In case you were wondering why there's so much marriage and divorce in the military...
...and then got divorced a few years later because he got married for the wrong reasons, well, I'd have a few more dollars.
[a]Housing allowances vary based on location and rank.
I never went into the armed forces, but I had considered the US NAVY even got my ASVAB and was told I would be assigned Navy Nuke, but on the drive home from the processing facility, the recruiter was bragging about all the sex I would be having around the world. He was saying that knowing that I was in a long term relationship. That really put me off joining.
"Oh yeah we don't do that much" (soothes class anxiety and guilt, smiles at you)
And what was your takeaway? It wasn't that the adulterer was lying: why not? How often does a pretty smile do this to you?
Recruiters talking about getting laid a ton is probably because the primary recruiting demographic is young single men, and they will say just about anything to get people to sign contracts.
What sort of experience do you have with the military?
As someone who has served in the U.S. military, loyalty is absolutely drilled into you; it's integral to battle readiness, which is ultimately the military's goal. They instill the value of loyalty as far as it serves to make soldiers that are willing to fight and die for each other and for their country.
That doesn't extend to any and everything, but I don't think any of your arguments that the military creates a culture of cheating are substantiated. The military actually creates disincentives from cheating that do not exist in the civilian world with the UCMJ.
As for the battlefield, there is not duty to country, only those you’re in direct line of command with. Better hope they never break the law, since if they do, you report them, you will end up dead if you’re in active combat.
The “drilling” you referred to is more comparable to brain washing than loyalty bound to reasoning.
Yes, loyalty is an idle frequently never found, but to call someone loyal because they signed a contract or because they know what will happen if the report those willfully breaking the law, to me is not loyalty.
In US, military within recent past had to literally and repeatedly remind all the military that their duty was to the country, not an idealogy or person — which would not have been done if the military truly was loyal, trusted itself, etc.
> The “drilling” you referred to is more comparable to brain washing than loyalty bound to reasoning.
Yes, and? It's training soldiers to be loyal to each other and to their superiors which are both important factors in battle readiness. You need to be able to follow orders in extreme situations and you need to have each other's back. This is taught to all SMs going through any training in practically any military in the world.
> Yes, loyalty is an [ideal] frequently never found, but to call someone loyal because they signed a contract or because they know what will happen if the report those willfully breaking the law, to me is not loyalty.
There's a thing called "unlawful orders" in the military. If a superior officer/NCO issues one, it is your duty to disobey it. This is easier said than done, of course. In either case, this is tangential to my point. What even is loyalty to you?
To me, loyalty to reasoning regardless of outcome.
>> You've also not substantiated your claims about how the military cultivates a culture of cheating.
Here’s a paper that showed veterans report extramarital sexual relationships at 2x the rate of nonveterans:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192513X1246051...
How else might you explain such a significant difference in rate of cheating beyond it being part of the culture? Beyond that, under UCMJ adultery is a crime, even if retired, yet what percentage of active duty and veterans are charged? How frequently are those aware of adultery in military subject to UCMJ actions?
You cannot use the word you're defining inside the definition of it. In my best effort to interpret what you mean, I'd assume you mean that people only be loyal to reason? That's a fine ideal to have but it's got nothing to do with loyalty, which has to do with a person's consistent allegiance towards something. A person can be loyal to one thing and not loyal to another.
> How else might you explain such a significant difference in rate of cheating beyond it being part of the culture?
You would explain it as they do in the paper you linked, which is that there are many extenuating circumstances surrounding veteran marriages that make it more vulnerable to higher rates of adultery. That the cheating is a reflection of the self selecting population that trends towards joining the military rather than the military (the institution) doing anything to encourage that behavior. But it also carries several caveats, like how the results of their analyses cannot be generalized towards the current veteran population, which is significantly different from their data, which dates back to 1992.
