What happened to wages?

[Hrothbern]

@Hygro and @Hrothbern
When are you going to post all your thoughts? You said you'd come back to them.

Am pretty much tied up until Wednesday evening

 

[rah]

Prices back from my teens in the 70's
Ford Mustang 3000 vs 30000 grand today
Gas 28 cents a gallon vs 2.80 today
Cigs 50 cents a pack vs closer to 8.00 a pack today
Prices have generally increased 10 fold over the 50 years that have passed.
Fortunately my wages have increased 20 fold.
I can only afford to live so long in retirement

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Fortunately my wages have increased 20 fold.

People who got into a range of fields have done phenomenally well. The problem is that those 'winners' are a shrinking portion of the overall economy which is on a trajectory to fully bifurcate between a large majority of working poor and a sliver of the rich.

 

[Ironsided]

Yeah, it’s all about you, rah. You are so American.

 

[civvver]

Which is probably why my wages went up so dramatically cus I'm in a tech field. Hired in in 2006 for 48k a year salary, plinky dink 5% raises for a couple years, then got a huge promo from jr guy to medium level guy in 2010 with a 75k salary. Since then similar 2-3% raises but every 2-3 years I go in and complain about my pay and get some promo with a 8-10% raise attached like hey now you're a level 5 sr engineer vs a level 4! Congrats! Whatever that means, just show me the money.

 

[Ironsided]

Oh here's another one. So is this really about rah or about civver?

Moderator Action: Enough trolling, thank you. --LM
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[civvver]

Definitely. It's all about me. I still don't make enough though. Wages only up 3 fold vs Rah's 20. I need to get on management level I guess!

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Oh here's another one. So is this really about rah or about civver?

you'll get used to it. dozens of pages of discussions, graphs being interpreted, statistics being thrown around, only so that someone can come along and say: "ya know, I really feel like wages have improved".

 

[Ironsided]

It’s kind of cute in an impotent way.

 

[rah]

Oh here's another one. So is this really about rah or about civver?

Or maybe it's about the field we choose, unlike people that didn't choose as well.
The technology field has exploded over that time.

Are you disappointed with the career decisions you made?

 

[Lexicus]

Or maybe it's about the field we choose, unlike people that didn't choose as well.
The technology field has exploded over that time.

Are you disappointed with the career decisions you made?

Not everyone can work in those fields where wages showed significant growth so what are you even trying to say?

 

[rah]

so what are you even trying to say?

There are very few obstacles to working in the tech field. So those that choose not to might be considered to have not chosen correctly.
It's been exploding for over 40 years so it's not like it's a surprise to anybody.
If you don't like the field then I can understand.
Just saying.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I think you might be downplaying the role of luck in getting into lucrative fields and over-emphasizing individual choice and merit. We had this same back and forth not long ago where I pointed out the less successful members of my class cohort who did everything right to break into tech and wound up doing plumbing design at a fraction of their market value. And all that's before making consideration for things like where people are born or outright white privilege.

 

[Gorbles]

Nevermind the fact that logistically, you can't have everyone in the country working in tech (whatever counts as tech, here). At some point, however booming it might be considered to be, you're going to reach saturation. It's not a solution for the entire workforce of a country.

 

[rah]

Never said it was. But there are opening in a lot places.
Not that long ago I hired a guy I met at a gaming site who was working on fixing Colonization. He was a book store manager at the time.
I hired him as a dev and now he makes 6 figures. You may say luck but I say grabbing the opportunity.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Nevermind the fact that logistically, you can't have everyone in the country working in tech (whatever counts as tech, here). At some point, however booming it might be considered to be, you're going to reach saturation. It's not a solution for the entire workforce of a country.

If we take the capitalists who run tech at face value, we've run out of qualified workers and have to import more. Obviously, we have not run out of people so if it were purely market forces at work, we'd expect people to get trained and fill the jobs. Unfortunately it's not that simply. College is expensive and the tech industry is geographically clustered rather than spread evenly throughout the country. It's also dominated by rich white guys which has discriminatory aspects even if they are unintentional.

I hired him as a dev and now he makes 6 figures. You may say luck but I say grabbing the opportunity.

Yeah sure, luck is easily capitalized by those who can capitalize on it. That's inherent to the concept. But it's still random luck at the root and is not something that an economy should be based on. I covered this in our last exchange as well. Some of my less fortunate colleagues did not happen to go to the same conference I went to where recruiters snatched me up. Instead they went to other conferences where the recruiters had a paltry showing. No way any of us could have predicted that and it had a huge difference in our workforce outcomes.

And not everyone is in a position to capitalize on lucky breaks either.

 

[rah]

At our global company, IT is one of the few departments where minorities are well represented. Most companies that is limited to HR and mail processing. OF course, needless to say, in many of our countries, the white guy is the minority.

 

[Lexicus]

There are very few obstacles to working in the tech field. So those that choose not to might be considered to have not chosen correctly.
It's been exploding for over 40 years so it's not like it's a surprise to anybody.
If you don't like the field then I can understand.
Just saying.

No rah, you are quite smart enough to understand that an economy and a nation cannot be solely composed of techbros and finance bros, so this "just pick a lucrative field" is a silly attempt to blame individual choice for a structural problem.

 

[rah]

Not saying it's the solution to everything. But, currently there's a shortage of qualified people in the field.
It's not that hard to get qualified. (come on, I'm qualified and I'm not that smart)
So yeah, I can blame some individuals choices.
But a do agree there are some basic structural problems in many fields.
But I say the same thing about many trade jobs. Demand is very high for well paying positions yet people are ignoring them by claiming that that type of work is beneath them.

 

[Lexicus]

Not saying it's the solution to everything. But, currently there's a shortage of qualified people in the field.
It's not that hard to get qualified. (come on, I'm qualified and I'm not that smart)
So yeah, I can blame some individuals choices.
But a do agree there are some basic structural problems in many fields.
But I say the same thing about many trade jobs. Demand is very high for well paying positions yet people are ignoring them by claiming that that type of work is beneath them.

Okay, so what happens if more and more people go into tech? It will create a surplus of qualified people and drive wages down. Taking the idea to its logical extreme, society and economy collapse as everyone goes into tech and finance leaving no one to work in other fields like garbage collection and teaching.

You are applying micro thinking to a macro problem. Just stop.