LOL no doubt that also includes workers in sort facilities, part time casual/seasonal workers, yada yada. The average person looks to averages as if they are definitive. They are not. Esssssssssspecially in trading.
What are we talking about here... General productivity? UPS drivers productivity? What's even the point? Today most of us drive cars, use phones, operate computers. We've increased our productivity without sweating any more or working any longer than in 1948. The businesses we work for spent money to acquire these tools for us to do our jobs more efficiently, why should we be paid more when it made our lives easier? Where's supply and demand? White, blue collar, union and non union labor complain today because them brown people are willing to work for half our wages. We should send them back where they came from? Heck, that sounds like what we told the Irish, then the Italians and the Pollocks, etc. We all want to make our lives easier and every time someone or some group comes along to challenge our comfortable nest we try to get rid of them, especially if they are not part of our tribe. That's truly why and how unions came about, to keep others out of OUR jobs. Unions were exclusive until government forced them to be inclusive. You could only get a job if you joined the union and had a family member working in the shop. Some union locals to this day are black or white. Cops had to integrate, fire departments had to integrate, etc.. To date LA cops are in gangs with nazi tattoos to clarify any misunderstandings about their allegiances. Am I straying from the subject? Workers united against the capitalist barons? Are you seriously joining the communist international to fight for brothers and sisters who make $170k/year? Yawn, it's a joke! Everyone is leveraging whatever they can to get more. Don't get me wrong. It's easy to kick the middle class, blue collar, college (HS?) drop out who feels entitled because he's a white male. But I have no love lost for the robber barons who feel entitled to their multi million compensation packages. They are no different, at all. Greed knows no limits. I have an idea... Limit executive pay to 10x the lowest paid employee of the company. It's not novel, Denmark does it. Japan's highest paid executives are significantly lower than US paid executives, even though their companies are far larger and more profitable. Let's remove money/ income from the equation of an individual's worth. We could use other parameters, like our social contributions, to promote as most valuable. I know, that's boring and would require more effort than we'd want to expand. And the irony is that while we tried to change the world, time doesn't stop ticking and one day we wake up and realize we don't want to change anything anymore. We understand how things are, however screwed up, and just want to enjoy the last couple decades we have left to enjoy what we have, without feeling guilty, defensive or protective. Just bring that inflation down!
A few clicks of the mouse a day is all I do nowadays taking money from the market. Once upon a time I had a day job producing some real products. I wonder what is my value added these days and is it fair that I make more now than when I had a day job?
You're on a trader's forum. I'm sure some smarts guys in here would explain in rational economic terms the value of your contribution to the businesses you invest in and the market in general. If you ask me, we the plankton of the financial sea, contribute nothing other than time and effort trying to squeeze profit from a gambling den. The irony is our contribution, our value add to the system, would be to lose our hard earned money to it. Taking profit means we impoverish it. As to the question of fairness, my wife works 10 hour days, 5 to 6 days a week brokering high value corporate deals. In 2020 I made more money than she did, trading part time. It's absurd, ridiculous. But not fair? Dunno. It's not protected employment, like law or medicine or union work, anyone can have a go at it. It can be a struggle to identify value in a system that predominantly recognizes money ar the barometer of success. Is Elon Musk successful because he is the world's wealthiest man or because of his achievements? Are traders losers until they make a load of cash? Is it unfair if you can't squeeze a profit from trading despite spending so much time and stress trying? I'm one who respects the endeavor, regardless of outcome. I know that will rub the highly competitive among us the wrong way but I refuse to play the game.
From one of many daily email newsletters I get - earlier today: There's new fodder in the debate about why wage growth soared as the economy rebounded from its pandemic slump — with big implications for how policymakers should approach the fight against inflation. What's new: An intriguing new paper from Cleveland Fed economists found the ultra-tight labor market that helped define the COVID-19 recovery may not explain soaring wage growth after all. What they're saying: "While labor market imbalances have been large in the postpandemic period, they induced both downward and upward pressures on wage growth and do not account for the increase in average wage growth," Cleveland Fed economists Martin DeLuca and Willem Van Zandweghe write. Rather, the economists conclude rapid wage growth in recent years is "largely due to the pass-through of higher inflation since the pandemic," one that reflects higher compensation for a higher cost of living. Flashback: As inflation took off, wage growth followed. Various measures, including average hourly earnings (released monthly) and the quarterly Employment Cost Index, began to accelerate. That happened as the demand for workers clearly exceeded the supply of them. There were more job openings than ever before, but workers who had left the labor force — because of child care issues, lingering fears of COVID-19 and more financial flexibility thanks to the fiscal stimulus package — were slow to reenter. At a news conference in March 2022, when the central bank started what ultimately became an aggressive interest rate-hiking campaign, Powell said the "misalignment of demand and supply, particularly in the labor market" was "leading to wages moving up at ways that are not consistent with 2 percent inflation over time." The other side: Analysis by the Cleveland Fed economists, however, found that labor market imbalances during the pandemic contributed no more to the average level of wage growth than before the pandemic. "Thus, we conclude that the post-pandemic increase in wage growth largely reflects higher inflation and does not reflect labor market imbalances," DeLuca and Van Zandweghe write. Since "inflation has come down from its peak in mid-2022," they add, that suggests "a decline in wage growth from diminishing inflation pass-through." The bottom line: So far, cooler inflation has not come alongside a jump in unemployment, as some economists feared would be necessary. But Fed officials are worried the still-tight labor market remains a risk for inflation. At the last policy meeting, policymakers said "the labor market continued to be very tight," though there were signs "that demand and supply were coming into better balance," minutes released this week show. But while wage growth had moderated, pay was still "rising at rates above levels" consistent with its 2% inflation target and "further progress toward a balancing of demand and supply in the labor market was needed."