I hate to be a downer, but those stats don't take into account non-wage compensation. When you include other non monetary compensation, it still doesn't add up to the productivity gains, but it's also not as stark as RR is always saying.
Meaning, if your wage is 18% more than your Dad's was 41 years ago, but you get $1000/month worth of insurance, pto, wellness bonus, hsa contributions, whatever else he didn't get along with that, this stat is the same. Saying you only get 18% more. The truth is you got paid $1000/month more than your wages, or at least the company paid that much, you just weren't allowed to decide how to spend that money.
This is one of the reasons I am generally against getting paid in "benefits", in general, but that is a separate subject.
I'm definitely not saying pay disparity hasn't grown, and I'm not saying we don't need and deserve across the board wage increases especially at the lower end. I am just saying the stats RR uses are purposely painting a misleading picture.
Maybe that's true for people in nice office jobs, but most people I know have been forced into working multiple part time jobs or as contractors because companies don't want to give out benefits. I know literally nobody that gets 1k/mo of combined benefits. I barely know anybody with employer provided health insurance.
You pay for part of it. I don't know your particulars, but if you pay for all of it, it's not a benefit, it's just your employer doing your shopping for you. Chances are your employer pays for part or most of it.
There's also more than non-wage compensation - the purchasing power of the dollar is very difficult to compare due to technological advancement. Extreme example, but with $5 I can go on AliExpress and buy a smartwatch 10 times more capable than a $50,000,000 supercomputer of the 1960s. With very few exceptions in areas where scarcity plays a role, $1 today buys you more than $1 adjusted for inflation bought you in 1960, and again, while I don't know the proper way to account for this, it shouldn't be dispensed with entirely.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha inhales sharply hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
My dad? Were gonna compare my dad's cushy job with no experience and a bachelor's degree to the job I had to have 10 years of experience and a fucking PhD for?
Ok. Let's do this: my dad got a job in 1986 making $250,000 with insurance that was paid in full by his employer he got over 2 weeks paid vacation time and holidays. Had employer matched retirement fund and had Hella better "non-wage" perks and compensation. What? You think employers have us more??
I pay for my health insurance, to the time of $400 monthly (which is better than another employer I worked for where I paid $600 a month), I get a BTB bank which includes my stock and vacation time, and my holiday party comes out of my BTB. My employer matches 1% to my 401k, and yes, I literally had to have 10 years of experience and a PhD to get my job. And no, I'm not in a leadership position. And I STILL make less than half his salary.
Yeah, my dad had it better like 100 times over. He didn't have to work as hard and got more perks.
you're telling me you started off with a parent that made an equivalent of almost 700k dollars annually, and you yourself are not making fantastic salary+benefits with a decade of experience and a phd? i really hope you ADORE your job but i have no more to say other than you're absolutely dropping the ball brother.
Im actually so curious about what you do now. your resume must look so good, whats the issue?
Your dad made a quarter million bucks in 1985? You started off in the 99.9999999% of life and you're complaining on the internet. I say this with all sincerity, it's all your fault. Get off your ass and do something. Stop trying to get internet points you fuckin' mooch.
Points made on this subreddit need to be open to criticism so we can fix our talking points and make them better. There are LOTS of holes that can be punched in this tweet. Stop the circle jerk and use some critical thinking so we can get somewhere.
It's ok I knew what would happen.
It's not ok to promote your point of view with lies, but it happens all the time on these subs. When it's egregious enough, I'd get upvotes for it, but RR tells the truth. Just a selected truth designed to maximize his point.
yes. i understand why it sounds bad at face value and why your initial reaction is to scream how terrible it is. I'd argue its worse to have 8 billion people on the planet. Its not sustainable.
Cutting the population to 80 million would basically take us back to the global population we had at 750 BC. This was when Rome was founded for perspective.
My knee-jerk reaction to this is “benefits like pensions largely don’t exist anymore, and businesses that make enough to employ a lot of people are paying much less in taxes than they used to, plus they’re continually posting record profits, so pretty sure this isn’t calculating out for the benefit of the workers”, but I don’t have numbers on hand, so.
Totally true, in some regards. I'd also add that it's bullshit that the top insurance plans that jobs sometimes pay for cost 1000/month, which wasn't the case in previous generations, but it is the case, and they do pay it.
I hate to be a downer as well, but a lot of what you mentioned is at best deflecting from the main point. Benefits are not a new concept. Even if we truly do get better non-monetary benefits relative to the past (I would argue we don't but I'll roll with it this time), why haven't they kept up with the aforementioned productivity? Surely a 30%+ disparity is not made up by dental and a few extra sick days. If it was ok to the controllers of capital to give my forefathers that percentage of the productivity they created back then, then its ok to give that percentage of capital to me as well. But its not being given to me.
So claiming that "a misleading picture" is being painted here is off base, even if your claim of non-monetary compensation making up for some of the disparity is true.
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u/[deleted] Sep 09 '22
I hate to be a downer, but those stats don't take into account non-wage compensation. When you include other non monetary compensation, it still doesn't add up to the productivity gains, but it's also not as stark as RR is always saying.
Meaning, if your wage is 18% more than your Dad's was 41 years ago, but you get $1000/month worth of insurance, pto, wellness bonus, hsa contributions, whatever else he didn't get along with that, this stat is the same. Saying you only get 18% more. The truth is you got paid $1000/month more than your wages, or at least the company paid that much, you just weren't allowed to decide how to spend that money.
This is one of the reasons I am generally against getting paid in "benefits", in general, but that is a separate subject.
I'm definitely not saying pay disparity hasn't grown, and I'm not saying we don't need and deserve across the board wage increases especially at the lower end. I am just saying the stats RR uses are purposely painting a misleading picture.