>how modern work for a lot of jobs has become de facto indentured servitude...The average worker can't afford anything without taking on debt.
For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let's take an example: The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse. This is a job people with no skills take on. They pay 15 USD an hour. In other currencies that is 42k a year AUD or 2390 Euros a month. (the cost of living is roughly the same in these places).
I'll leave you to decide whether this is "slavery" and whether they "can't afford anything" or whether Americans are just so rich they are out of touch with reality.
Cynically untrue. Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel. And it's clear you haven't paid market rent in a major city since you bought that starter home back in the 90s - 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500 and you get no benefits.
You can get a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment where I live in a decent low crime location for $700-$1000. There’s an Amazon wear house up the street. It’s a city >250k people.
People around here make $40k on average and still go to sports games, bars, dancing, etc.
So rent a room and/or don’t live in the best part of the city. That’s what I did near Boston a few years ago. My rent was well under $1000. Do people think they’re entitled to private apartments in the most expensive cities in the world?
Boston is actually an amazing example of things the US needs to do to enable affordable living.
The expansive public transport network allows you to live far from the city without incurring huge commute times. That paired with the density means that car ownership is discouraged, which takes away another expense. Lastly, the city continues building multi-family middle housing in the city outskirts which keeps housing availability high.
High density and walking/public space culture comes with many other advantages. High footraffic means restaurants can run low-margin, high-volume food that poor can afford. The public spaces mean that restaurants can operate low-overhead businesses out of food trucks and holes in the wall.
Speaking if public spaces, they've generally (idk how, it is more localized there) managed to avoid the violent homelessness problem of the other major cities. Violent homelessness disproportionally affects poor people as they are more reliant on public spaces and safety in numbers. This has helped the city avoid an SF/Portland/Seattle-esque deterioration of entire neighborhoods.
Most American cities don't have any of these pros, which leads to skyrocketing costs associated with city living.
Boston and eastern MA are far from affordable. Homeownership in a decent area inside 128 is unattainable without a pretty sizable nest eg (equity or gift from parents).
The public transit system is insufficient. The Commuter Rail is infrequent, slow and often unreliable. The entire system needs to be electrified for RER service but that’s probably twenty years away if we are lucky.
And the homeless have just been concentrated into one shantytown at Mass and Cass.
My praise for Boston was in comparison to absolutely shambolically run cities in the rest of the US. In comparison to some well-run global cities, (Greater) Boston still has ways to go.
> Mass and Cass
Yep, Methadone Mile is the uncomfortable compromise between liberal: "don't evict the homeless" versus the moderate: "keep our neighborhoods safe" agendas. It keeps the rest of Boston relatively aggressive-homeless free, but the addicts and local residents are worse off.
> entire system needs to be electrified
At times, it is jarring to see the US do worse than 3rd world countries. The mind-boggling cost of any infrastructure in the US is really holding the country back.
> Do people think they’re entitled to private apartments in the most expensive cities in the world?
Yes, they do. Read any thread on a vaguely left-leaning subreddit that even starts approaching discussions of renting, or landlords, or landlord-tenant relations, and you'll get flooded with comments so detached from reality it will stun you.
Within a specific, ideal job they always wanted and got without having to make hard tradeoffs somewhere, or do a ton of searching?
This is what folks are talking about. Expecting things to just fall into place 'just because' without having to do the legwork to actually make/find something workable.
It's an entirely solvable problem at the data level.
We know where the employers and residential zones are. We could put together a model to minimize average commute time.
The problem is that we need to have a grand "rehoming" moment to deliver it. The day where everyone gets assigned a new residence in accordance with the optimization scheme. A day that would doubtless be deferred to long past the heat-death of the universe in endless court challenges by those who ended up on the losing side of the deal in some way.
In a way, the fact we still have powerful regimes which aren't tied down to "rule of law", and specifically the "property rights as sacred" segment of it gives me hope; I'd expect to see this day occur in Beijing long before it happened in San Francisco.
100% agree. Most cities in the US (not just SF, but definitely SF) are locked in this bizarre ‘you can’t make
it better because you’d stub my toe’ mode that enforces stasis. SF in particular is in this bizarre Byzantine political deadlock where it seems the only thing the city is allowing itself to do is stuff that it knows doesn’t work.
Why is that relevant? The cost of maintaining a reasonable standard of living is what matters, not the amount listed on your paycheck (as long as the latter is >= the former).
If you can’t afford to live in the city where you work then it’s pretty much the definition of “not a living wage.”
Like are we really at the point where we’re totally fine with people commuting an hour one way every workday to a shitty minimum wage job instead of just building affordable modest housing reserved for people working in the city.
It's not the wage that needs to change it would be the prices of housing in the city. This can't change because it's not determined by some governing body. It's called gentrification. It's currently happening to me. I could not afford to buy my house now and I just bought it a few years ago. Of course there still needs to be staff in the area working retail etc. but I haven't seen anyone over 25 in a store near me for over a year.
It’s the natural consequences of policies enacted by many governing bodies. Cities with land use restrictions and onerous zoning restrictions where they are allergic to highways and only build bad public transit run by incompetents, built by corrupt contractors and expensive unions? The prices are substantially the fault of the local governance. This is why people move out of San Francisco and New York and Chicago.
The parking requirement is just a symptom. The problem is everyone with some stupid pet interest tries to use the zoning code or other local laws as a backhanded way of legislating a monetary bar to entry. They don't want triple deckers, they want classy luxury apartments. They don't want a distribution center. They want a white collar office park. They don't want industry and jobs, they want high end retail and dining. But you can't go from suburbia to downtown without the middle steps so of course no meaningful development happens.
If we just respected property owner's rights to do as they see fit we wouldn't have these problems or not nearly to the same extent.
Even in cities that don’t require that, rents are still expensive (with the exception of Tokyo where you can rent a 2.5 tatami sized apartment, shared toilet, no central heating, for $300/month).
> Even in cities that don’t require that, rents are still expensive
Maybe you've got some good examples from other countries, but here in the US the only major city with reasonable zoning is Houston which has quite affordable homes.
I wouldn’t mind living in Tokyo, Houston doesn’t tempt me at all. I assume much of its affordability is related to demand, and the fact that given a lack of zoning it can sprawl forever (also reducing its appeal). I met a homeless person in Seattle from Houston, even the homeless don’t find the city desirable (though it might be due to weather?).
“In the city of New York there were laws
passed to push the private sector out of the SRO business [and eliminate SROs] on the theory that SROs were inhumane. Consequently, people sleep on grates outside.” — George McDonald
SROs, residential hotels, boarding houses and the like were all banned in the 1950s (and the surviving ones dismantled through the 1980s), a loss of about 100,000 units of affordable housing.
I think absentee ownership and zoning laws have a fundamental impact on the availability of housing. It seems outside of governmental concern because their impact is already so normal. It’s normal for rich people to own/rent land they don’t occupy or use in perpetuity. It’s normal to see almost everything zoned for car dependent, single-family housing.
Tomato potato. If you make policy that lowers the cost of living then the living wage goes down and vice versa. I don’t think we’re at all in disagreement.
How? If you can travel back and forth and that makes it work, what is the problem? You can hate it, sure, but, at least where I live, people commute 3+ hours/day to make a nice living while living cheap. What is wrong with that?
