My understanding is that the bottom of the wage scale have seen the biggest gains, in real terms (https://fortune.com/2021/12/10/inflation-wages-low-income-wo...). Its the middle and upper middle class that are being made (a little) poorer by inflation. A fine trade-off imo. And given the asymmetry of the risks policy makers faced (great depression vs higher than average inflation), they wisely went with the risk of inflation.

And its not clear that US federal spending is causing the inflation. Month-on-month, the trajectory has been remarkably similar between US, UK and EU.

https://econbrowser.com/archives/2022/01/inflation-us-vs-eur...

Update: I think some people's views of this are skewed by the prices in the places they live. It's worth while doing the comparison of what can be bought for about 1.4 million, in Roanoke:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15-Cardinal-Rd-SE-Roanoke...

and in Los Angeles:

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2495-Butler-Ave-Los-Angel...

Wage gains are not being treated the same as investment gains. It's not like Bezos is taking home an hourly rate. Everybody at the real top is doing quite, quite well.

That's why the concentration of wealth into a very few hands at the top marches on, not because of "wages".

Your touching on a much more complicated subject about reporting.

If someone one owns a billion dollars of stock foobar, and foobar grows 10x, then that person is now worth 10B and "made" 9B. However they have not sold anything so while they can be reported as making 9B, they are none of it was directly cash and not taxed; at least not yet.

However, while Bezos "only" has a salary/bonus of 1.5 million a year, it is very common for executives to have total comp packages in the 10s to hundreds of millions a year. These can easily be converted into hourly rate equivalents because there is only so many hours you can work a year.

The billionaire stock owner in your example's economic power has increased by 10x regardless though. They can borrow against that money and those funds aren't taxed - so they can effectively spend it without taxation.

They can cycle debt to avoid ever having to sell a single share for their entire life, at rates more favorable than any middle class person has access to.

We can fix our tax code with legislation to address this loophole, our politicians just don't have the will to do this currently (largely because many of them amass fortunes through stocks and insider tips, IMO).

I think there's kind of a tacit understanding with business owners and legislators that if you collect taxes, you're good. Bezos and Musk might not pay taxes personally, but they oversee operations that result in payments of sales taxes, payroll taxes, employee income taxes, property taxes, etc, in vast amounts.

The historical critiques of class warfare have some good points, because there's obviously a privileged class here that's doing really well on the backs of labor, and this privileged class can afford to buy (and let's face it, it's really bribe) itself ever more privileges for a very tiny share of their wealth.

Wealth != income. What you're advocating isn't changing a loophole, it's developing an entirely new tax (wealth tax) to supplant the old (income tax). It helps to be explicit.

The loophole is that you can get $1M deposited into your bank account, but because it's technically a loan it isn't considered income. This doesn't require a wealth tax, (and getting ex. a home loan shouldn't be taxed as income), but being able to utilize wealth to get a pile of cash that is not taxed is effectively untaxed income IMO.

A wealth tax could address this, but perhaps there are other legislative options, like (partial?) realization of capital gains when used as loan collateral in the income tax code, or something like that. I'd prefer that latter, as it seems more direct.

But I don't know the specific best way to address this, I'm no a tax expert. But, I think its pretty clear that this scheme is an abuse of the system and should be remedied in some way.

This type of loan is really just a form of margin -- the same thing you can get at most stock brokerages (e.g. Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, etc). It seems almost impossible to distinguish the purpose of the loans -- e.g. I know people who use these loans to fund primary residence purchases because they lack income for FHA mortgages.

In fact, unless you have a cash-only account, you likely use margin every time you buy & sell a stock. Technically, stock transactions don't settle for 2-3 days. When your brokerage fronts you the shares to immediately buy, sell, or transfer funds, it's all margin under the hood. It gets even more complex once you get into options, swaps, and other esoteric financial instruments.

TLDR: It's simple in principle, but very complex in practice. Further complicating IRS rules is unlikely to win the whack-a-mole competition -- especially when IRS auditors under-target the ultra wealthy to begin with.

I assume they borrow against the after-tax value of the stock, because it will be taxed before being paid back(?) I don't know if that is significant, but I figure it's worth noting.

No that’s not how it works. Infact, you can get a margin loan at 0.75% interest from ibkr if you hold more than 50k usd of stock for half of its value.

