[autoexec]

It comes from crab bucket mentality and a pervasive fear that somebody somewhere might be getting something they don't "deserve".

Everyone who gives a company years of their life should be able to comfortably retire after decades of service, but companies have managed to convince workers that most of them should work until the day they die and only a small precious few deserve to retire and finally be allowed to spend time with their loved ones.

[ryandrake]

Exactly. "Look at that guy, who has it slightly better than you. He's really the problem!"

[spwa4]

How does that work? That guy, pensioner, who has it slightly better than you, is a different way of saying that:

1) that guy gets your labor, for decades. 4 decades to be exact

2) for less than you'll get for that work

(that's what getting a higher pension actually means in the real world, with money being an abstraction and all that)

3) he (or she) doesn't get more because they worked harder or better, but because they were working when a random political vote needed to be made (paid for, really). And that, not only won't repeat, but there's absolutely nothing you can do to change the situation to your benefit, even just to equalize. That last part is of course what makes taking away their benefits attractive.

Sounds pretty unfair to me. At least with a CEO they did something to get what they got, and there is a way to get their position, even if most will never achieve that.

[ryandrake]

It's absolutely unfair. But the solution is to raise the rest of us up, not tear these people down. Why don't I have a retirement like that? Why don't you have a retirement like that? Those are the questions we should be asking. Not "He shouldn't make that much!" The people who earn literally 100X that pensioner are laughing at us as we fight each other

[spwa4]

How would that work? Could you explain? Because the only way to do that is to lower the price of labor. To greatly increase the availability of labor. You can do this with a lot of births, and we're finding out you can't really do it with immigration even.

So how would that work? The children that would need to provide that labor for me when I'm 65 would have to have been born already (they start work at, say, 20 years old). This has already happened, therefore, and cannot be fixed.

... which is of course another argument to take the pension away ... after all that's the only way to make it fair. You can play games with money, but money is an abstraction. You cannot raise up the necessary amount of people, the amount of people politicians promised us in trade for votes. It's not a matter of priorities anymore either, we're past the point where using 100% of the labor force would work.

[autoexec]

> How would that work? Could you explain? Because the only way to do that is to lower the price of labor.

why do you think the only way to improve things for workers is to lower the price of labor? Workers can get better benefits when others stop pocketing the money that should have gone to paying for those benefits. Maybe the CEO whose pay has gone up 940% while the typical worker's compensation has risen only 12% over the same amount of time can cut several hundred off that percentage, earn less but still obscene amounts of wealth, and provide better benefits for the workers they've been stealing from for decades.

[spwa4]

And yet when I calculate the numbers that's exactly what I see: that workers cannot get significantly better benefits by taking away executive compensation, since at most that can bring worker pay up to the average. Whatever is the solution, promising people they'll earn (significantly) more by destroying management's compensation is just not going to happen, for the simple reason that it's impossible.

Hell, on hackernews that average would be below what the vast majority here earn.

And, of course, if we're going to redivide earnings, that's what would be maximally fair: that everyone makes the average ... countrywide ... or $65k per year (before tax). THAT is what can be achieved by making things fair, under the absolute optimal circumstances (so in practice, let's call it 5% less than that at best)

No, thanks.

In fact, that leaves as the only real option making sure that $60k pays for a whole lot more. Which of course, if you want that to happen, requires the opposite from protecting labor: if anyone thinks they can do that, and succeeds, they should get a big reward for it ...