Work Reform

I remember all the conversations I've had that started with the other person saying, "Can you believe so-and-so gets paid $x million dollars for playing [sport]?!?" and ended quickly with me asking, "Can you believe the owner makes $X million dollars for doing NOTHING"?

While inflated CEO pay is certainly outrageous, it's the people who own the businesses that we should reserve our most vitriolic hate for. After all, at least CEOs do work that marginally contributes to the running of enterprises. Shareholders do nothing except siphon profit away from the people who create it. Not saying CEOs are good, but let's not get shortsighted here: the entire system of private ownership of the means of production is what needs to change for things to get better.

Or probably my favorite political quote ever for its combination of both ideology, practicality, AND brevity:

We all do well when we ALL do well

(Paul Wellstone, emphasis mine)

THIS is why the right is so afraid of union culture

Fast food work is pretty stressful, IMO.

If fast-food workers began earning wages comparable to electricians, I wouldn't necessarily expect electricians to become poorer. I'd expect employers who depend on skilled labor to increase compensation to remain competitive. The question then becomes whether those higher labor costs come from reduced profits, increased prices, greater productivity, or some combination of all three.

Anyway, it is better for all workers.

If the floor were higher for everyone, I wouldn’t see a problem with some jobs earning more necessarily. What you’re describing will probably always be with us: some work is just harder or less pleasant.

I’m in software also and it very seriously bothers me that I earn about what any 10 of my kids’ teachers do.

Driving is the easy part. Finding a bathroom at 4 am on Sunday. Taking a break without someone asking you a question. Just seeing your family with energy after a 12 hour day. That's where trucking sucks.

The truck driver's job is much harder to do day in and day out. It's also much more necessary. However, it's also significantly easier to train a truck driver than it is to train developers and there's no infinite upside potential for delivery like there is with software projects in some cases (unicorn startups) and there are so many other expenses to run a delivery company that a software company might not have that they need to run on pretty thin margins, otherwise we're all paying more for all of our food.

First job where I worked as a dev, they took on 3 of us on the same time, all entry-level. One of us was a physicist who was laid off by the university since the government reduced spending on academia. Absolutely an intelligent person. Didn't last past the probationary period, he just didn't get things naturally on his own, he needed a lot of guidance. Over the years I've seen that nearly half the people hired into entry-level roles don't learn to become independent enough by the end of their probationary period to be retained after it. Sometimes it's seniors too, they've worked at a place that just cranks out very similar solutions day in and day out (e.g only done frontend and only with one framework, or only a bunch of CRUD applications in one single tech stack) for like 7 or 8 years, that place has a downturn and then they apply for a job elsewhere and they just don't adapt.

Not everyone's cut out to be a truck driver either, but once someone has learned to drive trucks, they can drive trucks for another company too. Whether your new employee starts pulling in profit on the first week or you need 4 months to determine if there's a decent chance of them being a net benefit by the end of the first year has a lot of bearing on how badly you want to retain your existing talent.

Anyway, in my country only the top talent at a couple of companies gets paid significantly more than truck drivers. A junior developer might make less than someone who just started driving a truck. Places like the US just have highly inflated salaries for devs because they're expected to work in high cost of living cities and compete like crazy for their jobs.

I, too, wish I could be society's bottom...

Employees like this are kept under the minimum hours to qualify for benefits on purpose.