Reasoning to me is a belief, as such, it’s possible to be loyal or for that matter, non-loyal to reasoning. For example, beliefs of religious fundamentalists in my opinion are based on the word of god, not reasoning. Further, even when it would be easier to bend my reasoning to fit narrative that’s better for myself, I strive to reason objectively regardless of its impact on myself. To me, that’s loyalty that’s not born of force, manipulative tactics, and is a valid example of loyalty without error. In the not to distant past, people were killed for their belief in reasoning over the word of god, even today it still happens.
>> That the cheating is a reflection of the self selecting population that trends towards joining the military rather than the military (the institution) doing anything to encourage that behavior.
Taken to an extreme, top level military personnel cheating is potentially national security threat and even at enlisted level, systemic amounts of adultery, given it’s a crime under UCMJ, create an environment that’s only likely to produce similar illegal behavior and culture of covertly enabling it.
As I said in my original comment, in my experience these issues are common among all militaries, and I am not aware of a solution. That said, in my opinion, it is an issue, like the increased levels of suicide within military that if addressed would have a significant impact on a military being more fit for combat that those who have been unable to address these issues.
You being "loyal to reason" is just describing your values and has nothing to do with loyalty. You can't redefine the word just because you want to say that the military is full of disloyal people.
> As I said in my original comment, in my experience these issues are common among all militaries, and I am not aware of a solution.
What experience are you speaking of? You don't seem to have any experience that's at all related to these issues; at least you've not shared any.
> That said, in my opinion, it is an issue, like the increased levels of suicide within military that if addressed would have a significant impact on a military being more fit for combat that those who have been unable to address these issues.
They are addressed in the U.S. military. Suicide prevention programs and Mental Health programs are very big things in the U.S. military. I also would not describe it as a "culture of suicide" just because it occurs at a higher rate.
AFAIK, this has two reason: one feels a bit ancient as the states basically want their "Beamte" to live in an "orderly" family situation and thus encourage marriage and children.
The major reason, however, is to counter a disadvantage public officials have regarding health care insurance. For historical reasons, Beamte are not part of the public welfare system (or rather, they are in a different one). The state pays half of their medical expenses (if you are part of the public health care system as a "normal" employee, your employer pays half of the health care insurance). To cover the remaining 50%, Beamte need a private health care insurance. In the public health care system, your children and non-working spouse can be added to your health care insurance for free. With a private insurance, that is not possible - you have to pay for an additional insurance for each kid, and your spouse if he/she is not working.
There is a calculator for the federal level here: https://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/beamte/bund?id...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...
The Politburo often has a lot of need :D
Source: lived in a socialist country
The government owned a huge percentage of homes and rented them out to people who needed them, and moved them around too (if they got a kid, they got a larger apartment).
Then after the breakup, the government didn't want to deal with that, and sold all those apartments to renters living there for peanuts.. so 'everybody' got a home, and in the meantime stopped the communist-style buildings. .. then nimbyism, and yeah.. same as everywhere.
Now the "boomers" have apartments and young people can't buy them, because we don't build stuff anymore. When a boomer dies, their kids inherit and lease it out, because selling it is pointless due to ever rising prices (again, nobody builds anything anymore... nimbyism and all that)
If the government kept the apartments, when a boomer died, someone else would get to rent it at the government-non-profit-rate, but nope... whole country paid for building those apartments, some people got lucky to keep them, and the others could fuck off.
Also, building a private house back then was easier.. you could basically build, and then deal with all the pesky stuff, such as permits and legalization... now, you can't build a dog house without building/construction inspectors there. On one hand, we now have improper owner-build buildings in inapropriate places... on the other hand, atleast those people got a house, which is impossible now.
