I don’t think the negative sentiment for unskilled labor positions getting pay increased that equals skilled labor is out of jealousy but out of the skilled laborer now being undervalued. If I got a pay cut equal to an unskilled position while I’m an engineer, I’d be very unhappy that all my time, learning, and productivity in my field would essentially equal to the same value as a job a fourteen year old can perform. If unskilled labor increases in value, then skilled labor should as well. Why would someone bother trying to waste the 10 years to become a licensed surgeon when he could just move pallets in a warehouse for the same money in this scenario? Some labor is skilled and specialized and therefore rare and valuable. Some labor is dangerous and life-threatening by nature and therefore rare and valuable. Different careers/jobs/positions pay differently for a good reason most of the time. Linemen can die in a flash of light any given day and therefore I think they certainly deserve more than I make because of that because I certainly do not want to do that job. If unskilled jobs became so well paid that it equaled skilled jobs, no one would bother wasting the effort to get the credentials to do the skilled jobs and then we’d be out of engineers, doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, physicists, chemists, oilfield workers, etc.
The fact that they managed to convince the US that people working a fast food job don’t deserve a living wage while CEOS are making millions to billions is utterly insane.
I remember all the conversations I’ve had that started with the other person saying, “Can you believe so-and-so gets paid $x million dollars for playing [sport]?!?” and ended quickly with me asking, “Can you believe the owner makes $X million dollars for doing NOTHING”?
While inflated CEO pay is certainly outrageous, it’s the people who own the businesses that we should reserve our most vitriolic hate for. After all, at least CEOs do work that marginally contributes to the running of enterprises. Shareholders do nothing except siphon profit away from the people who create it. Not saying CEOs are good, but let’s not get shortsighted here: the entire system of private ownership of the means of production is what needs to change for things to get better.
If the rising floor makes things cramped, it is time to raise the roof not break the floor.
Or probably my favorite political quote ever for its combination of both ideology, practicality, AND brevity:
We all do well when we ALL do well
(Paul Wellstone, emphasis mine)
A rising tide lifts all boats.
I’m retired from a union IT job with a college. And now that I’ve got mine, I will go to the wall to help Gen Z and Alpha get theirs too.
THIS is why the right is so afraid of union culture
Anybody that’s offended by burger flippers making as much as them should be pointing that anger in the right direction. Towards their employer.
If a bunch of burger flippers started making what I make I would demand a raise. If my raise was denied I’d go get a job as a burger flipper and probably be a lot less stressed out than I am currently.
If the floor were higher for everyone, I wouldn’t see a problem with some jobs earning more necessarily. What you’re describing will probably always be with us: some work is just harder or less pleasant.
Yes, to be clear I’m saying the floor being raised would be a benefit to me and others like me as well. Either I make more money or I can go to a less stressful job without losing income. Regardless of if it benefits me or not everyone should make a living wage for a full days work.
Fast food work is pretty stressful, IMO.
It can be but it’s a different kind than what I’m dealing with though. It’s repetitive busy work and stupid scheduling bullshit vs. big projects that go on for months with deadlines and coordination between vendors and half a dozen internal teams where nobody wants to take ownership of anything. Fast food work never kept me up at night.
Get a union job, and you won’t have to take your work home either
We take our work home because we’re thinking about the problems and how to solve them all the time, some of my best solutions came to me in the shower.
I have a home lab and I often carry what I learn from my lab to work, I’m not working my job when I’m working on my lab, but there mental overlap is there.
I can’t imagine I’ll be solving many burger flipping problems in the shower.
Fair enough, if that works for you.
I enjoy the work/life balance too much, and love being able to leave my work at work. And being in a union makes that a reality for me.
I don’t know how being in a union would stop my brain from thinking about a problem I haven’t solved in my work day… It’s not my employer dictating it, it’s my brain.
No unions in my field as far as I’m aware.
Be the change you want to see in the world
This. Having homework is stressful. Being responsible for the uptime of systems and the inevitability of getting calls in the middle of the night is stressful. Having stuff follow you home is a different kind of added stress.
If fast-food workers began earning wages comparable to electricians, I wouldn’t necessarily expect electricians to become poorer. I’d expect employers who depend on skilled labor to increase compensation to remain competitive. The question then becomes whether those higher labor costs come from reduced profits, increased prices, greater productivity, or some combination of all three.