The increase in the world’s entropy is not priced into the commuting costs, so it is artificially cheap living. Assuming an inhabitable planet with clean air and water is a goal, then commuting 3 hours would not be cheap.
You are right, but you can stimulate wfh and stimulate companies to spread out more. The fact a lot of people are against that (including here on HN) shows that it's all great, but not in my backyard.
If a city has 1 million jobs but only homes for 800k workers, then you will always have 200k workers who are priced out of homes. Or if you do it the communist way and assign homes with arbitrary price ceilings, you still have 200k people without homes although now it is the 200k most recent immigrants and not the 200k poorest, but the problem is still there.
So what do you suggest we do about that except build more homes?
> So what do you suggest we do about that except build more homes?
Why are you trying to make this complicated? Just get rid of density caps so that developers build more apartments. Problem solved with zero cost to taxpayers.
>Why are you trying to make this complicated? Just get rid of density caps so that developers build more apartments. Problem solved with zero cost to taxpayers.
Because "better a thousand rental units go un-built than let one slum lord construct a substandard basement apartment" or some other garbage like that.
Basically people keep trying to set a quality floor that society mostly isn't rich enough to afford and most land can't be developed enough to justify then acts surprised when the actual densification that happens is only a slow trickle.
Yeah, that's kind of how this country markets itself. Being able to afford a home and a family on a regular worker's pay is literally part of "The American Dream."
I've thought a lot about this, esp as someone who was born here and whose parents immigrated here for the American Dream.
They've done great. We lived in a rural area. It was possible because one of them came highly skilled and solicited to immigrate.
That being said I shudder when I hear "just move to rural blah blah blah". My life was horrible there. I was considered black, egytian, non-english speaking, to come from a family of savages or royalty or witchcraft depending on the speaker.
This whole "move to a rural place" really doesn't seem open to the non-white growing majority. Its certainly nothing like the Californian life I live now where I still cannot afford a home but can enjoy Mexican, Indian, Ethiopian, Korean, and american culture in a form of acceptance that was fully closed to me growing up.
Care to expound some more on the differences between living in rural places vs. the Californian life? I've spent most of my time in the suburbs of coastal cities.
The American Dream is not about getting more for less, as in "most luxury for the least amount of effort." It's about having a shot at owning a business without the financial backing of a rich family [0], which is more like "most luxury for an insane amount of effort."
[0] A lot of recent discussion centers on how many of the most successful US entrepreneurs come from privileged backgrounds, but you should not lose sight of the fact that literally every other country in the world will fare a lot worse in this regard. Many things are broken in the US, but no other place on Earth has lower barriers to starting your own LLC and hiring your first employee.
@Aerosmile I dont know that you need to look at Austria. You can just look at America over time. Mobility is getting harder and there's no real need to pretend it isn't
The US is not a capitalist paradise. We moved a software company from the UK to a US Delaware Corp 2 years ago and it was a major headache involving substantial legal fees, accounting, employee benefits, and taxes. Texas interestingly has been the hardest to deal with--probably our biggest single accounting expense due to what seems to be antiquated tax management on their end.
It was a lot easier doing business in the UK. We had relatively low accounting overhead, the laws were not hard to follow, and we didn't have to deal with having employees and customers sprinkled over a dozen state jurisdictions.
We're fortunate to work in a growing and lucrative market, but it's not all peaches and cream.
You're confusing accounting expenses and the cost of running a business. Even personal taxes are a pain the US.
So, yes, doing your own corporate taxes in the US is likely not a good idea, especially if you hire people across several states. But the cost of an accountant is a minuscule cost compared to paying X% more across your entire payroll (not to mention other aspects).
Completely anecdotal, but my maternal grandfather was a first-generation immigrant at the turn of the 20th century, speaking no English, no family, no job - the whole cliché. He did various jobs - fireman, train conductor, court stenographer - none of which would be particularly high-income or high-prestige today. But by the 1960s he had managed to raise 12 children with my grandmother, a stay-at-home mother, and to pay off both a 10-room home in the suburbs of NYC and an 80-acre vacation place in the Catskills.
The heroic labor of immigrants notwithstanding, I strongly doubt that would be possible for a fresh-off-the-boater today. I told my 20-something kids about it and they just laughed, like hearing about someone who stumbled across a pot of gold or a magic goose in a fairytale. I can't say I blame them.
That's a very different version of the American Dream than what I've always considered it to be. Even as portrayed in movies through rose tinted glasses it's always seemed to be the conjecture that even if you start with nothing, through a lot of hard work, thrift, frugality and determination you can work your way up through the ranks and eventually achieve a good living. They generally make a big deal out of the protagonist living a hard scrabble life while they're working towards their big break.
Seeing it as being guaranteed a home and family on an average workers pay is completely detached from that narrative.
Uh no. The American Dream has been about the ability to work hard to better oneself, and work UP TO that after education or doing something unique (like making their own business work and be profitable). Not that anyone could move here and just get it everything by doing the minimum.
Here's what FDR said about the minimum wage law that was passed in 1933:
> It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
> By business I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.
If you think working and living conditions are worse now than they were in 1933, I'd love some concrete examples.
I'm not saying things couldn't be better. I'm saying that most people talking about this seem to be completely devoid of context about life at all, and most proposed solutions just come across as strong arguments that they have no clue about the world at all, or why anything is the way it is.
Which is a solid vote in the column of 'changes proposed won't accomplish the stated goals, and will cause way more problems'. In my experience, anyway.
In my experience one of the biggest issues is that no one reports companies doing shitty things, and the labor orgs in the gov'ts get away with ignoring shitty things, because no one holds any politicians accountable on labor issues because most of the population is super complacent about everything.
Hell, Amazon and a number of other companies are super blatant about their ACTIVELY ILLEGAL ANTI-LABOR ORGANIZING, and not a peep seems to be coming from the appropriate labor departments.
And since everyone is super complacent (barely any protests even), then of course nobody cares. Because nobody is making them care.
If everyone really feels so badly about it, make it known by making them feel badly about it. Instead everyone seems to go back to candy crush after posting complaints online about how terrible things are.
What is the 'minimum' when every single corporation is working to de-skill jobs so that they can cut wages, limit onboarding etc.
We all work on or adjacent to embedded software for robots to replace people in these jobs so that they can go on to be 'free' to have a higher skill job doing....no one ever seems to know what. Except maintaining said robots.
It's literally always been that way. Every business tries to cut costs, or they become unprofitable. Every organization tries to mechanize/create repetitive process where they can to minimize the amount of skilled workers they need as part of it. Every organization tries to skrimp where it can.
I literally never worked for a company with an onboarding or training process until I got to a FAANG. At that point I had been in industry full time for ~ 13 years, and worked at everything from startups to established 200+ employee companies.
Everyone has been worried about 'automation' nuking the jobs since I was born, and outsourcing killing all industry too. First it was Japan that was going to own the world though. Then Outsourcing to India. Then China. And they had impacts. But somehow, everyone who is useful keeps working, and everyone actually seems better off. Hell, the 'maintain the robots as the only jobs left' was a 90's thing with worries about car manufacturing automation.
Back then, a lot of jobs were things like secretaries, gophers (task runners)/delivery workers, retail shopping workers, postal workers, etc. Now people use email and write their own documents, uber or ubereats what they want, have things shipped to their door. Quality of life is dramatically higher in every objective way I can see.