Also, building a house isn't even so expensive here... especially if you do a lot of stuff alone... but just the project/permit costs are higher than the bricks and concrete, and buying a piece of land where you're actually permitted to build is impossible... but we do have literal fields in the prime locations of our capital - https://goo.gl/maps/YeoJMMGN2QhtZDLs8 (just rotate the view around to see what's next to that)
tldr: in socialist time, everybody was renting from the government, in capitalist time, those apartments were sold for peanuts to renters (and the rest of the taxpayers, who didn't get apartments, got fucked)
anyway you seem to say that owning houses resulted in a problem of not owning houses? seems to me a more simple explanation would be that slovenia became a capitalist society, and for-profit housing doesnt quite accomodate as many people as the socialist one. this is a problem that is faced in every capitalist country atm
and you seem to be misrepresenting what happened in former yugoslavia. basically it was not the government that gave you housing, but the state-owned corporation you worked for. and it wasnt for-rent, but to pay off as you work. which is WHY so many people were able to buy it for peanuts when the system collapsed. also to say it was the government is to grossly overestimate the centrality of the socialist yugoslav government. they simply were not that powerful
In yugoslavia, you didn't own an apartment, but you rented it (from the government)... so almost noone had more than one apartment, noone had a too-large apartment, and if you got a job in trbovlje the government would get you an apartment in trbovlje (a city in the middle of nowehere). If you died, the apartment went back to the "pool", and someone else could get it. If you got a kid, you got a bigger apartment, and someone else got the smaller one.
But still, nobody owned those apartments, they just rented them.
The high ownership (the colored map from a post above) came only after they sold all those apartments to renters, and people started hoarding them, because they got them for very cheap and the prices could only go up. For "normal people" it would be better to have lower ownership and more renting from the government (if it was handled properly by the government.. a big if).. but then the colored would show different ownage percentages.
The biggest problem now is, that you're not allowed to build anymore, due to regulations and a lack of buildable land (in a legal sense... there is a lot of land, but the government doesn't allow building there, also in A LOT of areas, you can build a two apartment two story building max, instead of large apartment buildings that we need). "Back then", the government decided they needed more apartments, they took a piece of land and started building.. didn't matter if it was a pasture [0], a field, what the neighbors though (again, government buildings next door), they just built.
Now we have areas where we could build [1], but the government doesn't allow it... sometimes, if you're friendly with the mayor, you buy a farmland somewhere, and it suddenly becomes buildable, but this isn't true for "normal people". It seems a lot of people have invested interests to keep realestate prices high, and those people are in positions of power and can decide where we can or cannot build.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/zjfRsuw.png
[1] https://goo.gl/maps/ZVvHQmwzuX4VhLZ99 https://goo.gl/maps/dCoroKjHYs45dU8T8
you paid it off to the corporation you worked for. it wasnt a lottery system. it was more like a generous homeloan
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2017.1...
>so almost noone had more than one apartment, noone had a too-large apartment
actually the apartments were reletively very good quality, and often buildings were made as part of a grander urban project
anyway im not saying the system was perfect. this shouldnt need to be said. but it did solve certain problems rather quickly
The option to buy the apartments from the government came only after the fall of socialism in 1991 (jazbinskov zakon/law)
> actually the apartments were reletively very good quality, and often buildings were made as part of a grander urban project
yes, the apartments were well built, but the aging reinforced concrete will be problematic very soon.
you could not "own" it but you had all the rights one might want for their dwelling
Only after the split of yugoslavia, they sold the taxpayer paid and built apartments to then-current renters for peanuts.
You do, if you buy the apartment and get a loan/mortgage. If you're renting from the government, you're just renting... you didn't become an owner of the apartment here, until the end of socialism, a new capitalist government, and politicians not wanting to deal with the upkeep of those buildings.
Before 1991, you were renting as you are renting now in any other (capitalist) country (although with proper rules and protections.. so like in eg. austria, germany, etc). You didn't get to keep it.
Yugoslavia’s blue-collar workers were less likely to receive a socially owned flat than white-collar and skilled workers who were systemically favoured in the allocation process (Živković 1968; Bobić and Vujović 1985; Petrović 2004; Le Normand 2012; Archer 2016). Housing allocation thus forged novel social inequalities, a phenomenon observed by scholars in other state-socialist contexts (Szelenyi 1983; Bodnár and Böröcz 1998; Kulu 2003; Pelikánová 2012; Fehérváry 2013, 74–75; Gentile and Sjöberg 2013; Harris 2013, 112; Dalakoglou 2017, 137). In contrast to capitalist societies where wealthier strata were more likely to own their own home, in socialist states like Yugoslavia white-collar employees and managers were significantly less likely to own property than poorer workers, instead enjoying the more prestigious use of a socially owned flat. This was arguably more advantageous than property ownership as socially owned flats ‘ … were acquired without incurring personal costs, while in terms of their use, inheritance and even trading there were practically no differences between the holders of tenancy rights to state/socially owned housing and private owners’ (Petrović 2004, 270).