Anyway, it is better for all workers.
what you’d actually see is increased unemployment, because that’s the most effective regulator of salaries. the system requires a mass of people without jobs in order to balance itself.
the system requires a mass of people without jobs in order to balance itself.
I don’t know where you got this idea, it seems more like the system requires desperate people and lack of jobs does help in causing that. However, fuck the system
it’s pretty simple; given offers of two identical jobs with different benefits, you’d pick the better one. if there isn’t enough people to fill all open positions, employers need to compete by raising benefits. in short, price follows demand. the more people that are looking for jobs, the lower employers can push salaries and still hire someone.
when neolibs campaign on how “everyone should have a job” and use that as an excuse to cut unemployment benefits, that’s them trying to distract from the fact that unemployment is necessary for the system they built to function. as unemployment approaches zero, salaries approach infinity.
so yeah, fuck that system.
“To succeed is not enough - others must fail.”
(Variously attributed to Gore Vidal and François de La Rochefoucauld)
I’m a software developer. My old roomie is a truck driver. I’m devastated he makes almost as much as I do.
He has to drive a truck 5 days a week the entire year, no matter the weather. He deals with accidents, annoying customers, breakdowns, tight spaces, heavy goods. Workdays often drag out, and sometimes he didn’t manage to get home and had to sleep in the truck or at a motel. People are dependant on his work, if his truck doesn’t arrive, a store might not get food, and the attached community will suffer. He takes half an hour to commute to work.
I work from home. I have a few set meetings daily, but I schedule my time on my own. Three times a week I take some extra time to go for a run through the forest with my dog. I’m safe, my bed is always nearby. My commute is the thirty seconds it takes to crawl into clothes and to my office. If I miss my work we at worst have to delay a product launch by a little.
I’m happy with my pay, no doubt, and I wouldn’t want a pay cut. My friend deserves much more though. It’s bananas to me that he doesn’t catch up with me despite all the overtime and such. It’s incredibly unfair.
I’m in software also and it very seriously bothers me that I earn about what any 10 of my kids’ teachers do.
Driving is the easy part. Finding a bathroom at 4 am on Sunday. Taking a break without someone asking you a question. Just seeing your family with energy after a 12 hour day. That’s where trucking sucks.
I’ve heard jr really takes a toll on your body over time. That’s true with so many jobs that are low-paid. It’s crazy to me watching people swing pick axes in the sun for shit wages.
I was not CDL driving but I hauled New York Times from the print site on one side of Ohio to a distribution hub on the other side. I spent a lot of hours on the road 6 days a week. You aren’t kidding about trying to find a restroom at night and all the hassles from construction, other drivers, detours, ect. If it weren’t for highway rest areas and truck stops, there would be basically nothing for drivers at night.
I always had an overnight bag with me, but thankfully never had to use it. Nothing but respect for drivers, the nation runs on their backs, we really should be taking better care of them.
The truck driver’s job is much harder to do day in and day out. It’s also much more necessary. However, it’s also significantly easier to train a truck driver than it is to train developers and there’s no infinite upside potential for delivery like there is with software projects in some cases (unicorn startups) and there are so many other expenses to run a delivery company that a software company might not have that they need to run on pretty thin margins, otherwise we’re all paying more for all of our food.
First job where I worked as a dev, they took on 3 of us on the same time, all entry-level. One of us was a physicist who was laid off by the university since the government reduced spending on academia. Absolutely an intelligent person. Didn’t last past the probationary period, he just didn’t get things naturally on his own, he needed a lot of guidance. Over the years I’ve seen that nearly half the people hired into entry-level roles don’t learn to become independent enough by the end of their probationary period to be retained after it. Sometimes it’s seniors too, they’ve worked at a place that just cranks out very similar solutions day in and day out (e.g only done frontend and only with one framework, or only a bunch of CRUD applications in one single tech stack) for like 7 or 8 years, that place has a downturn and then they apply for a job elsewhere and they just don’t adapt.