And if anything, there are waaaaay more jobs now, and people seem to be doing better everywhere. But they seem to hate everything and everyone way more, and FEEL poorer.
Yet you don't see that "gopher" / shopping jobs are alive and well in the very service workers you use today (Uber/eats, "items shipped to your door", etc.)
I hear you on 'always' and say - while strenuously protesting that I am not a luddite - that many jobs required apprenticeship. Some in the US still do and in places like Japan its a requirement. In France you can still make a living as a butcher and if the Great Pottery Throwdown is to be believed you can be a successful scrub nurse or elder care manager in the UK and still own a home and have the wherewithal to be a fantastic potter, in a home pottery studio. (that last bit is tongue in cheek).
Capitalists gonna capitalist.
But they are limited to differing degrees due to policy. Our current state isn't inevitable.
Statutorily for sure. Most don’t require apprenticeships as a part of the job/role fundamentally though. Electricians (classic apprenticeship setup there) for instance could be made through formal trade school + probationary period, and it would likely be even better than it is now. If it works, it works though.
Generally, It’s a means of locking in stasis in a particular field in general, or restricting competition to the ‘have’s’, just like the old Guild setup before that. Still very much a thing for MD’s in the US.
There is a reason why France in particular is notorious for not getting anything done.
German’s do it too of course, but in their own way which is focused more on results, so it tends to be less sclerotic and more productive.
It’s always a trade off - more protectionism, or more churn/chaos/competition. If they can provide good labor protections while maintaining economic growth enough to ‘lift the tide’ overall, hard to fault them. It’s easy to go so far that it strangles the economy and locks everyone into a pointlessly inefficient setup in favor of the protected classes though. (And they won’t necessarily be rich protected classes either).
Europe’s tide hasn’t been rising very rapidly for awhile, and many EU countries are clearly insolvent overall (Greece, Italy, etc), so we’ll see how long they can sustain it.
And housing wise - to be somewhat on topic - very unlikely those Nurses in the UK are doing so in London.
A home, yeah, not a home in downtown metros. My uncle is a teacher and owns two houses in rural Ohio with his wife, kid, and two dogs. Living the American dream.
Pretty much. Not realistic to assume someone comes to the US with nothing and then buy a home in say San Francisco.
The American Dream is typically "come to the US with nothing and build a comfortable life, no matter who you are". I still think that's possible. Guaranteed? Of course not.
A high percentage of homes in San Francisco are literally owned by first-generation immigrants. You can obviously see this just walking around and talking to people.
I don't know when that idea got started, but it seems like my grandparents' generation (The Greatest Generation) enjoyed the greatest benefits of it, then my parents' generation benefited but also inherited their parents' wealth. As a GenX person, I watched my cohort struggle well more than their boomer parents' cohort.
The American dream was effectively denied to my generation and it's only gotten worse for subsequent generations.
I don't know anything about Boston, but where I live in Europe that's not so easy; a lot of properties within commuting distance aren't cheap, either. Sometimes they're even more expensive actually. And living two hours from your workplace isn't cheap either: you pay either public transport costs or fuel for your car, never mind the enormous amount of time you'll spend commuting.
Consider a place like London. It's bloody huge, and much of it is quite expensive. At the end of the day, London is going to need people staffing grocery stores, and cleaners, and that kind of thing. Not the entire population can be software devs or whatnot working from home, and you can't push them all outside of London.
They aren't neccesarily designed that way, it is the reality of democratic local governance that real property owners in a community are naturally going to vote for measures that maximize the value of their property so that they can sell it once the land has a more profitable use than their own. When everyone votes for their own economic interest it tends to make real property more expensive over time.
You're just nitpicking vocabulary. This is exactly what I meant, and I would consider the laws and regulations that result from this process the "design" of a city.
I mostly agree, although are Amazon warehouses in the most expensive cities? My understanding was that they were big and therefore located in spread-out suburban food-deserts poorly served by public transit, where land is cheap and available, and the zoning is lax if you're building an Amazon warehouse and "bringing jobs" but strangely prohibitive if you're thinking of building apartments.
Anyway just penciling out the math, a $15/hr wage ($31K/yr) puts you in the 12% federal tax bracket and the 4% California (for example) state tax bracket. So your take-home would be $15/hr x 2080 hrs/yr x (1 - 0.12 - 0.04) = $26.2K/yr. So at that point rent ($1K/mo = $12K/year) is a good 45% of your take-home pay, and you've got $14.2K left to pay food, utilities, transportation, and (hopefully not) healthcare. It can be done. Each thing tends to trade off with other things. For example, to avoid healthcare expenses you'll want to stay healthy, eating healthy food for example. But healthy food is expensive, and probably not located close by your shitty part of town, so you'll be either driving (expensive and to be avoided) or spending extra time on public transit, or risking a catastrophic healthcare expense by biking there (in America anyway), or just eating the regular ol' cheap food. Also, do not take on any dependents. Like I said, it can be done.
Healthy food like frozen chicken, canned vegetables, potatoes, apples, and eggs are widely available and cheap unless you're in a complete food desert.
It’s been a while for me but i always remember single person apartments (even studios) being relatively more expensive than multi bedroom with roommates. Anytime I wanted to save money that was always the first place i started. In that sense i personally would consider an apartment all to yourself a relative luxury.
If it has been a while for you, then perhaps you were much younger and comfortable sharing a living space with relative strangers. Many people working these crappy jobs are not kids in their teens and twenties. They are middle-aged and these are their careers. Also, the workers we are talking about don't "want to save money", they are perpetually spending every cent they earn to cover costs and debt. It isn't some pit stop on the way to the upper-middle class (though upper-middle class people seem to like to pretend it is).
Sorry, I’m biased because I’ve literally never lived alone. Didn’t even cross my mind that one person’s salary can afford an apartment. When I say an entire studio apartment to yourself an entire studio apartment for you and your roommate or partner.
Renting a room comes with its own logistical nightmares, fwiw. Navigating the entire roomate interview process sucks. More than once I've had friends who deal with roomates have months at a time too stressed to advance their other career goals because roomates stealing their shit, playing loud music, refusing to leave, not paying on time, etc etc. When you don't have "fuck you" money, there is surprisingly little necessary to royally fuck up your plans to get out of the bad situation you're in.
Not that I disagree with you, but when these discussions come up I always see "major city" as the baseline, as if they're the only places in the world that are worth living in.
Likewise, they always take effectively the 0th percentile wages among workers (minimum wage earners), and compare that to the 50th percentile housing units. If 0th percentile earners are expected to be renting the 50th percentile units, who exactly is going to be living in the 40th percentile and below units?
Major cities are where the problem is most obvious. The cities need low skill workers to keep running, and those workers can't afford to live anywhere near those jobs.
What percentage of the world (or even western society) do people immediately move out of their parents homes into their own individual apartments that are nice and close to work?
What percentage work into it?
What percentage is it laughably out of touch for anyone and everyone who isn't top 1% of anything?
That is what folks mean with the unrealistic luxury part.
Typically, folks move in with room mates. Or into communal living (like a dorm). Or in with a girl/boy friend. Or find a job near where they live (not try to live right next to a job). Or any one of many other situations which the poster seems to think are unacceptable, yet very common - and probably the best setup anyway, since it's not like they have any experience living on their own most of the time.
