Since apparently nobody else in the thread has any empathy for those who've lost their jobs, future access to healthcare (in the US and less civilized countries), and financial security, I guess I'll be the first: I feel bad for people who are laid off by the machinations of billionaires. I wish we lived in a society where it wasn't optimal to act like raving lunatics will tear down every bit of security you have at a moments notice.
For those who are cheering this on - good thing its not you getting mauled by tigers in the gladiator pit, huh?
It's okay to feel bad for people who lose their jobs. But business cycles are important for a healthy economy. Unsustainable ventures need to die or be pruned at some point if you want to generate lasting prosperity. Whether this specific instance actually serves to create a more productive and more dynamic company remains to be seen, and it sucks for the people affected, but if they're skilled and useful – as every person should always strive to be – they'll be fine.
"if they're skilled and useful – as every person should always strive to be"
Side note, but the fact that people will "be fine" based on their level of economic usefulness - and, indirectly, linking their value as a human to their ability to be productive - is what keeps me up at night thinking about what happens when automation outclasses all of us
> I go to sleep wishing for the day when I can automate everything away.
I've been sitting here trying to suss out why something about saying this outside the context of a job interview feels so cringe to me. Best I can figure is that it's two things. 1.) Having that thought as a central part of your inner life implies that you have a very limited social life. 2.) The lack of worry about your own well being - "we'll have UBI or a dystopian hellscape, oh well" - feels almost ... subish in a sadomasochistic sort of way. Like you're bottoming for the economy (not that there's an issue with bottoming, lol).
If you owned your own business it wouldn't strike me this way, but if you're just a programmer at a company you don't actually get to work less by automating things, you just get to work on different stuff. But if you automated everything you'd just be tossed aside and reap no benefits. Wishing that on yourself is just.... so strangely pathetic. I know you didn't mean to sound pathetic. You probably consider it cool or heroic (in a nerdy sense) to talk about how much you want to automate everything.
Sorry to derail like this. I'm just fascinated by my revulsion and trying to untangle it.
I don’t literally think of this every night. I was exaggerating and should have been more clear about this statement not being literal.
I’ve never actually ended my day wishing for automating everything. But it is an ideal that I would like.
I wouldn’t be tossed aside from automating my own business as I own it and no one could toss me aside. There’s not a requirement that I have an employer.
So I don’t think automating all my work away means I won’t have a purpose any longer. I think it will lead to more interesting and meaningful work.
I could be wrong but I’ve automated hundreds, maybe thousands of processes over the years for various companies and it’s always led to me working on more interesting stuff.
I don’t think it’s cool or heroic, whatever that means, just part of fun problems that I get to solve.
My lack of worry is based on not having any control over the situation so instead focusing on other things. It’s just a reductive analysis that lets me think I don’t have to worry about it.
In the extremely small chance that it is possible to automate everything so that there’s no more work, I don’t have control over it. In hellscape mode, that sucks and is not fun. In UBI mode that’s great. Either way, it’s not affecting my decisions today. I certainly don’t wish for the negative outcome or relish it’s potential.
I think your revulsion may be due to misunderstanding some of my motivations.
It's not the next few years, but half-century out that I'm worried about. I'll personally be retired by that point, sure, but that doesn't stop me from being deeply worried by society at large. Even good programmers are going to have a hard time finding jobs.
You're also missing that programming isn't the only sector that's going to be upended by automation. Basically every job market is going to be affected by the end of the century.
>If we reach some zen state where truly all has been automated then we’ll have UBI (or some dystopian hellscape)
In the States at least, the resistance to any form of socialism is so strong that I have no faith UBI has a snowball's chance in hell.
>there’s tons of one person businesses you can run if you automate workflows.
and when literally everyone can do it, competition will be brutal. When the stakes are "make it or end up homeless", and everyone is desperately trying to run their own business because corporations don't need to hire anymore, we're in deep trouble
We have about a century of empirical data that says that automation does not cause widespread unemployment. Automating horses took away all the horse-care jobs and business, but they found other things to do. Computers automated computers (armies of mostly women who chugged out calculations), and they all found new jobs. Nobody has a secretary any more. All those people responsible for inter-departmental mail are gone, because nobody sends memos any more. Nobody has live-in servants any more, partly thanks to washing machines, dishwashers, and microwaves.
Actually, in some sense, more people have servants, just that they are part-time: cleaning services, people who keep track of your schedule (executive assistants, but for normal people, can't remember the word).
When Microsoft Word automated away secretaries, it also raised the level of quality to be what was formerly available only at professional printers, so people spend the same amount of time, but now the expectation of quality of output is higher.
There can't really be widespread unemployment due to automation, because then labor costs would decrease and handmade goods would become more affordable, so people would start doing that.
Actually studies are that people who specialized in Eg. Looming fabrics never found equivalent jobs. They literally lost their livelihoods and never regained that quality of life. I would be supremely worried if a permanent underclass of people whose specialties are automated away and there are no equivalent quality jobs for them.
Good point, but as a counterbalancing force, those people still benefit from the economy-wide productivity increase in the long run. An entry-level unskilled worker has a much higher standard of living today than a skilled tradesman of the 19th century.
When it comes to approaching the asymptote of the singularity (or just general exponential increase in tech advancements across the board, if you don't buy the general singularity theory), the societal impact of the car replacing horses means little to me in terms of predicting the future.
UBI is orthogonal to socialism. It could exist under socialism, but you could also just take the existing state of the USA, widely considered capitalist, and modify it by setting the Social Security benefits age to 0. I've actually seen socialists against the UBI often enough; it implies the existence of money and markets
We’re the richest country in the world and yet that lasting prosperity only seems to exist for a few. Maybe we’re going about this wrong. Maybe being heartless and coldly efficient doesn’t create lasting prosperity.
Many of them have been paid a high enough multiple of the median household income in the state (which is less than 80k) for long enough - they’ll be fine.
But in here, the company has deep debt only because of overpriced leveraged buyout. And the layoff have popcorn qualities because they are rage driven. The debt twitter had originally was much smaller. The scale of layoff that had to happen would be much smaller. It is also fair to guess they would be deal with more tact and more fairness then done now (no I dont believe Musk team is able to actually tell bad and good performers apart).
Twitter has some profits last year first time. I am not saying it was perfect company. But the deep deep financial trouble it is in now is because of leveraged buyout motivated by politics (stick it to ennemies) and ego.
Why not? Twitter hired a TON in the last 3 years and their income didn’t keep up. That’s business that could need correction. That’s part of the cycle.
As a european though, it is absolutely crazy to see you can do this on a day by day basis.
Here you would have at least 1 month, more likely 3 month, prior notice to just being kicked out and having your accounts closed. You would also have to state a business reason for people who are employed as fixed staff.