Of course, if that value drops you’ll get margin called for more collateral

Half of its value is less than after-tax value, which is at least the initial investment + 63% of the gains.

Maybe I didn’t phrase it right for you,

Unaccredited investors (us, commoners) have access to margin loans for up to 50% value of account.

Accredited investors have access to portfolio margin which can be up to 90% of mark to market value.

That’s nothing to say of any custom financial instruments that banks might come up with to save bezos any taxes. Think swaps.

The thing is, when most of your money is in illiquid assets (stock, in this case, or houses, etc.) you can reliably get an extremely low interest rate loan against those assets. What does that mean? Let's say you have 10B equity in a company, and you want to buy a used 747 Jumbo Jet--a steal, at $500,000. You only have about $100k liquid cash on you at the moment. No problem! Go to a banker, take an extremely inexpensive loan out against your 10B (think less than 1% interest), and buy your jet. Because it's not income, it's not taxed. But yes, these people do actually have access to that much purchasing power, it's not just abstract numbers.

AMZN is down 10+% over the last year so not sure about that one.

His ex-wife is shovelling money to charities faster than anyone before and still made more than she gave out.

He's got elite financial engineers at his disposal, it's highly doubtful his fortune has declined in lockstep with the AMZN share price.

There are the rich and then there are the really rich, and then there are the unbelievably rich. I'll happily call a family earning 500k/y on two salaries in a small town where a million dollar home is literally a mansion on a hill "rich". Because they are. They just aren't as rich as the Trumps or Bezoss of the world.

What do you intend to connote by saying someone is "rich," though? What does it signify?

If the definition of "rich" is "independently wealthy," that family certainly doesn't meet it. They still have to work for a living.

If it means you never have to worry about where the next meal is coming from or losing the roof over your head, sure, a lot of people are "rich." And maybe this is better than 90% of humanity does, but it's still not a reasonable first world standard for being "rich" IMHO.

> They still have to work for a living.

No they don't. They could live in a median dwelling with a median income indefinitely on the interest of what they've saved over the past few years.

If you're saying that they have to work for the living that they're accustomed to, so does Musk.

Their modes of thought, their concerns and worries, their expectations, their assumptions of what is possible, their habits, their identities, all different.

She said: 'I am loosing every time!'

He answered: 'No, you are often winning, but when you lose you lose way too high.'

(-;

What does not calling them rich signify?

It hit me when I saw a 3MM home in Tampa vs 3MM in Bay Area. I think many’s definition of money is skewed from living in hcol cities.

One of my favorite quotes on the topic:

"Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his check, is wealthy." [Chris Rock]

The other thing I never hear discussed is that this round of inflation isn't expected to be permanent, or even particularly long-lasting. So a wage increase in January which is (temporarily) eaten up by January's inflation means....an actual wage increase in May which then goes on for years and years.

I think you're making a mathematical error here.

If inflation goes to zero, that does not mean prices have fallen to where they were before. It merely means prices stop increasing further.

So a temporary bout of inflation equal in magnitude to a one-time but persistent wage increase, _do_ cancel out.

Maybe I should swap in the word "price increases" for inflation.

Gas prices are high now, but nobody expects them to stay at this level indefinitely. (And nobody expects the price of gas to stop increasing without then also dropping back down.) Supply-chain related price increases aren't permanent, and go in the other direction when the supply chain improves.

And the larger point is it's a positive development if workers really are able to renegotiate their compensation -- and that isn't entirely negated by slightly higher prices in January.

Except that producers aren't going to lower prices, because the "expectation" is that other producers won't for any non-commodity good (consolidation is GREAT for the consumer), so we're stuck with it in a lot of cases.

The idea that "printing money leads to inflation" is startlingly overblown as the most impactful source of what causes it. It certainly can; but its explicative popularity is mostly the result of it being really easy to explain to children ("if you have two candy bars, wouldn't you feel that each bar is worth less?")

Or, more accurately: if everyone has more money, wouldn't demand for goods & services go up? And per the law of supply & demand, if demand goes up, prices should go up. And, per how inflation is calculated (CPI), if prices go up, inflation is on the rise. That's a lot of steps to get from "printing money" to "the value of the US dollar decreases".