I personally moved out (and in with room mates) when I turned 18, and was working full time before then. This was in a low cost of living, mostly rural area.
The number of folks who can move out of their parents place and have their own individual apartment RIGHT AWAY?
Laughably small, and generally if so it's funded by their parents. It's always been that way.
My first comment was about the high cost of housing causing people with high paying jobs to take on roommates. Policy is a substantial factor in that outcome.
I took your comment as a reply to that topic, I guess I still don't understand what your point was in relation to that.
I also think we can take a look at what drives costs for less expensive housing. My small town is basically allergic to larger apartment buildings, I think probably because the people with control don't want them (vs any good reason). One project got cancelled with people talking, with straight faces, about the historic nature of a post war car dealership building. Another got refused because people were afraid of having low cost housing adjacent to a hypothetical business hotel (a business hotel proposed to be in the middle of a bunch of parking lots, it was ridiculous).
The second one there would have been conveniently located for people filling the low income jobs we are talking about!
My comment is pointing out that people often have room mates, and always have often had room mates. Especially in high cost of living areas. Especially if they are young. Even if they have high paying jobs. A friend of mine is a quite experienced physician, and I've known her for a couple decades. She had room mates as an internist, and for awhile afterwards. It made financial sense.
If your argument is that a meaningful number of people who historically would not have had room mates, now do, not because of a different set of choices they are choosing to make, but rather due to economic situations requiring radically different choices then maybe some data would be useful?
I know a lot of people who are clearly choosing to live in a city who probably don't need to. I know of many people choosing to have room mates because of economics, but would historically likely have made other choices (cohabitating with a boyfriend/girlfriend, moving to a different location, getting a different job, etc.).
In 2016 I was on £16.82, I had to share a house with four other adult housemates and had no prospect of owning a property within a 10 mile radius, it's only gotten worse since. God knows how any unskilled people doing these jobs are supposed to live with any dignity.
Who is paying $2500 a month for rent on minimum wage?
In Australia (where that $43k is from), the median rent for a 2 bedroom unit is $436 a week - $1700 a month. Very affordable with housemates or a partner also on minimum wage. In cheaper suburbs or 1 bedroom units, this is cheaper again.
I am anchored at $2500 because I currently pay $1775 / month (just bumped to $1875) for accommodations I moved in to late 2019. To find a similar situation on the open market I would have to pay $2500.
I am surely in an outlier market so your point stands, I'm just speaking from where I sit, not trying to muddy the waters with hyperbole.
> Amazon is not even close to bottom of the barrel.
What would you define as the bottom of the barrel then? There has to be a sensible threshold that delineates between 1) "I encountered a lot of bad luck but I am motivated and want to get myself out of this situation and 2) I simply don't care. Most of the physically able that fall under 1) can get a job at an Amazon warehouse. For those in poor health, I will agree that the US is no match for other countries.
> 42k is a joke when your rent is close to $2500
You are approaching this subject as if living in an area where rents are $2500 is a right and not a privilege (the median rent in the US is $1,104 [0]). You might be shocked to hear that even in the most socialist countries in the world, there are gated neighborhoods and areas that are off limits to the poor (I experienced this first-hand living in a country that's often used as a socialist success story). I understand that not living in high-income areas leads to bad schools and a ton of other factors, but this is not a US-only phenomenon. Taking the necessary steps to remove the variations in rent is a strong step towards full-blown communism, which comes with its own set of downsides.
> and you get no benefits.
Nonsense, Amazon has surprisingly good benefits [1]. I am all for bashing Amazon's various horrible practices (eg: launching white-label brands that steal data from their own customers, total disregard for trademarks in their paid search bidding, etc), but when it comes to benefits, it will be hard to find a warehouse job with better perks.
> The national median rent was $1,792 last month, up 17% from a year ago, according to a report from Realtor.com. Rent for studio apartments, one bedrooms and two bedrooms all saw double-digit increases over the past year[0].
Very true, but individual income in the US is being discussed.
$15 an hour translates to ~31,200 a year. A household consisting of a married couple or just 2 people living together both earning $15 an hour is $62,400. Pretty close to the median.
Yes, but households by definition don't need to pay two rents, which means if you can afford average rent on $67k, the median household can in fact afford the median rent.
I think you are probably right, median household income likely can afford the median rent. Median rent is ~$1100. After taxes 2 people making $15 an hour are going to bring home $3,900 a month, so after rent that leaves $2,800. Probably a livable amount. To be honest I am not really sure where we were going with this conversation but I agree with all your points :)
> You are approaching this subject as if living in an area where rents are $2500 is a right and not a privilege
And you're approaching this subject as if Amazon warehouses are uniformly distributed throughout the country, such that median rents _matter_. They aren't, and they don't. Amazon warehouses are typically just outside of (or even within) population centers, where rents exceed median, often substantially.
How far should a person commute for a $15/hr warehouse job? How far _can_ they commute?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right an Amazon warehouses are nearly all located in areas where rents exceed the median by a meaningful amount. So what? Living right next to your employer is as much as right as anything discussed here. Ignore Amazon for a second. There are gas stations in areas like Malibu that have bad traffic and extremely expensive real estate. The people working there are obviously not living anywhere close, and I'm thinking they probably get paid less than Amazon warehouse workers in the same state (and have much worse, if any, benefits).
edit: I just thought it might be fun to calculate and shared my calculation. Sorry it wasn't welcome but I'm outside of the delete window so I'll just remove the numbers and leave this apology.
I work at a FANG, total comp in 300k-400k range, and my rent is less than $2500. Can you tell me why someone making $15/hr needs to rent a place that costs $2500/mo?
This is a good point. My mortgage and escrow on a decent house in a nice suburb and good school zone on the outskirts of a large city is $2300. Spending $2,500 on rent is insane.
That's not normal, but it is simply what it costs to live in NYC or SF or London. I know tons of people who pay north of $2,500/month for decent (not fancy) apartments in central neighborhoods of those cities. And $3-$4k/month is very common for a single person.
I would posit that those people spending $3-$4k a month are making a great deal more than the $15 an hour that this thread is talking about. Living in NYC, London etc is for people that make a vastly above average salary. Anyone choosing to live there on ~35k a year or under is asking for financial distress. Granted it is very hard to move to another city when you are making a low wage as moving is expensive but if you have a job making $15 at McDonalds in NYC, you can get a job at McDonalds making $15 an hour in Alabama or Ohio and enjoy a better cost of living. You wont have all the perks and nice to haves of NYC but a financially sensible person would not be enjoying them on that wage anyway.
No, that's what it costs to live alone, in the middle of a highly desirable city that restricts housing supply via NIMBY zoning. None of these things are things you need to live life. You don't need to live alone, you don't need to live in NYC, and you definitely shouldn't feel obligated to live in a place that refuses to build adequate housing.
Yes, and I would bet that those people you know paying $2500/mo are not earning $15/hr.
And no, it is not simply what it costs to live in NYC, unless you think you absolutely must live in Manhattan below 96th st. This is like saying the cost of a car is $65,000, because the only car I accept is a BMW X5. Ok, if that is your standard, then yes a car will cost you $65k. But there are cars available for much cheaper, that will fulfill all the important roles that one looks for in a car.
Its a bit old now but this article really stuck with me back in the day, it was my primary motivation for escaping the warehouse/agency environment and getting in to tech.