Not everyone’s cut out to be a truck driver either, but once someone has learned to drive trucks, they can drive trucks for another company too. Whether your new employee starts pulling in profit on the first week or you need 4 months to determine if there’s a decent chance of them being a net benefit by the end of the first year has a lot of bearing on how badly you want to retain your existing talent.
Anyway, in my country only the top talent at a couple of companies gets paid significantly more than truck drivers. A junior developer might make less than someone who just started driving a truck. Places like the US just have highly inflated salaries for devs because they’re expected to work in high cost of living cities and compete like crazy for their jobs.
Exactly my feelings. Software dev, get paid more than many people who actually keep others alive, healthy, educated and comfortable. This is not how things should be
Might want to edit your first line, where you say you’re devastated that a trucker gets paid almost as much as a software dev. You resolve this as you go on, but I’m surprised you’re not getting more kneejerk douchevotes from people who scan the first line and just infer the rest in the most negative way possible.
It was intentional. A sign of a skilled writer, even. Irony works.
(Even if it does undercut the trucker roommate a bit. The double irony of privilege.)
Not sure how you know what was intentional without being the writer, but ok.
edit: based on the douchevotes, a lot of lemmites either believe in psychic powers or don’t realize comments have usernames.
Because we all read the post their comment was responding to and understood quickly & easily that they were setting up the same reversal of expectations as the lineman in the OP. Context my friend, context.
How do I “know” that you have a mind and have conscious experiences and aren’t just a zombie?
For arguments sake let’s say I don’t “know.” But I can still assume so. I wrote and write under the assumption that such is the case then and now.
Does one need to know x–whatever “know” means–to state “that x”?
I don’t believe so, certainly not as a blanket rule. Do you? Is that why the standard was applied to what I wrote?
A can of worms. What’s the point? Plenty abound in backyards, internet forums (elsewhere), and politicians’ brains apparently.
Ultimately, the bar–or standard of proof–for acknowledgement and praise, which could have been reasonably inferred from my comment, is low. E.g., when a student does well on a test (in-person, lol), we do not need to “know” that they are perspicacious or precocious. Nor do we need to “know” that they didn’t cheat or simply “guessed” and got lucky. Regardless of (or even in spite of) experience or plausibility, I strongly hold that it is by default fine to assume they did a good job and are a good student. That’s good faith.
How can anyone make friends or have a good life without having some good faith for “strangers,” even if that “vulnerability” can be abused from time to time?
Good luck on the path ahead.
Not sure how you know they weren’t but ok.
Because comments have usernames on them.
You could tell they aren’t using the first line as a rhetorical device because their username is Leon?
No, I could tell one person didn’t write the comment they were making a pronouncement about because the two comments had different usernames. I did assume it wasn’t one peson using two accounts, so my bad.
I understand what you mean, but it seems like this post is filled with people that are willing to engage rather than be judgemental. Like the other person said, it is a sign of a good writer - to engage with the readers.
Of course, there are other cases within this site where people are jerks, but in this case you gotta understand that your own anger is spilling into situations where the only jerk is you.
Honestly I thought it was a rhetorical device used cunningly.
My thing is I don’t want to be on top. I want to live in a society where I can be on the bottom and have a good life.
I, too, wish I could be society’s bottom…
I don’t mind being society’s bottom as long as there’s a safe word.
well I said can be at the bottom. Its polite to take turns.
Vers society.
Mom said it’s my turn to be the society’s bottom next!
cum now. You know its daddy who makes those decisions.
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But do you want to main bottom, or off bottom? Like, are you an aggro build, or a damage build?
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Same dude same. I wanna be a maillady who pets kitties and does fart walks daily to deliver mail. And afford the basics.
Why is it too much to ask?!
These kinds of walks are unfamiliar to me. Please tell me more.
I don’t want more or less than what the fare share of the economy Boomers had back in 60’ and 70’.
White boomers*
The health benefits and insurance can be sig ificant portion of pay. The min wage burger flippers likely dont get that, even with laws increasing min wage.
Employees like this are kept under the minimum hours to qualify for benefits on purpose.