It certainly can cause, and is a component of today's, inflation. But there are three confounding factors:

First: We're in an unprecedented economic climate, yet we still apply many of the laws of economics written during the Gold Rush. Today, its reasonable to assume that many people have a "demand maximum"; outside of a few high value commodities (houses and cars being the two biggest), there's only so many CPI-included goods & services which can see significantly increased consumer demand given a larger money supply. Food doesn't really see increased demand. Housing and Living supplies don't. Maybe you splurge on a PS5 (if you can find one, see (3)) or a bigger TV.

Houses & Cars, being the two biggest areas people will splurge, and related to that, Rent, are seeing massive price inflation. Which leads to:

Second: All else being equal, the average consumer sitting near a "demand maximum" socioeconomic point should mean that they're sitting on more money in a bank account. But, most aren't. The fundamental reasoning for this is complex, but it boils down to: most of the money being printed by the Fed isn't entering consumer pockets. On the contrary, most Fed policies have hurt consumers more than helped; because of rising real estate prices, which are in no-small-part due to low interest rates, housing & rent prices have skyrocketed, which mostly hurts consumers. QE over the past decade has lined American company balance sheets to unprecedented values, but that money hasn't trickled down to front-line workers in any meaningful sense; all it really serves to do is inflate stock prices, which destabilizes the stock market and makes for fun Forbes headlines about the richest Americans getting even richer (on paper).

Third: Biggest: Supply chain shock. CPI is calculated based on the price of consumer goods. Supply & Demand overwhelm the pricing decisions of most consumer goods. Some products are experiencing demand shock; but nearly everything is experiencing supply shock right now. Blame COVID. Blame China & Russia. Blame capitalism's tendency toward hyper-optimization creating a brittle supply chain.

Overall point being: Many correctly associate the word "inflation" to mean "weakening of the US dollar", but then incorrectly extrapolate it to mean "weakening of the US dollar relative to other currencies". The reality is exactly what's written on the box: its weakening relative to what you'd buy with it. And if its happening to most currencies (as it is, today); its not a currency issue, it's a supply/price issue. I'd argue not only is it not clear that Fed spending is causing inflation; its most probable that it isn't, and Fed spending over the past two years has been a positive, invisible force against higher inflation.

Wage gains aren't actually that good. A lot of people are going to be surprised they moved up in tax bracket while their standard of living went down.

What is the relevance of tax brackets? Earning more nominally while standard of living going down is the same as earning less in real terms.

“Moving up” in a tax bracket never means earning less in nominal or in real terms. It just means you get less in your pocket of the extra you earned, not of the total you earned.

I feel like all the stupid comedy shows, especially in the 80s and 90s, making those episodes about getting a raise and earning less money, did a lot of damage to people's understanding of how taxes ACTUALLY work, and continues to ripple to this day, leading to comments like the one you are replying to.

While there's nothing to fear from taxes, there is the completely separate issue of the benefits cliff [0]. When you just barely make enough to no longer qualify for SNAP or childcare and you lose 100% of those benefits instead of it phasing out based on your pay. This benefit is often worth more than a normal raise, so while you you don't take home less in your paycheck, you do have fewer resources overall. Phasing out benefits instead of making them all or nothing is a simple way to address this.

0 - theguardian.com/money/2014/jul/20/benefits-cliff-minimum-wage-increase-backfire-poverty

Other benefits is certainly a valid point, from food stamps to scholarships to all kinds of things. And when people talk about those I totally sympathize because my family dealt with those issues of "too much for those scholarships but not enough to be able to afford over a certain tier of school." And when people talk about those things I agree entirely.

If inflation is 5% and you get a 5% raise, you're level in real terms, right? No, because that 5% is taxed at your higher tax rate, which is (usually) higher than your average tax rate. This is called bracket creep.

Only if 5% causes you to change tax brackets. 5% of $300k is a lot more than 5% of $100k or $50k/yr, but only if you were already at the very edge of a tax bracket will 5% cause you to change bracket. Eg the 22% bracket is from $40-$86k for single filers in 2021. Only if you were making $81k or more will 5% tip you over. For everyone else earning 40-81k, that 5% doesn't cause a bracket change.

To add to this, especially for non-Americans or Americans unfamiliar with the tax system, the very notion of "change tax brackets" is a misnomer.

If you make $41k, you still pay 10% on your first ~$10k, 12% on the next ~$30k, and 22% only on that last $1k.