This gives people time to react to these kinds of things.
Edit: Sorry, this refers to a comment further below:
Also, comparing this to the pandemic is kinda crazy, isn't it?
It's one thing to have a global scale event effecting the lives of billions and another of just buying a company for way tooo much because you wanted to make a dumb joke about smoking weed.
America truely is a heartless, dystopian society...
I'm surprised by these "generous" packages. Where I work in Europe, they must give me 3 months notice, my full salary is paid for 6 months, after which it's 75% up to 2 years, and if I still don't find anything new by then I get 50% indefinitely.
I've worked in both the US and various EU countries, while the higher salary is certainly enticing, it's also a trap; When shit hits the fan, you better have been saving. In Europe, the money I make is money I get to really use, because the rest is taken care of for me.
Those benefits are ludicrous. How can any small company or startup survive if they have to contend with those kinds of requirements? If I were a business owner wherever you are I'd restrict my hiring as much as possible and try to find ways to not hire anyone, probably by contracting work out to other businesses or offshore completely.
It's a good question. Here, if you have a permanent contract, the employer is required to pay into various government insurances, and this is mandatory for all employers. The salaries here are lower because of this, but it's deceiving because the insurances are based on your salary. Your employer also pays anywhere between 2-10% on top of your monthly salary into a pension fund on top of your state pension. So in short, if you make 100k EUR, after taxes that's actually your money. So in my case, after I've made my monthly mortgage payment, set some aside for groceries and some subscriptions, the money I have left can be spent on whatever I want without worry, I practically don't need to save unless I choose to.
You're right in that employers restrict hiring as much as possible, what tends to happen here is you get a 1 year contract with the option to be taken on permanently, and these contracts don't have all of the insurances. Taking a permanent contract here is seen as a serious commitment to the company, so most people who just want more money in their bank account at the end of the month choose not to take permanent contracts and take the risk themselves.
If I saved for these things myself in the US, I would've been netting less than I do here in Europe, despite my US salary being 100k higher. A lot of people live way beyond their means with all these things considered.
The value of benefits packages in the US is often around 40% of the salary. For example, health insurance, social security, 401k matching contributions, stock options, etc.
I recognize those numbers and suspect he's talking about the Netherlands. If so, he/she is being incredibly inaccurate in describing benefits.
If you're on a permanent contract, there's a minimum legal notice that depends on years served and your age. So it's not "6 months", it's a variable amount of months. It may be as little as 0.5-2 months if you've worked there for < 5 years. If you're not on a permanent contract, the notice is: BYE.
As for "75% for 2 years", that's not the employer paying you, it's the state. Unemployment benefits. Where both "75%" and "2 years" are lacking some crucial details. It's max 75% of a fixed cap. So if you're a high earner, you might only get 25-50% of your previous salary. Further, you'll be intensely pressurized to find that new job, where you need to supply weekly evidence of job interviews. You can't just take a holiday for 2 years. By the way, you paid for the above yourself, directly from your payslip.
As for "50% indefinitely", this is state wellfare. Which is absolute hell. You don't easily qualify for it and you're even more pressurized to find a job, any job. You'll be closely monitored and you can't own anything of any worth. So if you were a highroller owning assets before, get ready to be stripped naked. Next, you'll have the social stigma of being a leech. Have this on your resume, and its goodbye career.
I'm honestly pissed about the inaccuracy of the poster.
I tried starting a manufacturing site in Switzerland. We wanted to get the Swiss Made badge (70% parts sourced in Switzerland and all major assembly steps done by Swiss employees). An hourly employee had basic rate of CHF 45 an hour and they had to be paid some ridiculous benefits totaling up to like CHF 120 an hour. Apart from the cost, the biggest issue is that you can’t fire them essentially if you hire them on “permanent basis”. It’s impossible to do anything there for a scrappy small business.
Modern Switzerland is much of a socialist state. It’s lost all the things that made it a great place for business. Zurich is still a small tech hub for startups but mostly services and finance. Labor is usually hired in US or elsewhere.
About the only place in EU that's pro-small business is Italy. It still has some 50% of the GDP from companies less than 50 employees.
Pretty much what I expected. Also, I'm surprised that the Swiss Franc is worth exactly the same as the US Dollar. Is it pegged to it? 45USD per hour for an hourly manufacturing job is shocking as well, that's about $90k per year. I'm sure it makes it a nice place to live but God help them if they ever need to get something done in a hurry. I imagine they have to tightly control immigration as well.
Those benefits are not paid by the company, but by the state. That's one of the reasons why cash-in-hand salaries are lower in most "socialist" European countries: the State takes a big fat cut out of it (47% in France), so it can pay for these benefits.
Taxes in the USA are often just as high (remember to add in state and local taxes for an apples to apples comparison with European countries). And for that you get no "socialism" -- no healthcare until you're old, for example.
Income taxes (Federal + CA) seem to be roughly in the same ballpark as France based on [0]. A French income tax simulator is available at [1]. This is the "simplified" version. What matters is box 1AJ for salaried income.
For 100000 USD it's actually a bit higher than for 100000 EUR.
However, as another commenter said, income tax is not the full story - far from it. There are other taxes that you have to pay. Also, while social security comes out of your paycheck, it's considered taxable income in France for the purposes of the income tax. Also, social security is usually insufficient, so you usually have to pay for a separate insurance. Which, you guessed it, isn't deductible from taxes.
As far as a company's concerned, if the employee costs 100 EUR "fully loaded", they only get around 55-60 EUR in hand. Also, when comparing with the US, don't forget that VAT is at 20-25% depending on the country. And, at least in France, VAT is levied on some taxes (yup), like for example electricity and gas.
People forget to count the corporate taxes on the employers in Europe (to support the welfare state) which lowers the salaries of workers making the calculation look like taxes are similar.
> When shit hits the fan, you better have been saving. In Europe, the money I make is money I get to really use, because the rest is taken care of for me.
I wonder where this happy country is. In Germany it is already a common knowledge that relying on state for your retirement is a sure recipe for poverty in the old age.
> In Germany it is already a common knowledge that relying on state for your retirement is a sure recipe for poverty in the old age.
Is it? I'm living in Germany since so many years and nobody told me this. They send me estimates about the money I'd be getting when retiring regularly, and while it'd mean downsizing, I'd not be poor with the amounts named.
Assuming you are somewhere in IT and earn above the average, you will be okay-ish.
People with lower incomes will benefit less.
But if you look at that receipt and consider inflation, the extreme rise in rent in Germany, etc and all of that over maybe 20-30 years from you ending your career. It becomes less.
There are adjustments for inflation, but still.
These high pension values are also quite sure to be unsustainable for the government, as the workforce shrinks quite dramatically and people still get older.