Yeah in decent countries the min wage and being able to afford a broken leg (or similar accident) aren’t as closely related. Mean maybe only got so many sick / vacation days but the actual cost of treatment isn’t what you’re worried about. At worse you’d be out the money you’d make during non working days, not much of an actual cost (okay in Canada I had to pay for the crutches when I twisted my knee one close to Xmas time slipping on ice, unfortunately didn’t realize it just needed a good knock in to get right till that happened)
There are worse situations but that’s probably the worst case scenario (well outlying cases exist) that most people come into for the most part is all. Of course some worst cases exist but expecting someone to pay 5 plus digits (okay I know that’s even low) of expenses for medical is insane.
No work is less valuable than others.
all work is equal
What about ICE?
It was a comment of what society should be rather than what it is. Ofcourse there are toxic jobs in todays capitalist system. Work that cause over production, that helps oil companies, washes brands, makes us more dependent on cars or cause mass dehumanization.
In an ideal society we dont have ICE officers. We dont have toxic work. We just have work depending on whats meeded.
I show the same respect to any workers, but, some work is much less specialized.
I wouldn’t say a vibe coder is as valuable as a software developer as an example
Also, influencers… Generally not useful at all, and are just trying to score freebies…
Entertainers are valuable and skilled workers. They don’t want to have to advertise to make ends meet, that’s just how our economy is right now.
I consider influencers to be part of the advertisement industry.
Well, vibe coding isn’t working. That’s just letting the machine think for you.
However, even non specialized work is essential. Burger flippers, street cleaners, bus drivers, librarians… They may not have a career as long and specialized as a doctor’s, but they’re still essential people, and their work should be valued.
Librarian is a job requiring a masters degree. Library clerks don’t need formal training however. Bus drivers also require a CDL which I would argue also makes it skilled labor. I wouldn’t be surprised if street cleaners also need one.
But yes, many jobs are essential for our society that don’t require certifications, education, or formal training. Though I will say that some jobs are more necessary than others. There are both bullshit jobs and jobs where while the labor is real, the benefits of it to society are less than the value produced by it.
What about people who manufacture cigarettes?
Or gambling companies?
I can think of many jobs society can safely get rid of
The guy flipping burgers is essential and people need to eat.
“News reporters” at sky news… not essential
I think work that requires you to study and learn and experience for ages should be paid higher than work you can do without prior experience or know-how.
But you know, reasonably higher. Like 3x at most.
I don’t care much about pay differences, as long as everybody can afford to live comfortably and nobody can afford to buy politicians.
Fair enough
This is my stance. If you’re working full time you should get a living wage. If you’ve got more experience or have learned more specialized skills then you should get more on top of that baseline living wage. I think 3x is less than what I would set the cap as but when I say that I’m thinking of people with highly specific technical skills or medical professionals, not CEOs. 3x is a fine cap for them.
all work is equal
It isn’t.
It is. It’s TIME.
One hour of your life isn’t more precious than one hour of mine.
Person A and person B have to do the same exact task e.g. fix a car or whatever. It takes person A one hour to do the job. Person B is more skilled and experienced, and thus can do the exact same job in 30 minutes. Correct me if I’m wrong, but by your logic I understand that person A should be paid double of what person B is paid, because they gave double of their equally important time. One could argue that since it’s the same job being done, they should be paid the same. I would argue person B deserves even more pay for the exact same job that person A did, because they SAVED time. I agree time is valuable, thus doing a job faster is more valuable than doing the exact same job but slower.
What work isn’t equal to others?
Sweeping the floor is not equal to doing a heart transplant, stop getting lost in platitudes and get a grip.
Your ability to completely de-humanize janitorial work says so much about you. Heart transplants cannot happen unless someone sweeps the floor.
Every job is important. Every job matters. Someone working at McDonald’s matters to that surgeon who shows up at 2am after a 16 hour day and needs food.
Your ability to completely de-humanize janitorial work says so much about you.
cool strawman bro. Saying sweeping up dust is less important than saving a life is not saying “and you’re a worm if you ever sweep a floor”. I’ve had to sweep the floor at almost every job I’ve had, it was never as important as someone’s life.
I love how people tell on themselves by projecting their own prejudices and then get mad at the person they did it at, as though they had anything to do with the process
I have a prejudice that I believe every job is important and every job is worth doing? And every job is required for other jobs to succeed?
When the fuck did I find myself back on reddit?
it was never as important as someone’s life.
It could never have happened without someone cleaning the operating room.