So yes, you could be in a situation where you had been at the top of a bracket, and your incremental wages from the raise are taxed at the next bracket's rate. But it doesn't trigger any kind of situation where your entire salary is now charged at the higher rate.

Yes, of course, a 5% raise does not compensate for 5% inflation. But that's just because taxes exist, not because you are entering a higher bracket per se.

IMO, the whole pervasive narrative around tax brackets being something to fear is a fear-uncertainty-and-doubt move by those seeking to vilify the tax system. It's worked surprisingly well to those ends.

No, because 100% of that 5% is taxed at the highest bracket but a percentage of your old salary is taxed at your old bracket.

To simplify 100k split 50k @20%, 50k @ 40% is less than (105k split 50k @20%, 55k @40%) / 1.05

The fist is worth 50 * 0.8 + 50 * 0.6 = 70k, the second is worth (50 * 0.8 + 55 * 0.6)/ 1.05 = 69.52k.

but you're still earning more than if you haven't gotten that 5% raise.

I think his point is that while a 5% raise and 5% inflation should be a wash, since you now pay slightly more taxes than before your pay after taxes is slightly less value than before.

It's still very misleading to say "wage gains aren't good" though - the problem is not that you got a 5% raise, it's that inflation is 5% so you need a slightly-higher-than-inflation raise to keep up. If you didn't get a 5% raise you'd just be even worse off.

It’s too far to say that “”wage gains aren’t good”, but he makes a good point about wage increase, inflation, and tax brackets I hadn’t thought of before

I think it's a bit overblown personally, the percentage of tax you pay is not going to increase a notable amount even with 5% inflation and a 5% raise. The brackets also get adjusted every year, to account for his point.

Presumably the tax brackets are linked to inflation too

Pretty sure they're not.

US tax brackets seem to be

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-provides-tax-inflation-adju...

1% inflation seems about right for the 2020->2021 tax year. Most indicators are lagging so if inflation started taking off during 2021 it wouldn't show up right away.

That shows nothing about the amount of the adjustment. Looking up last year's and running a few calculations, it appears to have been adjusted 1%! That's not adjusting for inflation. Not sure what it's adjusting for, but not inflation.

Headline literally says

IRS provides tax inflation adjustments

And links to https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-20-45.pdf

"This revenue procedure sets forth inflation-adjusted items for 2021 for various provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (Code)"

It's states adjusting for inflation for the tax year beginning March 2021. The document came out in October 2020 when inflation was 1.2%, I'm not sure when they adjust it and you may disagree with the measure of inflation

The year before was November 2019

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-19-44.pdf

Here's the one for 2021/2 (Nov 29th 2021)

https://www.irs.gov/irb/2021-48_IRB

Married Individuals Filing Joint Returns, lowest and highest bands:

Thresholds for tax year 2021/2 goes from 19750 to 19900 (0.7%) at one end, and from 622050 to 628300 at the other (1%)

Thresholds for tax year 2022/3 goes from 19900 to 20550 (3.27%) at one end, and from 628300 to 647850 at the other (3.11%)

And you’ll still be surprised that even though you’re in a higher tax bracket, your standard of living actually went down.

That's not how the progressive tax system in America works.

It is when inflation is high, which is exactly what we are talking about.

Because they haven’t adjusted the amounts for the tax brackets with inflation. So it’s a double whammy. Your money is worth less, even though you got more of it. And now Uncle Sam is taking more of it.

I cannot figure out why the US writes laws in terms of nominal value while maintaining an inflationary currency. The majority of lawmakers agree that a law should be x with respect to the current value of USD, why don't they also agree it should be x+inflation for a future value of USD? Maybe with a circuit breaker for hyperinflation. They don't have to rely on third party inflation numbers, because the Fed is a government agency.

Do some lawmakers only support a law because it will have a lower (min. wage) or higher (tax) real monetary significance in the future?

Probably, even if it is only accidentally. The Congressional Budget Office produces long-term estimates on things, and I'm guessing they aren't ignoring inflation. So, for example, a proposed law has $X ramification, according to the CBO, over the course of 10 years where X is an acceptable amount. If you were to adjust to make the law account for inflation, X would change, potentially into something not acceptable.