Generally, people are advised to put some money for retirement on the side, if they can.
If you are in a position to put some money aside probably try to do some research.
"Geldanlage für Faule" by Sina Groß is a very down to earth starting place.
It is guaraneed to be less value in 20-30 years, because Germany's pensions are transferred directly from the pension fee deducted from salary of employees. And since in 20-30 years you will have a totally diffeerent ratio of number of employees vs. pensioners, the cake will be smaller and will have to be distributed to more people. No matter how inflation or anything works out in future, pensioners will then have less than pensioners now, who more or less live in paradise.
It's wise to be prepared for this scenario for the reasons you mention, but in 20-30 years a lot can obviously change; either a change to the way the pensions are funded (this already started happening to a small extent) or a sudden influx of qualified (!) migrants.
I wouldn't bet on any of it happening, but predicting the future is always hard.
Great reply! To be honest, It's easy to forget about the inflation. Well, worst case, one could make more kids and invent their own "take care of your parents" ponzi-scheme, hehe.
Seriously though, in Germany, you always get this sense that everybody seems to know what they are doing until ??it hits the fan and you realize all that time nobody had cared about what's coming.
Not in my country (in Europe). You get unemployment benefits for up to 2+ years that is a percentage of your salary up to a certain level, depending on your job history in the last 2-3 years. The maximum you can get is around $40k USD, which can be difficult because you probably have a mortgage and other expenses that were calibrated to a much higher salary.
You are also required to actively apply for jobs, and you may be required to take a job application course. I think you can even be assigned to a job interview if you delay. It is not intended as a "free" paid vacation. I think that even in some cases you are theoretically required to take any job anywhere in the country even if you have to move, but I haven't heard of anyone who had to do that. I assume they look at your social situation (family etc.)
Every 2 weeks you need to send in a form where you state that you have been actively looking for work and your financial situation is unchanged. If you forget to check some boxes, you lose all your money for the 2 weeks. Vacation is also regulated and you need to inform your local government and in some cases you will not receive money for the period. You are assumed to spend a full working week applying for jobs.
After 2 years you are placed into a different type of program where you don't get a fixed amount, but you get money according to what the local government decides you need. That means you would need to sell your big house and move to a cheaper appartement if you want to get any support. If you had any savings, you would probably have to spend them before getting any assistance.
Yes, but you don't tend to get fired on permanent contracts to begin with and it's much more enticing to find something new especially considering work-life balance is very very good, I work maybe 24 hours at most with my company explicitly putting your personal life before work because a healthy employee is a healthy employer. You also still pay taxes over the 50% income you're receiving and taxes are high, so it pushes you to find something new -eventually-.
That's certainly not true in all European countries. In Switzerland, for example, you get 70% (80 for very low salaries) of your old salary for 1.5 years (2 years if you're over 50). After that, if you still don't have a job, you're on your own (if you're broke, you can apply for social welfare).
"Europe" isn't a unified system. Those benefits definitely don't exist in the UK, and I'd still consider our labour laws to be well-balanced and reasonably fair to both employees and employers.
In what universe would that be "properly taxed"? You're saying I can work for 1 year in a $200K/year job and then draw $100k x 30 years = $3,000,000 of value from that one year of work? And it would be fair and just to tax "wealthy people" on my behalf for that?
I still feel like I must be misinterpreting something here, because I can't imagine even the leftiest of leftists thinking this sounds fair. That's basically just UBI except the rate is set for each individual based on whatever the high-water mark of their lifetime earnings were at any point?
So in exchange for software engineering salaries that are 8-10 thousand american dollars lower per month at least. you get a fraction of a much lower salary in unemployment benefits?
Lmao, americans shocked when they realized that proper social welfare is a thing always baffles me.
To reply to you genuine question :
1. Yes it is a thing.
2. Everybody is paying for it through taxes.
> As a european though, it is absolutely crazy to see you can do this on a day by day basis. Here you would have at least 1 month, more likely 3 month, prior notice to just being kicked out and having your accounts closed.
That's not true, there are minimum periods for which you must continue to pay the employee after notice their contract will be terminated, but I'd be surprised to learn of any country where it's illegal to prevent the employee having access to the building, confidential documents, etc.
>be surprised to learn of any country where it's illegal to prevent the employee having access to the building, confidential documents, etc.
And I'd surprised if there were many countries where you couldn't prevent an employee who had been notified they were being let go from having access to systems, documents, etc.
No I agree, that's exactly what I mean. You might still have to pay them, but if you don't want them to actually 'do work' for you that's fine. (It's your prerogative to have ever let them access any of that stuff to begin with, could've changed at any point during employment even if they still had a job.)
That's only for very senior management positions and highly paid specialists, I've never seen gardening leave for even middle management, much less an engineer.
Every coin has 2 sides - yes we have this additional security (which I love, just like everybody else), but we pay for it. Much lower salaries, companies not so agile, so they are hardly world leaders. You simply can't get compensation like those folks had/have in Europe, not as perm employee on 100%, more like 25-50% of it.
Its actually great, skilled people can choose their priorities and how they want to setup their lives and career (stupid immigration policies and bad stuff coming out of it notwithstanding).
I prefer something in between - ie Switzerland. Salaries higher, taxation lower, some middle ground on social security - ie easy to fire people, usual 3 months notice by law, but social system will give you 70% of your salary (up to an OK limit) for first year, you just need to keep doing the job hunt. It means you are not shit-scared if you take a mortgage for example, you don't need to have such a massive reserve like in US. And of course top of the world healthcare that cost very little (sickness, accidents are 0 if you work/retired) and cca free top notch education including best universities.
Europe has plenty of world leaders and very large cooperations.
Just a few examples: Automotive manufacturers, Siemens, ASML, Several arms manufacturer, Airbus just to name a few.
In addition, at least where I am, there are a million small companies (a few hundred employees) who deliver to customers around the world and, I assume, at market prices.
It's a balance and probably one of the reasons we lost out on the digital race so far.
> you don't need to have such a massive reserve like in US
If it makes you feel better people in the US don’t have massive reserves either. They just gamble and hit up credit if things hit the fan, even at FAANG salaries.
Notice period is different from redundancy. Redundancy can mean you leave the day you’re made redundant. But they must give 30 days notice that redundancies are going to occur.
In australia you cannot hire for a redundant role for I believe 9 months? If you do you must rehire the people made redundant or face big fines.
> you would have at least 1 month, more likely 3 month, prior notice to just being kicked out
At this point we have no idea what kind of severance package Twitter will be offering. I think it's likely that what you're saying is pretty much what they're going to wind up with - that is, Twitter will push them out the door, but with a check equivalent to something like 60 days of pay plus like continuation of benefits. Of course, I don't know this for sure, but neither do you, so there's no point in condemning or praising them yet.
