Hacker News Reader

Comment by sergiotapia | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong is wealth inequality. It all rolls downhill from that. Minimum wage is not enough to make ends meet and rent + food is through the roof. That's what is wrong. Imagine being scheduled to work 39 hours on purpose to avoid being full-time and getting benefits. That's just one problem in a laundry list of problems.

An entire generation was sold a dream and now people are waking up.

View on HN

Used to be scheduled 38 hours a week as a part timer but at least I sometimes got overtime pay for special occasions. I'm not sure if an entire generation was sold a dream, a lot didn't dream to begin with. As someone at the edge of being of being a millennial nearly gen z. I think a lot of folks never expected anything good per say, but perhaps many starting poorer made us have much worse mental health to begin with. I'm in a good spot now and worked into STEM with little education but I know many who will likely never get better. There is a lot of problems with the workforce that lower end people have so little power over. Requiring more of companies is a good place to start.

The problem you describe is poverty, not wealth inequality. While they are correlated, they are not the same. Some countries have less poverty and more inequality than others.

The only way to make wealth inequality go away is to make everyone poor. (This has happened in every society that tried it.)

Lowering "effective" wealth inequality might help, and probably happens to some degree. Distract the rich and suck their money into pissing contests over status goods whose commerce does not infringe on the supply/demand of goods for people down the ladder. The problem comes when that wealth sets its eyes on acquiring or monopolizing assets and pushing up prices of real estate and rents, for example.

I grew up feeling it should be a sin to waste money on fancy cars or fancy vacations. I now think we need more abstract art, NFTs, and something real compelling and scarce in the metaverse to absorb all that money.

Just some ill-formed thoughts with plenty of holes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com