I think two of the biggest falsehoods many people seem to believe about finances is that one, you don't want to move up in tax brackets because then you will suddenly be making less money. And two, that somehow businesses and business owners can just "write off" expenses so that those expenses don't actually cost them any money.

There are a few edge cases where these can be technically true but they are rare and limited in scope and magnitude.

I think you are misreading the comment at the root of this whole thread. They aren't saying "if you go up a tax bracket, ALL of your income goes down because you pay more taxes!" but instead saying "you might make more money but despite that, you will not be able to buy more things." I don't think tax brackets have anything to do with this besides being tied to how much you make.

>you might make more money but despite that, you will not be able to buy more things.

I'm not sure how else to read that. If you make more money, you can buy more things. Even if you go up a tax bracket. If you make twice as much money and that moves you up a tax bracket, you won't be able to buy twice as many things, but you can still by more things than you could when you made half as much. Maybe 1.8 times more things.

That’s not how taxes work

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/071114/can-moving-h...

I think they mean if you are 1% away from a new tax bracket and get a 5% raise, 4% of that is at the higher tax bracket. So while you still make more money you make less than you would have if the entire 5% were in the lower bracket.

As others have already noted, that's not how tax brackets work. The real problem might be government programs like Medicaid - it's hard to tell if eligibility requirements are inflation-indexed, and since it seems to be determined at the state level, I'm almost certain it won't be in every state. So it's possible that increased wages, while it still increases post-tax income, actually reduces net disposable income after taking Medicaid, CHIP, etc. into account.

Tax laws are confusing, alot of people think that since they made more they are in a new tax bracket and every dollar they made is subject to the new higher tax bracket rate. This is incorrect, every dollar made at and above that high tax bracket is subject to that higher tax rate, every dollar made below is subject to the previous tax bracket.(and this is after 401k and other tax writeoffs).

Clarity here, this is how it is, where you live I presume.

Other places do have more horrid, retroactive taxation.

But that said, tax rates are typically based upon cutoffs. So the more you make, the more tax you pay.

So this means that if you get a raise to meet inflation, you could see your raise more heavily taxed, if it is above the next tax bracket.

Eventually, with enough inflation, and no changes to tax regs, you could see the very poor, taxed like the well to do, a few years before.

There are also some tax benefits, which have income cutoffs, and also programs which have income cutoffs.

With inflation at historic lows for 25 years, there is little institutional knowledge about how fast >10% inflation can erase buying power, and at the same time big raises mean nothing..

totally sorry, yes you are right, I forgot to mention I live in the US and that is how tax laws here are set up. And as a caveat I am assuming all income is salary.

Being highly paid in salary you are subject to very high taxation where someone who receives most of their income in stock and sells after holding for a year would have dramatically less taxes on the same amount of money received. Its why these CEO's making $1 a year(and having stock grants in the 100's of millions) are a slap in the face to the working engineer who incurs substantially higher taxes as a percentage than the CEO making 100x his salary.

"meaning the true value of their paycheck after taking into account inflation — fell by 2.4% in 2021."

This has been going on for like 30-40 years. It's sad, but nothing new. I got about a 4.5% value cut this year.

> I got about a 4.5% value cut this year.

I have not done the math, but I would not be surprised to see this is true for me. Certainly feels like it.

I do not hate my current job, and I loathe interviewing, but I feel like I will need to jump soon just so I can push the reset button and get my compensation to keep up with inflation lately.

I got a ~50% raise last year by changing jobs and switching to 1099. This year I did not get a raise, contract just renewed as is. So I got a 50% raise to start the year and after inflation took a 10% cut at the end of the year. I like the job but I think I have maxed the salary there so going to have to find a new one at the end of this year. Pretty unfortunate but I can't eat a pay cut every year. I have a feeling most software engineers are in a similar situation where the market is good, why take a cut or only 3% raise during out of control inflation when we can jump and get a 20% raise.

10% cut? Wasn't inflation about 6.2%?

It’s always weird applying inflation to an individual.

Some things changing hit some people more than others. For example, high fuel prices would hit those very dependant on fuel.

They might be referring to inflation in their specific area or in their specific budget. I don’t think you can apply average national or global inflation rates to an individual in a specific location.

That's why I'm asking how it was 10%

Inflation was 7%. Most of my diet is meat which is up ~20%. Also if you want to do some home improvement like put in a pool, that's up 20 - 25%.