I lost my hobby but that's a small price to pay long term i think.
Amazon is good job though. A shitty job would pay $10 an hour, lack the benefits, and still just get rid of you on a whim. Also, multiply by .8 to get the takehome pay - $15/hr isn't netting 40k without overtime.
> Amazon is a desirable and good job in the low-skill, low-wage world. The only people who think otherwise are rich 6-figure making degree holders.
So incredible that I'd find an authority on that right here in the HN comment section! Please tell me more about my opinion!
It's pretty close but I don't have a six figure salary and don't have a degree (but am getting one part time while I work.) 80% of my friends are grown adults working in the service industry, retail, and driving jobs with a few working in upper-level clerical jobs. My wife works in retail. Folks at work— mostly developers— are the exception rather than the rule in my life.
Not one single person I've spoken to about it considers working in a wage or independent contractor job at Amazon desirable. I know a few people that did work there and they quit because if you want to run yourself ragged under authoritarian management, at least UPS/a paving crew/a bar will compensate you well for it and probably give you decent career prospects.
Where I live, the $15/hr Amazon starts at is less than any McDonalds franchise pays entry-level openers and closers, less than you make as a prep cook, less than what you make working at CVS or Walgreens, less than what you make as a rideshare driver/delivery person. A impossibly cheap studio apartment— we're talking 200 square feet, probably not legal, in a crappy neighborhood— would take a minimum 70% of your take-home pay without considering health insurance or anything else besides taxes that might get deducted from your paycheck.
The estimated take-home is about 1/3 of the area's calculated AMI— the federal poverty level. You're so far into what constitutes low-income for public housing that the numbers on the city chart don't even go below 30%.
You're making the same exact mistake you're accusing people of here of making. There's a whole world happening outside of your own sphere of experience. No surer way to be consistently meaningfully wrong than assume nobody else knows what they're talking about.
you're using relative terms to justify an absolute judgement. those jobs can be literally better than 100% of all other jobs available in a particular market segment and it STILL doesn't qualify them as "good" jobs because "good" is a moral qualifier. should people be forced to work jobs as shitty and destructive as Amazon's because the alternatives are either worse jobs or starving on the streets? you're answering that question with yes and using rhetorical sleight of hand to hide the fact.
What does make something good, then? The top level comment implies that having to work at all is indentured servitude. Does that mean any sort of work to sustain oneself is not "good"?
Standard of living, living wages, and employee satisfaction are among the most frequently measured and calculated statistics of our time. I’m not your research assistant.
I think Amazon warehouse is a good job for some, and others with no choice. Personally all other things being equal(which they prob aren't but depending on age and situation the other benefits may not matter much) I'd rather work fast food than run around that warehouse like a mad man all day. Lot a fast-food and other places offering 15/hr around me and I live in a relatively low COL city..
I wonder how many people here saying Amazon warehouse is a good job just because it pays 15/hr have actually worked there along with other jobs paying similar or better?
> I wonder how many people here saying Amazon warehouse is a good job just because it pays 15/hr have actually worked there along with other jobs paying similar or better?
I have never even made $15 an hour. Also, in my area (also pretty cheap CoL), they pay $20/hr while fast food is ~10-12.
>For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims
I don't think GP is out of touch with reality as much as sensationalizing what is going on. Given the trend of the housing market and wages across the entire west, it could be closer to reality quite soon.
Rather, Average Joe is struggling with things that realistically, he shouldn't be struggling with given our global wealth. Comfort level of money has risen far above median wage. If you're not sitting on wealth yet, anything below that isn't going to feel comfortable for a myriad of reasons. Individuals can work around that and build up the wealth, but that won't make the road itself any more comfortable.
Not to mention the majority of actions individuals can perform involve less spending, and every time that happens, politicians, economists and the news will quickly throw out a panic article how the economy is doomed if people don't start spending more quickly.
Whoever complains about slavery in the US should look up the 996 working hour system in China (spoiler: 72 hours per week).
Why compare ourselves to China and not to a place like Argentina or wherever they take mid-day naps during weekdays? Because you don't want to fall behind in the global economic race. As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, there are going to be fewer and fewer protections for the local industries. For example, back in the 20th century it was possible to ban imports of various foreign goods, because those same products could be manufactured anywhere. But we're increasingly getting to the point where there are only 2 or 3 options for most of the tech products (mobile phones, computer operating systems, anything AI-related). In 20-50 years from now, things are only going to get worse. As a first-world country, you might still have a chance to be a relevant exporter in the mid and late 21st century, which will hopefully pay for the cost of importing everything else you can't manufacture locally. But you won't get there with siestas.
You can absolutely try and make things better, but most people have very little perspective. Countless times I’ve seen people say things about how they’d never bring a child into the world because of how bad things are now. They mean global warming, Donald Trump, or whatever happens to be in the current news cycle.
We’re living in the very best time to be human so far. It wasn’t long ago that the world was living under the constant threat of global nuclear annihilation, before that two world wars, before that constant illness, famines, and other wars, etc. Long before that, just struggling to get enough food and shelter to survive.
The same goes for current working conditions/life. Some things are worse than 20 years ago but some are better.
My favorite part about people who use that as justification for not having kids is that they will not have kids. Let them exit the gene pool and the rational people can continue to have children.
You got that backwards. Not having kids requires a lot of rational thinking.
Having kids merely requires drunk sex without anyone being aware of the consequences.
It's entirely rational to think twice about the circumstances before having kids, or more kids.
For one thing, micro-plastics weren't in the brains and bloodstream of past populations. That said, doubtful anyone hesitant to have kids is under the delusion everything was always better in the past. I certainly wasn't when the time came to make those decisions.
It means “I would prefer the human race dies off rather than reproduce”. Sure, you can make decisions for your own health and personal reasons. But if you truly decide not to have children because of “global warming” as if the planet gives a fuck (it’s only an issue for humans - the planet will live on for billions of years) then you are saying humans as a species are a cancer that must die off. And I find that totally absurd and illogical.
> It means “I would prefer the human race dies off rather than reproduce”.
Who is saying this?!
Regardless, there are 8 billion humans from a population pool that may have at times dropped to as few as a few hundred. So risk of human extinction is far less than the (very real) risk of making lives of future generations much shittier.
That is the whole point of this thread - people who choose not to reproduce because of global warming, Trump, or [insert some society problem] is saying “I’d rather humanity die off than try and let future generations solve the problems I see”. It’s ludicrous.
The part that gets me is the 'modern'. There have been periods where things were somewhat easier in certain regards, but those aren't the norm and were for unsustainable reasons. The US had a nice honeymoon period after WW2 where our position as the world's factory and plentiful natural resources afforded food and housing to be cheap.
Young people look around and think things are harder now than they've ever been and it's simply not true. My mom didn't have it easy, hell, my grandpa who was born in the great depression and got to be an adult through the 50's didn't have it easy.
Houses and food may have been cheaper relative to other things, but people put in way more hours of way shittier work, at least my family certainly did.
You'd actually have to accumulate everything before being able to make an absolute statement such as "Young people look around and think things are harder now than they've ever been and it's simply not true" (rather, them having it worse than those before them). I don't know how people can make this statement in such absolute terms, while at best their arguments are "well Y is worse, but X is better!" Let's not forget "young people" still have to live to see their retirement years. At least for someone outside the US, I don't expect to see most of my taxes funding the elderly's retirement returned by future generations (nor do I want that, for that matter).