Serious question. Are you intentionally being dense? Or just come by it accindently?
“ah but what if I change the example you used to a different example”
ok man have fun playing with your strawmen. Sweeping the floor of a warehouse is still not equally as important as life saving medical work. People who detail cars are not as important to society as paramedics.
Noone’s gonna fucking die if you miss a spot when sweeping
In a hospital surgical room? Yeah they can.
Here’s hoping you’re just trolling, because I wouldn’t want to insult a lobotomite
You wouldn’t sweep an OR you would mop or squeegee. Kinda like the example I used was ‘sweeping a floor’ and not your straw example of ‘sanitizing a surgical theater.’
C suite work for example is completely useless.
The unnecessary one.
You are not required to judge the value of work based on its output. While some types of work may produce output that is relatively more beneficial to society than is other work, a society can choose to believe that the value of the work lies in the effort rather than the output. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. This is the core tenet of Marxism. It’s entirely a matter of which paradigm you choose to accept. There is no right answer to this question, only reflections of what you value.
society can choose to believe that the value of the work lies in the effort rather than the output
Beliefs won’t feed you. Raw output won’t feed you either. What feeds you is an output of things society actually needs. There’s no reasonable way of gathering information of what every single member of society needs, worse some members will lie to get more resources than they should. That approach has fundamentally unsolvable problems
The problems you list are solvable, but you have apparently lacked the intellectual curiosity to investigate how they can be solved. I won’t debate the basic tenets of Marxism with you because it will take too much time and effort, and I have no way to know if you’re genuinely interested or just another troll. But you can find numerous reading lists here if you want to understand.
The problems they listed are unsolvable, but you have apparently lacked the intellectual curiosity to investigate why the supposed solutions would not actually work. I won’t debate the basics of the impracticability of Marxism in large and interconnected societies with you because it will take too much time and effort, and I have no way to know if you’re genuinely interested or just another troll.
See, others can do it too ;)
The problems you list are solvable
They aren’t. Every solution proposed by Marxists is fatally flawed.
i mean i really believe that in general, but some people really do provide unique services. it’s hard to reconcile the two concepts especially because people are allowed their contradictions so whatever
I think if you decouple capital and earning from skill this “more or less valuable” thing sorts itself out. If I’m hungry, I’d rather have a farmer and a chef around. If I sprain my ankle, I’d rather have a doctor and a PT around. My needs of the moment are not what I always need. My abilities at this moment, are not what my abilities always will be. for example, if I sprain my ankle, I probably can’t help the farmer bring in the cattle, but I could help the doctor by setting up the autoclave for surgical tools.
I also feel like if my ability have a home and live in a community and not starve were separated from how my time is spent, I would get to choose both less specialized things and I would probably get to cycle through different things (and prevent burnout). I would adore a schedule that lets me do significant physical labor for 2-4 hours in the morning, child care 2 days a week, geriatric health care 2 days a week, barista another day or two, and creative endeavors the rest of the time. That’s not really a job that can or does exist these days and if I tried to cobble it together from part time work, lean staffing would never let it be regular enough to manage all of them without flaking out on someone.
Even Marx knew that’s just not true at all. And I’m not even talking about the usual ‘garbage collector vs doctor’ bullshit.
I’m talking fastfood worker vs cafeteria worker, where one is reheating some chemical wastes to poison people for corporate gains; whereas the other is serving cheap and nutritious food for his local community.
I think both of those examples are wild generalizations.
Not as much as the original claim, so I’m fine with that
Hell yeah! Guard labor is real labor! FOP unions are real unions! Solidarity with the guys who tear gas you!
When the minimum wage was instituted, the intention was one full-time worker would be able to support the family of four suburban lifestyle. They’ve been gaslighting us for a long time.
And the union would have more justification for negotiating a new even higher wage then they currently have.
The ONLY risk of a minimum wage or Living Wage is that companies that highly skilled workers earning the same might move to less skilled jobs. For this, the only rational action is to pay your skilled workers accordingly. FAIR PAY is not difficult when an executive team earn millions or billions.
Also, Tax Wealth, Not Work.
FAIR PAY is difficult when the exec team funnels the money to themselves. Funding of their raises/bonuses shouldn’t be at the expense of ours