Interesting. I wouldn't have thought that would comprise enough of one's budget to have such a big effect. Thanks

It is possible I am off by a percentage point or so, my estimate is not scientific :)

Official inflation numbers are super dishonest in my opinion.

I 100% agree with this. I go to the grocery store on average twice a week. My bill was generally $100. Now my bill is ~$180. I know this is anecdotal and I buy a lot of meat which is definitely up but it seems like everything has come close to doubling.

Fuel prices are high. Housing is high. Food is high. Car prices are high. Education expenses are high. Healthcare expenses are high. Literally everything we spend most of our money on is outrageously expensive.

giantg2 is relentlessly pessimistic and negative about their job and job prospects. They say much the same things in every thread about employment.

I suck at life, but my comments are pertinent to the topics and vary by the specifics of the article/thread.

I would be interested to see the difference between those who did switch and those who didn't.

It could easily be 20% raises for those moving and 1% for those who are not.

It seems like companies are really having a hard time understanding that people are not going to just take financial hits out of loyalty to a company anymore. Companies still appear to be of the mindset that they can give small cost of living increases and people will stick around for years in hopes of getting promoted. With inflation at 9%, getting a 20% raise after 2 years with a promotion essentially just sets you back at your starting salary with more work and responsibility. Why would anyone stick around for that? Plus there are only so many positions available to be promoted into, statistically the odds are not good for most. Coupled with the fact that companies are very open that they have zero loyalty to any employee below c-suite, its not really surprising people are only keeping jobs for a couple years before being forced to look somewhere else.

> Why would anyone stick around for that?

Lots of reasons.

First of all, job hunting takes time and effort. If you're rusty at interviewing and need some practice, then even more so. People that have kids or other responsibilities outside of work have even less of both available. On top of that you have to face rejection, which for many people is emotionally difficult.

Secondly, even if everything goes well, it's still a substantial risk. The new job might seem great at first, then turn out to be a nightmare a couple of months in. The old job might not be ideal, but you're used to it, and know you can live with it -- it's the devil you know. Same way that couples often stay in unsatisfying relationships for years, because it seems better than risking ending up alone.

I have kids and need a raise each year to afford to buy them the things they need while still having a hope of retiring one day.

"The new job might seem great at first, then turn out to be a nightmare a couple of months in"

This is pretty much most of my jobs. The current one is probably the nicest I have had in a long time but I still need a raise as the thought of working until 65 just to be old and then die fills me with existential dread.

I received a 1% raise at my current job. My coworkers who worked evenings and weekends received a "100% positive adjustment of their raise" (2%).

After a few rounds of this, developers basically join a company with a plan to leave as soon as they become reasonably productive.

A 1% raise seems insulting imo.

I got nothing for a couple of years in a row, then less than 1% the next; the HR guys said this is because there is a very low turnover, so there is no need to pay better. Companies to what they can, as much as they can.

It is

It's a clear signal, the company values you less than when it hired you. When leaving a company like that I find it best to frame it in a way that they were unhappy with you. "Hey look I know you are trying to spare my feelings, but that is 6 percent less than inflation, clearly you want me out of here but didn't have the courage to lay me off. Thanks for the heads up, I've found another role."

It really seems like you are most valued the day you are hired, with your value declining by the day.

The whole concept of value in terms of business transactions seems weird to me. It is ill defined and unactionable.

Either you agree to buy or sell at a certain price, or not. “Value” plays no role in the determination of prices.

Whether you agree to buy or sell at a certain price is entirely dependent on whether such price is higher or lower than the value of the trade, in your own subjective assessment.

There are other meanings of the word "value" in business transactions, but that is probably the most common and fundamental one.

>Whether you agree to buy or sell at a certain price is entirely dependent on whether such price is higher or lower than the value of the trade, in your own subjective assessment.

The subjective assessment of the "value of the trade" is then a function of the subject's alternatives, which is usually how much someone else will pay or accept from them.

I find the term utility to be more beneficial than value, due to it being less likely to be confused. As a boss, I would say I value all the employees equally, in human terms. But the employees provide different amounts of utility/$. Although I can see how people use value and utility interchangeably.

> The subjective assessment of the "value of the trade" is then a function of the subject's alternatives, which is usually how much someone else will pay or accept from them.