Nor is it very fruitful to have this measuring contest when it is evident several things have gotten worse for no other reason than greed.
I'm actually not super clear on wat you are saying, but I'll try to respond.
> You'd actually have to accumulate everything before being able to make an absolute statement such as "Young people look around and think things are harder now than they've ever been and it's simply not true"
That's not an absolute. I did not say "All young people". I said "Young people". There are definitely young people who believe the US, and some the western world in general, is on some wild decline from a golden age where everyone with an entry level job owned a house at 25. Just look at Reddit (assuming it isn't trolls astroturfing that is).
> I don't know how people can make this statement in such absolute terms, while at best their arguments are "well Y is worse, but X is better!"
I'm actually not sure what you're saying here.
> Let's not forget "young people" still have to live to see their retirement years.
Here too. Are you pointing out young people need to save for retirement? That isn't new. My grandfather was employed his entire adult life and only one of his (out of 6 or 7) jobs came with a pension (which he didn't get). Likewise with my mother.
No one in my extended family, old or middle aged, has a pension, and very few have significant savings.
> At least for someone outside the US, I don't expect to see most of my taxes funding the elderly's retirement returned by future generations (nor do I want that, for that matter).
It's not really feasible even if we wanted it. And it shouldn't be necessary. That is a very long, very separate conversation though, as my the point of my comment lies elsewhere.
> Nor is it very fruitful to have this measuring contest when it is evident several things have gotten worse for no other reason than greed.
This was the intent of statement actually. Calling work indentured servitude is drawing a comparison with the human rights dark ages which isn't apt.
It's partly that we (the West, not just Americans) are so rich that we're out of touch with reality. Another way of looking at it is that hardship, which has not only been a part of life since the beginning of humanity but has arguably defined it, has been notably missing recently. So now we have young people complaining about things that would have very recently been appreciated and welcomed. At the same time they're bashing cultural values / norms that are in part responsible for this elimination of hardship.
Euro wages are typically after tax, but you are citing a before tax figure. In California for example where a 15$ wage is reasonable for a "shitty job", that's around 34,000$ take home. You can expect to pay 15,000$ in yearly rent, which leaves you with 19,000$. To get to the Amazon warehouse you work at, you'll have to pay around 5000$ a year on a car, because public transport won't get you there, leaving you with 14,000$. Then you have utilities, food costs, healthcare costs, etc..., and you'll be lucky if you manage to spare 2000-3000$ a year of disposable income.
And of course, this is Amazon, so at least you get some form of insurance. Many are less fortunate.
It is preferable to live as middle class in a third-world country (GDP per capita ~4000$/year) than as someone with a shitty job in the USA, having lived the former.
Although I don't agree completely with OP's point it is true to an extent. I'm in the UK. My US colleagues earn significantly more (for the exact same job), they pay less for accommodation and get much larger accommodations (even living in comparatively large cities), and general cost of living (food, gas, clothes etc.) is less. I'm talking tech here (so not comparing low-skill/earning jobs) but at least in this industry Americans have it pretty good.
Note also that $30k USD (not “42k AUD”) is pre-tax, and take home is more like $25k somewhere like Ohio. And that Amazon warehouse is going to exist near a population center, where CoL is a bit higher, like rent.
But I really need to reject what you’re saying about the “bottom wage.” $15/hr is not the lowest, it’s actually on the very high end of the lowest income salaries:
> Of those individuals with income who were older than 15 years of age, approximately 50% had incomes below $30,000
This isn’t 50% of low income jobs. 50% of all workers make less than what you say is a “normal” low skill wage.
Minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr. Anecdotally, when I was starting out a few years ago, I was paid minimum wage at a college IT job. Most restaurants (outside of HCOL cities) are going to start around minimum wage or slightly higher.
Let’s also look at one of the biggest employers in country, Walmart. It’s not going to start you anywhere close to $15/hr. Say you get lucky and get a whopping $12/hr. That’s $24k/yr, or $21k net. Monthly rent in the cheapest CoL places in the US is going to be like $500. That’s $6k/yr. So your total income after paying rent, at an extremely common low skill job, is $15k/yr, or $1200/mo.
You can cover these types of essential expenses with $1200/mo?
- Food
- Car and gas (there is not public transit to take you to Walmart in Ohio.)
- Utilities, such as electric, water, trash, and internet.
- A basic phone plan.
- Health care. (think about what percent of $1200 a premium could be.)
- Any kind of savings, including retirement?
It is certainly possible to live extremely frugally, assuming no children, no existing debt (such as college), no vacations or travel, no big expenses, etc. It is certainly not possible to cover emergencies (like a medical one or your cheap car breaking down). I also question if you’ll ever save anything towards changing your future, like a retirement plan or better education.
The bigger question is why the fuck, in one of the richest and most successful economies in the world, do a huge number of the participants in that economy — again, 50% make under $15/hr — have to make a wage which doesn’t enable them to be at least a little bit comfortable?
And they don’t get any kind of meaningful protection against bad situations, like medical problems. Walmart isn’t going to pay you to be on an extended leave. It’s not going to be common to have any kind of retirement plan other than social security. It’s rare to have good health care plans at this salary.
It is going to be challenging, in this forum, to gain empathy, because most of us are likely in the top 10% of earners. But I don’t see a way to look at this situation and think it’s good for our society.
US and more socialist EU countries may have similar CPIs, but when we get to talking about education, rent, healthcare, transportation, etc the differences can be stark.
Yes, people in US earn more and get taxed less. But they also spend a lot, lot more on necessities via shadowy cost structures like student loans and insurance and >$1,000 ambulance rides.
Not to mention people in the US often are just more likely to straight up die from things that should be totally preventable in such a wealthy country, the abnormally high infant and maternal mortality rate in the US being just one example.
This is often measured by researchers. It is called a "cost of living" calculation, and every one of these that I have seen indicates that this isn't the case.
For anyone who has lived in several countries, it should be obvious that direct cost-of-living comparisons rarely make sense. The actual costs depend so much on your income level and life situation that no single number can accurately reflect them.
Let's take Finland, the UK, and the US as examples, as they are the countries I'm most familiar with. At $30k/year (individual income), the US is much more expensive than the other two, mostly due to things like healthcare, childcare, education, unemployment, sick/parental leaves, and pensions. The UK might be a bit more expensive than Finland.
At $100k/year, the cost of living is more or less similar in all three countries. The weight of benefits and subsidized services is lower, because they take a smaller fraction of your income. The US may still be more expensive if you have kids, but it can also be cheaper if you don't have them and are never going to get then. The UK may also be a bit cheaper than Finland due to lower taxes.
At $200k/year, the US is the cheapest country and Finland is the most expensive one, primarily due to taxes.
I dont think this comparison is as relevant as youre presenting it to be - why concern ourselves with the rest of the world when the GP and the linked article are US centric? Furthermore - why would someone struggling and feeling enslaved care one bit about how much harder anyone has it?
