral not to teach people to achieve more wealth. When I wanted to achieve wealth I sought out those who would teach. Bless all of those who teach others to become richer.

Are you playing dumb or are you the real deal? You must've known when i used the word illusory it was wrt what a true fair market wage would be, not whether people are literally making 100k/y household incomes.

the min wage in new york is 15/h and the median starting salary for accountants is only a hair above that. many are actually making the min wage.

and they have to be selective to carve out that minimum by excluding many many who are able and willing to do it for less. this is true for many disciplines.

at least in the case of the big accounting companies they strive to make the hiring process as meritocratic as possible sealing out people with less than a 3.x GPA. that's the best case scenario. nepotism is a much more common scenario in other industries.

what would constitute evidence in your mind? companies making their exact recruiting process completely transparent? i don't think you're interested in evidence. i think you're just trying to pat yourself on the back and doing mental gymnastics to pretend that what i'm saying isn't true. you'd have to have zero life experience or be mildly ******ed to not think that nepotism is a major factor in hiring processes when the min wage is substantially higher than a market wage.

a husband/wife working entry level, bottom of the barrel corporate jobs are clearing nearly 100k in major metropolitan cities.

but i guess that's no biggy because obviously people are only ever hired for meritorious reasons, and really - even uber/lyft drivers are making 90k/y and anyone not making that much is just lazy or stupid.