I agree that it is a function of the alternatives, but the operative alternative here is not trading. The best way to assess value is that which you lose by taking something away, like taking a player out of a team or a customer out of your book of business

Well, what the business will pay for you declines the longer you stay.

Every choice in life is a gamble. Many or most businesses are betting that their labor vendors (employees) will accept less and less. Based on the statistics of the past 5 decades, this seems to have been a good bet.

So in order for us to keep our value, we'd better switch as often as possible, I guess. As long as companies aren't giving reasonable raises, at least.

Isn't that basically how tech careers work? We switch as often as vesting or the willingness of better companies to take us allows.

That is how price discovery in any market works. The more often buyers and sellers engage in transparent transactions, the more knowledge market participants have of supply and demand curve movements.

Note that for buying and selling labor, price is not only the amount of currency being exchanged, but will also include things like work schedules, work environments, break time, location, etc. I prefer to think of it as $x per a certain amount of quality of life at work.

That's how it feels to me.

I started at a company in mid January, and they did annual reviews in June/July. After review, I 'merited' a 4% raise. But... because I'd only been there since January, they prorated the 4% raise to 2%. I never quite understood their logic, but also didn't stay through the end of the year.

EDIT: this was... 2004/2005 era.

IMHO quite generous by them, in my former companies you skipped the raise talk if you joined less than 9 months ago. Makes sense, because you just negotiated your salary on entry.

> Makes sense, because you just negotiated your salary on entry.

Not really, as in this field that is about halfway through your tenure. Market has certainly shifted a lot in 9 months past.

18 month tenure seems short, even for IT employees. Better off just staffing with contractors if that's truly expected.

Devs seem to last two years, but they make the decision to leave well before that, so you need to get a retention offer in before they start the job search.

Any data on that?

Only anecdotal, but that seems to be how long people last. There are no devs that I knew at either of my past two jobs that remain. Virtually all friends report similar experiences.

My experience goes the other way. 75%+ have been at my company for 5+ years.

Inventing arbitrary formulae to calculate your wage is merely a dishonest negotiation tactic. Govt companies do it all the time, don't read too much into it. Also, it's perfectly fine to renegotiate your wage once you're off your probation period, as once you're in, you have a better idea of your worth to the company. Just don't do it too often.

1.5% raise receiver here. Yes I'm insulted.

Is keeping your salary at pace with inflation a good argument? My raises have typically been 0-3% YoY but inflation in 2021 was 6.8%.

There's a saying “never let a good crisis go to waste” and I suspect many elites are taking that saying to heart.

On the surface they are complaining but I suspect many are using this as an opportunity to make changes that they've wanted to make for a long time but couldn't for various reasons. Mainly because elites tend to play game of thrones in their respective organizations and it wasn't politically favorable to make certain changes before covid.

>All while the world's elites have doubled or tripled their fortunes

Who and how?

It's not an US specific issue. Central banks all over the world have been pumping money ("printing") into the financial market during the pandemic. This has lead to massive bonuses, large income increases at the top of companies, while buying up their own stock. Some countries (like the US) have also made tax giveaways.

Not that these things don't happen regardless but artificially inflated capital (AKA debt) perpetuates the issue.

Maybe we should realize that increasing debt via banks and financial products is not good in of itself. Especially when we contrast it with investing in technology and workers.

It's no small secret that the world's billionaires saw >50% increase in wealth during the pandemic.

https://www.reuters.com/business/pandemic-boosts-super-rich-...

This is very misleading. They took a massive cut in early 2020, so a lot of that is just recovery.

I don't understand this degree of wealth apologism.

If you had just read the article or looked at the report, you'd see that the time frame involved includes the March 2020 crash, which in fact did not cause a massive cut for billionaires, who maintained 2.0% of the worlds wealth throughout.

I checked total return price of VTI (which basically reflects the performance of the entire US stock market), and it's up 43.5% from the peak of 2020 (some time in February) to the date of the article. The article seems to be measuring household wealth rather than stocks, so it's plausible that the difference in measurement is off, but "> 50%" and 43.5% is close enough that it's not "extremely misleading".

Yep. And in the last week, the rich have lost more money than anybody else.