Many Americans think Europe is heartless because youth unemployment is allowed to get so high because businesses are paralyzed to protect those that have work and thus can never reorganize.
Knee-capping the dynamism of youth is a current consensus of the European system.
What's a $250k payroll worth if that's also what you have to pay for the average hospital visit? I'd stick to my €100k and not have my life ruined just because I broke my leg or my kid is born with a heart disease.
I work as an engineer in America and yea.. that’s totally not how the math works. Healthcare expenses are largely covered along with the much higher pay and lower taxes. I think my out of pocket cost last year was negative after hsa contributions from the company.
If you're productive and then get sick and get fired for being sick, by the time you die of lack of access to healthcare you had become poor. So you see, nothing bad happens to the good useful people!
You have cobra coverage until you go get another job, which is something you absolutely have to do regardless. If you have an hsa, you’ll still have a bunch of money in there, too.
At the end of the day, the revealed preference is that many EU+CA developers move to the US for the salary, and extremely few US developers move to the EU. Draw your own conclusions.
Just ran some arbitrary numbers. Someone earning $190k in mid Ohio would have take home of around $140k, between state/federal. That's before any other retirement savings or anything else. A 'fantastic' insurance plan from blue cross anthem will be around $2400/month for a family of 3. With a 'modest' deductible of $4k. $2400*12=I around $29k. This person is having to spend ~ 21% of 'take home' just on medical insurance. Not any medical expense, just insurance.
Assuming working independently, some of that is deductible, and one might argue how much left over is "a lot" or not. There's still food, shelter, utilities, transportation, education, etc. they need to account for, as well as saving for the future.
Actually, looking at it, if the person is 'independent', they'd pay another ~$10k or so on FICA, or have some LLC structure set up. Or they might be lucky enough to have an employer who pays for some/most of this 'fantastic' insurance... until they don't.
Perhaps in terms of raw dollars, there's some advantage, but there's a pervasive threat of "what if" scenarios that is hard to shake for a lot of folks.
But if you are earning that you are likely working for a large corporation where your actual out of pocket expenses are much closer to something like $1000/month for that family (varies by situation). Far better scenario then a much lower European salary (probably closer to $80,000) with higher taxes and the same (at best) quality care.
If you are working independently yea it may be more expensive, but (unfortunately) so few people work independently so it’s an edge case not really that valuable here. Though worth noting providing a way to untie healthcare from employers and still make it affordable so that you can more easily start a company is a good idea.
It’s really difficult to do good analysis here. If you were in Ohio making $190,000 your family is automatically in the top 10% or so. If you worked remote you could buy a house outside of a major city for your salary equivalent, or in a city like Columbus for 2x your salary with some fantastic public schools.
Also a nitpick while I think you get much more efficient and cheaper healthcare with the government running it, at the end of the day it’s never free so you have to actually compare taxes to premiums to get a fair assessment of cost.
This 1000 times. I don't think we'll see a meaningful change in my lifetime, but it's an existential burden that we, collectively, have had for generations. So much so, really, that hundreds of millions of people seemingly can not envision meaningful change.
The constant "just get a great job with great benefits!" refrain irks me to no end, and demonstrates a privilege that people often deny exists. Even if/when I can get that "great job with great benefits", I still only have it at the pleasure of the employer. I grow old? You're gone. Employer makes bad decisions? They "take responsibility" by letting me go.
The notion of having access to health care, regardless of my employment status, should be such a basic thing to grasp. If I'm unemployed for a year or so (illness, family issues, whatever), having to upend specific doctors/medicines/hospitals/treatments because "insurance change" is life altering for many. Seen it myself in dozens of personal connections over the years. Want to change jobs? Whether abusive working conditions or just need to be with family? "Can't do it... I need my health care... the only doctors that take my health care are in this area...". Or... "I won't have health insurance for 6 months if I take that new job".
There's 1000 different examples I could find why "employer/insurance" connection is bad, and very few I can think of that are good for all parties, yet, we continue in this mess.
> but (unfortunately) so few people work independently so it’s an edge case not really that valuable here.
I know a growing number of folks doing this, and many more who would love to, but ... "health insurance" keeps them tied to "employers".
Great post and I do apologize if I came off as 'not caring' about people working independently it's just if we do broad characterizations we have to compare broadly and so few work independently.
Maybe an idea there to start an independent business owners healthcare association or something that redistributes profits via lower premiums or something? How the hell do you start something like that?
FWIW, there are orgs that do that, but they almost always end up being somewhat regional, and... it ends up being a lot of work. FreelancersUnion, in New York, I believe did/does something like that. Some chambers of commerce and similar groups do too, but... it doesn't really end up changing much of the price at all, especially since ACA. (oh, misread, I initially read that as simply just offering a buyers group to get 'group' rates).
You've generally always been able to buy health insurance independently. I started... 14(?) years ago. The ACA, well-intentioned, was hobbled from day one, and my $220/month high deductible plan has morphed in to a $1300/month plan which is still high deductible ($14k/year), has fewer options, and ... well... some pregnancy services will be covered (cis male here). You want a 'low' deductible? You're looking at probably $2k or more for 2 adults. And yes, I know health insurance has an age component - I'm years older than I was then too. $3k/year in exchange for taking on some risk (higher deductible) makes some sense. But base price of $15k/year in health insurance, plus another $14k/year in deductibles means this is essentially catastrophic only, but not really priced as such).
It's all region-based, and even where I'm at, I get measurably fewer options because I live 2 miles over a county line, and 'no one' insures out here. It got worse for several years - I know in NC, there are ~100 counties, and I believe there were more than 30 at one point who had only one insurer even selling health insurance in those counties.
Also.. FWIW, I didn't take it as you didn't care, but yes, freelance workers are generally overlooked, even as the ranks grow. They just tend to be growing on the lower-end of the spectrum - rideshare drivers, door dash delivery, etc. Much easier to just ignore growing segments of society while we pride ourselves on our ability to "get a better job with great benefits!". I'm not in a position of having to choose food over medication, but having to decide between medication or surgery today over funding retirement savings? I've been there, as have some friends of mine. Yes, it comes across as a bit privileged, but privileges are all relative.
If you think this is good oh boy do I have news for you. You don't need to "afford" fantastic insurance, healthcare is essential and needs to be free for everyone, which it is here. I have complete freedom of choice across 27 countries, no strings attached, completely free of cost. So do people poorer than me.
Better how?
It is probably better if you do not intend to have children or ever need medical care.
People saying that taxes in the US are much lower than Europe, as a person who lived in London, San Francisco and NYC I’d like to disagree.
The tax rate for my income bracket in the UK is 45%, and while federal income tax is 39.6% I still have to pay state and city taxes on top of that which works out to be about the same.