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2017.1...
I have no idea where the author got this... this was maybe(!) true for very high ranking party members, but for normal people, there was no inheritance and trading, and the use was the same as with any other rental apartment. Also maybe only in what was left of yugoslavia in 1991 and then turned into 'serbia and montenegro'. If you died, the apartment went back to the state. To trade it (move elsewhere) you needed a good reason (usually, more kids or more rarely a new job).
I was born in yugoslavia and lived here/there until the fail, and now still live in the same city, just in a new country. My parents got a social apartment, I got born and they got another apartment and moved (1->2 bedroom apartment). They couldn't get a bigger one before, because 2 people meant 1 bedroom apartment, 3 people, two bedroom one. They couldn't even choose the floor (noone wanted the ground level or top level ones). No trading, no inheritance, no ownership until 1991 and the jazbinsek law, where every renter could buy off the apartment from the government.
Or did she live in another apartment, and when he died, she got his, better(?) apartment?
If someone dies and you get to stay in an apartment, that's not inheritance, just continuing to rent that apartment.
The person defines what they need, not some third party who has obvious conflict of interest in down-estimating the needs.
I'm happy to be proved wrong, and maybe someday there'll be a successful communist state, but until then I look to history.
There are socialists who are anti-state, for example. Check out Anarcho Communism, who very much use the "...according to their needs" ethos.
Paying on performance and taxing high earners seems like a better system than paying directly based on need.
To incentivise performance, employers should pay based on performance. If an employee cannot perform well enough to provide for themselves or their family, the state should help.
None of this requires that employers directly decide pay based on whether you have a family. Requiring that results in the employer discriminating against parents and employees having a reduced incentive to produce.
In both scenarios we put ourselves in that position.
Maybe I have a health problem, and live in the US.
Maybe I'm taking care of aging parents.
Maybe I have a crippling mortgage. Too big a house. Live downtown, etc… etc…
"You have no dependents and responsibilities so I'll pay you less" is basically age discrimination in addition to discrimination based on parental status. Both often illegal, and for good reason.
Taking care of elderly parents -> you probably should get more money
Health problem in the US -> you probably should get more money
Crippling mortgage. This one depends a bit. Does your job require you to work at a specific location, and the location has a high cost of living. Then yes, you should get more money.
Think of the "no dependents and responsibilities" as the base rate. And you get extra depending on your needs (as listed above).
If you think this really crazy, consider that in the US, all of these things are tax deductible. Which means that its already normalized for people with such needs get more money (in the sense of more after-tax money). So why would getting a salary bonus be so wrong?
Or at least that it should affect what your employer gives you.
It's straight up discrimination, and some of it (e.g. based on parental status) usually illegal.
Taking care of the sick, elderly, and children is a social issue, and belongs with the state. Not by illegal arbitrary discrimination.
Also imagine how humiliating it would be for someone failing to conceive to see insult to injury that they don't get a bonus but their team mate does.
Paying someone less for doing more work (i.e. not picking up from daycare) is incredibly disrespectful and demotivating.
I hear all the time that someone asks for more money because they just got a new house. Like... What? Your employer is now responsible for you choosing to live beyond your means?
Maybe I have health issues, maybe I want to go back to school myself to get a more advanced degree, maybe I need more for Retirement because I will not have any kids to take care of me when I am old, maybe 100000 other things
However NONE of that is relevant to my wages, my wages and my co-workers wages should be set Solely and Exclusively to the value we bring to the organization.
if I choose to have 5 kids, or choose to eat fast food for every meal meaning my cost of living is higher should have ZERO bearing on my wages.