The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass had this to say on the subject of wage labor[1]:
> [E]xperience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other
From Wikipedia[1]:
> Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as arising from the unequal bargaining power between the ownership/capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer class within a compulsory monetary market: "No more crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages. It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the shopkeeper"
So what, even if Amazon pays slightly above a minimum living wage, the working conditions are extremely bad (e.g. no adequate toilets, extremely long walking times towards the break room, drivers being forced to piss in bottles, employees being pitted against each other by a relentless algorithm without respect for differences in age, body strength or whatever).
Given that the social security system in the US (and to be fair, even in Europe) is pretty lacking and Amazon (as well as Walmart) is setting up shop exclusively in areas with high unemployment, it can very well be said that people have the free choice to work at Amazon instead of another employer that treats their workers better, so yes it is perfectly valid to call it "de facto indentured servitude".
> Americans are just so rich they are out of touch with reality.
It’s this one. As a Canadian, I can’t take anything they say seriously about their housing “crisis” or cost of living. Almost everything is more expensive in Canada and most jobs pay a lot less, but things are still not really that bad, so I know that the Americans just like to complain.
The only way it’s possible for an American to struggle financially is if they do it on purpose.
The irony here is that so many Americans will say "I'll move to Canada if things don't get better here." None of them have ever lived in Canada (or any other country), and just assume that things must be better elsewhere.
The Greatest Generation was exceptionally patriotic, and I always assumed it had to do with living in a country that suffered much less industrial damage in WWII than other countries (which enabled a great standard of living while everyone else was still rebuilding). But I am starting to wonder how much of this has to do with just simply having spent a couple of years abroad and getting to witness first-hand how dysfunctional most other places are (during and in-between wars).
Yes. Jeff Bezos is an unsung hero and has done more to help the poor than anyone. Without him, there would be massive unemployment and an underclass riddled with social problems like opiate addiction and spousal abuse.
I couldn't agree more and I think the road the right takes with "free speech" is purely emotional and makes no sense.
What makes HN great isn't that there is free speech, it is that everyone is treated equally. The rules are the same no matter what your opinions. I really wish the people clamoring for free speech would use their heads instead of their hearts and realize that this is what they really want.
If Twitter openly said, "we ban anyone with a right of center opinion" then I would be perfectly happy. What bothers me is they lie about what they are doing. It tells me they know they are doing something wrong. It is really dark and manipulative what they are up to.
Well first, Twitter literally banned the President of the United States while allowing ISIS and other terrorist groups to have free reign. All this tells me is that one of your friend groups is perfectly happy lying to themselves about what is going on.
>Again, not judging and willing to be proved wrong, but the right is a lot ... rougher, aggressive
I am yet to see anyone on the right openly talking about murdering black people, whereas it is common for left wing twitter users to talk about murdering white people (remember the new editor for the New York Times had a number of tweets to that effect). Also, posting pictures of themselves with severed heads of their enemies while covered in blood seems like a thing among left wing users. I am in fact struggling to think of anything "rough" or "aggressive" from the right, even at the most extremes that comes close to the norm of the left on that platform.
Bad example because the only reason the communist dictatorship in North Korea still exists is that they are propped up by China, and the only reason Chinese dictatorship exists is because they are propped up by the West.
This is historically accurate, sure, but from what I have seen the current ruling class in the West has used this as a cheap excuse at best. It certainly seems to me that they have simply been selling our cultural and technological heritage away to line their pockets. The fact that a lot of these people would prefer a society run the way China is run also helped in getting them to support China too.
If you watch the videos the entire city was on fire and the "peaceful protestors" were firing rocket propelled grenades at the police force. And the Democratically elected leader, Yanukovych, had to flee the country and give control over to the insurrectionists or he would have been murdered.
I guess you can say "That wasn't a coup" if you like, but we would really just arguing about semantics here.
The protests were peaceful at the very begging in November 2013. Then protests were dispersed and the spiral of violence escalation started culminating in death of around 100 protesters and less than 20 police officers in February 2014.
Towards the end it was certainly not a peaceful ordeal. It was more of a small uprising.
I recall snipers shooting to protestors.
But I don't recall RPGs being used by either side when I was following it. I could not find any mention of it right now. Any sources of that claim?
On Feb 21st 2014, the EU foreign ministers and Yanukovich signed on a deal where there would be speedy elections — that would most certainly remove Yanukovich from power, somewhere in spring.
But on Feb 22nd, the protesters refuse that deal and seize Yanukovich's palace, stripping him of power immediately. After which he flees.
It's that seizing of the palace and rejecting the EU-brokered deal is what is usually called "the coup".
1. Within 48 hours after the signing of this agreement will be adopted, signed and promulgated a special law that will restore the action of the Constitution of 2004, as amended by this time. The signatories declare their intention to create a coalition and form a national unity government within 10 days thereafter.
On February 22, 2014 as allowed by Article 111 of the Ukrainian Constitution, Verkhovna Rada decided to impeach Yanukovich with 328 votes for, 0 against and 122 not present or abstaining.
According to the Constitution of Ukraine, impeachment would have involved a) formally charging the president with a crime; b) a review of the charge by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine; and c) a three-fourths majority vote – i.e. at least 338 votes in favor – by the Rada.
Of that three — that all had to happen — exactly zero happened. Instead, the Verkhovna Rada declared that Yanukovych "withdrew from his duties in an unconstitutional manner" and cited "circumstances of extreme urgency" as the reason for early elections.
This can be taken to a direction of "democratic transfer of power under extraordinary circumstances". This also can be taken to a direction of "unconstitutional coup d'etat". The direction depends on the goals one's trying to achieve.
Because a popular revolution shouldn't be labelled a "US-backed coup", and labelling it as such strips agency from the protesters who made it happen. Getting the label right is important given that this is a critical part of the Kremlin's justification for the invasion: casting the current Ukrainian government as illegitimate, and stripping Ukrainians of agency and their identity.
The evidence that it was a US-backed coup is quite weak; from Nuland's leaked call, to Nuland handing out sandwiches to protesters, to the speculative opinions of Estonia's FM, to the few billions of investments the US has made into civic institutions since 1991 -- it's a little bit of smoke if you squint really hard and apply a good dose of confirmation bias, while simultaneously sweeping under the rug Russia's more aggressive colonial meddling in Ukraine (such as Yushchenko's poisoning).
Maybe better evidence will emerge later about 2014 as records are declassified (such as it did with Diem's overthrow), it's possible and wouldn't be surprising, but barring better evidence, it needs to be labelled the 2014 Maidan Revolution, or something similar.
Yes. Westerners and Russians seems to think that everything is organized by USA and that people of other nations do not have any autonomy.
A lot of people seem to think that Poland or Baltic states were somehow forced into NATO. Certainly narrative that China is trying to sell right now.
We knew very well that aligning ourselves with Russia is just straight road to disaster. And we needed to get as far as possible as soon as possible from Russian imperialism when we had a small window of opportunity.
Ukraine was split on it and it did result in disaster.
> everything is organized by USA and that people of other nations do not have any autonomy
This is not an either-or proposition: the truth could well be that there were (lots of) people who wanted a regime change AND the US State Department intervened.
It's not a spin. The word "intervened" may mean anything from talking to people to military intervention. USA officials talked about who would be good for them in Ukrainian government, granted some loans etc., while Russia put soldiers in Crimea parliament, annexed Ukraine territory and started war that continues till this day.
USA talked, while Russia started a war. Both can be understood as interventions, but they are not equivalent.