However I get free medical care in the UK, affordable college tuition (10x less than the US at least), maternity leave, great public transit, I could go on. What does the same amount of taxes paid get me in the US? I’m not complaining about having to pay taxes, but sure would be nice to get something back that isn’t military.
> The tax rate for my income bracket in the UK is 45%, and while federal income tax is 39.6% I still have to pay state and city taxes on top of that which works out to be about the same.
This statement is meaningless without specifying the brackets or providing an effective tax rate for a certain amount of income.
How would a reader know that? And how can that be true when the brackets are so different? UK does not even look like it has single vs married distinctions, not to mention the myriad deductions in the US, and the drastically different taxes in various locales (I pay $30k+ less per year by living on the other side of a state/city border).
The 45% UK income tax rate is for 150k GBP, which is $167k. The top bracket for US federal income tax starts at $578k/$693k at a 37% tax rate.
It does not seem to pencil out to being remotely close, and that is ignoring UK National insurance and pension tax rates, but I am not sure how UK pension works to equivocate to US FICA taxes.
I was providing my personal anecdotal experience of having the basically the same net income in 3 places.
37% federal tax also does not account for 6.8% state tax and the 3.8% NYC tax which I know does not apply to all of the US, but then we get into the territory where we have to address that I will probably not have same income in bumblefuck alabama anyway.
People here are talking like the difference between US taxes and EU taxes is 20% or more, when in reality it’s maybe 5%
The difference in tax burden is give here: https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenue.htm . It varies quite a bit by country, but the contrast with France/Nordics is particularly large
I’m not sure how income tax % to GDP is relevant here, but perhaps I am looking at a wrong thing, it’s quite painful on mobile
UPD: looked at the tax wedge, the US vs UK looks pretty similar to me- which supports my point.
Germany looks a lot higher, but they have 100% free tuition and I am not familiar with the rest of the benefits germans get.
A single digit % of total income may not be a big deal in European salary terms, but when you make US salaries it's significant. That's your first mistake.
Also, lol at UK public transit. Horrifically expensive - probably more than a single digit % of total income if you actually have to commute anywhere on a regular basis.
Life insurance is available- as is emergency healthcare riders.
Americans won’t admit it publicly but a big part of living in America is knowing what parts of America you shouldn’t go. And if you do have to go to or through those areas, you start to understand why so many people drive urban assault vehicles.
I'm sincerely sorry for your loss, but moving the goalpost doesn't help the discussion. Again, nothing to take away from how dreadful what you lived through is.
That's exactly my point. The discussion started to derail into "Who has more money?" like that's the ultimate metric. This just makes me sad but is pretty representative for the stereotypical US mindset. My point is there is a lot more to life than money.
This is just ignorant. Nobody with a $250k salary at a tech company in the US is paying any meaningful amount to health care. It is covered by insurance that their work provides.
I often describe the US as the richest (and most well armed) underdeveloped country.
It's unfair, as all short takes are, and it saddens me to see my friends who live there, who are at no fault for the mess they are in, suffer. I fear the coming mid-terms will only make things worse.
Extra-urban (outside of the big cities) Texas feels increasingly feudal every time I visit; maybe it’s because I’ve spent an increasing amount of my life in comparatively egalitarian Germany so it’s easier to see than when I was embedded in it.
Developers are already very well off no matter what country they live in, and I'd wager that "normal" people in the US are not far wealthier than people in Nordic countries for instance.
Yeah, but SF is swamped with homeless ppl. Yay for all those devs earning a lot while living in dystopia.
If I can earn less but be confident that I won't go broke because of an unfortunate events. And that the system is humane, and tries to find a balance between capitalism and humanism, I'll take that any day.
Have you been to SF? I spent a bunch of time there for five years between 2013 and 2018 and the homeless problem got worse every time I visited. It's really bad, and I live in a place that has lots of homeless people.
I think people from actual third world countries would love to be in the US where the government gives you stimulus cheques, instead of back home.
Trust me, the unemployed life in third world countries, and even in second world countries, is far more brutal than the unemployed life in the US, especially for unemployed big-tech workers who can find a new job anytime.
> unemployed life in third world countries, and even in second world countries, is far more brutal than the unemployed life in the US
maybe so, but we should look at the trend not just one sample group at one point in time... for a long time it can be argued that the u.s is riding along as fast as it can to catch up to "the 3rd world" in that regard....
The US safety net, in terms of spending, is as expansive or more expansive than the rest of the world. For example, the U.S. spends $748 billion on Medicaid, health care for the poor, which is matched by state governments. Obamacare subsidies are another $160 billion a year. The fact is the terrible U.S. government administration of these programs and the regulatory capture of the health care system by doctors, pharma, and hospitals are the core issues, but liberals whistle past these real issues and wonder why we don't have European comforts and outcomes per dollar.
I don't think that was the point that they are trying to make.
A lot of people hold the belief Healthcare in the US is bad because it callously refuses to spend money on people. This is not the case.
When you remember that those funds were largely deducted from someone's paycheck, it has a real impact on those workers and it's important not to dismiss all the hard work that did go into supplying those funds.
That's not to say that there are major structural issues with how Healthcare is regulated in the US, primarily related to how those funds are spent
I don’t know how “spending more money for less benefits” is better than “callously refusing to spend any money”? If your country has good intentions or bad it makes very little difference when u’re dying from treatable cancer because u can’t afford the care. Or when u have to go back to work immediately after giving birth.
Honestly, my mother lives in Russia, which is by no means an example of a country with a good social net, she was mortified when I told her about US labor laws. It’s true u net more cash in the US, but u also have only urself to rely on if anything bad happens, and people are really bad at financial planning for any and all unfortunate circumstances
There are significant differences when it comes to expectations on a fix. If the problem is just refusal to spend, the policy problem is easily improved with easy to write legislation: 'medicare will now cover everyone over 55'. The US healthcare system is far more difficult to improve than that, as just asking the government to cover more bills at the prices companies and the public pay would be hard to sustain. Changes to make costs more in line with European countries would have extreme opposition from some people: Every dollar of waste is someone else's income, and in general those are also American voters. This doesn't make American healthcare any better, but it means that it takes extreme efforts to make it better, even a little bit. So it's at least not a matter of malice.
As for labor laws, the US does far better than it seems. Easy to fire also means easy to hire too, as the risk taken by the employer is also far lower. And the stronger the protections, the higher the slack, showing in unemployment. Very few European countries have the unemployment rates of the US, and the ones that do get there via a lot of temporary work, which has about as many protections as US work. And even with those protections, you still see Spain and Greece at well over 10% unemployment, while the US is under 4.
I think there are some "simple" fixes that would go a long way to improving the healthcare system.
The easiest is basing Medicare spending on patient benefit in terms off quality adjusted life years.