It’s all a function of two things: 1. what percentage of your wealth is where, (ie home, stock market, checking account) and 2. Even if you and a rich man are both 80% in the stock market, he’ll come out in absolute terms having made more money.

Is that fair? I think so. Both made the same percentage. And if it drops, he’ll lose more absolute money, too.

[Citation needed]

I think the trick is to be the CEO of Amazon when bricks-and-mortar retailers are shuttered by a pandemic. Or to be the CEO of Tesla when their share price rises 500% for some reason.

The words "all" and "doubled" are an exaggeration, though.

unironically; them, us.

While I hope that this redistribution of wealth can be reverted, reversed or something else, I don't think this is robbery.

My concern with this is primarily because people in Germany (not that many) believe that the pandemic is controlled by big pharma, big tech and by the 'elite' (great reset) and I think it's just much simpler described somehow else than the control of rich people.

"All while the world's elites have doubled or tripled their fortunes. Great Robbery would be a more apt name than Great Resignation."

I don't get it. Why does what they do have anything to do with what you or I do? Why does anyone begrudge someone else for being lucky, harder-working, in the right place at the right time, better looking, fitter, smarter, better at business, better at making connections, faster at learning, or anything else that helps them acquire more wealth? Was it at your expense? I've certainly been passed for hiring because someone found a better candidate. I've receive smaller raises than a co-worker probably because they did more impactful work. I'm sure I've missed opportunities due to office politics.

I guess this is where we should all whip out the "U mad bro?" meme.

>Was it at your expense?

Yes, I think the point of complaints of the richest becoming richer is that they are doing so on the backs of the poor. They are underpaying employees and otherwise taking advantage of the lower classes to extract efficiency from them. If at the end of the year, I'm poorer because wages didn't even keep pace with inflation but my employer is 2-3x richer, something is wrong.

In a healthy econonomy, the idea would be that the employer pays you for services rendered and we both come out ahead and with some sort of balance.

Which, in a truly competitive free market, that should be the case. Amazon shouldn't be able to pay peanuts and work employees like dogs (or drones). Because in a free market, a competitor would show up and pay more and treat employees with more respect. But the moat is too wide and deep for many of these companies.

Heck, even if someone did make a serious play for Amazon's online retail and fulfillment, they would simply use their AWS earnings or even borrowing power due to their market cap to fund their retail side and underprice you out of the market. (Something that they have done several times before).

At a certain point, you start to see the elites continue to amass incomprehensible quantities of wealth while making their employees piss in bottles and drive into tornadoes. It’s a completely different gap than competing for a job or a raise with another candidate or coworker. I believe this is what is meant by “The Great Robbery”.

Because it's not luck. It's exploitation.

Come on. Most of the people in first world countries were forced to stay at home and depend on the services that these "elites" provided. How exactly is it unfair that they make more profit from wider reach? A large portion of Americans who received COVID cheques burned it on toys and leisure instead of saving and their money went upwards. How is that unfair?

> Approximately 159 million economic impact payments, totaling more than $376 billion, have gone out to eligible recipients in the last month — and the majority of that money continues to be spent on groceries, rent and other monthly bills, according to a new survey released Wednesday. [1]

The vast majority of the stimulus money was spent on bills, not frivolity.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/how-are-stimu...

Also is even painful to me to think about frivolities and how people spend money when seeing things like this.

“Lamborghini had its most profitable year ever during the coronavirus pandemic”[1]

Each of this cars may be something like 5 years of average salary in US.

[1] https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/lamborghini-had-its-m...

Surely the much smaller individual sums spent on something like Xbox consoles is far greater in the aggregate than a few Lambos?

As soon as you get into rating the worthiness of a spend it becomes a bit puritanical.

The ironic thing is that I mostly agree with you, but judging others ‘wasted’ spend is too slippery a slope to go down.

Yup, I agree with you too and to me the slippery part is to talk about ratios.

Definitely absolute values have a meaning to me, otherwise would not make sense to talk about billionaires and non billionaires and a better classification would be starving and non starving people.

Interestingly according to the above article, Lamborghini had $1.93B in revenue on 7430 cars, while it appears XBox had total hardware revenue of $2.29B in 2020. A handful of Lambos does seem to be worth thousands of consoles!

Perhaps people have realized that the PPP program was basically a gift to business? And that the majority of the COVID checks were spent by consumers on normal expenses?