This isn't true now and has never been true. Otherwise frontline workers would make a lot more and CEOs would make a lot less. Wages already have skewed dynamics based on a bunch of arbitrary reasons. Saying that people with kids should get a bit more salary I don't think is that much more controversial than saying a permanent employee should get paid more than a someone from a temp agency that does the exact same work (and hence the same value to the organization).
Neither one of those statements follow each other. You may belive, and in some cases you may be correct that a CEO is of less value than frontline workers, but the prevailing narrative I see across the internet that workers bring "all the value" is also false
>Wages already have skewed dynamics based on a bunch of arbitrary reasons.
They are not really that arbitrary, pricing for wages are set largely by 3 factors
1. Market Demand for a given role 2. Number of people available to fill a given role 3. Amount of revenue a company can generate from a given role
Wage pricing is a balance of all 3 factors,
The global population is increasing, so some form of civilization will carry on. The issue is that certain societies have lopsided demographics that will topple the fragile social structures they'd been relying on, a lot of that being the consequence of short-sided incentives like what you're suggesting.
People who have kids have to put a bunch of their resources towards those kids: money, time, lost sleep, lost interactions with friends, and so on on. Nothing controversial here so far. Some view this as a choice of those people because they simply want to have kids, raise a family, and so on. But regardless of their intentions, there is a positive outcome for society in that there now exists a next generation that will keep society functioning. Those kids will grow up to be the doctors and farmers and so on that do all the things that need doing. These kids really are an investment in the future. People who don't have kids, but still grow old and live in society, say retired on purpose, or simply because their bodies and minds degraded to the point they can no longer work (happens to everybody), then those people are living in society that is functioning because of the time/money/resource investments of the people who had kids. The people who didn't have kids got a free ride because they didn't have to do any of that, but still get to see food in the grocery store that go there because other people had kids who then grew up and made that happen.
It's fine if you don't want to have kids, but if you plan on being alive and in society in 20-30 years, then you are living off the investments of others. So why not let them have a bit more salary then you?
One can agree that child-rearing and domestic work are productive activities while still disagreeing with your proposal to inflate salaries.
For instance, instead of what you're proposing, the state can treat these activities as an actual job and pay accordingly. This no longer conflates the issue by making other entities (private employers, tax code, etc) fill in the gaps on what society at large claims it values. Now, I'm not saying I endorse this solution, but rather that there's more to the discussion than how you're framing it.
I don't agree with your logic that childless adults are free riders, and you omit many of the upsides to raising kids that childless adults willingly forgo, or the fact that childless adults often play vital roles in their families and communities that regular parents often don't have the bandwidth for.
You also haven't really talked about the ecological impact of first-world nations having more kids and whether that's wise or sustainable. You act as if it's a priori a net good.
Last, I'd argue that one of the benefits to having a sufficiently advanced society is that people are granted more agency to live as they see fit.
The points about ecology and population are a whole other thing, interesting, but out of scope of the pay issue which is why I didn't mention them.
Interesting to discuss it further here in HN. I argue that at the same professional level it is not the same to have a full family that being solo.
I see this as the core of the argument - paying people based on their needs requires you to invade their privacy in order to find out their needs. And not wanting your employer to invade your privacy would mean getting some baseline low pay because "you don't have any needs".
If I go to the grocery store, I do not pay more for an apple from a farm owned by a family that has a sick grandma than from a farm owned by a family that does not have a sick grandma.
In my role I know that and would also support that case as special.
This kind of thinking varies depending of where you live (at lease for most people and less for remote workers). My takeaway is: if you live in a country/state where this help is "embedded" within the system we can focus more in salary equivalence for the same job responsabilities but if you live in a place that put this pressure on the organization side the organization could have the awareness to take care of these issues. In HN we have people from all around the world and with different democratic and non-democratic systems.
How would you? Are you running an intelligence agency and it's part of your job as a boss to constantly monitor your employees?