I think it is a common misunderstanding that European countries maintain lower costs via price caps. In actuality, most don't limit the sale price, but control how much they are willing to pay for a drug, device, or procedure. This means that a product has to be substantially better to command a substantially higher price. More treatment with slightly worse products means much more benefit overall. Similarly, it puts some downward pressure on the price of new products because they have to compete with cheaper but less effective ones.
Using spain and greece for comparison sure seems like cherrypicking your data.
Also it has been proven many times by many people that if US were to transition to single payer insurance system, it would actually decrease the spending. No one claims it is easy, but there is absolutely no reason for the US insurance system to exist under single payer, that would be just setting piles of cash on fire.
I would quibble with the word proven here. There are compelling arguments with good data. single-payer could be better or worse depending on actual implementation and coverage.
It's also worth noting that many countries with single pair still have a supplemental insurance market for premium coverage not included.
>I don’t know how “spending more money for less benefits” is better than “callously refusing to spend any money”?
I don't know if it is better, but it is certainly a different problem, which matters if anyone is interested in understanding or fixing it.
I think it is important to understand the problem specifically there are a lot of patients dying of treatable cancer who would benefit from a health care system that functions better.
Sure it is necessary to understand the problem to fix it, I am not denying that. Sure, “refusing to pay” vs “paying a lot and accomplishing fuck all” are different problems.
But the context of this discussion is “can US healthcare system be objectively called third-world-like” which it can. Whether it is bad because of X or Y reasons is not relevant and comments like the one I responded to, come off as trying to diminish how dire the situation really is.
An interesting rebuttal to the usual complaints about the US healthcare system (no idea how factual it actually is, but it passes my basic sniff tests, but it is a subject I am unfamiliar with):
> but liberals whistle past these real issues and wonder why we don't have European comforts and outcomes per dollar.
The US should grow up and stop it with these bicameral partisan pissing matches.
Both the US centre right and alt-right parties are equally responsible for putting US citizens taxes directly in the grubby hands of middlemen who fail to deliver outcomes.
The biggest problem with us Healthcare spending is how the money is allocated and spent. A lunch pin in the high cost is that the government has no concern for the cost to benefit of treatments and largely props up the price of the market. This is a bipartisan problem. If the government set reimbursement for treatments based on patient benefit, it would go a long way to reducing the cost in the US.
Even worse than that, immigration status. Getting laid off when on H1B, especially when other companies are freezing hiring and we are getting close to the holidays when everything takes longer is terrifying. You are on a clock for being simply kicked out of the country.
Some shitty body shops are going to have a field day with this. Some random regional nontech companies who staff their IT departments as cheaply as they can are going to randomly accidentally end up with some MUCH better talent than they deserve for what they pay because of this.
Of course it was known. The system itself is shitty to immigrants. But "well you signed up, deal with it" is an empathy-free way of responding to this sort of situation. An Indian or Chinese citizen can come to the US for undergrad, get a PhD in CS at a top US university, be unable to get o1 for a variety of reasons, end up with h1b, and be on a decades-long waiting list for a green card. This person can get married and raise a family while still waiting for that green card.
Being weeks away from deportation is unimaginably terrifying.
This happened to me (and is in part why I'm a tad salty in the comments), I was a H1B and in the process of adjustment of status. While your green card application is pending, you're legally in a grey area if your H1B expires. I had to leave for family circumstances but advanced parole took months to process, I figured it would be okay since it was a serious emergency. Upon returning I was told I couldn't re-enter the US because even though my stay in the US was completely legal, I had technically overstayed the terms of my H1B. The USCIS policy and CBP policy differs around this. There's a specific USCIS policy memo that mentions this actually. So I'm now banned, no leniency, no understanding for the situation.
Advance parole is the permission to leave and re-enter the US while your green card application is pending. USCIS is pretty backlogged right now, so getting anything approved, including advance parole, can take longer, which leads to bad experiences like this one.
Lying about job requirements to import lower paid hostages has been an issue on here for years. I have empathy for the individual but they are also hurting me by doing what they are doing even if it is rational for them.
Software jobs create software jobs. I find it very hard to believe that the US bringing in a lot of people from around the world to work in software has actually hurt you. A major reason why tech compensation is so huge in the US is because it is a tech center, and a large part of that is because we draw people from the entire world.
I mean, some people are coming at this from some kind of altruistic angle, but let's be pragmatic: immigration is the American superpower and the key to expanding the dominance of American companies decades into the future.
Yep even if you take a maximally cynical view and think of policies exclusively from the perspective of rival nation states, I have no idea how you'd conclude that pulling very large numbers of smart people from China to the US is bad for America's hegemonic influence in world politics.
> This person can get married and raise a family while still waiting for that green card.
That's your mistake right here - making long term plans while being on temporary visa. Just assume that you're here for a few years to make money, and then need to go back to your home country. That's the idea behind H-1B visas anyway.
The green card wait for chinese and indian citizens is decades long. This is "don't make any long term plans until you are 50" kind of advice.
The idea behind h1b is to bring people to this country to work in useful and productive ways. Telling people to get the fuck out after a few years of work (even if they've spent 8-10 years in school here prior to that) is heartless and definitely not good for the country.
> The idea behind h1b is to bring people to this country to work in useful and productive ways.
Specifically, in a temporary way. H1B is not an immigration visa, it's a temporary working visa, for which duel-intent is acknowledged (it's legal for an H1B holder to intend to get and apply for a green card.) But at the end of the day, an H1B visa is still a temporary work visa, not an immigration visa.
I'm not saying I like it. If it were up to me all the temporary work visas would be done away with and replaced with a system of permanent visas. But it is what it is.
That's hiding behind technicalities. A person on H1B needs to leave the country within 30 days after being laid off. What life plans can one make around that? Even a simple housing lease is minimum 12 months in most parts of the country.
It leads to immigration in the sense that an H1-B terminates in a green card or the worker loses it after 6 years. Compared to a Chinese Z work visa, which you can just renew indefinitely and has no path to a permanent residency, an H1-B is a completely different beast.
OK, why don't you volunteer then to give up the basic human tendency to fall in love, and give it up indefinitely for many years at a time? It's not temporary if it can last for a decade, is it? Just live a pathetic little life in a box, collecting money for the day, many years away, when you can finally let yourself be a human again?
Tell me, which decade of your life would you be OK with throwing away this way? Your 20s? Your 30s? Get back to me on that.
By the same logic college students should never date, as they may move somewhere far off after graduating.
Sadly, while there is surgery that takes away your ability to procreate, there is as yet no surgery that will supress your ability to fall in love or to live a normal life.
So even if an immigrant comes here with the same stupid mindset you are displaying, and tries hard to never fall in love, it may happen anyway.
