[alvah]

"Inequality has been going up in the US for a very long time, which means a lot of people are not being rewarded as much as they should."

The second part of your sentence is not necessarily true. It might be true in some or even many cases, but it's certainly not something you can just assert & move on, as if it's a physical law.

[Herring]

I'm just tired of re-litigating this issue. Discuss with your favorite frontier model. Roughly, productivity has been outpacing pay since the mid 1970s, and I wrote about this in another comment here.

There's just so much confusion here. Some people like you don't get why a world where a handful of billionaires own everything is a bad idea. Madness. I think nothing less than another depression will get through to most.

[knollimar]

Increased capital investment (e.g. software) could explain productivity not attributable to the employee.

On its face, productivity vs pay isn't a faor metric. I agree that problem exists, but we shouldn't use it to benchmark

[Herring]

> I own your tools therefore I own everything you do with them

Like I said, madness.

It's like slavery was technically outlawed but a lot of America strongly disagreed. And they're posting on HN.

[knollimar]

If I lease tools that triple your productivity for the same cost as your wage, how much more do I pay you?

My point is increases in productivity can be caused by capital investment, not totally attributable to the worker. That money has to come from somewhere.

Ideally there's a fair balance. This isn't it but you can't look at the number you referenced blindly.

[Herring]

You're not thinking at a systems level. Check this out - https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart. The US is increasingly a miserable place to live in - in large part because of pay not keeping up with housing/school/medical/etc.

Correct systems-level answer to your question "how much do I pay you" is "as much as it takes to stabilize the US curve". Happiness correlates with financial security, which we won't get if the rich get richer from those capital investments then buy up all the housing.

Fun fact: Fit 2 lines on that data and you can extrapolate by ~2030 China will be a better place to live. That's really not that far off. Set a reminder on your phone.

[alvah]

I don't care if you are tired or not, it's not something you can just assert and move on.

Also, you know nothing at all of my opinion on whether "a handful of billionaires own everything" is a bad idea or not. All you know about me is I don't agree with you that rising inequality AUTOMATICALLY means some people haven't been rewarded as much as they "should", whatever that means. Reading comprehension, combined with not assuming others' POV, for the win.

[Herring]

Dude go figure it out yourself, it's not that hard. I remember discussing inequality with friends in 2014, and probably knew about it since Occupy Wall Street (2011). Or earlier. At this point if you still don't get it, with a billionaire in office, surely it's on you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street

I got what I needed from here, I'm out.

[alvah]

lol, the arrogance of youth.... I think the point I'm making might be too subtle for your young, idealistic brain.