I don't see how the location matters, really. A single person might need more money because they want to save up to start a family. Now you factor that in, and you pay them more, but they never find the right partner and don't start a family. Are you now going to ask them to return the money?
I'm a terrible example, but if you offered me to work the same (or, let's face it, often more) than someone for less money because they're married with children, I'd rather work somewhere where I'm not a second class citizen.
No, I live in a culture where this matters arise. There are many discussions in this thread based on culture experience. I see for example privacy discussions, in some cultures/countries privacy is a must but at the same time contradictory with the private information that is flowing unregulated in multiple organizations.
It seems like it's not the needs that matter, it's your assumptions about them.
Are you also willing to pay more for someone living alone and that therefore can't split the costs with a significant other?
But in the US, if an employer offers subsidized health/dental/vision insurance for partners/dependents, then the employer is already offering extra benefits to someone with spouse/kids.
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...
We could of course quibble about market rate and so on but that shouldn't be locally based in a global marketplace. The fact that a software shop down the road from me pays peanuts when I'm looking for work with companies in other countries that otherwise pay their staff very well isn't important IMO and IME.
Of course it's important. It means you will, all other things being equal, go for the employer that pays the best rate. And that will drag your local wage up, or it might cause the local shop to close down because they can't pay well enough.
In general I keep seeing people very much like being paid a good salary, but not understanding the one thing that puts their salary high (or low): competition from other employers, and from other employees. Other employees lower it; other employers raise it. The fact that employers think they don't have to pay SF salaries globally is the same mechanism that created SF salaries in the first place.
Rather, no one would work for you in CapitalCity at SmallTown salaries.
(One of the reasons is the higher cost of living, but that isnt what keeps the salary high, it's that there's no labour supply at SmallTown salaries.)
Within those two bounds, labour markets can play, but the cost of living going up doesn't automatically make more salary money available.
Why not rather: you don't have such a time-intense hobby such as raising kids, so you deserve more income.
Does that sound like a good plan, great for economy?
Between this and climate catastrophy, neoliberals are creating a self-destructive civilisation
Rather thank the politicians who sold you a pyramid scheme as a pension system.
Immigration is only a temporary solution, it may not be a reliable solution by the end of the century. Global birth rates are falling and QoL is slowly improving, reducing the incentive to immigrate. Saying this as an immigrant myself.
Maybe they should have thought about that before they based retirement on the Ponzi Scheme of income based taxation
No, it's the other way around.
Lowering birth rates is the very best thing we can do to ensure sustainability.
I mean the saying goes they are the future, and it a very literal sense, they are.
Why do "we" want that?
TLDR: you want children to exist now.
And that's ignoring how our society works, because the way pensions work you want about 4 times as many children as old people. That's a lot of kids we haven't had, but the alternative to that is way more taxes. Clearly we don't want way more taxes, so 4 times as many kids it is. Except we're not doing that either, and ... uh ... I guess we're hoping God will save us?
TLDR: you want children to exist now. And, actually, you should want the number of kids to roughly double from what we have now (in the US, in Europe, a minimum of 4x is needed)
If we, as a society, believe that then surely those rewards should be paid by the government and not private employers.
2. Demographic decline per se is not in the interest of the state or society.
3. It is in the interest of the state to create incentives for marrying and having children and to support or defend a culture that is at least not hostile to family life and its flourishing.
Does it follows that companies are obligated to pay a higher salary to someone with a family over someone who is single for the same work? If labor is the source of economic value, then it would seem that they are not since the married person with children is creating the same value.
Of course, when employers do compete for employees, such candidates will have a greater need and incentive to choose the employer who does pay more, and companies, realizing that such people will find better offers more attractive, may provide benefits that specifically target such people (e.g., free daycare or whatever). Whether companies do this will depend on market conditions, for example.
Are we facing underpopulation?!
Can you imagine how stupid that comment is?
my first thoughts: hey maybe musky boi should try pay-transparency at twitter to get more to quit; what's another 1/7th and then saying no to the others that ask to the already all time low morale?
I noped out of that employment quickly