I don't know if I've read a more unempathetic statement on HN. Perhaps you are a happy lifelong bachelor, and can't relate to any other point of view. That is the only case that would make me understand where you're coming from, for if you have ever actually experienced love, you would understand the hypocrisy of your view.
Well, it's not like decades-long delay for green card processing is something that surprises you - it is known long before you set foot in the US. Why would you plan your life around the assumption that somehow the issue won't apply to you? Also, H-1B visas are relatively short term (6 years tops) so that's the time to figure out your green card chances and life plans. Finally, it's not like love somehow totally strips you of the ability to think rationally. If it is, it's not love, it's obsession.
this is unimaginably callous, do you not see the worker attached to the visa is a human being. they cant even have the most basics of human need by the virtue of being on a visa? you guys basically want immigrants to be slaves & guess what that works for your employers but not you the populus. your anger & callousness towards immigrants is misdirected.
btw No H1B is just 6years, thats just paperwork, all employers know this & workers know this & us gov knows it too because you commonly file for a GC near the end of that term & use it to further your stay. the problem parent post is facing is that us immigration rules are unclear and adhoc in many cases & folks in the pipeline end up suffering for it mostly.
> they cant even have the most basics of human need by the virtue of being on a visa?
Well, if you ignore reality of your situation because you are high on love hormones that's on you.
BTW. I'm not even from US, I live in central Europe, I spent a year in the US for one of the projects I worked on, didn't last, so I came back. You might say that I also fell victim to "unclear and ad hoc immigration rules", except they aren't ad hoc or unclear at all: if your intention is to immigrate to the US then H-1B (temporary worker visa) is not even the right visa type for you, you should apply for EB-3 instead, from the very beginning. So, to sum it up, original poster is trying to game the system, and bitching about the fact that the system is hard to game.
EDIT: Another problem with China and India is that combined they have population 10x that of the US. That's why US puts limits on number of immigrants from there (via wait times), otherwise the US population can easily double or triple in the next decade, leading to a lot of problems.
> Well, if you ignore reality of your situation because you are high on love hormones that's on you.
you mean getting married & starting a family? Even bloody monks who take chastity wows are not immune from carnal desires but you want some poor immigrant to be better than a monk because you waived a legal doc? btw thats works out great for illegal immigration in US.
> if your intention is to immigrate to the US then H-1B (temporary worker visa) is not even the right visa type for you, you should apply for EB-3 instead
Yet most GCs happen either H1B or asylum path. its because its designed that way. BTW I have been through the process so keep this BS to yourself, H1B is dual intent. And OP was not trying to game the system the system is poorly setup, surely your solution to a jobloss could not be just up & leave. especially when the rules are not clear (hence the needed to be clarified).
>..China and India is that combined they have population 10x that of the US..
nope, India's population is 4x of US. and agree there are per company h1b quotas BUT if US wants to limit the number of immigrants then they should stop issuing APs after H1Bs 6 year and force workers to go back. thats totally fine, but what US does is worse because they are stuck in a limbo state (I personally know many such people) waiting for GC to become current at some arbitrary date. And while this happens they have little leverage over company so they get treated like shit with subpar pay. So USCIS should either come up with a better plan to resolve the backlog or invalidate APs. they wont do that because employers dont want that.
Oh and BTW if they dont let workers become permanent residents then they should return all the SS & medicare taxes they took from paycheck as that is just plain theft.
The US diversity lottery sets a constant cap per country. The same number of Iclandic citizens as Chinese citizens can get it. The cap is absolutely not being set because the US is worried about its population doubling.
I agree with the above assessment that your posts are simply heartless.
> That's your mistake right here - making long term plans while being on temporary visa. Just assume that you're here for a few years to make money, and then need to go back to your home country. That's the idea behind H-1B visas anyway.
Just to be clear, since H-1B (or visas with similar restrictions) are the only path to permanent residency for people of many countries, this attitude is tantamount to "we don't want any immigrants from ______, period".
In civilized countries, you don’t loose your healthcare when your loose your job.
It’s tie to your human status, not to a contract
with a random corporation.
Also, civilized societies have come up a long time ago with appropriate social nets that mitigate the hurdle of unemployment.
I'm with on on everything but the food! I can get like 10 different kinds of apples at my grocery store, a dry aged ribeye, and there is an entire row dedicated to different types of sparkling water. If i want fresh noodles for fish soup I can go 10 minutes down the road to the Asian grocery and get Bok Choy, fishballs, and udon noodles. The only thing not near me is a reliable source of rainbow colored bagels that my daughter loves.
I guess then based on your narrow minded moral stance of what "civilized" means, Switzerland would be uncivilized. So would be Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
Your definition of "civilized" just means a socialist state.
There is no security. You never know when things will go wrong. When pandemic happened software companies like Twitter were untouched but millions of workers felt its impact shaking them to the core and hence preparing them for better choices next time. The employees that are laid off I wish them best of luck but they should have been prepared for a day like this. They were earning good. It's things like this which transforms people. Maybe someone out of these employees will start next billion dollar company, who knows?
I feel like Musk is making a spectacle of Twitter layoffs as a way to curry favor with those who very vocally disliked Twitter’s moderation policies, most of whom were just social media clout chaser types. Makers getting sacrificed to please the attention-seeking “professionals”
One of the richest people in the world overpays capital holders and slashes labor by 50% in order to own "the world's town square". Remarkable demonstration of labor weakness.
Many will be fine, there also may be many who will not. Not everyone makes that much at twitter, not everyone is in a role that is competitive right now. The ones who make the least are the ones who will suffer the most. Stop being callous.
That’s not the point. Dignity and respect. Going in a different direction? Fine. Make cuts. But, no one deserves to be treated as disposable playthings. Zero communication and unreasonable demands create anxiety. Contrast this to stripe. I fail to see how one’s income determines the respect they should receive.
As I saw pointed out elsewhere, with a headcount of only engineers and these alleged 10 managers per engineers, this would leave twitter with like 630 engineers and 6300 managers which is a clearly a drastic underestimation of the number of engineers and that's before you count roles like sales, support, etc.
Sure, but that team may have N engineers and those VPs may have N teams, so that doesn't seem so ludicrous for a 7000 person company. Or even 3500 person company by EOD. Certainly in my company there's about a 200:1 engineer:VP engineering ratio, so pointing out every engineer reports to a VP is kind of a meaningless statement
And there are also finance people, HR people, sales, etc. people. The company is far from entirely engineers, their managers, and the managers of their managers.
Yeah right. Because smart people can always control the circumstances of their life like an illness, elder care, affordable housing, change in market conditions, etc.
I try to live by that principle but it's really difficult to actually do it, mostly because of costs related to real estate/housing, and seeing how housing is a big share of almost anyone's salaries (either through mortgages or rents) in the end it gets out of your control.