Technically true, but this reeks of false balance fallacy. The US recognizing that Yatsenyuk will inevitably take power (given that he was the most popular opposition politician by far) and strategizing about factional politics following a brewing revolution is just categorically different to annexing territory and poisoning opponent politicians.
There's also no equivalency between a serial killer who killed 10 people and a serial killer who killed 100 people.
> and you should not be trying to create it
I'm not trying to create any equivalency. But if these two serial killers are fighting each other to death, may I please be excused from rooting for one of them?
> Because a popular revolution shouldn't be labelled a "US-backed coup"
What do you suggest we label a situation where the US government officials get in touch with people opposing the regime in a foreign country, in protests (that turned violent) and talk to their leaders, designating one of them to lead the future government and vetoing some of them from joining that future government?
(Note that the leaked Pyatt-Nuland call is from before Feb 5th. They apparently talked to Yatsenyuk to lead the future gov't, and they are discussing that Klitchko and Tyahnibok stay out while supporting it. On Feb 27th the new gov't is sworn in, lead by Yatsenyuk, with Klitchko and Tyahnibok on the outside.)
On similar note, what would you call a situation where Russian gov't would get in touch with people opposing the ruling US order and organize a regime change in US? "Popular Revolution" or "Russia-instilled coup"?
The leaked call reveals little novel information. Nuland was already having public meetings with Yatsenyuk, Klitschko, and others on the eve of the revolution. It's a foregone conclusion that such meetings were to exercise US influence to promote the US foreign policy position on what ought to happen if the government was to get toppled in a revolution.[1] This isn't evidence that the US instigated the revolution, or that the US was a big part of the factors behind the revolution. It's "US-backed" in the weakest sense of the US having communicated their desired outcome if the revolution came to pass after the ball was already set in motion by Ukrainians.
That's why we shouldn't label it a US-backed coup. That label connotes a large degree of involvement and influence over the causal factors underlying the revolution which can't be supported.
If the US followed Russia's tactics and poisoned pro-Russian Ukrainian leaders, or sowed disinformation in their media ecosystem, then sure, the label of a US-backed coup would be more than appropriate.
[1] Actually, this is me being overly generous. While that is one possible interpretation, another is that they simply recognized that Yatsenyuk will take power due to his overwhelming popularity among Ukrainian people, and are simply trying to preempt and manage the inevitable factional politics that could arise post-revolution.
What would we call a situation where Russian foreign minister and their ambassador to Washington would contact and meet the leaders of the March on the Capitol, and dictate them what the future US government — if that March succeeded — would look like?
The US went ballistic over the idea that Russians interfered in their elections by publishing emails. The direct contacts would turn them super-ballistic.
> a situation where Russian foreign minister and their ambassador to Washington would contact and meet the leaders of the March on the Capitol
If Russia played no role in instigating the conditions of the revolt, and if Russia was a close US ally, then I would not call that a Russia-backed coup attempt.
The analogy doesn't fit, though, because Russia wasn't an ally, it was an adversary with its heart set on undermining US democracy. And Russia did play a role in the events that caused the revolt, with the purported stealing and releasing of the DNC's and Podesta's private e-mails, strategically leaked immediately after the Access Hollywood tape. One could make a case that these leaks got Trump elected due to the thin margins that he carried he election by, and that the leaks created an atmosphere of deep-state conspiracy thinking in the US public that made people more pliable to Trump's stolen election lies.
There are a huge number of cultural differences in the US to other places, with all sorts of different reason behind them (seriously it is like being on a different planet), and the reasons can be hard to pin down.
However, a lot of them, and I think this one included, can be put down to the ethos with which Americans interact with each other. In other Western countries (perhaps with the exception of Mediterranean Europe) it is considered polite to not expect things of your interlocutor unless you know them well, and even then, not so much. In the US it seems to me that it is much more acceptable to be somewhat demanding of strangers, for their time and attention, and it is expected that you will do the same back. When an American uses first names for their family, they are, if we were to exaggerate greatly, be saying "How stranger! This is my family, I demand you WILL know them, and I will follow your demands that I know yours, as is custom in these parts, now let us break bread."... I know it's ridiculous, but I find looking at things this way helped me a lot.
Depends where in the USA. Stranger interactions are vastly different between the northeast, the south or the Midwest. Don’t even get me started on the damn Californians.
1) An all powerful state is the logical conclusion of anyone who believes the collective is more important than the individual.
2) There were many benevolent all powerful states during the 20th century, but every single powerful state that believed in collectivism turned into a murdering hell hole filled with poverty and suffering where the poorest people risked their lives to flee to countries that believed the individual is more important than the collective.
>1) An all powerful state is the logical conclusion of anyone who believes the collective is more important than the individual.
That is an absolutely massive assumption not based in reality. Its possible to care about the system as a whole without thinking that there needs to be a centralized authority.
Indeed, caring for the society more than the individual and all-powerful governments are at best orthogonal, at worst inversely correlated.
Take Hong Kong for example. Citizens are mindful and care about the collective a lot, while having individual business to take care of. In daily life they are conscious about following the rules not because they are forced to but because if they didn’t the dense city would come to standstill within minutes. HK was never under a communist dictatorship.
Similar with Japan and Korea, which are not dictatorships and thus the case for an all-powerful government is very tough to make (a government that is democratically elected to enforce the will of the people is hardly an all-powerful government—it’s the people who are all-powerful in that scenario).
Meanwhile, over in the mainland China you get selfish drivers speeding through red lights, giant interchanges full of cars at standstill (presumably, due to such behavior), organized scam mafia employing trafficked children to “sell flowers” on subway stations, etc.
I’d argue that all-powerful government is in fact the supreme (but hidden) example of individualism where power-hungry individuals on top do everything to ensure they reign forever and cannot be replaced, everybody else be damned; and the rest of the country (whether consciously realizing it or not) follows the example set by their leaders.
A factor that might correlate with societies being less individualistic is ethnical homogeneity. I hope there are examples to the contrary, though.
That's not a bad trend, but such data has to be interpreted carefully. Throughout much of the (so-called) developed world, the past several hundred years of growth have seen large amounts of old-growth forests cleared. Replacing those forests, ecologically speaking, will take many human lifespans, and filling the void they once occupied (as well as land that was traditionally not forested and therefore provided different ecosystem services) with human-planned monoculture will do little more than inflate oversimplistic statistics that provide cover for those seeking to avoid taking responsibility for the health of the natural environment.
To be clear, I'm not questioning your intentions, just pointing out that the data you cite isn't (necessarily) as encouraging as a superficial examination might suggest. I'm not an ecologist, but I'd imagine that measuring biodiversity levels, soil health, cleanliness of air + water, etc. would paint a better picture of environmental health than forest cover.
I remember listening to someone point out (I think it was Sam Harris) that what all ideologies and religions have in common is that they must have, somewhere, a very strange idea that everyone in the religion must accept. One that clearly goes against common sense and experience.
For people from other countries wondering about the veracity of these claims, let's take an example: The typical shitty job everyone on here complains about is working at an amazon warehouse. This is a job people with no skills take on. They pay 15 USD an hour. In other currencies that is 42k a year AUD or 2390 Euros a month. (the cost of living is roughly the same in these places).
I'll leave you to decide whether this is "slavery" and whether they "can't afford anything" or whether Americans are just so rich they are out of touch with reality.