What I'm saying is that is difficult to live "bellow my means" when it comes to, well, living, which means having a roof on top of my head. I don't want anything fancy, just a safe enough area, decent amount of space and decent amount of transportation options. I'm of course willing to pay for all that, the problem is that there are people who are willing to pay even more, which leaves me with two options: either compete against those other people, which, like I said, makes the "live bellow my means" moot, or, the second option, to compromise on my housing/living arrangements (choosing to live in a less safe area, giving up on access to public transportation, choosing a studio apartment instead of a one-bedroom thing), which is less than ideal (because housing is a basic thing in one's life).
Even leaving aside that a lot of these people are not engineers but customer support, finance, sales, etc. even developer hires in the current market are very measured and selective at most companies. First of all, probably nothing will move forward until after the holidays. It's not unreasonably pessimistic to think that it may take 6 months or more for someone to get a new position even as a developer.
False dichotomy. It's possible to feel empathy for someone who takes a bitter pill, but if the pill makes them and society better, I'm not going to be shamed by you for saying it's a good thing.
I've been laid off in downturns a couple times before, so it has been me in that pit.
But you can't have the boom without the bust, and shrinking bloated companies is a thing that has to happen one way or the other.
Also, the Twitter layoff in particular has had about as much advance notice as anything I've seen. It's been clear for months and months it was going to happen. Plenty of time to get yourself in order or get out first.
The personal financial security shouldn't be provided by corporations, is your problem, so you should be the one who solve it, if you want financial security just make sure you are highly employable at any point.
Most people fired from Twitter will find a new job without problem and if they can't, is their problem, not mine.
This is a very very naive take from someone who has no empathy and no understanding of macroeconomics.
In a down economy, human resources and artificially underutilized and many competent workers with solid financial discipline will still find themselves in financial trouble.
Sounds like what you’re really saying is “from each according to their ability; to each according to their need…”
Also I’m sure you didn’t have this intention, but your comment made me think about East Germany. When the wall came down, there were all these state owned companies that had to be sold, something had to be done with them. They could not produce enough income to maintain the workforce that they had. This really upset a lot of people and they lost their jobs. It was not their fault, it was the fault of the state and the structure of the company.
Twitter apparently is quite bloated, and for the company to survive and succeed it needs to cut costs, or go out of business.
Germany could’ve easily just closed all of those companies in the east and laid everyone off, but they did their best to sell them so that people could still be employed.
don't forget immigration security - if you're on an employer-tied visa then you must find a job extremely quickly or leave the US and start the process over.
Well people can be hard to replace thanks to skills and training they received on the workplace... which they can quit on a short notice if they are offered better pay elsewhere, causing enormous problems for business owners. So it kinda checks out.
Obligations shouldn't be one way, they should be mutual. If you want an ironclad employment security, etc, etc, you should also accept to be bound to your workplace until the business hires somebody else to do your work who is as qualified to do your work as you are. And if you think that your obligation is only to work well until you decide to quit at the moment of your choosing... then you should also accept that this moment might be chosen by your employer.
It's that whole thing of reacting with great sadness to hearing of one person's death and being numb to hearing of a plane crash (I'm mangling the saying). If we stopped to think about all the individual tragedies that go on every day around us, nothing would ever get done, we'd stop eating and we'd never get out of bed. People have to cope, and we shouldn't have to feel guilty about it.
I think the empathy is limited only in this particular case. Twitter has a) been exemplifying cancel culture itself and b) been a major tool for cancel mobs to organize and defame. The latter was intended and encouraged.
Some here have perhaps been victims themselves, for relatively mild things (I'm not talking about the really egregious cases where cancellation has been justified!).
If you live by the sword, things may turn around at some point.
Too many people are unreasonably attached to their jobs. If you work in a country/state that is "at will", you should take that seriously as if you could lose your source of income at any time.
That includes financial planning and money set aside for these types of events.
but underneath this 'business' there are real humans with kids & mortgages and a life. we dont/should't have to live to feed some capitalistic ideal of maximizing the line rather it should be other way round. looking at US for last 40 years which way you think its been going?
I must confess that I am finding it difficult to muster sympathy for them. And this coming from a man that despises Musk's behaviour, and wished he had been barred from buying Twitter. My reason being that during the pandemic, I repeatedly told people that my biggest fear was not the virus, but the economic collapse that would be the inevitable result of global lockdowns, and the authoritarian dystopia being shaped by the censorship of contrarian views. "First you are working from home, and then you are just... at home.", I said. And people who tried to share that view on Twitter where harassed and banned. Perhaps I will be proven wrong, and the economy will quickly rebound, who knows. But being gagged from even discussing the possibility of the events we now see unfolding, has left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
Watching twitter ban dissenting doctors and scientists reminded me of Hannah Arendt and the Eichman trial: "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution"
And this from a NYT movie review:
"Arendt concluded that evil in the modern world is done neither by monsters nor by bureaucrats, but by joiners. That evil, Arendt argued, originates in the neediness of lonely, alienated bourgeois people who live lives so devoid of higher meaning that they give themselves fully to movements. It is the meaning Eichmann finds as part of the Nazi movement that leads him to do anything and sacrifice everything. Such joiners are not stupid; they are not robots. But they are thoughtless in the sense that they abandon their independence, their capacity to think for themselves, and instead commit themselves absolutely to the fictional truth of the movement."
Generally the centi-millionaires don't have a fan following cheering them on, so there's less of an opposing view to require a comment like the top level one to be made
I think it would be easier to feel sympathy for these Twitter employees had we seen them show sympathy for the various people that were suddenly banned from using Twitter, and/or other platforms and services, often with the flimsiest of "justifications".
In at least some of those cases, it was a matter of livelihood and financial security for the people who were banned, too.
I won’t quote your reply since you deleted it but I would suggest reviewing that list of suspended Twitter accounts and looking for any example which supports your original claim that this is being done callously on flimsy grounds. Conservative grievance peddling is a popular way to assert group loyalty but it’s hard not to recognize how routinely they leave out the parts about knowingly violating the terms of service repeatedly and ignoring warnings.
People make mistakes but they also correct them and there’s no reason to believe individual Twitter employees were callously nuking accounts, much less at the scale where it’d justify being dismissive about thousands of people losing jobs they were performing satisfactorily.
How do you know they didn’t? Are there any specific cases you can point to so anyone else can decide whether to agree with your assessment of how warranted it was? Speaking of which, why is this blame directed at Twitter employees rather than the managers setting the policies? Why are they also to blame for unspecified “other platforms and services” where they presumably are not in policy-making positions?
For those who are cheering this on - good thing its not you getting mauled by tigers in the gladiator pit, huh?